When I was in college I got permission to take a children’s writing class at the Radcliffe Institute. Most of the women were actually refugees from a memoirs class the previous semester. They wanted to keep writing! They were a wide variety of ages and had all sorts of interesting stories! I was by far the youngest though. 
The nice thing about a class like this is there’s a lot of talking. I’ve taken lots of art classes, but with a few exceptions people tend not to be that talkative.
My mother volunteered for library book sales everywhere she went.