In this 6-week course transform your life experiences into powerful, compelling writing. Through guided exercises and inspiring readings, you’ll explore memory, voice, and emotions while crafting vivid scenes from your own life.  

Six two-hour sessions covering: 

• Introduction: the creative writing approach to autobiography
• Exploring memory to build your material
• Finding and structuring your story
• Developing an engaging style – voice and perspective
• Scene and setting 
• Revision, editing and getting into print
• Workshop of a short piece of writing from each student 

 The teaching and Q&A portions of each session will be recorded and made available to students ASAP after each session. These will be available through the 23^rd of March 2027.

Student feedback discussions will not be recorded for privacy reasons.

Tutor biography:

David Pettigrew is a tutor of over twenty years' experience for the Centre of Lifelong Learning's daytime, evening and weekend creative writing courses, the Creative Writing Mentoring Programme, the Blaze online writing courses and the Classic Book Group. He is also the Centre's Departmental Disability & Guidance Officer. 

 Alongside his teaching, David is a professional editor working in the Scottish publishing industry. Qualifications include an honours degree in English Literature, masters degrees in Publishing and Creative Writing (with Distinction), and a postgraduate diploma in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education. He is a recipient of a Scottish Arts Council New Writers Bursary award and his short stories have been published in a number of writing anthologies. He also researches and writes non-fiction in the area of Scottish local and social history.