Writing Circle

The Past is Everywhere at Once:
a Memoir Writing Circle

with JUNE GOULD

In this hands on writing workshop you will : Find your big story,  understand lessons learned, discover your overarching theme,  establish your time frames, focus on  important events- past and present. We will discuss  the memoir’s imperative- the importance of truth. Samples of memoirs will include memoir letters, dialogues, emails, diaries and excerpts from recent and past memoirs.

Please note the class intervals allow for some weeks in between to read and write. 

Writing Circle

Renew (by Disrupting) Your Poetry Practice

**Please note all times are listed in EST**  

“When water gets caught in habitual whirlpools, / dig a way out through the bottom / to the ocean,” Rumi counsels in his poem “The Worst Habit” (translated by Coleman Barks). Some habits move our lives forward; some keep us stuck in a pattern. Do you keep writing the same ol’ poem? Sure, the words are different, the subject matter is different, but what about your language usage, your poetic moves and strategies, your structure? Do you vary how you write? We will engage in inventive (but not gimmicky) exercises designed to disrupt our habitual ways of writing so we can generate poems that are revelatory—for the writer and the reader—in both content and form.

Marj Hahne is a freelance editor, writer, and writing teacher, and a 2015 MFA graduate from the Rainier Writing Workshop, with a concentration in poetry. She has performed and taught at over 100 venues around the country, as well as been featured on public radio and television programs. Her poems have appeared in literary journals, anthologies, art exhibits, and dance performances. Committed to making poetry hospitable for everyone, she launched a YouTube channel featuring videos in which she reads poems to dogs and pairs poems with craft beers, craft spirits, and coffees.

www.MarjHahne.com

Facebook:  www.facebook.com/MarjHahne

YouTube:  https://bit.ly/2LxHUG2

Workshop

Act Like A Writer, Think Like An Editor: Getting Your Manuscript Ready
**Please note all times are listed in EST**  

So you want to write a book and get published. In this two-part course, author and fifteen-year publishing insider Christine Pride explores practical and critical questions that every writer who has a dream of being published must consider: What are agents and editors really looking for? How do I know if I have a marketable idea? How do I know if my book is any good? It’s so competitive out there, so how can I increase my chances of getting an agent? Is it all just hopeless? (Spoiler alert: no!)

This course, designed to be an expert guide for every step in the process, will focus on idea development, elements of craft, and the editorial process. We will explore what makes projects exciting and marketable to agents and editors. We will discuss how to evaluate and improve your work, as well as the critical components to a successful book. And finally, we will discuss the three Ps: how to polish, package, and pitch your projects.

The session will be interactive—come prepared to discuss your ideas and books, whatever stage you’re at in the process. We will have exercises and prompts to help you think about ways to improve/refine your book based on an editor’s eye, identify the audience for your project, and hone how you think and talk about your project (the ever important “sell”). By the end of this first session, you’ll be able to think critically about the merits of your story, its audience, and how to reach and entice that audience: In other words, you’ll be thinking like an editor!

Christine Pride is a writer, editor, and longtime publishing veteran. She’s held editorial posts at many different trade imprints, including Doubleday, Broadway, Crown, Hyperion, and Simon & Schuster. As an editor, Christine has published a range of books, with a special emphasis on inspirational stories and memoirs, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. As a freelance editorial consultant, she does select editing and proposal/content development, as well as teaching and coaching, and pens a regular column—“Race Matters”—for Cup of Jo. She lives in New York City.

FREE

Friday Free Write with Allison Joseph

JOIN BY ZOOM NOW
(only click when it's time for the event to start, or a few mins before)

Inspiration Everywhere: How Little Epiphanies Lead Us to New Writing”
The topic of this workshop is inspiration. What is inspiration and how can we find it in everyday life? Through generative exercises, I will engage participants in ways of seeing that will help generate creative writing. This workshop is for anyone who wishes to start writing poems or lyric prose for seasoned writers who are looking for a pick me up in their creative processes. Participants should expect to write and share at least two poems/ lyrical pieces written during the workshop.

Allison Joseph lives in Carbondale, Illinois, where she is on the faculty at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Her most recent collections of poems are Lexicon (Red Hen Press, 2021, winner of the Best Poetry Book of 2021 Award from Poetry by the Sea: A Global Conference), Any Proper Weave (Kelsay Books, 2022), Speak and Spell (Glass Lyre Press, 2022), and Confessions of a Barefaced Woman (Red Hen Press, 2018). Confessions of a Barefaced Woman won the 2019 Feathered Quill Book Award and was a finalist for the 2019 NAACP Image Award. She was named Illinois Author of the Year for 2022 by the Illinois Association of Teachers of English. Her poems have appeared in the New York Times and in the Best American Poetry Series. Her next book, Dwelling, will be published by Red Hen in 2025. She is the widow of beloved poet and editor Jon Tribble.

Imagination and Justice: Meditation and Free-Writing Circles

with Lisa Freedman

An activist’s faith can never be unquestioning … can never oversimplify, as believers and activists are often tempted or pressured to do.   Adrienne Rich

These freewriting circles are intimate and expansive. We hold space for the complexities of our own and each other’s stories. Each time we meet, we start with a few minutes of silence followed by a short guided free-write and share to check in. Then Lisa guides us in two more rounds of meditation, free-writing, and sharing. The sharing is always optional.

Holding the silence together is a bonding activity, and as the weeks unfold, we connect more deeply through our writings. This is how we help each other take writerly risks to reveal our experiences and imaginings. And this is how we support each other as we dare to share our voices and visions with the world.

Meditators, writers, dreamers, and activists at every level of experience are welcome. All genres are welcome. These circles are a place to write or re-write material that dwells (or wants to dwell) in the realm where the personal is political. You may already be working on a relevant project, or you may be starting a new one. Either way, you and your stories, your writings are welcome here.

Participants receive the prompts and background materials each week. These come from many sources, including Ada Limon, Ross Gay, adrienne maree brown, and Ilya Kaminsky.

Lisa Freedman is a writer, activist, and New School Writing Program faculty member. She founded Breathe/Read/Write as a contemplative response to the chaos of the U.S. elections in 2016. BRW combines meditation and freewriting so participants clear the static and astound themselves with the flow and clarity that comes when they set their pens on the page. As a practitioner of Shambhala Buddhism, Lisa knows how inspiring it can be to share the open space of silence. And she has a knack for choosing free-write prompts that connect writers to what they need to say. Lisa leads BRW circles for The NY Zendo, the International Women’s Writing Guild, The Poetry Barn, and the New School’s Social Justice Hub, among others. Her work with BRW earned a 2021 NYFA Community Artists Corp Grant. 

Lisa holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the New School. Her creative work can be found in these anthologies: Resist Much, Obey Little: Inaugural Poems to the Resistance; Literature from the First 20 Years of Art & Understanding; and Grabbing the Apple: An Anthology of New York Women Poets. Her poetry and prose also appear in Satya Magazine, POZ, Poetry Ration, and others. For more info, see the Breathe/Read/Write Eventbrite page and Lisa’s Writing Coach website.

Workshop

Poetics of Incantation
**Please note all times are listed in EST**  

As poets, we speak song into being, speak beyond the finality of language, speak to address the dead, speak to be spoken to. In this workshop, we will explore the incantatory form of anaphora, discussing the power and limitations of repetitive utterance, that ephemeral & powerful “carrying back.” Participants can expect to read a selection of poems written with anaphora and to participate in a generative prompt. Let us intone, together.

Raena Shirali is the author of two collections of poetry. Her first book, GILT (YesYes Books, 2017), won the 2018 Milt Kessler Poetry Book Award, and her second, summonings (Black Lawrence Press, 2022), won the 2021 Hudson Prize. Winner of a Pushcart Prize & a former Philip Roth Resident at Bucknell University, Shirali is also the recipient of prizes and honors from VIDA, Gulf Coast, Boston Review, & Cosmonauts Avenue. Formerly a Co-Editor-in-Chief of Muzzle Magazine, Shirali now serves as Faculty Advisor for Folio—a literary magazine dedicated to publishing works by undergraduate students at the national level. She holds an MFA in Poetry from The Ohio State University and is an Assistant Professor of English at Holy Family University. The Indian American poet was raised in Charleston, South Carolina, and now lives in Philadelphia.

FREE

National Poetry Month Reading & Open Mic

Don’t miss IWWG’s National Poetry Month special event Thursday, April 20 at 7pm eastern! We’re excited to be featuring one of my favorite poets and former Utah poet laureate Paisley Rekdal, followed by a Q&A and open mic.

Moderated by Trish Hopkinson.

Trish Hopkinson is a poet, blogger, and advocate for the literary arts. You can find her online at SelfishPoet.com and provisionally in Utah, where she runs the regional poetry group Rock Canyon Poets and folds poems to fill Poemball machines for Provo Poetry. Her poetry has been published in several literary magazines and journals, including Tinderbox, Glass Poetry Press, and The Penn Review, and her fourth chapbook Almost Famous was published by Yavanika Press in 2019. Hopkinson happily answers to labels such as atheist, feminist, and empty nester; and enjoys traveling, live music, and her day job as a software product director.

Paisley Rekdal is the author of four books of nonfiction, and seven books of poetry, including Nightingale, Appropriate: A Provocation, and the forthcoming West: A Translation. Her work has received the Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an NEA Fellowship, Pushcart Prizes, a Fulbright Fellowship, and various state arts council awards. The former Utah poet laureate, she teaches at the University of Utah where she is a distinguished professor.

In this 90 minute workshop we will look at culture, categorizations and the mind. Themes from cross-cultural communication and cognitive metaphors will be combined with poetry and personal experiences. Authors included are Ella Frears, Kim Shuck, and Marieke Lucas Rijneveld a.o. At the end of the workshop, you will receive a sheet with information about the theories and poems we touch on. 

Workshop

How to Make Money with Poetry
**Please note all times are listed in EST**  

How to make money with poetry is a workshop based on my twenty four years as a working poet. I've bought a house ,paid off $30,000 in debt and over $3,000,000 in Medical Bills with my Earnings from poetry as well as my day to day expenses. This workshop will cover the six markets you can make money from poetry, the six levels of achievement in poetry and how much you can make after you reach each level. An Introduction to "Bardic Law" and how it gives you the basic method for setting your prices as a poet. a few tips on how to make more money regardless of what level you're at. A little bit about me. closing tips and if there is time a brief Q$A

Lawrence Berger Is the author of ten Poetry books. one had the honor of being chosen By the philosophy department at St. John Fisher college as a text book for their classes. He has also written a self-help guide which has sold over 30,000 copies. He has co -written five screenplays based on one of his poems and done performances on the West Coast and in upstate New York! He has appeared on over seven podcasts.

8-Week Workshop Series

Embodying Queer Stories

Registration Instructions:

Please complete this form to apply for registration.  Once your material is reviewed, you will be sent a code to use for registering:  https://forms.gle/w9vYtJQxZXkW4sLt7

This eight-week course is open to 12 LGBTQIA+ writers. We will meet virtually on Tuesdays from 7 PM to 9 PM, starting on May 2, 2023.

Informed by the blueprint set forth in Felicia Rose Chavez’s The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop, this eight-week course is open to 12 LGBTQIA+ writers who seek to center the embodied experience of their characters, regardless of the genre of their work.* The world is shaped by patriarchal white supremacist power structures, and the traditional workshop table is no different. It’s time to change that. It’s time to write our stories in our voices. Writing through the body is key. When we write through the body, we pay attention to what happens inside of us when we experience trauma and its aftershocks. When we write through the body, we pick up a pen and paper and let our words pour out, unfiltered. Writing through the body is an act of resistance. Let’s build a collaborative and supportive community of LGBTQIA+ writers. Our stories are life-giving and life-saving, but, unfortunately, even as Pride has been co-opted by rainbow capitalism, our stories are still marginalized. Whether you are a seasoned workshop participant or have never attended a workshop before, all are welcome. Together, we will create a space to share our work that is safe, constructive and inspiring.

*NOTE: While all genres are welcome, Jenni’s writing, editing and teaching experience is primarily in fiction and creative nonfiction.

What Makes This Workshop Different?
1. No gag rule. Traditional workshops implement what’s often called the “gag rule,” where a writer whose work is being discussed must stay silent for the duration of that discussion. This is detrimental to the writer and to the workshop as a whole. Instead, writers will meet briefly with me prior to having their piece workshopped. Together, we will come up with a list of questions you’d like to pose to the workshop table. During workshop, you can open the discussion by reading your work aloud, asking others to read, or guiding us through a related activity. Then you will lead the workshop discussion and I will support you. If, for instance, you feel the discussion is becoming unhelpful, I want you to say so, and I will help you steer the conversation in another direction. Remember: You know your work better than anyone, and we are here to help you more fully realize your vision.

2. You write the syllabus. Seriously. Before class starts, I’ll ask you all to tell us three writers or artists of any kind that inspire you. I’ll compile these, along with some of my own favorite pieces of art and literature, into a shared document that we can all refer to during the course.

3. Freewriting. We’ll freewrite as much as we can during class, and I’ll come up with prompts inspired by the work you submit. You are encouraged to write with a pen and paper rather than on a computer or phone, but no matter what writing implements you use, we’ll try writing without stopping, without crossing anything out, without censoring ourselves. If you want, you can share what you’ve written with us. If we don’t have as much time during the class for freewriting as we’d like (on days when more than one person is being workshopped, for example), I encourage you to take these freewriting exercises home!

4. Applying critique to your own work. It is very easy to find fault with someone else’s work. It is far more difficult and more useful—for both you and your peers—when you strive to imagine your way into their mind, to think deeply about the intention behind their words and provide feedback in a way that helps them accomplish their goals. Rather than writing critique letters of one another’s work, I’ll ask you to write one critique letter to yourself before the course is over. This letter can be a critique of one of your submissions, a list of things you love about your work and elements of craft that you want to continue honing, a culmination of everything you’ve learned, a revision plan. It can be anything you want it to be, but the goal is to practice examining your work with a generous but critical eye.

Jenni Milton is a queer writer who studied at Connecticut College, Oxford University and the Columbia Publishing Course. After graduating, she worked in book and magazine publishing at One Story, Oxford University Press, and Grove Atlantic. She earned her MFA at the Programs in Writing at UC Irvine, where she taught composition, fiction writing and literary journalism. In her final year of the program, she was Fiction Editor of the Pushcart Prize-winning journal Faultline. She now works as a copywriter, teaches for Blue Stoop, volunteers at H&H Books, and plays violin with the New Amsterdam Symphony Orchestra and the Roxborough Orchestra. She has published work in Juked and A Distant Memory Zine and is working on a novel.

Workshop

Act Like A Writer, Think Like An Editor: Getting Your Manuscript Ready
**Please note all times are listed in EST**  

So you want to write a book and get published. In this two-part course, author and fifteen-year publishing insider Christine Pride explores practical and critical questions that every writer who has a dream of being published must consider: What are agents and editors really looking for? How do I know if I have a marketable idea? How do I know if my book is any good? It’s so competitive out there, so how can I increase my chances of getting an agent? Is it all just hopeless? (Spoiler alert: no!)

This course, designed to be an expert guide for every step in the process, will focus on idea development, elements of craft, and the editorial process. We will explore what makes projects exciting and marketable to agents and editors. We will discuss how to evaluate and improve your work, as well as the critical components to a successful book. And finally, we will discuss the three Ps: how to polish, package, and pitch your projects.

The session will be interactive—come prepared to discuss your ideas and books, whatever stage you’re at in the process. We will have exercises and prompts to help you think about ways to improve/refine your book based on an editor’s eye, identify the audience for your project, and hone how you think and talk about your project (the ever important “sell”). By the end of this first session, you’ll be able to think critically about the merits of your story, its audience, and how to reach and entice that audience: In other words, you’ll be thinking like an editor!

Christine Pride is a writer, editor, and longtime publishing veteran. She’s held editorial posts at many different trade imprints, including Doubleday, Broadway, Crown, Hyperion, and Simon & Schuster. As an editor, Christine has published a range of books, with a special emphasis on inspirational stories and memoirs, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. As a freelance editorial consultant, she does select editing and proposal/content development, as well as teaching and coaching, and pens a regular column—“Race Matters”—for Cup of Jo. She lives in New York City.

Workshop

The Road to Publication
**Please note all times are listed in EST**  

You’re ready to go! You have or soon will have a finished project ready for the world. Now what? This session will deal with the tricky business of getting an agent and editor interested in your project. We will break down the intimidating “behind the scenes” of the publishing world, so you can have a deeper understanding of the true ins and outs of publishing. This behind the scenes tour will include a range of helpful insights—from the best approach for getting an agent to what editors are really saying about you and your book, to the realities of the marketplace and how you can put your best foot forward.

This session will also include fun and helpful exercises, such as “Can you spot the bestseller?” We will review query letters and pitches so you can leave the session equipped to successfully write your own. We will discuss common mistakes, road blocks, and pitfalls writers should avoid as you navigate this process. You can expect to leave the session armed with lasting knowledge and approaches that will improve your chances on the road to publication.

Christine Pride is a writer, editor, and longtime publishing veteran. She’s held editorial posts at many different trade imprints, including Doubleday, Broadway, Crown, Hyperion, and Simon & Schuster. As an editor, Christine has published a range of books, with a special emphasis on inspirational stories and memoirs, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. As a freelance editorial consultant, she does select editing and proposal/content development, as well as teaching and coaching, and pens a regular column—“Race Matters”—for Cup of Jo. She lives in New York City.

Summer Conference

Summer Conference 2023
Writing for Equity and Inclusion

Join us this summer!  You can stay connected and get all relevant conference information on the conference event site here:

Summer Conference.

Early bird registration includes all workshops, 4 nights in a single room (all rooms have A/C; some rooms are singles; some are suites) and all meals (Friday dinner through Monday breakfast). Full workshop descriptions and schedule are on our conference website link above.

2023 Summer Conference

Ten Tips: An Intensive Workshop on
Writing Your Personal Story

Registration Deadline: June 15, 2023. This advanced workshop is limited to ten participants, assigned on a first-come, first-served basis. Pre-registration is required by June 15 and the fee is $50. 

Submission Deadline: June 23, 2022. Once you have received notice that you are registered, please submit electronically no more than five double-spaced pages of personal narrative to lydia@iwwg.org, Use the subject line: Submission for Memoir Intensive. Work can be taken from a single long piece or several shorter, stand-alone pieces Be sure to include at least one of your opening paragraphs or pages and one of your closing sections. Please use Times New Roman, 12-point type and submit your work as a .doc so the instructor and other participants can add observations. Preference will be given to full-week registrants. Manuscripts will be distributed to all participants in advance of the conference.

Annie Dillard once said, “You have to take pains not to hang on the reader’s arms, like a drunk, and say ‘And then I did this and it was so interesting’.” What is it, exactly, that can make your personal narrative truly engaging? Not simply a recollection of your experience or an information dump.  Working together we will be looking at how to find the kernel, the heart of your story, the image or concept that teems with life, even at its most deceptively subdued. Using this kernel, we will then explore and apply ten techniques useful for writing the openings, middles, and closings of your own personal essays, autobiographical short stories, and memoirs. Personal stories can be made to matter; this workshop demonstrates how. Participants are invited to submit ahead of time up to 5 pages of their own personal writing to foster collaboration and focus feedback.

Judith Huge has spent over thirty 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 voices through writing.  She currently teaches intensive writing workshops for the Osher Learning Center ( University of South Florida) and Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill (Cape Cod, Massachusetts), among others 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 (Women in the Wild, A Traveler’s Tale Anthology.)

2023 Summer Conference

Advanced Fiction Writing

Lynne Barrett is the award-winning author of three short story collections The Secret Names of Women, The Land of Go, and Magpies, which received the Florida Book Awards Gold Medal for General Fiction in 2012.  Her anthology Making Good Time, True Stories of How We Do, and Don't, Get Around in South Florida, was published in Fall 2019 by Jai-Alai Books. What Editors Want: A Must Read for Writers Submitting to Literary Magazines, published by Rain Chain Press, has recently gone into its second printing. The essay on which it is based, published in The Review Review, was featured in the L.A. Times Book Blog and republished in Glimmer Train's digest. Barrett edited Tigertail: Florida Flash, and  co-edited Birth: A Literary Companion and The James M. Cain Cookbook, a collection of Cain's nonfiction.

Her short stories have appeared in many journals including the Orange Blossom Review, New Flash Fiction Review,  Mystery Tribune, Necessary Fiction,The Miami Rail,  Fort Lauderdale Magazine,  Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine,  Painted Bride Quarterly, Night Train, and Real South. And her essays have been published in The Hong Kong Review, River Teeth's "Beautiful Things" series, andThe Southern Women's Review.

In Fall 2020, a new essay was included Grabbed: Poets and Writers on Sexual Assault (Beacon Press), and a short story from the 1990s was republshed Akashic's Miami Noir: The Classics.  Her stories and essays are included in many anthologies and textbooks, including: Flash! Writing the Very Short Story, Just to Watch Them Die: Crime Stories Inspired by the Songs of Johnny Cash, Fifteen Views of Miami, Trouble in the Heartland,  Blue Christmas, One Year to a Writing Life, Delta Blues, A Dixie Christmas, Miami Noir, Simply the Best Mysteries, A Hell of a Woman, Mondo Barbie, Literature: Reading and Responding to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and the Essay, The Lexington Introduction to Literature, and many more.

She has received the Edgar Allan Poe Award for best mystery story from the Mystery Writers of America, the Moondance International Film Festival award for Best Short story, and fellowships from the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs and the National Endowment for the Arts. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College, she received her M.F.A. from the University of North Carolina-Greensboro. She teaches in the M.F.A. program in Creative Writing at Florida International University and edits The Florida Book Review.

http://www.lynnebarrett.com/about-lynne.html

2023 Summer Conference

Advanced Poetry Seminar

Pre-registration required; limit of SEVEN participants on a first-come, first-served basis; a one- page poem of any form/content is required of each attendee in advance of the workshop; $100 fee/ 

To reserve for one of the SEVEN spaces, submit a one-page poem of any form/content electronically by no later than June 15 to LYDIA@IWWG.ORG, subject line: Submission for Advanced Poetry Seminar. 

Set your life on fire. Seek those who fan your flames.~ Rumi 

LINDA LEEDY SCHNEIDER, a psychotherapist in private practice and poetry mentor, was awarded The Contemporary American Poetry Prize by Chicago Poetry.  She has written six collections of poetry including Through My Window: Poetry of a Psychotherapist (Plain View Press).  A former faculty member at Aquinas College and Kendall College of Art and Design, Linda facilitates workshops nationally including The Manhattan Writing Workshop which she founded and has led since 2008. Editor of two poetry anthologies by poets she has mentored, Poems From 84th Street (Pudding House Publications) and Mentor’s Bouquet (Finishing Line Press), Linda’s poetry was included in Not a Muse: The Inner Lives of Women, a World Poetry Anthology for which she produced a reading to benefit The International Women’s Writing Guild at The Bowery Poetry Club (NYC). She conducts workshops on Poetry Therapy for the National Association of Social Workers’ Annual Conference.  Linda has been the featured poet at readings in New York City, Chicago, Detroit, Taos, Ann Arbor, and Grand Rapids.

IWWG VIRTUAL CONFERENCE SUMMER 2023

Please note that some events will be the same instructors who are on site in Philadelphia while some are new for the virtual track only. The link for all workshops will be the same.

FRIDAY

Self-publishing with Cathleen O'Connor

SATURDAY 

9 am to 10 am: Writing Sprints 

10:30-12 noon: MultiGenre 

1:00 pm to 2:30 pm: Fiction with Rona Gofstein

3:00-4:30 - Poem À La Mode - Choosing the Best Voice for your Subject and Speaker – with Marj Hahne

SUNDAY

9 am to 10 am: Writing Sprints 

10:30-12 noon: Mindful Editing with Andi Penner

1:00 pm to 2:30 pm: Fiction with Rona Gofstein

3:00-4:30 - Poem À La Mode - Choosing the Best Voice for your Subject and Speaker – with Marj Hahne

Download full program here.