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• How to Write About Life's Hard Stuff // with Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg

  • When
    04 May 2024
  •  
    2:00 PM - 4:00 PM (CDT)
  • Location
    online

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  This class focuses on the healing potential -- both in theory and practice -- of writing about challenges, losses, and brokenness in our lives.

  How to Write About Life's Hard Stuff is being offered as a fundraiser—all proceeds will be donated to TLAN.

  "These are the materials," Poet Adrienne Rich writes of life's "wreckage, dreck and waste" as well the moon rising over wreckage, dreck and waste. Whether writing poetry, fiction, memoir, or in other genres, your materials are key, especially when writing about something charged, painful or tender. To avoid spinning your wheels in the metaphorical mud, it's important to explore when and how to write about life's hard stuff, and to create enough perspective to aim yourself toward writing that's strong and transformative. By looking at how and when writing can be healing, examples of strong writing in several genres, and ways to further unfold your writing, you can better find your way into poetry, fiction, and memoir that draws from your more challenging life experiences.

  Drawing on the theory and practice of therapeutic writing as well as research and experience on how to write toward greater lightness and freedom, we'll experiment with several short writing prompts and discuss applications and ramifications. Moreover, we'll consider how to listen to our bodies in how and when to write about losses, challenges, and moments of brokenness in our lives. This class is very focused on guiding ourselves by our full wisdom and discernment, and we'll talk about how to bring that better in focus as we write.

  All participants will receive a packet of writing prompts, research and theory sources, and information on how to develop their own best prompts.

  Who Should Attend?
  

  Anyone who turns to writing to help them find greater healing and wholeness as well as people who facilitate writing classes or coaching or work as therapists, educators, or collaborative arts facilitators.

  Format
  

  This is a one-time 2-hour session that focuses on the healing/therapeutic aspects of writing, especially in concert with when and when not to write about traumatic and stressful experiences. This class will be presented as a two-hour Zoom session and will be recorded for anyone who cannot attend live. 

  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/

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• Writing Hard Things: Approaching Difficult Topics with Sensitivity and Candor // with Autumn Konopka

  • Start
    05 June 2024
  • End
    16 July 2024
  • Location
    Online
  • Spaces left
    11

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  "If we don’t strike a careful balance between candor and sensitivity, we run the risk of exploiting traumatic experiences rather than creating opportunities for healing."

  Many of us use writing to process difficult experiences and past traumas. Such writing can be beneficial not only for the writer, but the reader as well – allowing those who have experienced trauma to feel understood and validated.

  However, this is delicate work that requires careful intention. We don’t necessarily want to be “confessional” or gratuitously graphic; nor should we attempt to spare audiences from difficult moments by obscuring them with metaphor or ambiguity. If we don’t strike a careful balance between candor and sensitivity, we run the risk of exploiting traumatic experiences rather than creating opportunities for healing.  

  Using the principles of trauma-informed practice, this class will explore approaches to writing about challenging topics – such as abuse, assault, suicide, mental illness, and other sensitive issues – in ways that make the work honest, affirming, and safe for readers to feel seen rather than sensationalized. 

  Week by Week

  Week 1: Introduction to the class & the topic

  We’ll begin by introducing ourselves and establishing a common understanding of “hard things” and “trauma-informed writing.” Our discussion will focus on difficult subjects that we have both read about and struggled with in our own writing. Participants will be invited to consider a particular project (or projects) to focus on for the duration of the class.

  Week 2: Writing to be Sensitive

  As we begin exploring trauma-informed writing, we’ll discuss how to approach projects with self-awareness and how to set expectations for readers. We’ll discuss how unconscious biases, internalized assumptions, and/or cultural expectations can affect our writing and our readers. We’ll explore strategies for recognizing and resolving our own blind spots and limitations. Finally, we’ll examine examples of trigger warnings and other external/pre-narrative cues to help readers prepare for encountering our difficult material.

  Week 3: Writing to Affirm

  Writing about traumatic experiences requires honesty, clarity, specificity, and fullness. Weeks 3 & 4 will include writing exercises that challenge us to move closer to the difficult materials, rather than pulling back from the details. This week, we’ll focus on showing these experiences by focusing on the body’s sensations and physical reactions. 

  Week 4: Writing to Affirm, cont. 

  One of the greatest challenges in writing hard things is to make them more than just “hard things.” This week’s exercises will ask us to acknowledge the multiplicity of emotions that coexist in the presence/aftermath of trauma or difficult experiences. By including feelings like desire, humor, apathy, contentment, or excitement, we give our writing about difficult topics a fullness that honors the human experience. 

  Week 5: Writing to be Responsive

  As we write about difficult topics, it is important that we not only recognize our own assumptions and expectations, but those that exist within the larger culture as well. There are many tropes and conventions that do a disservice to those who have actually lived through trauma or painful experiences. We will look at good and bad examples of this and discuss strategies for recognizing and resisting writing patterns that may unfold almost unconsciously.  

  Week 6. Writing to be Responsive, cont.

  Writing about hard things isn’t necessarily enough. We have to think about how we present those things and whether we are reinforcing potentially harmful patterns. What’s more, this work gives us an opportunity to go a step further and write toward an optimistic reality. In our final week, we’ll explore ways that our writing can not just explore difficult topics but also model the kind of response to those topics we’d like to see, without being unrealistic or overly idealized. 

  Who Should Take This Class

  Writers of any type would benefit from this class, especially if they are interested in or practicing writing about traumatic experiences or sensitive topics. Even if trauma is not a central component to a writer's work, many would benefit from better understanding the impact that even "ancillary" trauma (something in a character's or subject's background or something that is part of a sub plot) could have on readers. The class is appropriate for writers of all genres, but the material will be largely focused on creative writers, with an emphasis on fiction and poetry.

  Format

  This class will offer a weekly two-hour Zoom meeting from 7-9pm EDT (UTC -4). Click here to convert to your time zone. The zoom meeting day of the week is proposed to be either a Monday or a Tuesday and will be determined in conversation with the people who register. Zoom meetings will begin either June 10 or 11, 2024, based on the day of week chosen by the class. Zoom sessions will be recorded and class materials will also be shared in the classroom platform Wet Ink. 

  About the Facilitator

  Autumn Konopka is a writer, runner, mental health advocate, and trauma-informed teaching artist. Her debut novel, Pheidippides Didn’t Die (Manuscripts, 2023), earned honorable mention in the 2023 Writer’s Digest Self-Published E-Book Awards, and Kirkus calls the book “a compelling adult romance that captures the complexities of trauma dynamics.” A former poet laureate of Montgomery County, PA (2016), Autumn’s work has been published widely in literary journals, and her poetry chapbook, a chain of paper dolls, was published in 2014 by the Head & the Hand Press (Philadelphia). She holds a BA in English from the University of Pittsburgh and an MFA in poetry from Antioch University, Los Angeles. Dedicated to promoting the social, emotional, and mental health benefits of running, Autumn volunteers as an ambassador for Still I Run and as a coach for Girls on the Run. She lives with her family outside of Philadelphia. You can connect with Autumn at www.autumnkonopka.com, and at amkonopka (Instagram), autumnkonopka.author (Facebook), autumnkonopka (LinkedIn).

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• A Banquet of Transformative Language Arts!

  • When
    15 June 2024
  •  
    2:00 PM - 5:00 PM
  • Location
    Online

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  Join us for a replenishing afternoon featuring a delicious menu of Transformative Language Arts in poetry, memoir, stories, and song.

  Enjoy yourself in a welcoming and vibrant community of other creatives. Everyone also gets an ample doggie bag of handouts, plus recipes for great dishes from famous writers, to bring home with them.
  

  Our banquet will be on Zoom, so you can attend from wherever you are without any need to dress up, find a place to park, or figure out what to order.

  This event is a fundraiser to help us expand our staff to better serve you and others who resonate with the power of words to spark positive change in our lives and the world.

  Your Menu

  Welcome and Be Our Guest with your host, Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg

  Amuse Bouche—A Taste of Poetry Aloud with Eric McHenry

  Enjoy poetry memorized and recited by Eric McHenry, former Kansas Poet Laureate, and reconnect with the wonder of learning and taking into your memory poems you love.

  Appetizers—Measured in Moments: A Taste of Micro-Memoir with Elizabeth Chelsa

  Micro-memoir invites you to tell a compelling personal story in under 300 words by focusing on a moment or memory that has shaped you. This taster course will briefly define the micro-memoir genre, share strategies for capturing snapshots in powerful prose, and provide a smorgasbord of prompts for crafting your own micros.
  

  Soup & Salad—Mindful Writing for Conscious Embodiment with Marianela Medrano

  Mindful Writing (MW) creates a bridge to healing the self. It facilitates the process of writing from and with the body, bringing attention from the neck down. Mindful Writing is an invitation to write in a less cerebral, intellectualized way, softening to the whispers of a body with the wisdom to guide us to conscious awareness. In Mindful Writing, we observe our behaviors and the cultural, political, and emotional/psychological structures we create. We watch our language and find the etiology of our attachments, beliefs, and views. With our Writing, we shine a light on the perspectives we hold and strive to see our shared humanity thru the lens of love, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity.
  

  Entree—Rewriting Your Future with Lewis Mehl-Madrona

  Medical and psychological healing is easier when we can imagine where we want to go. People tend to wrestle over how to improve without clear images of the destination. We will explore techniques for creating images of healthy futures and then exploring how that future can draw us toward it. Is it possible that Coyote is right -- the future creates the past?
  

  Dessert—If Music Be the Food of Love: Savor the music of Joy Zimmerman in a short concert

  Sit back and savor the original songs of Joy Zimmerman with just the right balance of savory and sweet.
  

  Closing—Hugging Goodbye

  Bid your new friends adieu and we’ll send a doggie bag of handouts with you, including special recipes (yes, for real food) by famous writers.

  About Your Chefs
  

  A Taste of Poetry Aloud with Eric McHenry, former Kansas Poet Laureate

  Eric McHenry is the author of three books of poetry, most recently Odd Evening (Waywiser, 2016). His honors include the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, the Theodore Roethke Prize from Poetry Northwest, and a term as poet laureate of Kansas. His poems have appeared in The Threepenny Review, The New Republic, The Times Literary Supplement, Field, and The Yale Review. His prose appears in The American Scholar and The New York Times Book Review. He teaches English at Washburn University.

  Measured in Moments: A Taste of Micro-Memoir with Elizabeth Chelsa

  Elizabeth Lukács Chesla is the author of You Cannot Forbid the Flower (2023), a hybrid novella based on her father’s experiences in World War II and the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. The daughter of Hungarian refugees and a mother of three, she earned her MA from Columbia University and spent a decade teaching writing and literature in New York City before moving back home to the Philadelphia suburbs to raise her family. There she wrote books on reading, writing, and critical thinking skills for educational publishers; served as an editor for nonprofit organizations; taught online writing and literature courses for homeschoolers; became a yoga teacher specializing in support for hypermobility and trauma; and co-founded a weekly embodied writing group for women.She now leads writing and yoga workshops, develops humanities content for educational publishers, and serves as an editor for emerging authors. Her work has appeared in Quarter After Eight,The Tattooed Buddha, Another Chicago Magazine, and Flare, a flash fiction anthology. Learn more here.

  Mindful Writing for Conscious Embodiment with Marianela Medrano

  Dr. 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 and has published numerous poetry collections in English and Spanish. Her literary work has appeared in numerous 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: Embed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pQeBYd2oJk. Dr. Medrano is a certified Mindfulness Meditation teacher. She is a 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. Dr. Medrano has lectured in many countries, including Spain, India, Colombia, El Salvador, Panamá, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico. Website, LinkedIn, Facebook,Youtube, Instagram.

  Rewriting Your Future with Lewis Mehl-Madrona

  Lewis Mehl-Madrona, MD, PhD is a faculty physician in the Northern Light Acadia Psychiatric Residency Program. He is also associated with the Family Medicine Residency at Northern Light in Bangor, Maine. He graduated from Indiana University, Stanford University School of Medicine, and completed his post-graduate medical training at the University of Vermont. He works with Coyote Institute, whose goal is to bring Indigenous wisdom to the larger world. His PhD is in neuropsychology.  He is the author of Coyote Medicine, Coyote Healing, Coyote Wisdom, Narrative Medicine, Healing the Mind through the Power of Story, and Remapping Your Mind: The Neuroscience of Self-Transformation through Story. His work focuses on the power of story, the neuroscience of story, and story as a tool for transformation. He keeps trying to transform psychiatry to be more humane and richer with stories.Coyote Institute, Coyote Institute Facebook page,Lewis’ website, Facebook page, or LinkedIn.

  If Music Be the Food of Love with Joy Zimmerman

  Joy Zimmerman is a touring folk & acoustic roots singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. Joy’s clear, honeyed voice lights up her songs of hope, resilience, and humor. Her eighth album, The Canvas Before Us, debuted at #8 on the FAI Folk Charts in 2021. A former social worker, Joy is an ArtistINC alumnus and an Artist as Activist grant recipient from the Mid-America Arts Alliance. Joy’s many collaborations include a portrait exhibit she curated based on her song, “Women Who Walked on Water,” at the InterUrban ArtHouse. Joy is the Power of Words conference co-chair. Website, Facebook,Instagram.

  This fundraiser offers you a sliding scale of options. Please donate whatever you can to help us grow TLA. Thank you!

  Level I: $75 | Level II: $150 | Level III: $250

  
  

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