Free Info Session on Mapping "the Disturbed Country": Writing Illness and Aging  (FREE)

Maya Angelou says, "There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” Writing about illness and lost capacity can be tricky. Many forces - shame, medical lingo, "why bother?" - can get in the way.

The meditation and free-writing circle starting on Friday April 4th (12-1:45 PM ET), Mapping the "Disturbed Country": Writing Illness and Aging offers a supportive circle in which you can access the healing that comes from giving voice to your experiences.

In the intro session, Lisa will guide participants through a round of her "breathe/read/write" approach: a short meditation + a free-write prompts (quote or poem about illness/healing) + freewriting + sharing. Then Lisa will open the floor to questions about the writing circles that start on April 4.

Lisa Freedman is an author, activist, and professor. Her online community, Breathe/Read/Write, blends meditation and writing to cultivate free expression. Lisa has been living with chronic disease for 60 years and writing about and through it for 40 years. See her work in Satya, the NY Times, and more.

Gateway to Memoir II (starting at $199)

In this 6-week workshop we will build on the foundation and skills developed during Gateway to Memoir I with more of a focus on:
Developing and strengthening your voice as a writer
Identifying narrative arcs at the chapter and book level
How to do self-research to aid your memory

The final two sessions will be reserved for workshopping writing submissions.

Minda Honey’s essays have appeared in Harper’s Bazaar, the Washington Post, the Guardian, the Oxford American, Teen Vogue, and Longreads.

Her debut memoir, THE HEARTBREAK YEARS is a hilarious and intimate portrait of a Black woman finding who she is and who she wants to be, one bad date at a time.

Expressive Writing for Emotional Healing (starting at $50)

Whether you’ve known periods of overwhelm, trauma, or significant difficulty, it’s important to process these experiences in healthy ways. In this course, you’ll learn the evidence-based technique of expressive writing to help process difficult emotions in order to help you get “unstuck”. The practice of Expressive Writing, pioneered by Dr. James Pennebaker in 1986, is a remarkably straightforward and FREE way to acknowledge your most troubling memories and create a framework of language that can help to move unresolved thoughts out of your head and onto the page (or even into the air).

Participants will:

Christine Wolf is a memoir coach and founder of Writers’ Haven, a coworking space for women writers. A former board member of the Chicago chapter of SPJ, Wolf’s writing has been awarded for excellence by the National Society of Newspaper Columnists and The Moth. Wolf is a writing instructor at Northwestern University and runs Write to Heal Workshops and Retreats. She’s the co-author of Politics, Partnerships, & Power: The Lives of Ralph E. and Marguerite Stitt Church.

Mapping "the Disturbed Country": Writing Illness and Aging (starting at $179)

Mapping "the Disturbed Country": Writing Illness and Aging

In Intoxicated by My Illness, Anatole Broyard writes, “Always in emergencies we invent narratives…. I saw my illness as a visit to a disturbed country.” This five-session generative free-writing circle is for those who are or have been patients and/or caregivers and who want to write about their experiences in the realms of disease and diminished capacity.

The format of each session helps us get to know and support one another. Each time we meet, we start with a few minutes of silence followed by a short guided free-write and sharing time to warm up. Then we do two longer rounds of meditation, free-writing, sharing, and responding. The sharing is always optional.

Texts by Jorge Luis Borges, Jane Kenyon, Audre Lorde, and more guide our freewriting. 

 Each session explores a different theme, such as these:

.

All levels welcome. No need to have meditation or writing experience. There will be optional casual conversation time after each session from 5:45-6:00 pm.

Lisa Freedman is an author, activist, and professor. Her online community, Breathe/Read/Write, blends meditation and writing to cultivate free expression. Lisa has been living with chronic disease for 60 years and writing about and through it for 40 years. See her work in Satya, the NY Times, and more.

Divinatory Poetics: Writing as Mystical Practice (starting at $199)

Uncover Divinity in the Ordinary!
Join me in this riff on a mystical tradition, where the words of luminaries become a gateway into our mysterious imagination.

How do we listen deeply—to language, to silence, to what stirs beneath the surface? This six-session workshop explores Lectio Divina as a creative practice, guiding participants through contemplative reading, poetic response and intuitive writing. Drawing from mystical traditions, poetry, and personal experience, we’ll engage with text as a living presence—something to be received rather than analyzed and approach our writing as an underground stream that flows through us.

Each session will include immersive reading, somatic 'recoveries', writing and conversation. Alongside Lectio Divina, we may experiment with other intuitive methods of engaging with text, imagery and metaphor.

Open to writers, artists, the curious and the skeptical. No experience required.

Regan is a creative consultant and artist. Through abstract painting, poetry, and immersive laboratories, she navigates the intersection of perception, imagination, language and correspondence. Her approach, ‘Divinatory Poetics,’ invites participants to engage in non-dogmatic, creative practices that nurture deep listening and spontaneous expression.

Featured Author/Open Mic with Shze-Hui Tjoa

Shze-Hui Tjoa is the author of The Story Game: A Memoir from Tin House Books, a genre-bending work about storytelling, siblinghood, c-PTSD, having been raised as a child musician, and deconstructing/finding the self. It was named one of the best nonfiction books of 2024 by Electric Literature and Paste Magazine. She is also the Nonfiction Editor of Guernica magazine. Her most recent author interviews can be found in BOMB, Lit Hub, Electric Literature, The Adroit Journal, Poets & Writers Magazine, and Between the Covers podcast.

Organizing your Poetry Manuscript (starting at $159)

A published author and editor will help you organize your poetry manuscript. We will examine the two versions of Sylvia Plath's Ariel, along with different theories and formats, to see how the impact of poem order affects a manuscript. This workshop will provide detailed feedback on individual poems and offer students a variety of strategies for sequencing, structuring, sectioning, and titling a full-length poetry manuscript.

Linda Kleinbub is Founding Editor of Pink Trees Press, curator of Fahrenheit Open Mic, contributing editor at Girls Write Now, and co-founder of Pen Pal Poets. She’s the author of Cover Charge, Appear to Dance, and co-editor of Silver Tongued Devil Anthology. Her MFA is from The New School.

Flash Fiction Workshop 
(starting at $45)

In this 90-minute workshop, we will write flash fiction that takes advantage of brevity as a way to show and not tell, to use omission or delay to build tension in a piece, and to be economical and exact with our word choices. How much detail and life can we breathe into as few words as possible? We will freewrite from several prompt options, drawing inspiration from writers like Mary Robison, George Saunders (and others). Whether they build to longer pieces or stand on their own, we’ll leave class with newly written flash fiction."

Cora Kircher (corakircher.com) is a poet, fiction writer, and visual artist from New York’s Hudson Valley, currently based in the East Bay. Cora’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Nat Brut., A CLEARING, BRUISER Magazine, Joy of the Pen, Tilted House Review, Canned Magazine, and elsewhere on the Internet.

Friday Freewrite with Lisa St. John  (FREE)

Creation in a Time of Destruction: Through reading quotes and poems, participants are invited to empower their creativity to evoke positive change. "In a time of destruction, create something.”
― Maxine Hong Kingston

Lisa St. John is the author of Ponderings (Finishing Line) and Swallowing Stones (Kelsay), A Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominee, her poems appear in journals such as New Verse News, The Poet’s Billow, and The Orchards. Lisa believes that art is hope and that there is beauty in possibility.

The body, the mind - a facts-to-fiction
freewrite-shop (starting at $45)

In this 90 minute workshop, we will look at face-keeping and body-caring, and touch upon theories re image, perceptions and expectations. Women’s language, and the power of community and sisterhood …we will freewrite to some facts and fiction, with Miranda July, Morgan Parker, and Tate Britain’s exhibition “Women in Revolt” to prompt us! At the end of the workshop you will receive a document with all sorts of information to muse on. To quote the Spice Girls: "Just Girl Power is all we need. We know how we got this far. Strength and courage and a Wonderbra!”!

Kate Copeland’s love for languages led her to teaching; her love for art & water to poetry. She is curator-editor for The Ekphrastic Review & runs linguistic-poetry workshops for TER and IWWG. Find her poems @TER, WildfireWords, Gleam, Hedgehog Press [a.o.] and @https://www.instagram.com/kate.copeland.poems/ Kate was born @harbour city, and adores housesitting @the world.

With New Eyes: Deep Revision in Any Genre (starting at $139)

Deep revision isn't about wielding a red pen; it's about listening for the thrumming heart of a piece, asking big questions and reimagining voice, structure and language to give that piece maximum impact. No matter your genre--fiction, nonfiction, memoir or poetry--you'll learn tools and strategies for reflecting on your own writing, returning to it with fresh eyes and making it sing!

Anndee Hochman is a writer, educator and storyteller. For more than 30 years, she has worked with writers across the age span, helping them raise their voices in memoir, poetry and creative nonfiction. Her books include Anatomies: A Novella and Stories (Picador USA) and Everyday Acts & Small Subversions: Women Reinventing Family, Community and Home (The Eighth Mountain Press). A new book, Parent Trip: Unexpected Roads to Form a Family, is forthcoming in October from Temple University Press.

Threshold of Tongues: Writing from our Ancestral Wombs (starting at $89)

    

Course Leads
Kashiana Singh and Pramila Venkateswaran

In a time when the world feels increasingly fractured—marked by geopolitical uncertainty, climate crisis, and the shifting sands of identity—poetry offers both anchor and compass. With thoughtful prompts and expert guidance, Kashiana Singh and Pramila Venkateswaran will help you craft poems that draw on ancestral and cultural syntax, inviting sensitivity, honesty, and connection.

This workshop creates space for the stories we carry—those buried in the silences of elders who could not or would not bring them across thresholds of migration, displacement, or trauma. Through embodied language and intentional writing practices, we’ll call forth these silences and transform them into powerful, living poetry.
For both beginners and experienced poets, the workshop provides a sanctuary to explore the intersections of heritage and the present moment. In a world navigating deep uncertainty, Threshold of Tongues becomes a vessel—not just for reflection but for resilience, offering participants a way to yield to the world’s challenges while discovering inspiration in its complexities.

Description of the Panel –

Poetry serves as a portal for those whose heritage has been disrupted by violence, colonization, and displacement. This panel is an invitation to air out the stories we often tuck away in attics, closets, journals, or even deep within our bodies. With discernment, we’ll explore what to salvage, what to unlearn, and what we must leave behind. We will call forth these gnarled stories, finding sound for them and housing them in poetic altars—where they can be honored and reshaped.

Together, we will engage in a journey of unearthing our heritage, reaching across generations to call our ancestors into the room. Through poetry, texts, and references, this panel will create space for participants and panelists alike to unlearn and rediscover what is essential, grounding, and liberating within our histories.
The stories, whether remembered or forgotten, live inside us, waiting for the right moment to emerge. This panel offers an opportunity to open the doors to these words, rhythms, mantras, and wisdom. While some stories may feel gnarled or deformed by time and trauma, they are no less a source of deep-rooted truth—the truth that transcends data, facts, and historical records, and instead speaks to the unchanging core of who we are.

Join us as we reclaim, reconnect, and reimagine what our heritage can offer in these uncertain times.

Statement of Value and Outcomes expected –

Poets as keepers will engage with poetry of persistence and resistance. Pathways to our Ancestral systems that ignite memory and hidden narratives. We will gently unbind and trace our roots. Roots that have either been axed, twisted, corroded, or displaced. Through these roots, we will start to locate pathways that lead us into the tree system of our ancestors.

Let us carry forward our poetic altars that honor the memory of our ancestors, and serve as wombs/garbhasThe four sessions will flow to and through the following –

Holding Space - Reading from reference texts to ground the discussion –
● How I Became a Tree by Sumana Roy
● The Overstory by Richard Powers
● Our Ancestors Did Not Breathe This Air Anthology
● Every Poem Has Ancestors by Joy Harjo
● Ancestors by Ada Limón
● Crazy Brave by Joy Harjo
● The Aisling Irish dream poem in which Ireland appears to the poet personified as a woman.
● Poetry of Immigration, Refugees, and Exile

Session 1: Invocation
In this session, we will engage in readings from poets whose works are deeply inspired by ancestral words, languages, and the intricate weave of displacement. These texts will serve as a gateway to understanding how distance and history shape our identities, calling forth the echoes of our ancestors in poetic form.
Session 2: Gazing Inwards
With a ceremonial fishbowl, we’ll invite participants to ask questions that lead us into a still space of deep reflection. This introspective exploration will focus on the roots and root systems of our ancestors—those foundations that nourish our poetic voices. Poems and texts will guide us into this space, helping us integrate both personal and collective histories into the creative process.
Session 3: Going Outwards
Now, we will turn our gaze outward, opening doorways for our participants to bring forth examples of their own communities—folk tales, places, food, and superstitions. Like a collective ritual, the poems generated in Session 2 will be shared and welcomed into the cohort, expanding our understanding of heritage through diverse lenses and experiences.
Session 4: Contemplation
In our final session, we will leave with more than just first drafts of poems—we will carry our bodily and soul selves forward, enriched by the reflections and creative energy of the workshop. Our poems will open new doorways, ushering in fresh creativity and deeper connection to the legacies we’ve explored.

When Kashiana is not writing, she lives to embody her TEDx talk theme of Work as Worship into her every day. Author of 4 collections with Witching Hour released in December 2024 with Glass Lyre Press.

Pramila Venkateswaran, poet laureate of Suffolk County, Long Island. Author of 8 collections she is a Professor of English at Nassau Community College (SUNY).

Both are actively involved in giving workshops and readings and lead the Matwaala South Asian Diaspora Poetry collective.

Making More of Memoir:
Tools for Drawing Readers to and into Your Writing 
(starting at $50)

The memoirist writes, above all else, to redeem experience, to reawaken the past, and to find its patterns; better yet, to discover behind bygone events a dramatic, explanatory narrative. Storytelling fails when the narrative cannot coax sympathetic resonance from the reader.
-Sven Birkerts, The Art of Time in Memoir

Coaxing this “sympathetic resonance from the reader” is the difference between writing the stories people choose to read on airplanes and the ones that speak gently to the depths of the human spirit. Primarily designed for new writers, but offering unique insights for more seasoned ones, this workshop offers both practical tools and personal advice for adding depth to your own non-fiction writing—keys for building better bridges between yourself, your story, and your reader:

Time: The then and now of memoir
Structure: Hanging more layers from the narrative arc
Scene and Summary: The Siamese twins of story
Carnality: Images that take your breath away
Voice: The critical role of the narrator in reality-based writing
Come and leave with tools for writing the next chapters of your life.

Judith Huge has spent over 30 years developing innovative approaches to both learning and writing. As president of her own national consulting firm, teacher of both undergraduate and graduate-level college courses, and director of writing workshops across the country, she has made a difference in the way thousands of people find, craft, and promote their writing voices. She is a co-author of 101 Ways You Can Help: How to Offer Comfort and Support to Those Who Are Grieving (Sourcebook, 2009), as well as A Middle Aged Woman and the Sea, a tale of loss and transition.

Featured Author/Open Mic with Sarah Ghazal Ali

Sarah Ghazal Ali is the author of Theophanies (Alice James Books, 2024), winner of the GLCA New Writers Award and a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Her work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, the Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day series, and elsewhere. A Stadler and Kundiman Fellow, Sarah is the poetry editor for West Branch and an Assistant Professor of English at Macalester College.

Featured Author/Open Mic with Natasha Williams

Williams’ memoir, The Parts of Him I Kept, is an intimate account of coming of age in the face of a father's schizophrenic unraveling. Williams investigates the limits of our medical and cultural understanding of schizophrenia while chronicling the shared burden and benefits of caring for a mentally ill family member.  The Parts of Him I Kept humanizes living with mental illness and illuminates how families find hope and even thrive in the face of the extraordinary challenge of mental illness.

This is Natasha Williams' debut book. She has an MA from the University of Pennsylvania and attended the Bread Loaf School of English and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. Excerpts and essays have been published in the Bread Loaf Journal, Change Seven, LIT, Memoir Magazine, Onion River Review, Writers Read, Post Road and South Dakota Review.

Natasha Williams offers us a portrait of America at a time when everything was in flux, when people searched for new ways to live, and (if they were lucky) ended up simply loving each other.” 

– Nick Flynn, Author of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City and Low life.

Building from Scraps: Making Old Things New 
(starting at $79)

For this workshop, you will be asked to bring drafts of old poems that aren’t “working” for you. These might be finished poems, or they might be scraps of incomplete poems, sentences or paragraphs. We will use several techniques to infuse new life into them. You will leave the workshop with at least one new draft that surprises you. Writers who are new to poetry, but have old bits of prose to repurpose, are welcome.

Sherre Vernon is the author of two chapbooks and two full length poetry collections, Flame Nebula, Bright Nova and Translating Blue. Sherre has been nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart prizes, and anthologized in several collections including Fat & Queer and Best Small Fictions.

Accessing Our Wounds through Words (starting at $89)

Writing difficult narratives can offer an opening, create awareness, and begin necessary conversations. Often, we seek penning our experiences to help make sense of our wounds, to assign meaning to what is not easily expressed. This three-part workshop-based class offers practical and empowering exploration into the trauma-writing process. Instructor Rebecca Evans has instructed trauma writing to a wide range of students and in a variety of settings. She shares her own curated process that she developed while confronting vulnerability and pain on the page. Through compassionate and gentle exploration, students will learn to re-frame their experiences into craft that feels true and meaningful. Session one includes methods to help establish sacred writing practices, including space for self-care. Students will explore concepts to help manage emotions that might surface during writing sessions. Session two offers a study in forms, crafts and approaches. Students will explore narrative accessibility should they wish to share or publish their work. Session three helps students establish a creative and safe ongoing writing practice. This class is open to writers of all levels.

Rebecca Evans writes the heart-full guidebooks for survivors. She teaches high school teens in the Juvie system and co-hosts Radio Boise’s Writer to Writer show. She’s a disabled veteran, an avid gardener, and lives with four Newfoundlands and her sons.

Her poems and essays have appeared in Brevity, Narratively, The Rumpus, Hypertext Magazine, and more. Her books include Tangled by Blood (Moon Tide Press, 2023) and Safe Handling (Moon Tide Press, 2024).

Laughter and Poetry (starting at $99)

In a two-day workshop on “Poetry and Laughter“ we will explore the presence and the healing power of laughter in poetry. We will discuss: "The Laughter of Women" by Mary-Sherman Willis, "Your laughter turns the world to paradise" by Jalal al-Din Rumi, "The Laugh" by Don McKay, and "Poem about your laugh" by Susan Glickman; one week lecture, the other workshop.

Carmen Bugan, George Orwell Prize Fellow, published her sixth collection of poems, Tristia, earlier this year. She is an award-winning author of 10 books that include memoir, essays, and criticism. Her work has been translated into several languages, gathered international praise, and has been widely anthologized. Carmen's memoir, Burying the Typewriter, was BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week, and she has been featured on NPR, ABC, PRI and the BBC.

To Question or Not Question - a factual fiction freewrite workshop  (FREE)

In this 90 minute workshop, we will dive into ways of asking questions, of making assumptions ... asking questions about question asking as such! We will touch upon theories re direct and indirect communication, a factual facekeeping that will prompt us to freewrite to poems by Sarah Uribe & Hagar Peeters, to lyrics by Annie Lennox. At the end of the workshop you will receive a document with more facts & fiction to muse on. To ask or assume … let’s read and write beyond conjecture!

Kate Copeland’s love for languages led her to teaching; her love for art & water to poetry. She is curator-editor for The Ekphrastic Review & runs linguistic-poetry workshops for TER and IWWG. Find her poems @TER, WildfireWords, Gleam, Hedgehog Press [a.o.] and https://www.instagram.com/kate.copeland.poems/ Kate was born @harbour city, and adores housesitting @the world.

Matwaala South Asian poets' Collective:
From OTHER to CENTER (starting at $45)

Usha Akella moderates a panel of four poets - Kirun Kapur, Sara Garg, Anita Nahal & Meher Manda to delve into the notion of immigration as a spectrum of unfoldment. More than a static dot in time, immigration is a wave giving birth to endless surges of the notion of identity enacting within the larger canvas of country, belonging and borders. The poets will read poems that explore an evolutionary journey to reflect changing themes, concerns, and poetic expression. What does a poet write about upon arrival? What does the poet grapple with in successive years? What does an American born poet with immigrant parents write about? From ‘other’ to ‘center’, is there indeed a definite destination of belonging?

Moderator, Usha Akella: Usha Akella has authored ten books that include poetry, and two musical dramas with noted publishers. She earned an MSt. in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge, UK. She is the founder of Matwaala (www.matwaala.com), launched to increase the visibility of South Asian poets, and www.the-pov.com, a website of curated interviews.

Panel: Kirun Kapur, Sara Garg, Anita Nahal & Meher Manda

Writing poems that surprise (starting at $45)

Will go over various techniques for writing poems that surprise the writer, will read sample poems and talk about how the techniques have been used. Participants will be given time to write and to share their poems.

Brenda Wildrick, poet and visual artist, member of Columbine Poets of Colorado, the Arizona State Poetry Society, Colorado Poet’s Center, and IWWG, has published poems in several anthologies. Her book, On the Train for Somewhere Else, and her coloring book with haiku were published in 2023 by Wild Rising Press.

Writing & Wellness Retreat
-----

August 11-15, 2025

Stepping Stone Retreat Center 

320 Sawkill Road Kingston NY 12401

Room block link:

International Women’s Writing Guild

The link will expire in April 30th.  A new block will open in May if needed. 

View Property - https://lumen5.com/user/bestwestern/33195-bw-plus-kings-0y7lb/

Monday, August 11 - Arrival Day

4 workshops during each session, 8 daily

Friday, August 15 - Departures

Meals & Other Information

Complimentary Breakfast at the hotel.

Please note registration is for retreat, workshops, and meals only. Rooms will be booked separately under an IWWG block below. Rooms must be booked by April 30 for early bird rate of $129 per night for a room with two queens. Nearby Kingston retreat center for workshops with shuttle services.

ROOM BLOCK LINK:

International Women’s Writing Guild

 To help you with your guest accommodations needs, we have created a customized reservation link for your room discount. Please test the link so you understand how it works. Your guests can adjust the dates to the night or nights they need.  

Reservations can  also be made by calling the hotel directly 845 338 0400 and ask for the group by name.

The link will expire in April 30th.  Please encourage your guests to make their reservations early. Individual reservations can be cancelled up to 24 hours prior to arrival. A new block will open in May if needed. 

View Property - https://lumen5.com/user/bestwestern/33195-bw-plus-kings-0y7lb/

Gateway to Memoir III (starting at $199)

In this 6-week workshop we will build on the foundation and skills developed during Gateway to Memoir I & II. You do not have to have participated in I & II to enroll in III, but you should have completed at least two full essays/chapters of your project for this workshop to be most beneficial to you.
Week 1 - Real-time Revisions
Week 2 - Sharpening Your Writing Voice
Week 3 - Book Proposal Basics

Weeks 4-6 will be reserved for workshopping.

Minda Honey’s essays have appeared in Harper’s Bazaar, the Washington Post, the Guardian, the Oxford American, Teen Vogue, and Longreads.

Her debut memoir, THE HEARTBREAK YEARS is a hilarious and intimate portrait of a Black woman finding who she is and who she wants to be, one bad date at a time.

Embodied Editing (starting at $79)

Embodied Editing pushes the revision practice beyond the norm of academics, highlighting the connection between the body and art. This approach helps surpass traditional boundaries of language, acting as an invitation to explore story and narrative in relationship to the body’s visceral response, creating a deep conversation between work and heart.

We’ll explore editing in two sessions. Please bring work that you wish to revise, along with highlighters and/or markers to the event. Dress in comfortable clothing to allow yourself to move freely as part of the revision process.

Rebecca Evans writes the heart-full guidebooks for survivors. She teaches high school teens in the Juvie system and co-hosts Radio Boise’s Writer to Writer show. She’s a disabled veteran, an avid gardener, and lives with four Newfoundlands and her sons.

Her poems and essays have appeared in Brevity, Narratively, The Rumpus, Hypertext Magazine, and more. Her books include Tangled by Blood (Moon Tide Press, 2023) and Safe Handling (Moon Tide Press, 2024).