metaphors of our lives
with Arya Samuelson
Discover the metaphors that tell your unique story
Saturday and Sunday, November 11th and 12th, 12-3pm Central, Virtual
The strongest metaphors are the ones most deeply embedded in your own life. We don't have to go hunting for them, or make them up out of thin air. We just have to learn how to find them, and then how to crack open their fullest possibilities, allowing them to lead us somewhere we never could have gone alone.
Workshop Details
generative climate fiction
with Denise S. Robbins
a workshop where doom is not on the table
Mondays, October 2nd - November 6th, 6-8pm Central, Virtual
The climate crisis will touch everyone, if it hasn’t already. But it’s not all about doom. In fact, in this workshop, doom is not on the table. Instead, we will engage with the topic of global warming in ways that are fruitful and life-affirming. Climate change can instead be a problem waiting to be solved or a mystery waiting to be uncovered. There’s a world of perspectives to explore, and this informative and generative workshop will walk you through them.
Workshop Details
re-wilding our writing, re-wilding ourselves
with Wendy Brown Baez
honoring the wild in our writing & ourselves
Tuesdays, September 12th - October 17th, 6-8pm Central, Virtual
What does it mean to be interconnected with the uncivilized, untamed, ancient, and whole? How can we honor wildness in ourselves?
Workshop Details
your body must be heard
with Arya Samuelson
a course designed for listening to the songs of the self & writing them resonantly
Saturdays, February 25 and March 4, 12-3pm Central on Zoom
Even in numbness or dissociation, the body sings to us—if only we’ll listen. In this two-part class, we will explore the body as the central site of memory, meaning-making, and transformation
Workshop Details
query clinic
with Jill Swenson
a bootcamp on the basics
Tuesdays, January 17 and 24, 7-9pm Central on Zoom
We’ll break down the basic structure to every query letter and strategies for customizing and personalizing yours. It’s a boot camp, so be ready to stretch, run some drills, build your confidence, and exercise to build your query muscles.
Workshop Details
writing with brain and body
with Jill Swenson
a generative writing workshop
Saturday, January 7, 10-12pm Central on Zoom
This two-hour writing workshop involves a three-step practice. Naming, which alerts our conscious awareness to the senses. Describing, which engages our senses and bodily responses on a deeper, more emotional level. And engaging, which invites us to create a relationship with our surroundings, to make life meaningful.
Workshop Details
Writing in the Dark XIV
with Jeannine Ouellette
potent survival strategies for creating during uncertain times
Thursdays, January 19 - February 23, 6-8pm Central on Zoom
WITD is a highly participatory, generative, collaborative & inventive space where you will be invited to (distracted into) leaving your burdens momentarily in order to engage with writing prompts that capture your imagination and take you to new places in your writing.
Workshop Details
river of fire
with Jeannine Ouellette
a winter solstice writing workshop
Sunday, December 18, 1-4pm Central, on Zoom
Winter is the fruitful darkness and silence from which deep yearnings and inspirations can flicker and burn. This generative workshop will help you kindle one bright new work, the flames of which you can then tend into the new year.
Workshop Details
art of the fractured
with Jeannine Ouellette
fragmented, experimental & hybrid prose
Thursdays, March 3 - April 14, 2022 6-8pm Central on Zoom
Fragments. Braids. Juxtaposition. The stories we write don’t have to be linear. Sometimes, the richest, truest version falls onto the page in pieces.
Workshop Details
radical revision retreat
with Jeannine Ouellette
manuscript intensives in Troncones, Mexico, with Mindfulness, Meditation, and Movement
December 3-10, 2022, Present Moment, Troncones Mexico
Not only will we focus avidly on your work-in-progress—on seeing it again, seeing it anew, seeing the outlines of its absolute most shimmering version of itself—we will also lean over the edge of doubt, where new things come from, and crack open a space for the unexpected.
Retreat Details
autumn in ixtapa
with Jeannine Ouellette
Mexico retreat for writing and yoga
November 13-20, 2021, Present Moment, Troncones Mexico
a deep dive into the rhythms of your own voice on the shores of the pacific
Retreat Details
re-emergence: a writing retreat for the moment
with Jeannine Ouellette and Tyler Lewke
the world has changed and so have we
Friday July 23 - Sunday July 25, 2021 Hackmatack Retreat Center, Richmond Illinois
As we seek to re-emerge from the collective trauma of the Covid-19 pandemic, we have the opportunity to engage with our creative energy in mindful, intentional ways. We have the opportunity to release some of the fear, grief, sorrow, and anxiety of the past year.
Retreat Details
writing in the dark
writing in the dark XVI
with Jeannine Ouellette
SOLD OUT!
potent survival strategies for creating during uncertain times
Thursdays, November 2 - December 14, 6-8pm Central, Virtual
WITD is a highly participatory, generative, collaborative & inventive space where you will be invited to (distracted into) leaving your burdens momentarily in order to engage with writing prompts that capture your imagination and take you to new places in your writing.
Workshop Details
finding your voice
with Jill Swenson
a workshop designed to help you find and use your voice
Saturday, October 14th, 9am-12pm Central, Virtual
This workshop is open to writers at any level and in any genre. For beginning writers, this session will help you listen to your own voice and learn to harness its power and trust it. For those seeking to improve their craft, explore a wider range for your authentic voice. For writers who may have received (unhelpful) advice that they needed a stronger voice or that they had a hard time connecting with the narrator, then this workshop is intended to help you understand how you can address it head-on.
Workshop Details
the art of time in memoir
with Jill Swenson
build your toolkit for handling time in memoir
Monday, September 25th, 6-9pm Central, Virtual
Writers who are working on a memoir or first-person essays will find this more advanced workshop helpful. By close and careful readings of passages from published memoirs, participants will analyze the artistic choices in handling the matter of time made by authors.
Workshop Details
thriving along disturbed edges
with Jeannine Ouellette
explore the threefold path of past, present & future to plot your best next chapter
Friday October 7 - Sunday October 9, 2021 Hackmatack Retreat Center, Richmond Illinois
Your life’s major plot points shape both who you are and who you will become. And how you arrange and rearrange those plot points changes everything. But plotting a life, on or off the page, is especially challenging in times of deep uncertainty. Paradoxically, language and narrative provide us the very tools we need to face such uncertainty and thrive within it.
Retreat Details
scaffolding for your manuscript
with Jill Swenson
while you write and revise
Sundays, March 19 - April 30, 1-2:30pm Central, Virtual
These methods help you with character development, narrative structure, sense of time and place, pacing, identifying themes and threads, interesting juxtapositions, emergent metaphors and more. Only temporary, they are removed once they no longer serve any purpose.
Workshop Details
resurrecting the dead…files
with Rebecca Gummere
a workshop to help us reconsider rejection
Sunday, June 11, 1-3 pm Central, Virtual
Do you have a folder of “dead” work? Essays or stories that have been rejected, that you’ve revised and that still can’t find a home? There are always those pieces that just don’t work, even with revision. They’re dead. Kaput. And we all know, that’s part of the writing process. Not everything is going to work. But what if there is a way to take a fresh look, to metaphorically hold the mirror up to a piece’s face and see if there might yet be a bit of breath, a smidgen of life?
Workshop Details
writing in the dark
writing in the dark XV
with Jeannine Ouellette
SOLD OUT!
potent survival strategies for creating during uncertain times
Thursdays, June 15 - July 20, 6-8pm Central, Virtual
WITD is a highly participatory, generative, collaborative & inventive space where you will be invited to (distracted into) leaving your burdens momentarily in order to engage with writing prompts that capture your imagination and take you to new places in your writing.