I am always thrilled when my students and mentees successfully demonstrate that my work with them is paying off. Sometimes they write for pleasure, sometimes for publication and often because they want to make money! I have just decided to start sharing a selection of their work here with you, bear with me while I start to compile this. It may take a while!
Sian is just 17. She asked me to help build her portfolio to help her produce a really great university application. Here is her piece on how finding a hobby helped her to integrate into Dutch culture. It appeared at WhileAbroad.
Susan is an American expat, based currently in the Netherlands. She attended my Write Your Life Stories and Definite Articles workshops a few months ago and I recognised she had a real talent for writing. Susan asked me to mentor her so she could create a new portable career as a freelance writer. She has had several pieces published now, including this book review about The Mission of Detective Mike appeared at WhileAbroad too and an article about Repotting the Expat Child at Expat Arrivals.
Becky is an American, who has recently moved to Dubai and was looking for a bit of a career shift. She attended my three hour workshop on how to write life story at Families in Global Transition in 2009 and went on to start a blog right away. Within weeks she had been brave enough to respond to one of my email mailings about a publisher looking for someone to write a book in India. Her book is published September 2010.
Christa is British and she attended my three hour workshop on how to write life story in Houston in February 2010 and went on to take my Write Your Life Stories home study course. Christa recently felt motivated to start her own blog about her life as an expat and her repatriation.
Becky came to me as a fledgling straight out of university and attended my Definite Articles course before being mentored by me for about a year. I watched Becky blossom as my connections turned into several articles which boasted her own name in the byline. She went on to have numerous articles published in magazines, newspapers and online. She has written for the Weekly Telegraph, Expatica, Trip Magazine and Living Abroad before working at the Guardian on their website, Guardian Abroad.
Becky has since taken her knowledge of journalism and turned her hand to public relations, helping others to gain the media coverage they deserve. This has taken her to some of the UK’s most prestigious publishing houses and also to charity.
More recently, she has achieved one of her greatest ambitions, by compiling and editing The Thrifty Kitchen: wartime lessons for the modern cook, in her role of Media Officer with the charity, Independent Age. The book is a modern collection of recipes which revisits the main principles used by wartime cooks (without imposing the wartime austerity). All funds raised from the sale of the book go to the UK-based charity which provides lifelong support to older people on very low incomes. Her work promoting the book has seen her appear on TV as well as performing live cookery demonstrations at the London Olympia Exhibition centre. You can follow her adventures in the international world of not-quite-celeb-chefdom here. Now, I can vicariously live out my own dream of being a TV chef one day, as you can see in this video clip.
Melinda is Filipina and she has attended all my Write Your Life Stories workshops here in The Hague. She soon began an insightful blog and, as a result, the Hague Online asked her if she would like to work for them as a regular contributor. Here is one of her previews of the North Sea Jazz festival.
Amanda attended my Definite Articles workshop a few years ago and has gone on to have a career as a freelance writer. Her excellent blog, Letter from the Netherlands is more like a magazine than a blog as she crams it with great articles and interviews and she has also had articles published both on and offline. Read her piece on the World Cup in the Netherlands that was published by the Daily Telegraph. And her interview with Linda Hemerik that was published on ExpatWomen.com.
Laura attended a three hour Write Your Life Stories workshop in Houston two years ago and then spent a year working with me one to one on her memoir. Her memoir is about to be sent to publishers, but in the interim she had an article about surviving Hurricane Ike published by The Telegraph and is starting a blog about expat transition.
Angelica attended some of my Write Your Life Stories workshops in The Hague late last year and also a couple about blogging. Already a photographer, she began blogging about Sanity and Motherhood with gusto soon after the courses and the results are both beautifully written and beautifully illustrated, insightful too.
Niamh has attended a number of my workshops, on writing books and on writing life story. Earlier this year she also came to me for mentoring so that we could work on her memoir, The Singing Warrior, which will be out later this year. Soon after one of my early workshops, Niamh began to write an insightful cross-cultural column for the Hague Online, entitled Cloggy Valley. Take a look.
