Denis Ledoux
Soleil Lifestory Network

author, teacher, editor, publisher, writing coach

Turning Memories Into Memoirs®workshop originator Denis Ledoux grew up in a three-generation home with paternal grandparents who lived upstairs. Stories have always played an important role in Denis' life. As a child, he heard tales of his extended family and their history recounted by the family storyteller, his memere.

Denis holds a B.A. in English and an M.A. in Education. He has taught high school English, Latin, French, and History. He has taught Franco studies at the university level and has been a guest lecturer at numerous colleges and universities on the subjects of cultural diversity and Franco North American culture and history.

As a short story writer, he drew on family characters, settings, and stories for his fiction. In 1989, he won the Maine Fiction Award for Mountain Dance & Other Stories. His other titles include What Became of Them and Other Stories from Franco-America, and Lives in Translation: An Anthology of Contemporary Franco-American Writings which he edited. Denis' short fiction has twice been honored with the Maine Writing Fellowship Award (1991, 1996), an NEA-based merit award.

As a Maine Touring Artist for the Maine Arts Commission, Denis has been an artist-in-residence in Maine schools and community centers where he has led programs on creative writing, personal history preservation, the history of immigration in New England, and Franco-American culture.

It was a natural leap from his own family stories to helping others to record their stories in well-written accounts that apply all the techniques of fiction writing to autobiography, family reminiscence, and scrapbooking.

In 1996, Denis was named Lifewriting Professional of the Year by the Association of Personal Historians.

Today, Denis is a writer, educator, teacher, autobiography co-author, memoir-writing coach, editor and publisher. He directs the Soleil Lifestory Network, an international group of life story writing teachers who use his method and materials to lead the popular Turning Memories® and Photo Scribe® workshops and programs.

Denis Ledoux lives and works in Maine, just a mile from his boyhood home. He and Martha Blowen (who is his partner both in life and at Soleil Lifestory Network) are the appreciative parents of two remarkable young adults.