Saturday, September 23

11:00am-1:00pm MT and 2:00pm-4:00pm MT (includes hour-long break)

$175

Although writing can be healing, crafting and publishing our most difficult stories can make trauma worse. In this 4-hour Zoom workshop with author and trauma specialist Katherine Standefer, learn how the physiological processes of trauma and shame interact with a writing process. Together, we'll discuss some of the embodied blocks writers experience, touch into the craft problems common to this material, and use tools adapted from clinical practice to begin generating work— supporting you in moving forward at the right time and with the right pace.

Katherine Standefer's debut book Lightning Flowers was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize in Nonfiction and the Arizona/New Mexico Book Award in Memoir, selected as a New York Times Editor's Choice/Staff Pick, and shortlisted for the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Prize from Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. The book was named one of Oprah Magazine's "Best Books of Fall 2020," selected as the Common Read 2022-2023 at Colorado College, and featured in People Magazine, on the goop podcast, and on NPR's Fresh Air. Standefer's previous writing appeared in The Best American Essays 2016 and won the Iowa Review Award in Nonfiction. She earned her MFA in Creative Nonfiction at the University of Arizona and spent time as a Logan Nonfiction Fellow at the Carey Institute for Global Good. She is based out of Wyoming.

As a trauma writing doula, Standefer accompanies nonfiction writers through the underworld process of extracting stories of trauma through the body and the challenge of building trauma narratives beautifully on the page. She brings to this work more than 30 hours of training at the Arizona Trauma Institute, a decade as a sexuality educator, and her own time within the brutal, embodied work and spiritual practice required to birth Lightning Flowers.