Borrowed Lives: When Family History Becomes Fiction with Carol Cram
Turn family stories and memories into fiction.
Time & Location
Sep 20, 2026, 1:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
Evergreen Arts & Healing Centre, Bowen Island, BC V0N 1G0, Canada
About the Event
Every family has a story that gets told and retold, at dinner tables, at funerals, shifting a little each time until nobody quite agrees on what actually happened. That story is yours to transform.
In this hands-on writing workshop, you will learn how to raid your own family history for the raw material of fiction and why the moment you change one detail, invent one character, or shift the point of view, something truer than fact can emerge.
Using her latest novel The Choir as a touchstone (a novel that began as a family story and took on a life of its own), Carol Cram will guide you through structured writing sessions designed to move you from memory to imagination. You’ll write from unexpected points of view and shape the secrets every family guards into the building blocks of fiction.
Come ready to write and leave with pages and a new way of thinking about the stories you have been carrying your whole life.
About Carol Cram
Carol Cram is the author of five award-winning novels including The Towers of Tuscany and her latest, The Choir. She hosts The Art In Fiction Podcast, where she interviews novelists inspired by the arts, and writes Artsy Traveler, a blog for culturally curious independent travelers. The author of over 60 textbooks on computer applications, Carol taught for two decades at Capilano University. A co-founder of Write on Bowen, she lives on Bowen Island, BC with her husband, artist Gregg Simpson.