Our beating hearts are easy to take for granted until they no longer work. Join authors Katherine Standefer and Florence Williams at Tucson Festival of Books as they share their journeys into healthcare and science to heal their broken hearts.

In this 3-hour virtual memoir seminar hosted by Literary Arts and the Portland Book Festival, students will explore how the contradictions in their personalities—the gaps between dirty laundry and grace—are the most interesting space, and how careful and brave craft choices allow us to write into our most gorgeous, complex selves.

Although writing can be healing, crafting and publishing our most difficult stories can make trauma worse. In this 3-hour 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 explore tools for moving forward at the right time and with the right pace.

After a long, disorienting night, we blink into the light of a new day. In this 2-hour workshop, we’ll continue our journey through the Third Line of the tarot with The Sun card, asking ourselves: After destruction, deep tending, and shadow work, how have we transformed? Together, we’ll write into the celebrations, joys and successes of The Sun card, as well as the tentativeness we often feel when moving back into illumination. The Sun card announces: The light has returned.

In this 3-hour virtual memoir seminar hosted by Hugo House, students will explore how the contradictions in their personalities—the gaps between dirty laundry and grace—are the most interesting space, and how careful and brave craft choices allow us to write into our most gorgeous, complex selves.

Learn how the physiological processes of trauma and shame interact with a writing process. Discuss some of the embodied blocks writers experience, touch into the craft problems common to traumatic material, and explore tools for moving forward at the right time and with the right pace.

At night, shapes lengthen and shadows grow. We can’t quite be sure of what we’re seeing. In this 2-hour writing workshop, we’ll continue our journey through the Third Line of the tarot, moving from the gentle self-tending of the Star card into the void energy of The Moon, noticing the dreams, visions, delusions, spells, madnesses and shadow work beckoning us. Moon energy is rarely comfortable, but it offers an essential invitation into spiritual mystery. The Moon card reminds us: There is a way to see in the dark.

Following the fires of the Tower card, the Star brings rain and rest. In this 2-hour writing workshop hosted by the Ninth House Shop, we’ll write into the raw moments after crisis, touch into our experiences of gentleness, identify what needs grieving, and step into a faith that can lead us forward. The Star card wants us to know: There is a way to come home to ourselves.

All of us live within structures—our days shaped by jobs, families, ideologies and laws. With its images of lightning, fire, and bodies falling from the sky, the Tower card makes clear: What has long stood is coming down. In this 2-hour writing workshop hosted by The Ninth House Shop, write into your relationship with destruction, revolution, and disaster, and touch into the Tower-season clarity, clearings, and awakenings that can point you toward what is next. The Tower card wants us to know: Starting over can be the truest gift.

With its connotations of addiction and shadow, pulling The Devil card in a tarot spread can make our stomachs twist. Yet beyond this spike of shame lies The Devil’s true promise: what tarot teacher Lindsay Mack calls “transformative liberation.” In this two-hour writing workshop, we’ll familiarize ourselves with the traditional meanings of The Devil card, explore our inner saboteur, and write into the risk-taking, pleasure, defiance, and sensuality that are our birthright. Through writing prompts, card-pulls, and sharing opportunities, The Devil card will help us commit: we will serve no master but our own souls.

In this 90-minute gathering, writers have the opportunity to ask Kati their questions— whether craft questions about writing trauma, illness, and sexuality; the way a writing life intersects spiritual invitations; or what it means to put our work in the world at this moment.

Telling our stories of trauma can be excruciating, and the process—if not undertaken carefully—can damage our nervous systems. But for some of us the task is spiritually mandatory. In this 1 hour workshop as part of The Yoga Seed Collective's Roots to Resilience Summit, we’ll explore what it looks like to surrender to a writing process that is operating on multiple planes.

"If you can't talk about something, you can't think about something," writer Eula Biss told Krista Tippett. Join me in April as alumni of my classes-- writers of sex, illness, and trauma-- read together for the 4th Annual Literary Bacchanal on the patio at Tucson Hop Shop.

How do we write sex well, and what keeps us from writing it at all? In this 8-hour intensive, participants will consider the role of the sex scene in storytelling, explore how the culture we live in shapes what we write, examine what the “intent to arouse” means on the page, and notice differences in syntax between pornography, erotica, romance novels, and literary sex writing. Along the way, participants will gain a greater comfort discussing, writing, and publishing sensual and sexual writing.

"If you can't talk about something, you can't think about something," writer Eula Biss told Krista Tippett. Join me in San Antonio in March as alumni of my classes and the authors they’ve loved-- writers of sex, illness, and trauma-- read together at the first national Literary Bacchanal, hosted near the annual AWP conference.

With its connotations of addiction and shadow, pulling The Devil card in a tarot spread can make our stomachs twist. Yet beyond this spike of shame lies The Devil’s true promise: what tarot teacher Lindsay Mack calls “transformative liberation.” In this two-hour writing workshop, we’ll familiarize ourselves with the traditional meanings of The Devil card, explore our inner saboteur, and write into the risk-taking, pleasure, defiance, and sensuality that are our birthright. Through writing prompts, card-pulls, and sharing opportunities, The Devil card will help us commit: In 2020, we will serve no master but our own souls.