Public Speaking Survival Skills for Writers

Craft Talk with Elizabeth Peavey

Just because you built the plane doesn’t mean you know how (or want) to fly it. Same goes for the written and spoken word. Have no fear! Celebrated author, performer, and educator Elizabeth Peavey will deliver a lively talk: Public Speaking Survival Skills for Writers (and more to the point, their audiences) at this year’s Black Fly retreat on Friday afternoon. She’ll provide handy tips and tricks to for readings, panels, interviews – and basically any occasion writers are called upon to open their mouths.

Elizabeth Peavey has been teaching memoir and personal narrative for MWPA since the days of quill and parchment. She is the author three books and countless print columns and features, including for Down East magazine, where she is a contributing editor. Her one-woman show, My Mother’s Clothes Are Not My Mother, ran for six years and received the Maine Literary Award for Best Drama. She has conducted personal narrative workshops for Bay Path University and Stonecoast's MFA programs, as well as for new Mainers, prison inmates, an online elders group, and middle school boys, among others. She is a frequent keynote and guest lecturer at conferences and schools, and she provides communications training – with an emphasis on story – to institutions and organizations in fields ranging from finance and health, to the arts, education, and advocacy.