Workshops & Coaching
"I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood." -Audre Lorde
I taught my first writing class in 2004 at a residential shelter for girls and young women in Detroit, MI while completeing my undergraduate studies. Since then, I have taught in a wide range of classrooms including other shelters and drop-in centers for youth, middle schools, public libraries, protest encampments, my own apartments, colleges, and a living room salon series, to name a few. My teaching philosophy is student-centered, inquiry-based, encourages failure, and is interested in generation and innovation, above all else. In addition to creative writing, I've also taught remedial reading and writing at the college level and am passionate about adult literacy. I enjoy teaching everyone from beginning and accomplished writers and artists, to people who have complicated relationships to writing and reading, and folks who just want to try something new. One of my greatest joys (and challenges!) in life is supporting people with all skill levels and styles of learning, while they work to find and develop their voices.
"I appreciated the Body Poetic (somatics and poetics) workshop I participated in with Liz and sadly, have found little like it since! Initially, I took Liz's workshop to try something new. While that part was exciting, I wasn't anticipating that I would utilize these texts and exercises in my art practice for the last few years since taking the course. The workshop was the perfect blend of approachable, supportive and innovative. Liz is a gifted writer, no doubt, but of equal importance, she is an educator and faciliator who understands how to help you become the writer you want to be. Additionally, I found that she was able to hold/contain the many personalities and myriad of life experiences held in the workshop. Approaching such difficult subject matter, I felt that Liz held it together with a grace and realness that made it a compelling educational experience for us all."
- Irina C., visual artist/community programs manager
Workshop participants in their own words....
"Liz's workshop was a wonderful mix of intellectual inspiration and emotional grounding. It got me thinking about writing in new ways while feeling comfortable and supported enough to experiment. Liz was wonderful at engaging every writer in the room where they were at, listening and intuiting to respect each writer's voice and creative intentions while creating a sense of supportive community among the whole group. Writers of all levels of experience would benefit from Liz's thoughtful, attentive approach."
- Jess H., writer/editor
Writing Coach
& Editing Services
"What would you write if you weren't afraid?" -Mary Karr
As a writing coach I can offer you:
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Guidance on the development of personal writing goals and schedules
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Close readings and feedback on past, present, and future work.
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Writing prompts and suggested readings based on your personal writing interests and goals
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Accountability deadlines and check-ins that work with your lifestyle
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Choice between in-person, phone, or Skype sessions, or a combination that works for you
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Whether you want to complete and polish a project, want guidance working on in-progress projects at any stage, need help reinvigorating your writing practive, or are starting from scratch, I can guide you towards reaching your creative goals.
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Editing services also available for projects at any stage.
*Sliding Scale available for both Coaching and Editing Services
More Workshop Offerings Coming Soon!
Begin, Begin Again
Online Writing Workshop
November 15 - December 13, 2015, Mondays 7:30 - 9:30pm EST
Always wanted to explore creative writing, but never got around to it or didn't know where to start? Used to write years ago, but life got in the way? Love to write, but feeling blocked lately? This class is for anyone who wants to begin a new writing practice or hone their existing skills in the company of a passionate instructor and a welcoming community of writers.
Whether we are beginning or advanced writers, part of the work of writing is finding the motivation and support to begin - to begin again - every time we sit down to write. In this class you'll receive writing prompts you can work on at your own pace and weekly online classes where we will discuss the work of classic and contemporary writers from primarily outside the white, Euro-centric literary canon, and share our own writing with each other. We will explore and experiment with fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. Writers interested in any and all genres are welcome!
*5 wk course includes peer and instructor feedback, use of online forum for connecting with classmates, plus a 30 minute one-on-one with Liz at the end of the course to discuss the work you produced and next steps for your writing. Max 10 students.
Fee: $250
*In an effort to make workshops accessible to people
of all income levels, sliding scale payments are available.
memoir/anti-memoir
Online Writing Workshop, Thursdays 6:30-9:30pm EST
January 14 - February 11, 2016
Memoir (from French: mémoire: memoria, meaning memory or reminiscence)
In this class we will explore the ever-widening parameters of memoir while writing from the content of our own lives. Historically, memoir was reserved for former kings and heads of state (read: nearly dead white men). More recently, it has become something of the black sheep of literary genres, regularly accused of a very gendered (read: feminine, read: bad) kind of confessionalism, solipsism, and lack of craft or artistry. Yet, in truth, we are living in a time that is wildly exciting when it comes to memoir writing. Writers, and in particular marginalized writers, are reinventing what it means to write about the self, to explore the constructedness of subjectivity, and to lay bear bodies and lives previously erased from the dominant literary landscape. Both in form and content, innovation abounds--the "I " multiplies and disintigrates. The memory is elastic, permeable, and unreliable.
"This is not your mother's memoir." -Lidia Yuknavitch
Together we will examine contemporary writers who are exploding the notion of what we consider memoir, while we write our own prose, poetry, and/or hybrid monsters from the material of our lives. We will write our stories--strange, bloody, ecstatic, criminal, erotic, hysterical, lecherous, and disjointed as they come. All levels of writers are welcome.
*5 wk course includes peer and instructor feedback, use of online forum for connection with classmates, plus a 30 minute one-on-one with Liz at the end of the course to discuss the work you produced and next steps for your writing. Max 10 students.
Fee: $275
*In an effort to make workshops accessible to people
of all income levels, sliding scale payments are available.
Unthinkable Creatures, Unruly Bodies
Online Writing Workshop, Sundays 6:30-9:30pm EST
January 10 - February 7, 2016
As queer, trans, and gender nonconforming people, as people of color, disabled, poor and working class people, as women, artists, activists and revolutionaries, we live inside and adjacent to bodies that explode binaries, defy standards of form and desirability, bodies that leak, throb, and refuse to behave, bodies that break down, reimagine and redeisgn themselves, resist definition and approval. But how do we write these bodies? How do we write these bodies into being? What is the language that the body delivers? How is the textual body an extension of one's own corporeality? How do these/our bodies interface with other larger, more conceptual kinds of bodies? What does the body remember? How do we arrive?
Maggie Nelson writes that Wayne Koestenbaum says or asks, What else is there to write but the body?
I and she paraphrase, or I misrepresent because I have now lost the text in which this language lives.
How is this a body?
In this class we will center the work of queer, trans, and gender nonconforming writers; writers of color; and crip/disabled writers. Through weekly writing exercises, suggested readings, and an embodied workshop container, we will write unruly bodies and unthinkable creatures into and beyond being.
This class is unconcerned with the boundaries of genre. Writers of all levels are welcome. Allies are welcome, but please do your homework on the folks/communities that will be centered in this class. Write me and ask if you're unsure what this might mean for you:)
5 wk course includes peer and instructor feedback, use of online forum for connection with classmates, plus a 30 minute one-on-one with Liz at the end of the course to discuss the work you produced and next steps for your writing. Max 10 students.
Fee: $275
*In an effort to make workshops accessible to people
of all income levels, sliding scale payments are available.
