The Mighty Pen Project helps veterans share their stories

RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) — For more than a decade, The Mighty Pen Project, an intensive writing class, has been helping preserve military experiences in a different way — all through the written word.

The sessions encourage veterans to craft their experiences through expressive, emotional and historical perspectives — at no cost.

Founder David Robbins, a creative writing teacher at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), started the project in 2014. He said the goal is to help veterans take control of their stories and challenge them to express what they feel in the best way possible.

“They're being [allowed] to control their narratives,” Robbins said. “Not just ‘Thank you for your service’ and a nod, but they’re getting a chance to put their stories down on paper, and then they get to study under me and with each other to refine their work.”

Robbins said the class is not a form of therapy, but a true writing course focused on skill and craft.

“If you’re going to tell that story about that bad day, let’s do it with verve and style and technique,” he said. “They’re not here for a safe space or a harbor. They’re here for a writing class.”

For Daniel Barotti, a four-year Navy veteran, sharing stories of the past can be nerve-wracking.

“It took me a solid year to get used to telling the stories as they should have been told,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of people with stories of true loss and things like that, and as a recent veteran, it felt difficult at times putting my stories out there among some of these.”

Still, Barotti is encouraging other veterans to come to the sessions — even if they don’t feel ready to write.

“You might catch a thing or two,” he said. “It’s like, ‘Oh wait, I did go through something like that,’ or, ‘If this is a good story, you just wait until you hear about this thing.”

“I want Luca, my nine-month-old son, and Catherine, my beautiful wife, to understand the things that I've gone through, the things that I have done, and the things that I do," Barotti said. "They're all part of me."

Fall sessions for The Mighty Pen Project run through Wednesday, Nov. 19, at the Virginia War Memorial.