Unlock Your Story: Writing Your Memoir and Other Narratives Beyond Words:
In Person Workshop with Shazeera Ahmad Zawawi
Ready to tell stories that leap off the page?
This creative, hands-on workshop invites writers and artists alike to explore how illustration and comics can open new dimensions in storytelling — whether you’re shaping a memoir, short story, or children’s book.
You’ll learn how to blend image, text, and simple visual data to express memory, imagination, and emotion in fresh, powerful ways. Through guided exercises and examples from works like Persepolis and Fun Home, we’ll see how visual storytelling can enhance pacing, tone, and connection with readers.
✨ Discover how drawings, comic panels, and infographics can make your stories more vivid and emotionally resonant. Learn to find your visual voice, “show don’t tell” through imagery, and use layout and sequence to create rhythm and meaning.
By the end of the session, you’ll have begun crafting your own short illustrated or comic narrative — a story told not only in words, but through the language of the eye.
No drawing skills required — just curiosity, imagination, and a story to share! If you're ready to tell your life story in a way that truly stands out, join us!
Saturday, December 13, 10:30 – 16:30
Foound, Rue Jean-Dassier 7, 1201 Geneva
Workshop Fees:
Full day: CHF 70 (Members) | CHF 100 (Non-Members)
Morning only: CHF 50 (Members) | CHF 70 (Non-Members)
Shazeera Ahmad Zawawi is a Malaysian visual storyteller, artist, data analyst, and legal advocate based in Geneva. Her comics, cartoons, and visual stories have appeared in exhibitions and festivals worldwide, and she is the illustrator of the children’s book Aardvark to Zebra: A Book for Kids by Ben Buckland.
A lawyer by training, Shazeera spent several years as Senior Adviser on Research and Innovation at the Association for the Prevention of Torture (APT) in Switzerland, following extensive human-rights work across Southeast Asia. Her legal background deeply informs her creative practice, which often explores themes of justice, empathy, and mental health.
A Tableau Public Ambassador and Featured Author, she combines illustration, comics, and data visualization to tell stories that often go untold or misunderstood. Inspired by "Data Humanism," she focuses on telling stories about human rights, mental health, art and culture as well as personal memoirs through her data visualizations.
Blending visual and textual storytelling, she invites writers to explore how image, sequence, and data can amplify voice, emotion, and structure in memoirs, short stories, and illustrated narratives. Shazeera is currently writing a book and learning how to drums.
