Eleven Voices

Writing has been part of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at San Francisco State University since its beginning; people expressing the lives theyve led or might have led; or saving fragments of history in danger of vanishing forever if they dont get it written down. The dream was a community of writers. Courses were offered in many genres: fantasy fiction, poetry, writing while walking neighborhoods, performing monologues. Four years ago, continuing students asked for a convening of writers to share their work with a captive audience of other writers. They wanted someone to take the responsibility of keeping them together, guiding them as needed, monitoring the time. Susan Hoffman, the Institutes original director in San Francisco, became the workshops facilitator: partly as a fellow writer, often lapsed, but one who had written a little bit of several genres and who wanted to give them what they said they needed. Joan Holden and Laurence Howard, who later shared the roles of facilitators, provided a radically different, but equally valuable perspective. Susan adds: I see these writers work as defining eras---past, present and future. The stories express the past with intimacy. The present is integrating ones life into a whole narrative. And the challenge and possibility for the future is learning from our own historical moment, as the first time in mans history when there are more people over 60 alive today than have existed ever.