Susan Wittig Albert's
Nonfiction Work

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In addition to writing mysteries, Susan has a passion for journaling and teaching other women to write their life stories. As a result of her own journaling she wrote Writing From Life: Telling Your Soul's Story. She has also written numerous book reviews of women's memoirs, autobiographies, and journals (those discussed in the Story Circle Network's Austin Chapter Reading Circles, among others) for the Story Circle Network's Book Review website. Her most recent project is What Wildness is This: Women Write About the Southwest, which she edited for Story Circle.

Susan's own personal story—the worklife she left, the reasons why, the contentment she found in new work and a new life as a full-time writer—are described in another non-fiction book she wrote: Work of Her Own: A Woman's Guide to Success off the Career Track. The book also tells the stories of over a hundred other women who left positions of leadership and authority to create work that expresses more deeply who they are as women.

In early 1997, Susan founded the Story Circle Network, an organization dedicated to and made up of women who want to explore their lives and their souls through life-writing—writing that focuses on our personal experience, through memoirs and autobiographies, in diaries and journals, in personal essays, in poetry. The Network is for every woman who aims to claim the power of her experience, who wants to map her journey, and who is determined to name herself. The Network is guided by a board of directors and incorporated as a Texas not-for-profit and tax-exempt organization. Its membership is made up of hundreds of women around the country who share their experiences in Story Circles in their local communities and through the Story Circle Journal. The work of the Story Circle Network is carried out through classes, workshops, story circles, reading circles, retreats, and conferences.

One of the Story Circle Network's most important projects is the Older Women's Legacy (OWL) Circle, which was funded by a major grant from the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, of Houston, Texas and sponsored by the Story Circle Network. Beginning in January, 1999 we offered ten-hour guided autobiography workshops for women over sixty. These workshops were designed to encourage older women to share the legacy of their memories in story form. They were offered free of charge to older women in a variety of residential, day-care, adult education, and church settings in the Austin, Texas area. The workshops were led by trained facilitators using the OWL-Circle workbook and based on important research into the healing effects of story-telling. The facilitator's manual and workbook may be purchased - see the OWL-Circle website for more information.

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