WORKSHOPS • PROMPTS/CONSULTING • WORKSHOP ARCHIVE • TESTIMONIALS
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Sabrina has created a physical/mental/emotional space in that luminous realm between enCouragement and flight. Enter and you will write your way into the dark wood. Stay and she will show you the flowers that mark the way back.
- Michelle Castleberry is the author of Dissecting the Angel and Other Poems
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SLOWLY BUT SURELY: A WORKSHOP ON SLOWING DOWN
Over the years, I have learned that the more I slow down the faster I write what I am actually after.
This workshop will help writers practice the art of slowing down. How can we hold onto our sentences before they are distracted and forget themselves? How can we grow our ideas before they lose their attention span? How might we slow down time so we can finally get to the deepest part of our destination? We will find ways to compose the uncharted grounds that hurrying up to get somewhere has kept us from knowing. Consider this workshop a radical act.
We will resist the digital oblivion. We will go snail. We will find urgency in stillness.
In this five-week workshop I will offer weekly prompts and reading assignments to guide you slowly into slowness. Each writer will be up for workshop twice.
As in all my workshops, all genres are welcome: (poetry, prose, hybrid, essay, flash, fragment, and everything in between).
This five-week workshop will meet on ZOOM on Mondays, July 13, 20, 27, August 3, 10 from 9:15AM-12:45PM EASTERN STANDARD TIME. All assignments and handouts will be sent via email. Workshop is limited to 15 participants.
Recommended Reading:
The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker, On the Calculation of Volume by Slovej Balle, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey, Garielle Lutz’s “The Sentence is a Lonely Place,” The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis (I will provide a few selections / but encourage the whole collection)
REGISTER
Full payment of $585 is required to hold your spot. If you need to work out a payment plan please don’t hesitate to email me.
A Memoir Not a Memoir Workshop
(workshop is full / please email if you’d like to be on the waitlist)
“Trust me, I'm telling you stories... I can change the story. I am the story.” — Jeanette Winterson
Over the years I’ve heard so many writers say: “I don’t want to write a memoir, but I might be writing a memoir.” This workshop grew out of desire to honor this conundrum. In this workshop we will bend the memoir and consider how memoir forgets, lies, dreams, and crumbles. How can we use the memoir to inch closer and closer to ourselves without scaring ourselves away? And what even is the story of the self? What is confession? How can we write the memoir without getting trapped by the constraints the memoir once set?
In this five-week workshop I will offer weekly prompts and reading assignments to guide you through ways of un/memoiring the memoir so that you can write the memoir of your dreams.
As in all my workshops, all genres are welcome: (poetry, prose, hybrid, essay, flash, fragment, and everything in between).
This five-week workshop will meet on ZOOM on Wednesdays, June 17, 24 / July 1, 8, 15 from 9:15AM-12:45PM EASTERN STANDARD TIME. All assignments and handouts will be sent via email. Workshop is limited to 15 participants.
READING LIST
Craig Morgan Teicher’s AUGUST, SEPTEMBER, OCTOBER, Caren Beilin’s SEA, POISON, Bruno Schulz’s STREET OF CROCODILES (translated by by Celina Wieniewska), plus writing by Eula Biss, Hanif Abdurraqib, Kate Zambreno, Rachel Zucker, and Dana Levin.
REGISTER
(workshop is full / please email if you’d like to be on the waitlist)
Full payment of $585 is required to hold your spot. If you need to work out a payment plan please don’t hesitate to email me.
Are We in the Real World Here?
(workshop is full / please email if you’d like to be on the waitlist)
(A Non-Fiction / Fiction Workshop)
The question I’m often asked about my writing is: “are we in the real world here?” I love this question because it asks me to pull the letters I am writing apart and look for dust and bones, a lost glove, my mother. It asks me to consider how the imagination hatches the real, and how the real can often slip into the imaginary. This workshop will consider the lines drawn between fact and fiction, and what happens when those lines blur.
In this five-week workshop you will be given weekly prompts and reading assignments to guide you through a deep exploration of how the story and the essay, fiction and nonfiction, the imagination and the real, can fuse into a great coherence.
This five-week workshop will meet on ZOOM on Thursdays, April 23, 30, May 14, May 21, May 28 (skip May 7th) from 6PM-9:45PM EASTERN STANDARD TIME. All assignments, lectures, and handouts will be sent via email. Workshop is limited to 15 participants.
READING LIST
Benjamin Labatut’s WHEN WE CEASE TO UNDERSTAND THE WORLD, Ben Lerner’s TRANSCRIPTION and Carmen Maria Machado’s IN THE DREAM HOUSE
REGISTER
(workshop is full / please email if you’d like to be on the waitlist)
Full payment of $585 is required to hold your spot. If you need to work out a payment plan please don’t hesitate to email me.
JOURNALING (workshop is full)
SIGN UP NOW!
In this five-week workshop we will keep (and share) a daily journal. We will study the composition of the entry and its worth, the strangeness and beauty of raw material, and the relationship between confession and invention. What does it mean to record, plot, or sketch an unfolding day? We will discuss how an entry might grow into an essay, or a poem, or a story. You will leave this workshop bursting with ideas.
Note: entries can be dreams, grocery lists, notes towards a novel, letters to nobody, a list of current events, sobbings, pieces of poems, fictions or chicken scratch. Which is to say, this workshop is a multi-genre workshop. All forms are welcome (poetry, prose, hybrid, memoir, essay, flash, fragment, and everything in between).
This five-week workshop will meet on ZOOM on on Mondays (March 30, April 6, 13, 20, 27) from 9:15AM-12:45PM EST. All assignments, lectures, and handouts will be sent via email.
Weekly reading and writing assignments will guide you. All levels welcome. Workshop is limited to 15 participants.
READING LIST
DIARIES (from The Paris Review), Fernando Pessoa’s BOOK OF DISQUIET, Susan Sontag’s REBORN, Edward Carey’s THE SWALLOWED MAN
REGISTER
Full payment of $585 is required to hold your spot. If you need to work out a payment plan please don’t hesitate to email me.
COMMITTING TO THE BIT (workshop is full)
SIGN UP NOW!
In this five-week workshop we will commit to the bit. We will arrive with a single harebrained scheme and we will not give up on it no matter how broken or dead or awful an idea it becomes. We will consider its twists and turns and work together to plot it and give it form. We will examine our bits’ roots and find ways to nurture them through different modes of composition. In this workshop all forms are welcome (poetry, prose, hybrid, memoir, essay, flash, fragment, and everything in between).
This five-week workshop will meet on ZOOM on Mondays (Feb 16, 23, March 2, 9, 16) from 9:15AM-12:45PM EST. All assignments, lectures, and handouts will be sent via email.
Weekly reading and writing assignments will guide you. All levels welcome. Workshop is limited to 16 participants.
READING LIST
Samuel Beckett’s WAITING FOR GODOT, Caren Beilin’s REVENGE OF THE SCAPEGOAT, Amos Tutuola’s THE PALM-WINE DRINKARD, Inger Christensen’s ALPHABET, and Lucie Brock-Broido’s THE MASTER LETTERS
REGISTER
Full payment of $585 is required to hold your spot. If you need to work out a payment plan please don’t hesitate to email me.
(private workshops will be scheduled individually between Feb 16- March 16)
JOURNALING (workshop is full / email if you’d like to be on a waitlist)
SIGN UP NOW!
In this five-week workshop we will keep (and share) a daily journal. We will study the composition of the entry and its worth, the strangeness and beauty of raw material, and the relationship between confession and invention. What does it mean to record, plot, or sketch an unfolding day? We will discuss how an entry might grow into an essay, or a poem, or a story. You will leave this workshop bursting with ideas.
Note: entries can be dreams, grocery lists, notes towards a novel, letters to nobody, a list of current events, sobbings, pieces of poems, fictions or chicken scratch. Which is to say, this workshop is a multi-genre workshop. All forms are welcome (poetry, prose, hybrid, memoir, essay, flash, fragment, and everything in between).
This five-week workshop will meet on ZOOM on Thursdays (January 22, 29 / February 5, 12, 19) from 9:15AM-12:45PM EST. All assignments, lectures, and handouts will be sent via email.
Weekly reading and writing assignments will guide you. All levels welcome. Workshop is limited to 10 participants.
READING LIST
Miriam Toews’s A TRUCE THAT IS NOT PEACE, Slovej Balle’s ON THE CALCULATION OF VOLUME, DIARIES (from The Paris Review)
REGISTER
Full payment of $585 is required to hold your spot. If you need to work out a payment plan please don’t hesitate to email me.
Are We in the Real World Here? ( workshop is full / email if you’d like to be on a waitlist)
(A Non-Fiction / Fiction Workshop)
The question I’m often asked about my writing is: “are we in the real world here?” I love this question because it asks me to pull the letters I am writing apart and look for dust and bones, a lost glove, my mother. It asks me to consider how the imagination hatches the real, and how the real can often slip into the imaginary. This workshop will consider the lines drawn between fact and fiction, and what happens when those lines blur.
In this five-week workshop you will be given weekly prompts and reading assignments to guide you through a deep exploration of how the story and the essay, fiction and nonfiction, the imagination and the real, can fuse into a great coherence.
This five-week workshop will meet on ZOOM on MONDAYS (December 1, 8, 15, 22, 29) / 9:15AM-12:45PM EASTERN STANDARD TIME. All assignments, lectures, and handouts will be sent via email.
READING LIST
Patricia Lockwood’s Will There Ever Be Another You, Anelise Chen’s Clam Down, Catherine Lacey’s The Möbius Book
REGISTER (workshop is full!)
Full payment of $585 is required to hold your spot. If you need to work out a payment plan please don’t hesitate to email me.
ONE STORY (workshop is full!)
In this five-week workshop you will each write ONE STORY over and over again as we consider the many, many ways to fiction. Over our time together your story will grow and shrink and grow more. I will provide prompts each week for you to handle and mishandle character, setting, plot. We will practice how to use the smallest image to see the larg(est) picture. We will not give up on the story even if the story gives up on us. The hope here is that you write the story of your dreams.
This five-week workshop will meet on ZOOM on Mondays (October 27, Nov 3, 10, 17, 24) 5:15PM-8:45PM EASTERN STANDARD TIME. All assignments, lectures, and handouts will be sent via email.
READING LIST
(stories by Franz Kafka, Elizabeth McCracken, Donald Barthelme, Shirley Jackson. Yiyun Li, Ben Lerner, Grace Paley, Lydia Davis, Jorge Luis Borges, Stuart Nadler, Rachel Cusk, Kristen Iskandrian, Samantha Hunt, Samanta Schweblin, Carmen Maria Machado, Aimee Bender, Marie Helene-Bertino, Reginald McKnight and others)
REGISTER (workshop is full)
Full payment of $585 is required to hold your spot. If you need to work out a payment plan please don’t hesitate to email me.
ONE ESSAY (workshop is full)
In this five-week workshop you will each write ONE ESSAY as we consider the many, many ways to nonfiction, to wonder, to question, to claim authority, to research, to remember. You will arrive with a single topic, and I will provide prompts each week for you to shatter, repair, undo, plant, unearth, and then replant your topic until something (fingers crossed) unexpected grows.
This five-week workshop will meet on ZOOM on Mondays (June 30, July 7, 14, 21, 28) from 5:15PM-8:45PM EASTERN STANDARD TIME. All assignments, lectures, and handouts will be sent via email.
Weekly reading and writing assignments will guide you. All levels welcome. Workshop is limited to 10 participants.
Reading list
Eula Biss’s NOTES FROM NO MAN’S LAND, Deborah Levy’s THE POSITION OF SPOONS, Amy Leach’s THINGS THAT ARE, Mary Ruefle’s MADNESS, RACK, and HONEY, & Hélène Cixous’s REVOIR
Also highly recommend THE LOST ORIGINS OF THE ESSAY & THE NEXT AMERICAN ESSAY (edited and introduced by John D’Agata)
REGISTER
Full payment of $585 is required to hold your spot. If you need to work out a payment plan please don’t hesitate to email me.
JOURNALING (WORKSHOP IS FULL)
SIGN UP NOW
In this five-week workshop we will keep (and share) a daily journal. We will study the composition of the entry and its worth, the strangeness and beauty of raw material, and the relationship between confession and invention. What does it mean to record, plot, or sketch an unfolding day? We will discuss how an entry might grow into an essay, or a poem, or a story. You will leave this workshop bursting with ideas.
Note: entries can be dreams, grocery lists, notes towards a novel, letters to nobody, a list of current events, sobbings, pieces of poems, fictions or chicken scratch. Which is to say, this workshop is a multi-genre workshop. All forms are welcome (poetry, prose, hybrid, memoir, essay, flash, fragment, and everything in between).
This five-week workshop will meet on ZOOM on MONDAYS (April 21, 28 / May 5, 12, 19) from 5:15PM-8:45PM EST. All assignments, lectures, and handouts will be sent via email.
Weekly reading and writing assignments will guide you. All levels welcome. Workshop is limited to 10 participants.
READING LIST
Maggie Nelson’s Pathemata, Or, The Story of My Mouth / Franz Kafka’s HE (Shorter Writings of Franz Kafka) / Sheila Heti’s Alphabetical Diaries / and Nina MacLaughlin’s MOON IN FULL
Full payment of $585 is required to hold your spot. If you need to work out a payment plan please don’t hesitate to email me.
REGISTER (workshop is full)
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Take it so you don't die wondering why you never got so close to your own magic.
- Hope Hilton is an an artist, writer, educator, & author of Walks
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