Rebekah Pierre: How To Write About Lived Experiences Without Selling Your Soul

When Rebekah Pierre first started out as a rookie journalist, she was so desperate for pitches to land that she threw everything she had at the wall hoping it would stick. Sound familiar?

Join this new workshop to discover how Rebekah learned to curate the message and level of information she shares, as well as how to create a strategy for selling your story without selling your soul as a by-product.

This session will cover:

• Autoethnography as a source of inspiration on how we tell our story;
• Planning and strategy; utilising specific holidays and search terms to maximise your opportunities; 
• The ethics behind writing about our lived experience; the digital footprint we leave, the emotional toll, and what I call the over-sharing fallacy (the more you divulge, the more others are expected to divulge); 
• Finding allies and strengthening your networks in the lived experience space; 
• Protecting yourself from exploitation, primary and secondary trauma/burn-out.

Given that lived experience is being shared at this event, the speaker kindly asks that attendees arrive on time. Watch backs are available for those who are unable to make the live timeslot.

** PLEASE ADD TICKETTAILOR TO YOUR SAFE LIST — OTHERWISE, YOUR LINK TO JOIN AND WATCH-BACK LINK MIGHT GO INTO YOUR SPAM FOLDER OR NOT BE DELIVERED**

About The Speaker

Rebekah Pierre lives in south London and is a care-experienced journalist and author with a background in child protection social work. She has appeared in publications including The Guardian, The Independent, and on BBC Radio 4 among others.

Rebekah is the editor of Free Loaves on Fridays, an upcoming anthology of the care system due to be published with Unbound in 2024. Rebekah has drawn upon her lived experience to expose wider policy failures at a political level, and her work spans not just mainstream media, but academia too. Her peer-reviewed journal, 'Revisiting Diary Entries from Care: An Exposition of the Challenges of Unregulated Placement Settings', is the first-known auto-ethnographic paper to feature childhood diary extracts written while in the care of the state.

Types Of Ticket

Live Ticket: Please select this ticket to get the most out of this session — we will be asking questions the audience wants to know on the evening! You'll receive a Zoom link to join when you order and a reminder a few minutes before the event so you can join us live. Don't worry if you don't feel comfortable chatting — our team can always ask your question for you. Don't worry if your plans change though (we all know WiFi lets you down when you need it most) we will also send you a copy of the recording and session notes via email. This is normally 24-48 hours after the session to allow time for us to edit the recording.

Watch Back / Recorded: If you can't make it to the live session, don't worry — select a recorded ticket. This allows us to keep a handle on numbers and make sure we have enough seats around our virtual table. Again, no worries if you change your mind, you will still be sent the Zoom link, so no need to let us know if your plans change. You will typically be sent the recording 24-48 hours after the live session, to give our team time to edit.