Register here: Writing from Photographs with Sonja Livingston - LibCal - Gates Public Library

What can photographs tell us about our lives today, the traditions of our past, and the world we want to create? Which stories, emotions, details, secrets, and meanings lie just outside frame of the photograph?

Whether you’re creating memoir, poetry, family history, visual art or a hybrid combination—using photographs to inspire or accompany your work can add much-needed texture and focus to your projects. This session will offer tips and writing prompts to help get you started. You’ll have time to discuss your work in a supportive environment and come away with fresh ideas and drafts to refine or expand into longer projects. Bring 3-5 photographs (phone or hard copy) that intrigue, inspire, or hold great meaning for you.

This workshop is presented as part of our Rochester Reads 25th Anniversary programming. Participants in this workshop will learn from Sonja Livingston, author of our 2026 Rochester Reads selection, Ghostbread.

Sonja Livingston is the author of four books of creative nonfiction, including the award- winning memoir Ghostbread, which has been adopted for classroom use around the country. Her work appears in The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Salon, and elsewhere. Honors include a NYFA Fellowship, an Iowa Review Award, an Arts & Letters Prize, a VanderMey Nonfiction Prize, and an AWP Book Prize. Sonja is an associate professor in the MFA Program at Virginia Commonwealth University and teaches in the Postgraduate Program at Vermont College of Fine Arts.

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