A TIME, A MEMOIR, AN INSIGHT"Reading Rosie's Daughters changed my life; I will never be the same." Matilda Butler's book, ROSIE'S DAUGHTERS: THE "FIRST WOMAN TO" GENERATION TELLS ITS STORY (four-time award-winning book is now in its Second Edition) recently earned these words of praise. "I understand what this reader meant," Butler says. "Writing the book had the same effect on me. Until I gathered and compiled women's stories into this collective memoir, even I didn't grasp the significance and impact of our lives.""I didn't expect that the creation of ROSIE'S DAUGHTERS would become such a powerful personal journey and source of new beginnings for both the women I interviewed and for me," continues Butler. ROSIE'S DAUGHTERS is the collective memoir of American women born during World War II whose stories inform, entertain and surprise as they trace their remarkable journeys through the years of the post-war education boom, sexual revolution and the Pill, civil rights and gender equality, the Vietnam War, NOW and consciousness raising, Roe v Wade, no-fault divorce, old fields to conquer and new ways to work. "Using my experiences from interviewing more than 100 women and reading more than 100 women's memoirs, I decided to share my respect for and passion about life storytelling by teaching women's memoir writing workshops. Out of this insight about the importance of memoir writing came a regular program of offering writing classes in person and online. In working with the wonderful women in these workshops, I continue to be amazed at the power of the personal narrative both for the self and for others."THE INSIGHT AND A NEW APPROACH TO WRITING WE CALL WRITING ALCHEMYThe initial insight from work on ROSIE'S DAUGHTERS led to teaching memoir writing. And after a number of years of teaching, Butler and her co-author Kendra Bonnett both saw that the same writing problems came up over and over. Although it was great to help these writers through critiques and suggested changes, the same problems would come up with the next group. Butler and Bonnett undertook a multi-year search for a better way to write. Eventually, they developed Writing Alchemy, a new writing system that puts the writer in charge of the entire process -- a new writing system that makes him or her a PURPOSEFUL writer.Butler and Bonnett tested Writing Alchemy for four years before writing the book that reveals the system to everyone: WRITING ALCHEMY: HOW TO WRITE FAST AND DEEP. In the few months after it was released, it quickly won one award (Honorable Mention, New England Book Festival), and was voted the Best Nonfiction Book of 2013 in the annual OWFI contest, and has been nominated for several other awards.SHARING WOMEN'S STORIES AND MEMOIR WRITING TIPS IN SEASONS OF OUR LIVESThrough their website: http://WomensMemoirs.com, Butler and Bonnett have developed a number of contests. The award-winning entries to recent contests have been released (2014) in a four volume series: SEASONS OF OUR LIVES (SPRING, SUMMER, AUTUMN, WINTER). The four volumes represent a total of 591 pages with 100 stories. Butler and Bonnett wrote a takeaway or mini-lesson at the conclusion of each story. They designed these 100 takeaways to help readers think about their own lives and help them write their own life stories. Our passion is helping women create a legacy of their experiences through writing their life stories in ways that engage the reader.BACKGROUNDIn a career spanning more than 40 years, Butler has focused on business and professional women's issues while working to create, aggregate and distribute information via digital and traditional publishing media. During her seven years of teaching and research at Stanford University, she established and chaired the Committee on the Status of Women for both the Association for Education in Journalism and for the International Communication Association-thus helping to build awareness and open doors to more women. She went on to create and direct the national information clearinghouse, Women's Educational Equity Communication Network (1977-1982).In 1985, Butler co-founded Knowledge Access International, a software company specializing in CD-ROM products. Among its clients were the World Bank, Dun & Bradstreet, Pacific Bell, McGraw-Hill, Pfizer, 3M and the US Departments of Labor and Agriculture. Butler served as president until 1997 when she sold Knowledge Access to a large publicly traded company.From 1992 to 1996, when companies large and small were discovering the Internet, Butler was a director of the Information Industry Association (IIA), serving on the Executive Committee of the Board for three years and as treasurer for one. In a 1998 award ceremony, the SIGCAT Foundation and the CD-Info Company acknowledged Butler's pioneering contributions to the development of the CD-ROM publishing industry. She's been listed in Who's Who in the West since 1978 and Who's Who of American Women since 1975.Prior to her work on memoir writing, she co-authored the award-winning WOMEN AND THE MASS MEDIA (1980) and co-edited KNOWLEDGE UTILIZATION SYSTEMS (1983).