New workshop pilot! Writing Our Way Forward, Sunday March 30, 7 to 9 PM

and greetings from Mexico

Hello from Oaxaca City, Mexico where I am taking a break from the onslaught of life, focusing on creativity and peacefulness, and eating my way through the country. I feel so fortunate to have this time in what feels like my writing home.

The other day I went to the village of San Marcos Tlapazola, home of the Red Clay Women. The artisans of this small village are all Zapotec women who spend each February in the hills digging up the clay they need to make pottery the rest of the year. It inspired in me all sorts of visions of community centered around the act of creating.

We are in a specific moment in history, one that shows that words and writing can be used for both oppression and liberation. I choose facilitating writing as a revolutionary, joyful act. It's a means for self-expression, healing, reflection, protest, asserting identity, bearing witness, preserving history, useful distraction, or just a fun thing to do. Writing in community, with guidelines designed to keep our space brave and inclusive, serves to amp up our collective power.

With this in mind, I am excited to announce a pilot session for a virtual generative writing workshop I am calling Writing Our Way Forward. I have so many different meanings for that title in mind. The pilot workshop will take place Sunday, March 30, from 7 to 9 PM. You can register here. There’s no limit on attendees for this pilot. It’s free, with a “gift-what-you-wish” model. More on that below.

I am making this session a pilot/one-off to help me gauge interest in either an ongoing group or a drop-in workshop on Sunday nights. Sunday nights can trigger night-before-school/work-dread, and I think generative writing workshop time could help. I also have been thinking about creating space at a time accessible for writers who can’t attend our Work Room during the weekdays. My goal is to soon announce an ongoing wider variety of offerings to support writers and develop writing community, and the pilot will help me further hone my thinking about what’s needed and what’s doable. I consider this all a form of resistance to the overwhelming attack on the fabric of our society designed to make us lose touch with our true selves and our core values.

Part of resistance is resisting the messages and mechanisms of capitalism that deny so many people of so many intrinsically human needs, so I am also experimenting with a “gift-what-you-wish” payment model, though I really think of it as a free workshop. For me, Writing Our Way Forward includes Paying Our Way Forward, so half of all gifts will go toward micro-gifts to writers from our community who are facing financial challenges, and the other half will be for my time/facilitation/bad jokes.

I’ve seen generative writing workshops with fees ranging from $35 to $100 per session, so if you’re considering a gift and have the means, that can be a guide. I also suggest you decide on a gift after you experience the workshop, so you can better gauge what you’d like to give. Again though, attending for free is welcome and encouraged. I am most interested in creating writing community with an impact as we try to get through whatever keep getting thrown at us. If you’d like to make a gift, email me and I can let you know how and where to send it.

Here’s a bit more about what to expect, for those who haven’t written with me. In our two hour long generative creative writing workshops, we will write together in response to optional writing prompts and then be invited (but not required) to read aloud our newly created work. The group will then reflect back what they most liked, noticed, or remembered about this work. If we have a large crowd, for the sake of time, these responses will happen via the chat box. If there’s a smaller crowd, we can also speak deeper, supportive responses with our voice boxes. This will be a confidential incubator space to write anything that the prompt inspires, to journal or reflect, to think and dream, and/or work on something you've been writing or have always wanted to write. No creative writing experience needed and open to all genres and forms of creative writing, from journaling to poetry to fiction to pieces that defy categorization, and so on.

If you wound up subscribing without knowing much about me, up until last year I created and for 22+ years led NY Writers Coalition, one of the largest community-based nonprofit writing programs in the country. NYWC closed last year and I’m exploring new ways to build writing community without the burden and complications that come along with the broken non-profit system. (One day I will expound on some of the shit I have seen and experienced.)

I have led creative writing workshops in a wide range of settings for nearly 30 years and led trainings for hundreds of Teaching Artists who have gone on to lead workshops in community-based and institutional settings, and beyond.

I am also thanked/acknowledged in dozens of published books by workshop members and colleagues. I am a published novelist and my short fiction, poetry, and essays appear in numerous literary magazines and other publications. I have been leading “generative writing workshops” since they were an oddity, and before they even were named as such.

I have exceptional facilitation skills and a ton of experience creating brave and supportive creative space, helping writers see their own strengths, and using a process-oriented approach that leads to surprising and often magical results.

I am also available for in-person or virtual private workshops, maybe for a writing group you are in, an arts or social justice organization, or perhaps an institutional setting. Feel free to email me if this sparks some sort of interest or you think I may be of use to you or your community. Please also share this with anyone you think might be interested in me and my work. Let’s talk.

Hope to write with you soon!

I somehow deeply relate to this guy that I met at the Museo Nacional de Antropolgia in Mexico City