Writing the Past

Writing Family History Workshop

Perhaps you’ve come across a photo or a family heirloom that intrigues you. Maybe you’ve found your immigrant grandparents’ citizenship papers. Or perhaps you can’t stop thinking about the last time you saw Cousin Ellen at Aunt Helen’s funeral and the conversation did not go well. Maybe that story Uncle Irving told you about your great-grandparents still commands your attention. Or that cookbook your mother inherited that became the basis of holiday meals.

In each session, we’ll write to timed prompts to help you put your thoughts on the page. Family history can be preserved forever if someone, maybe you, writes it down.

Writing the Past Memoir Workshop

Memoirist Sue William Silverman writes in her craft book, Fearless Confessions, that memoir involves the connection between the voice of experience and the voice of innocence. We’ll write to a variety of prompts to bring these voices together with insight and respect. We’ll meet via Zoom for two hours each week in a four-week cycle.

Poetry Editing Circle

When we generate new poems using the Amherst Writers & Artists method, we get feedback on what’s strong and what’s memorable. But we won’t hear about ways to make the poem even stronger. Join this once-a-month poetry editing circle to hear from other poets what’s working and where your diction, lines, stanzas could be more powerful.

2024: Your Writing Year — Setting and Achieving Writing Goals

Give yourself the gift of making 2024 your writing year. Start by setting specific and achievable goals. Using a proven methodology, AWA-certified facilitator Barbara Krasner leads you through a series of prompts to reflect on what’s worked, what hasn’t, what you should start/stop/continue doing.

Food Writing

In this one-session workshop, experience all the senses as you write to timed prompts about food.

Travel Writing

In this one-session workshop, write to timed prompts about the roads you’ve taken, want to take, or refuse to take. The focus will be on place, its sensory images and its people.

Submission Strategies

In this session, you’ll identify opportunities to get your creative writing–fiction, nonfiction, and poetry–published in literary magazines through sites like Chill Subs, New Pages, and Duotrope.

Not My Family’s Holiday

If you don’t celebrate Christmas or if you just need some time for yourself, come write with us on December 25 to timed prompts.

52 Snapshots: Writing Micro Memoir

Using Sonja Livingston’s Fifty-two Snapshots: A Memoir Starter Kit as a guide, we’ll write in ten-minute sprints to create a collection of micro essays (about 300 words each). Sessions will last 90 minutes. Day and time for this workshop have not yet been set. If you’re interested, please let me know what days and times would work for you.
Sundays, 10:00 to 11:30 am ET, $35/session for $140 for four-week cycle