TLA: This is How It Started. This is How It’s Going. // with Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg

Come explore the roots, branches, and blossoms of writing for change

In this special fundraising workshop for the TLA Network, we'll explore the roots, branches, and blossoms of writing for change, including how TLA sparked into being and developed, ways it’s seeded itself in our lives, communities, and world, and what its (and our) calling is now.

As TLA is inherently collaborative and evolving, we’ll entertain an expansive view and welcome all voices—beginners and newcomers to TLA as well as old hats. Everyone is welcome!

We’ll romp through the story of how TLA came to be, starting as a master’s level concentration in 2000 at Goddard College, growing into TLA Network in 2005, and sending up shoots of new growth in many surprising places places around the world.

We’ll especially look at what TLA means to each of us as a practice, profession, way of knowing, and personal and communal calling.

Along the way, we’ll experience some writing, meditation, and listening prompts to connect with more of our own words and the space in between them that also holds its wisdom.

Come learn more about:

• The roots of TLA’s story in the world.
• How TLA has and is finding new branches and blossoms
• What TLA means and can mean to us individually and collective as well as the importance of namign and claiming what we mean by terms such as healing, transformation, growth, and liberation.
• What we sense and experience as possibilities and callings for TLA in our lives, communities, and world now.
• Some ground rules and practices to consider and/or develop in how you embody and practice TLA in your life.

We’ll also learn more about how TLA started and how it’s going in our lives while finding many convergences of joy, humor, and meaning together.

What People Are Saying About Learning With Caryn

Beyond being detailed, caring, and brilliant in her editing, teaching, and consulting work, there is something about Caryn’s warm, authentic, empowering, Inspiring, and joyful presence that I have rarely observed in other leaders. – Harriet Lerner

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. The level of trust that we experience opens us to heartfelt honesty even as deeply painful experiences are shared.  Thank you for the sparks your words create. –  Patricia Durkin

Caryn’s skill, talent, wit, and wisdom have shown me the way to begin writing again, which is a restorative healing process. Caryn has taught me to reach deep within and unabashedly, without apology or shame, to tell my own story.  - Julie Flora

Who Should Attend?

All who are curious about TLA -- whether you're a newcomer to it, just hear of it, have been around the block with it a few times, or are an old hat at practicing TLA -- are lovingly welcome. This workshop would benefit anyone wanting to understand more about the possibilities and callings of TLA in our time as we share its history and scope as well as where it's going. At the same time, this workshop could help people wanting to know a little more about what TLA is in the first place and/or what the place of TLA is for you and your community now, whether you are a writer, spoken word artist, storyteller, musician, facilitator, educator, healer or health professional, or other kind of change-maker.

Format

This class will be presented Saturday, January 17, 2026 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.)
• Our free and open to all Community Circles and Virtual Salons

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, PhD is the founder of Transformative Language Arts, the 2009-13 Kansas Poet Laureate is the author of 25 books, including the recent The Magic Eye: A Story of Saving a Life and a Place in the Age of Anxiety, and How Time Moves: New & Selected Poems; Miriam's Well, a novel. A beloved writing workshop facilitator and writing and Right Livelihood coach, she offers writing workshops widely, particularly for people living with serious illness, adults in transition, humans looking for greater connection with the earth, and poets and writers seeking their most courageous voice on the page and in their lives. She offers the weekly “Write Where You Are” through her Patreon page, and her long-time blog is “Everyday Magic” at CarynMirriamGoldberg.com. 

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, cultivating a loving marriage, family, and community, and helping herself and others make and take leaps into the miraculous work of their lives. She lives in the country on land she and her husband, ecological writer Ken Lassman, have put in a conservation reserve and are restoring as prairie and woodlands.