Writing Family History

View the archive of my two-hour class and discover the Five Things I’ve Learned about diving into your past and bringing the story you find there to life.

Hi, my name is Russell Shorto. I’m a New York Times bestselling writer of books of narrative history.

With my latest book, I’ve entered new terrain: family history. Like the man said, This time it’s personal. I’ve known since I was a kid that my grandfather was a smalltime mob boss in my Pennsylvania hometown. I decided I was ready to tackle his story. Researching it took me into a netherworld of bookies and payoffs, of America in its mid-century brawn.

More than that, though, it took me into the heart and soul of my family. Not far into my research I realized that this was going to be an act of personal discovery. I’m convinced that writing about your family is one of the richest and most rewarding things you can do.

That’s why I want to share with you “Five Things I Learned About Writing Family History.” I’m inviting you to sign up for a live, two-hour online seminar in which I’ll distill everything I’ve learned from my own family history project. Using my research into my grandfather’s world, I’ll give you my techniques for interviewing relatives. We’ll examine how to squeeze illuminating facts out of old documents. We’ll talk storytelling: the basics of writing a rich, multilayered story. I’ll ask you to look into yourself as well – I’ll encourage you to dig, to push past the painful things that will come up, to see a family history project as a means of personal growth. And finally, I’ll give you my tips for getting it done.

By the end, you’ll be empowered and energized to dive into your past and bring to life the story you find there.

Russell Shorto is a New York Times best-selling author of seven books, including, most recently, Smalltime: A Story of My Family and the Mob. He is also a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine. His books have been published in fourteen languages and have won numerous awards. In 2009 he was given a knighthood by the Dutch government for advancing Dutch-American historical awareness. In 2018 he was inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame.

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Russell Shorto