People Writing Through Winter
Lifting a brush, a burin, a pen, or a stylus is like releasing a bite or lifting a claw.
~Gary Snyder
NEW SESSION !
Thursday eves 6-8 (MST)
November 7, 14, 21.
December 5,12,19
a writing class online.
Focus and nurture your creative work this Winter.
Each class is limited to six people.
Contact Katharine for venmo and paypal or mail a check the old school way, and I’ll send you something to read, a writing prompt, and a link.
katharinekaufman@gmail.com
$37.50 for a single class (single class November and December only).
$111 for a 3 week session.
$148 for a four week session.
Find your writing voice. Pick up your pen, your tea and find a spot you like. Write through what is going on this moment. The pen will do the work. Listen.
Find a different kind of knowing each other, through your writing life.
Each week you’ll read, write and share work from the previous week’s prompt.
And you’ll:
- be introduced to new authors, forms, poems, stories, essays and prose pieces,
- focus on women and people of color authors, as well as LGBTQ+
- receive writing prompts geared to you.
- share what you’ve written.
- listen to original work from the group members.
- develop a writing practice.
- join friends in making stuff up.
- bear witness.
Begin with a word, then another, another. Go with the stream of it and then you’ve made something that is yours and no one else. Pause. Write it again. Listen and read. And your writing grows, this way, influenced by what you hear from the class and your own sensibilities. Go to a place you saw someone suffer and put your poem there (a secret healing).
We can accept the world’s invitation to write as well as give it back (an exchange).
This morning’s writing practice:
thin film of dust on dog’s water this morning
is so quiet I can hear a mouse in the walls
now I hear a siren
so quiet I can hear a slight film of water
over closed eyes
and I say easy, go easy
make it a day
where your backstones soften.
(The poem is a thing– with a small weight to it
like picking up something, a stone, a jewel
and when you put it down the day is different).
this group emphasizes the practice of writing and includes a gentle touch of feedback, no critique.
No single classes.(except for Nov & Dec 2024)
Refund Policy:
If you attend and participate in each class in the four week session including writing, discussion and showing your work, and are not satisfied with the class, you will be given a refund.
Payment is for the session you sign up for. Sliding your payment into the next session is not offered.
Send directly through your paypal account or write Katharine to reserve your spot.
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Private 1-hour writing sessions available, Send directly through your paypal account or write Katharine to schedule a time.
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Katharine chooses poems that provoke and galvanize to discuss and inspire; she’s a thoughtful, brilliant curator. The class also provides a community of like- minded language lovers, who in a zoom salon atmosphere, can together discuss what feels most alive in the poems we analyze. The feedback, suggestions, support and encouragement that Katharine gives to each submitted poem feels as if one’s most private self was being lovingly witnessed.
Typically, I write about the same topics for cathartic release, but prompted writing supplemented by incredibly interesting readings helps me grow outside of self-imposed restrictions. Being able to grow in such a safe space, which is the atmosphere both Katharine and my newly found friends always create, allows for a lot more transference and trust in the skill sets I develop as both a writer and a reader. As a teacher of academic writing, also, I find that participating in places where writing can breathe and bend and expand is crucial to my ability to help my students break genre barriers, allowing for more permeable and pliable forms of communication across disciplines and subjectivities.
On the evening of the first session, I was not sure what to expect because it was my first time putting my writing out into the world before strangers. Yes, Katharine was a stranger too. I was a hum of anxious vulnerability. But the group of women quickly made me feel comfortable and safe. Since then, we have laughed and cried, filled in blanks, read when others couldn’t, shared in joy, reflected together… all via Zoom! Every class I leave in complete awe. Katharine’s thoughtful planning never ceases to amaze me. The equal parts wisdom, heart, and hilarity among the one-time-strangers within this class has been so moving. Through sharing our creative endeavors, I have found more than a writing group. These women have become treasured friends who I look forward to spending time with each week.