Los Angeles, California (The Hollywood Times) 12/28/2020 – Author, LGBT historian, and playwright Dr. Ronni Sanlo is the Director Emeritus of the UCLA Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Center (LGBT) and a frequent keynote speaker and consultant on LGBT issues in Higher Education. Now retired, Dr. Sanlo directed the UCLA LGBT Center, was professor and director of the UCLA Masters of Education in Student Affairs, and was a UCLA Faculty. For 2021 she is offering a course on “Writing Your Memoir.”
You are a frequent keynote speaker and consultant on LGBT issues in Higher Education.
I have keynote speeches at Lavender Graduations in the spring. My engagements are generally that: Lav Grad keynotes, LGBT history presentations, and strategic planning workshops for campus LGBT centers.
Tell us about the award-winning documentary Letter to Anita and the play Dear Anita Bryant.
The documentary is by Filmmaker Ander Meyerson, with Meredith Baxter as the on-screen narrator which has won numerous film-festival awards (but is not in distribution). It’s about how my life was affected by Anita Bryant’s Save Our Children campaign in Florida, a result being I lost custody of my two young children. I wrote the play which is about that as well but with the amazing acting by a talented cast from Palm Springs. The play – which received 2nd place for the Robert J. Pickering Excellence in Playwriting award – was written for radio and reader’s theater and works beautifully as a Zoom production. It’s currently being recorded for wide distribution on Zoom.
You are offering a course on writing your memoir. Tell us more.
Our stories are important not only for our families but for documenting our histories. If we don’t tell our stories, they get lost as so many already have. In addition, writing our own story helps us see our lives in broader vision and may guide us into a future with more understanding about who we are and how we got to this place in our lives. I teach a four-module method which may either be as a self-guided course or as a four-week live class session. The modules are: uncovering the turning points of our lives; seeing where those turning points fit, where they made a difference; storyboarding for visual understanding and placement of our stories; and essay writing to capture each story which will then be compiled into a book. I also touch on legal, ethical, and publishing issues. In addition, I help people self-publish their memoir or other books they’ve written with a three-option package: consulting to guide them through their own process; doing partial work for/with them; and doing the entire package for them with editing.
The next memoir course begins on Thursday, February 4th at 4:00 PM Pacific time. Registration is now open on my website at www.ronnisanlo.com/courses/
What is your vision for 2021?
To enjoy each day regardless of politics, to remain healthy, and to share the beauty of the San Juan Islands with my wife Kelly on our boat Strait Knot…and to be able to hug family and friends once again.
