True Crime Class Highlights Writers Series Wednesday

Alice de Sturler

Alice de Sturler's "Cold Case Blogging in 20 Steps" is the  featured class at the Writers Series this month at Community High School in Roanoke.

The class is 6:30-8 Wednesday, Oct. 16, and is the final class of the year before the Roanoke Regional writers Conference, scheduled Jan. 24-25 at Hollins University.

The class is free and does not require registration. Community High School is here (map, photo). Parking is free.

Alice will take a look at:

• What is the best way to blog about true crime?
• How do you make the story your own?
• 20 steps to learn the process with tips I have used since 2009 to get cold cases back on the front page. 

Alice de Sturler is a Dutch lawyer with a long history in human rights and cold cases. She worked for the Swiss Section of Amnesty International on capital punishment and women’s rights cases. After emigrating to the U.S., she incorporated those cases in her lectures at the College of Law from the University of Illinois and at Virginia Tech.

She started digging into cold cases at the Champaign (Ill.) Police Department in the late 1990s. Since then, she has been blogging about unsolved homicides worldwide and recently turned her blog into a business.

Her blog is Defrosting Cold Cases. She lives in the New River Valley.