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• Mindful Writing: A pathway to inner freedom // with Marianela Medrano

  • Start
    08 January 2025
  • End
    04 February 2025
  • Location
    Online

  Register

  
  

  Mindful Writing connects us to the here and now without judging the experiences of the body, feeling, mind, and understanding. Somatic practices are important parts of MW and lead to centeredness and equanimity. 

  In this course, you’ll discover how mindful writing expands your lenses and ratio of vision to see all the layers of your personal story in a way that strengthens it. You will dive into the myth of separation and navigate pluriversality and radical relationality as ways to counter the myth. Through various practices, you will deepen your understanding of Ubuntu, Sankofa, and Vincularidad and see how these concepts potentially generate active hope. 

  You will learn viable ways to elicit vigilant introspection, which refers to our ability to devise mindful ropes to tether the mind and facilitate equanimity. Some practices will lead to fruitful or introspective silence, the basis for building vigilant introspection and creating engaged spirituality, which is the backbone of mindful writing. Silence develops intimacy with the self. In this course, you will see how the four foundations of mindfulness and the four Brahma Viharas are the perfect platforms for establishing a connection with writing that goes beyond the personal. 

  Mindful Writing is the act of writing from the roots, meaning that as we write, we take a retrospective look at our point of origin or racial, cultural, and family history to engage in discerning practices that can help us respond from a more genuine sense of self.

  Week By Week 

  Week One: Understanding MW and its principles. A combination of short lectures, meditation, and group discussions.

  Week Two: We will explore somatic practices, define the myth of separation, and discuss countering it through meditation, writing, and group discussions. 

  Week Three: Situating the self in the Pluriverse and radical relationality. We will use meditation, writing, and group discussions. 

  Week Four: Poetizing the personal story. We will use meditation, writing, and group discussions. 

  Who Should Take This Class

  Therapists, educators and anyone interested in engaged spirituality. The course will give individuals an insight into the use of writing to create individual and collective transformation and healing.

  We offer scholarships based on income as well as some partial scholarships for people living with serious illness and/or disability or people of color through the Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg Fund. Please fill out this scholarship application form so that we can find the best way to make the class accessible to you.
  

  Format

  Weekly Zoom sessions on Wednesdays from 7-9 PM ET | 6-8 PM CT | 5-7 PM MT | 4-6 PM PT | 12-2 AM UTC

  About the Facilitator

  Marianela Medrano was born and raised in the Dominican Republic and has lived in Connecticut since 1990. A poet and a writer of nonfiction and fiction, she holds a Ph.D. in psychology. Her literary work has appeared in anthologies and magazines in Latin America, Europe, and the United States. She is the founder of Palabra Counseling & Training Center, LLC. 

  Her TEDTALK at Ursuline College speaks about her work and research on the Taino people. 

  She is a certified Mindfulness Meditation teacher and mindful eating instructor, and mentor/supervisor for the International Federation for Biblio/Poetry Therapy, IFBPT. In 2023, she was awarded a grant by the Bess Family Foundation to research interspecies care. She loves the earth and is committed to caring for the pluriverse until her last breath. 

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• New Visions for Your Life's Work in the Arts and Beyond // with Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg & Kathryn Lorenzen

  • When
    12 January 2025
  •  
    3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
  • Location
    Online
  • Spaces left
    20

  Register

  

  What would you like to bring into the world in 2025?

  Perhaps you're a writer, storyteller, musician, or other kind of artist puzzling out how to grow the art of your heart in concert with your livelihood and life. Maybe you're a facilitator, healer, or teacher looking to reach new people and communities with your work. Or you could be all the above, ready to re-envision your life's work to better align with your callings right now and for the year ahead.

  This fundraising workshop for the TLA Network will help you make room to listen to what your work wants to be, and then to imagine and build your vision. The big picture of your work – whether it's for livelihood, service, art, and/or purpose – can be a touchstone for discerning your best next steps and how to stay true to yourself.

  Both Kathryn and Caryn have decades of experience in coaching and teaching on career transition, right livelihood, and the work of the heart, and they will offer you some tools and approaches to converse more deeply with what's knocking at your door – what you most want to do or feel born or grown to do at this phase of your life. Through some short writing prompts and lively discussion, plus ample resources, we'll explore the potential and possibilities in your next act. 

  Kathryn and Caryn will also share information on The Big Picture Class, their annual small group immersion into reimagining your life's work.

  
  

  “Kathryn helped me see things that I couldn’t see about myself. She gave me a better understanding of my strengths and goals. And she gave me the language to talk about my experience, strengths and opportunities.” ~ George Weyrauch
  

  
  

  Who Should Take This Class

  Anyone engaged with TLA is also dancing with a calling related to the power of words for healing, change, and liberation. We invite you -- no matter where you are in your TLA journey -- to come explore what is emerging or ready to emerge in your work, art, service, and/or purpose, whether you are just getting started, re-imagining your work, or retiring from a career and ready to re-fire your life's work in new terms. An ample handout is included along with tried-and-true approaches for discerning the work of our heart.

  
  

  When I first started running writing workshops, Caryn gave me tremendous wisdom and guidance. I don’t know how I got so lucky! She was a powerful mentor and teacher at a moment when I was soaking up everything I could possibly learn. I have enormous trust in, and gratitude for, this powerhouse woman. ~ Chris Fraser, owner and writing coach at Firefly Writing
  

  
  

  Format

  This class will be presented Sunday, January 12, 2024 from 3-5PM ET/ 2-4 PM CT/ 1-3 PM MT/ 12-2PM PT / 8-10 PM UTC as a one-time, two-hour Zoom session. The day after class a recording, as well as notes and resources from the class, will be emailed to class members only.  

  Your Registration Fee is a Donation
  

  Because this event is so generously being offered by Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg as a fundraiser, your entire registration fee will go directly to support scholarships, program development, and other offerings meant to expand and enrich our community. You will be helping programs like:

  • Power of Words Scholarship Fund
  • Online Class Scholarship Fund
  • The Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg Fund (conference and online class support for both BIPOC people and people who are living with serious illness and/or disabilities.)
  • Supporting global programs to grow TLA around the world
  • Our forthcoming new podcast
  • Our blog and other publications

  Registration Levels:

  • Level I – $200.00
  • Level II – $150.00
  • Level III – $75.00
  • Level IV – $50.00

  We thank you. 

  About the Facilitators

  
  

  Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, PhD, is the founder of Transformative Language Arts, author or editor of 24 books of poetry, fiction, memoir, and more, and with Kathryn Lorenzen, she leads Your Right Livelihood: The Work Art an Service Your Love (YourRightLivelihood.com). A long-time community workshop facilitator and coach, she makes her living working with many communities and individuals, giving talks and readings, and collaborating with other Transformational Language Artists. Her other big projects include Art of Facilitation classes with Joy Roulier Sawyer and Brave Voice writing and singing retreats with Kelly Hunt. More and her blog at CarynMirriamGoldberg.com.

  Kathryn Lorenzen is a career coach, creativity coach, songwriter, and poet. Her songs have appeared in feature films and TV series, and she writes for both self-expression and social change. With an earlier career in copywriting and marketing communications, she is now a career coach to freelance writers seeking livelihood in support of their art. Kathryn now partners with Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg as co-leader of Your Right Livelihood (YourRightLivelihood.com) and you can find more about Kathryn at KathrynLorenzen.com

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• Integrating the Arts with Medicine // with Lewis Mehl-Madrona and Barbara Mainguy

  • Start
    15 January 2025
  • End
    11 March 2025
  • Location
    Online
  • Spaces left
    18

  Register

  
  

  Medicine desperately needs the arts.

  But artists can be quickly rejected when they don’t understand the culture of medicine and how doctors think.
  

  Our aim is to provide language and visual artists with sufficient understanding of the culture of medicine that they can interact with physicians and other health professionals to bring the arts into patient care and the environment of medicine.

  We also want to expose health care practitioners to the world of the artist to better understand how to interact with artists to improve patient care and also for their personal benefit.

  Health care practitioners work within implicit stories that are largely not understood or examined by them. Through engaging with the arts, they can become more aware of these stories and able to reflect upon how they might change their stories to provide better patient care and also to nurture themselves and prevent personal burnout.

  Medicine desperately needs the arts, but artists can be quickly rejected when they don’t understand the culture of medicine and how doctors think. To forestall that quick rejection, doctors need to understand how artists think.

  Rita Charon of Columbia University has written about the importance of health care practitioners writing stories about their patients and their patient encounters.

  • Poetry and the visual arts provide other means for becoming aware of feelings, beliefs, and biases.
  • Improved language arts skills help physicians to find the metaphors of their patients’ illnesses.

  We will finish the course by inviting participants to write a proposal for how they could bring their art into a health care setting within their environment. We hope they will present this proposal and make a positive contribution to that setting.

  Week by Week
  

  Week 1. Introduction to the arts in medicine with examples of successful interactions and programs.

  Week 2. How do doctors think?

  Week 3. How do artists think?

  Week 4. What are the constraints existing in health care settings that make it hard to introduce the arts.

  Week 5. Telling stories about patients – writing fiction and creative non-fiction.

  Week 6. Poetry and medicine

  Week 7. Bringing the Visual Arts into medicine

  Week 8. Discussing projects that could be proposed into health care settings in participants’ neighborhoods.

  Who Should Take This Class
  

  We are interested in attracting artists of all types who want to bring their art into medicine. We also want to attract health care practitioners who are open to the arts and want more exposure to the arts and how they can use the arts in patient care and for their own personal growth and well-being.

  We hope to create an opportunity for interactions within the live part of the class and also on the discussion board among health care practitioners and artists.

  TLAN offers scholarships based on income as well as some partial scholarships for people living with serious illness and/or disability or people of color through the Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg Fund. Please fill out this scholarship application form so that we can find the best way to make the class accessible to you.

  Format

  This is a hybrid online class, conducted through Zoom meetings and the online classroom Wet Ink.

  Zoom meetings are scheduled for 4:30 pm Eastern time on Tuesdays. Sessions will be recorded and made available only to the class. 

  Online readings and an asynchronous discussion board will be hosted on the online teaching platform Wet Ink. The day before class begins, you will receive an email invitation from Wet Ink. There are no browser requirements, and Wet Ink is mobile-friendly. The Wet Ink platform allows you to log in and complete the coursework on your own time. 

  About the Facilitators

  Lewis Mehl-Madrona is a practicing physician and a writer of creative nonfiction, poetry, and fiction. He studied creative writing at Indiana University and then attended Stanford University School of Medicine. He finished his postgraduate medical training in family medicine and in psychiatry at the University of Vermont. He completed the Novel Writing Certificate Program at Stanford University and has a first novel that is in process of being published. He has also published poetry, photography, and short fiction. He wrote Coyote Medicine, Coyote Healing, and Coyote Wisdom, a trilogy of stories about healing with traditional elders. 

  Barbara Mainguy studied philosophy at the University of Toronto, Creative Arts Therapy at Concordia University, and received a Master of Social Work from the University of Maine. She practices psychotherapy with the tribes of Maine. Barbara completed a certificate program in the Arts and Medicine at the University of Maine, which Lewis helped co-create.

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• The Arc of Storytelling from the Writer’s Subconscious // with Riham Adly

  • Start
    22 January 2025
  • End
    04 March 2025
  • Location
    Online
  • Spaces left
    18

  Register

  
  

  Have you ever wondered if stories had a mind of their own?

  If they had a purpose? A journey they must cover, regardless of who is telling them? 

  Have you ever stopped to think why you choose to write certain stories in certain genres in certain settings? 

  Have you considered why sometimes you start your story with what your character wants (desire) or what your character fears (conflict)? And why? And what does that say about you and your story structure? Or is it again, the stories have a mind of their own?  

  As humans we are the only species that resorts to storytelling to try to understand ourselves.

  That’s why we have story arcs, character arc, and character archetypes. Begging, Middle, End…Repeat.  Sometimes the end isn’t even an ending.  Sometimes a story about a character’s anger or grief isn’t at all about that but is rather about their hidden shame.

  Arcs are half circles. You start somewhere, you get provoked to move even if you don’t want to, you reach a climax, the peak of the half circle and then you go down.

  Who creates this arc?

  Is it you the conscious writer with the story idea and expected structure? Or is it the deeper, darker, and sometimes wiser part of you that’s kept truths, feelings and events locked in a black box at the back of your mind, where stories are forced to live in seclusion? That black box is the subconscious which is the seat of repressed memories and hidden emotions. Imagery and symbolism are its language. 

  Explore all of this in The Arc of Storytelling from the Writer’s Subconscious: Discovering the Journey of Story Structure Through the Writer’s Internal & External Vision/ Voice "The Why & How” You Tell Your Short Stories, Longer Stories, and Memoir.

  Week by Week

  Part I:  The Story Shows Itself to me

  Week one (Story theme ):  I’ve often thought of the theme as the story’s label.  But now really, what is theme? Is it really a label, a moral, a message? Or is it what the story wants to reveal to you?  We think of theme as the “Why” we write the story. We start with a concept. The Theme is: Love, Heartbreak, Politics, or what happens when you lose your favourite socks.  But what if, sometimes, we write without really knowing what it is that we’re writing about? What if the theme has an arc of its own. It starts somewhere and it ends somewhere else.  In this lesson we’ll communicate with our story’s theme, explore its elements, and its possible arcs to be ready for the next step.

  Week Two (Story Identity): Every story is told in one of two ways: 

  • It is told through the eyes of love or what I would like to call desire.
  • Or It is told through the eyes of fear or what I would like to call conflict.

  Your stories have their identities according to your vision/ perspective and your voice. Will your story start with your character’s desires or your character’s fears? Encounters or Avoidances? What will the arc of your story’s identity be? You start with what they want and how they face conflicts? Or with what they fear and how they find what they need or want?  In this lesson we’ll explore we’ll look at emotional resonance and discover the map of emotions and emotional functions of the five senses, and it is from there that we’ll able to find out the identity of our story so we can be ready for the next step.

  Week Three: Story Circuits/ Behaviour/ Pattern: Our lives run in arcs or even circles according to the seven circuits of affective emotional networks in our brains:

  The Seeking/Desire network, the separation/ grief network, the Rage/ Anger network, the Care/ maternal network, the Lust/ Sexual network, the Play/ social engagement system, the Fear/ Anxiety system.

  These neural circuit networks determine human behaviour and comfort zone. The story has its own circuit/ Pattern. Those circuits should work in a certain order. What are the circuits within your story, what happens when the order is messed up, how does this translate into behaviour? Will these circuits cause the story to behave in a certain way towards the reader? Will it delight the reader, hit the reader hard with some truths, enlighten the reader. In this lesson we’ll look at story Circuits/ Behaviour and how it affects your audience through the use of literary devices, word choice, syntax, and rhythm so this can take us to the next step.

  Part II:  What The Story Wants to Reveal to me

  Week Four: Story Hue-man/ Humans: Now, since we’re in the business of exploring story arcs, I believe the topic of archetypes is pretty much unavoidable, especially that we’re talking character or rather the doers of the story. In this lesson we’ll look at the four basic emotive norms that create the four major character archetypes (four parts of the self). Which one of those takes the lead in the character’s personality? What happens when this leading intrinsic archetype gets deformed or forced to hide? What mask will this character wear? What hue will they carry to the next step? What will the story be able to reveal through that?

  Week Five: Story Voice/ Perspective and Point of View: We’re all familiar with creating character point of view and perspective. The character speaks through either the first, second, or third point of view. But, what about the story’s voice? The actual perspective from which the story wants you to see and receive its events? In this week , the story will want to play a game with us called: put yourself in my place. We’ll experiment with different perspectives and voices and choose the one that best serve’s our story’s purpose.

  Week Six: Story Place/Time: This week is about setting. Setting is not just where the story takes place, its where its internal world manifests and comes out to the world. Setting is the story context within which events take shape. In this week we’ll look at what the story wants to reveal through setting. The story wants you to understand that worlds are built from the inside/ out , not from the outside/in.

  Who Should Take This Class

  Novelists, memoirists, short story writers, coaches, TLAN artists, and therapists looking for innovative ways to help their patients or clients or anyone suffering from creative blocks. 

  Students should expect to spend 3 hours per week perusing resources and readings, engaging in several writing/creation prompts, and briefly responding to peers’ work. From our interactions, we sustain a welcoming and inspiring community together.

  We offer scholarships based on income as well as some partial scholarships for people living with serious illness and/or disability or people of color through the Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg Fund. Please fill out this scholarship application form so that we can find the best way to make the class accessible to you.
  

  Format

  This is an online class, hosted on the online teaching platform, Wet Ink, as well as Zoom. The Wet Ink platform allows students to log in on their own time to post comments and critiques directly to authors’ works. You can also view deadlines, track revisions, and watch video or listen to audio. At the end of the class, each student will receive an email that contains an archive of all their content and interactions. Wet Ink is mobile-friendly and there are no browser requirements.

  The course will include five optional zoom classes taking place Saturdays from 1:30-2:30 pm EST.  Because they are optional, the Zoom sessions will not be recorded.

  About the Facilitator

  Riham Adly is an award-winning flash fiction writer from Giza, Egypt.

  In 2013 her story “The Darker Side of the Moon” won the MAKAN award. She was short-listed several times for the Strand International Flash Fiction Contest. Riham is a Best of the NET and a Pushcart Prize nominee.

  Her work is included in the “Best Micro-fiction 2020” anthology. Her flash fiction has appeared in over fifty journals such as Litro Magazine, Lost Balloon, The Flash Flood, Bending Genres, The Citron Review. 

  Riham has worked as an assistant editor in 101 words magazine and as a first reader in Vestal Review magazine. Riham is the founder of the “Let’s Write Short Stories” and “Let’s Write That Novel” in Egypt. She has taught creative writing all over Cairo for over five years with the goal of mentoring and empowering aspiring writers in her region. Riham’s flash fiction collection “Love is Make-Believe” was released and published in November 2021 by Clarendon House Publications in the UK.

  Riham is also a certified Luscher Diagnostic Test Practitioner, an NLP student, and a specialist in psychosomatic medicine.
  

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• Seeding change: Creating When Life is Hard // with Tracie Nichols

  • When
    02 February 2025
  •  
    3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
  • Location
    online
  • Spaces left
    8

  Register

  

  You know those times when life grabs you and shakes you like a snow globe then stretches you batwing thin across too many and too much?

  This practice is for those times. 

  As word-loving creators, we turn to language to help us make sense of both our inner and outer worlds. But what happens when life is hard and crafting a poem or other piece feels like a blank page too far? That’s where this practice reaches out a gentle tendril and won’t let you fall. 

  I started this practice because I was overwhelmed by the demands of managing both my neurodivergence and menopause while learning a new job, and in the background was a constant hum of grief for a struggling family member. My attention was tattered. Noticing only happened in fragments. My writing was constrained to torn corners of time. —Tracie Nichols

  Seeding Change invites us to:

  • connect to creativity in times of overwhelm.
  • create without needing to generate new writing.
  • think about making poems in a different way—more collage or mosaic than essay or novel.

  While it's oriented toward generating poems, it can be used to assemble the seeds for flash fiction, creative nonfiction, short stories, plays, monologues, songs—any form of word artistry.

  This two-hour Zoom class is generative.

  You will emerge with a collection of your own poem seeds—perhaps even a nascent poem or story—and your own version of this process to use when life is hard.

  Who Should Take This Class

  • Writers and poets (aspiring or established) with limited time and, more importantly, limited headspace, who need to engage with language in the brief moments life allows. 
    
  • Anyone who needs reminding that, no matter how stretched-thin they are, their word artistry is still with them—still there to support and nourish them.

  Format
  

  This class will be presented Sunday, February 2, 2025 from 3-5 PM ET/ 2-4 PM CT/ 1-3 PM MT/ 12-2 PM PT / 8-10 PM UTC as a one-time, two-hour Zoom session. The day after class a recording, as well as notes and resources from the class, will be emailed to class members. 

  About the Facilitator

  Tracie Nichols is a poet, facilitator, and the current Managing Director of The Transformative Language Arts Network. Over the past 20 years, inspired by her graduate work in Transformative Learning and Change, she has designed and facilitated hundreds of virtual and in-person learning experiences for people seeking personal transformation and growth. Tracie spent ten intense, wonderfully complex, successful years as a business and life coach, finally closing her coaching practice two years ago and turning her creative energies to writing (mostly) poetry. Her poetry has appeared in Rogue Agent, Text Power Telling, and kerning. You can connect with her at TracieNichols.com or on Substack. 

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• Sustainable Marketing Strategy for Writers, Changemakers, and other Magical TLArtists // with Tracie Nichols

  • Start
    12 February 2025
  • End
    04 March 2025
  • Location
    Online

  Register

  
  

  I’ll bet your work and art is quietly (or not so quietly) life-changing. 

  I’ll also bet not enough people know about it—or you—right? 

  Sustainable Marketing Strategy for Writers, Changemakers, and other Magical TLArtists will help you (re)define marketing and promotion (as well as terms and concepts like business growth, strategy, and community building) as practices that can be both sustainable and successful while also being aligned with your values, creative and business goals, and available expendable energy. (In other words, how many spoons can you devote to this?)

  At the end of our three weeks together, you will: 

  —Know what you want your marketing to do for you/your business

  —Have the foundation of a sustainable marketing strategy grounded in

  • language and methods of communication meaningful to both you and your community
  • knowing the best pace for your available time and energy
  • researching the best places/platforms for the ways you most effectively and genuinely communicate

  —Be part of a network of other creatives working to build sustainable marketing practices

  —Be supported by a collection of resources and tools

  In short—this is a professional development course designed to make strategies for growing your community and business sane and sustainable. 

  Week By Week 

  Week 1: Evicting your inner late-night infomercial huckster, (or how your assumptions about marketing are probably not helping you grow your business) 

  This week we will:

  • look at the ways ubiquitous, relentless, mainstream marketing consciously and unconsciously shapes what we think marketing is, the language we use to define it and ourselves, and what it must look or sound like. 
  • redefine and/or reclaim “marketing” and “promotion” as actions you take to help your community understand what you do and how it helps them so they can make a conscious, informed choice to work with you, (buy from you, join your thing).

  Week 2: You & your community—intersecting ecosystems. Creating a sustainable marketing strategy starts with knowing yourself and your community.

  Our activities this week will:

  • delve into who you are as a TLArtist; your values, your native communication style, the personality and neurologic traits that underpin how you think, create, and take action. 
  • explore who are the people in your community, how can you connect with them, what are the ways they will be looking for help?
  • clarify/define the kind of conversation and/or reciprocal relationship you and your community want to be having.

  Week 3: Market like a tree. Be rooted. Offer oxygen—Your sustainable marketing strategies. This week we will plant the seeds of a marketing strategy:

  • aligned with how you communicate, your goals, your working rhythm and expendable energy.
  • that feels genuine and inviting to your community.
  • that is both a short and a long-term strategy—meaning actions you can take right away and actions you can build up to over time.

  Who Should Take This Class

  You should join us if you're a TLArtist* interested in building your community and/or your practice without burning out, becoming overwhelmed, or feeling inauthentic, pushy, or like you’re imposing on anyone. This applies to both solo practitioners and people who are responsible for community building for an organization.

  NOTE: While this approach to marketing is especially helpful for introverts, ambiverts, Highly Sensitive People (HSP) and/or people with ADHD, anyone who feels alienated by traditional marketing methods will definitely find inspiration here. 

  *Who are TLArts practitioners? Teachers, counselors, writers, storytellers, performers, songwriters, poets, community leaders and activists, and other artists using language for individual or community transformation.

  We offer scholarships based on income as well as some partial scholarships for people living with serious illness and/or disability or people of color through the Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg Fund. Please fill out this scholarship application form so that we can find the best way to make the class accessible to you.
  

  Format

  Course materials will be delivered through a hybrid of weekly Zoom sessions and written resources sent via email.

  The majority of the work will happen in the weekly two-hour Zoom meetings, held on three consecutive Saturdays from 11 AM-1 PM ET (10 AM -12 PM CT | 9-11 AM MT | 8-10 AM PT | 4-6 PM UTC): Feb.15, Feb. 22 and March 1, 2025. Sessions will be recorded and made available to students only. 

  This class utilizes personal reflection, group discussion, and writing exercises to explore and redefine marketing so it becomes a useful and sustainable business strategy for creatives like TLArtists. You should plan to spend about three hours per week on the class engaging in the Zoom meetings and outside writing exercises and research. 
  

  About the Facilitator

  Tracie Nichols is a poet, facilitator, and the current Managing Director of The Transformative Language Arts Network. Over the past 20 years, inspired by her graduate work in Transformative Learning and Change, she has designed and facilitated hundreds of virtual and in-person learning experiences for people seeking personal transformation and growth. Tracie spent ten intense, wonderfully complex, and successful years as a business and life coach, finally closing her coaching practice two years ago and turning her creative energies to writing (mostly) poetry. Her poetry has appeared in Rogue Agent Text Power Telling and kerning. You can connect with her on her website or her Substack Breathing Space.
  

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• Be Your Own Valentine Writing Workshop // with Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg

  • When
    15 February 2025
  •  
    2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
  • Location
    online
  • Spaces left
    25

  Register

  

  

  Join a warm and lively writing circle (over Zoom) to write about who and what you love and to use your writing to discern how to love better.

  Be Your Own Valentine Writing Workshop is being offered as a fundraiser—all proceeds will be donated to TLAN.

  Writing can be a practice of opening your heart to other humans, the natural world, and your own good soul. Join a warm and lively writing circle (over Zoom) to write about who and what you love and to use your writing to discern how to love better. 

  Just the act of making something out of words is a way of loving the time and place where you are. Writing together is a loving practice that can help us open up and come to know your own hearts more.

  In this lively workshop, we’ll gather together to find greater inspiration, guidance, and tenderness through reading and considering how poetry can speak to myriad forms of love. Drawing from the poetry of such writers as Joy Harjo, Derek Wolcott, e.e cummings, Muriel Rukeyser, Willa Cather, Rita Dove, Walt Whitman, Robert Bly, Jane Kenyon, Harold Littlebird, David Whyte, Rumi, we’ll find new inspiration, plus an overflowing bouquet of writing prompts we can explore after our time together.

  
  

  After each class I recognize the peaceful place the class creates in me. My response to listening to others and hearing your responses to our work fills me with contentment, joy, and satisfaction. —Patricia Durkin
  

  
  

  Participants will leave with a greater sense of how the poetic power of language can help us access more our good selves as well as how writing together and on our own can be an essential practice of loving-kindness and creativity.
  

  Who Should Attend?
  

  This workshop is a valentine to anyone who writes, wants to start writing, or is ready to return to writing. All the prompts are aimed to meet you where you are with lots of options for engaging in ways to help you better see and celebrate your own definitions of what love and can be in your life, family or community, and our world.

  
  

  I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing and working with Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg for the past decade, and have rarely encountered a more insightful, compassionate, or integrous teacher and coach. —Mark Matousek, award-winning teacher, author, and mentor
  

  
  

  Format
  

  This class will be presented Saturday, February 15, 2024 from 3-5 PM ET/ 2-4 PM CT/ 1-3 PM MT/ 12-2 PM PT / 8-10 PM UTC as a one-time, two-hour Zoom session. The day after class a recording, as well as notes and resources from the class, will be emailed to class members only.

  Your Registration Fee is a Donation
  

  Because this event is so generously being offered by Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg as a fundraiser, your entire registration fee will go directly to support scholarships, program development, and other offerings meant to expand and enrich our community. You will be helping programs like:

  • Power of Words Scholarship Fund
  • Online Class Scholarship Fund
  • The Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg Fund (conference and online class support for both BIPOC people and people who are living with serious illness and/or disabilities.)
  • Supporting global programs to grow TLA around the world
  • Our forthcoming new podcast
  • Our blog and other publications

  Registration Levels:

  • Level I – $200.00
  • Level II – $150.00
  • Level III – $75.00
  • Level IV – $50.00

  We thank you. 

  About the Facilitator

  Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Ph.D., the 2009-13 Kansas Poet Laureate, is the founder of Transformative Language Arts and the author of two dozen books. Her publications include How Time Moves: New & Selected Poems; Miriam's Well, a novel; Needle in the Bone, a non-fiction book on the Holocaust; The Sky Begins At Your Feet, a bioregional memoir.

  A writing and right livelihood coach, working with people to bring what wants to be written and lived into being, Mirriam-Goldberg offers community writing workshops widely, and with Kelley Hunt, Brave Voice retreats. She also co-leads the Your Right Livelihood class and retreat with Kathryn Lorenzen, and the Art of Facilitation training with Joy Roulier Sawyer, with whom she also offers the annual Writing from the Soul retreat.

  Born hard-wired to make something (in art, music, and especially writing), Caryn’s long-time callings include writing as a spiritual and ecological path, yoga, drawing, cultivating a loving marriage, family, and community, and helping herself and others make and take leaps into the miraculous work of their lives.

  You can connect with Caryn at:

  https://www.carynmirriamgoldberg.com/

  https://www.instagram.com/carynmirriamgoldberg

  https://www.facebook.com/CarynMirriamGoldbergWriter

  https://www.linkedin.com/in/caryn-mirriam-goldberg-3772006/

  Show details
• 2025 Power of Words Conference

  • Start
    02 October 2025
  •  
  • End
    05 October 2025
  •  
  • Location
    Unity Village, 1900 NW Blue Parkway, Unity Village, Missouri

  Register

  
  

  Join the Power of Words Conference to explore the written, spoken and sung word to find how it can bring liberation, celebration and transformation within our communities. 
  

  Network with writers, storytellers, performers, musicians, health professionals, educators, and change-makers to connect with those who share your passion of making a difference with words.   

  Discover diversity and experience visionary voices at keynote sessions. Get inspired with workshops in five areas:  Social Transformation, Right Livelihood, Engaged Spirituality, Narrative Healing and Ecological TLA.

  Your registration payment includes main conference events only. Meal plans will be sold separately.

  Lodging and pre-conference events are an additional charge.

  

  Lodging & Travel

  We are meeting at the beautiful and welcoming Unity Village in Kansas City, Missouri, U.S. 

  

  PLEASE NOTE OUR REGISTRATION CANCELLATION POLICY:

  If you need to cancel your registration, please refer to the following schedule.
  

  • Aug. 14, 2025: Last day for full refund, transfer, or credit, minus $20 processing fee
  • Sept. 11, 2025: Last day for 75% refund, transfer, or credit, minus $20 processing fee

  No refunds, transfers, or credits issued after SEPTEMBER 11, 2025. (In the case of unexpected life circumstances—such as hospitalization or death in the family—contact us and we will try to do what we can.)

  Show details