Reconnect & Reimagine: IWWG 2022

Like Hermes, the archetypal mediator between the realms of heaven, earth and the underworld, the memoirist mediates between time past and time present. Memoirs bring forward an event of the past and re-enact it by giving it form in writing. Myth fuels the psychic desire of humans to understand their origins and therefore their destinies, and contemporary memoirs address some of the same archetypal themes found in ancient myths such as origins, the fall, the parent-child relationship, quest, descent, and return.

The story we tell ourselves and others gives us a sense of identity. It helps us organize our life in a way that gives it meaning and direction. Although not every memoir reflects a mythic theme, most memoir writers unconsciously reveal mythic themes in their desire to find meaning in their lives. Who am I? What is my tribe, my family? Where am I going? How do I make my way? What is my purpose? Both myth and memoir arise from a human need for connection and that is why memoirs are so popular in culture today. 

In 1949, Joseph Campbell presented a model of the mythological journey of the hero, which has since been used as a template for the psycho-spiritual development of the individual and a pattern for many screenplays. The mythic pattern we will explore, however, is the journey of the heroine, the quest to heal the deep wound of our feminine nature on a personal, cultural and spiritual level. We will use the stages of The Heroine’s Journey as a framework for our writing to look at the most significant moments in our lives. The journey often entails an initial separation from the mother and feminine values, seeking recognition and success from the metaphorical father, experiencing spiritual aridity and death, and turning inward to reclaim the power and spirit of the sacred feminine. Through memoir exercises and examining excerpts from published memoirs, we will write our own journey.

Listening to the Whisper: Writing Strategies to Capture Creativity

This workshop is geared towards listening to your own wisdom. We will discussing creativity and look at specific lessons on adding more details to texts, changing perspectives and using mentor texts to guide your writing. 

In this writing space, we’ll call on our sense of awe and wonder with the seeming mundane to access this complex and rich genre. We’ll explore the wide range of styles within the genre, as we seek to build a strong foundation for story and create compelling characters to bring the magic to life.

What does visibility mean to you – and what has it meant for artists like Audre Lorde, Prince, Phillis Wheatley, and others? Through guided exercises, free writes, meditations, and deep dives into poetic works, we will create and share work that deals with visible invisibility.

Like Hermes, the archetypal mediator between the realms of heaven, earth and the underworld, the memoirist mediates between time past and time present. Memoirs bring forward an event of the past and re-enact it by giving it form in writing. Myth fuels the psychic desire of humans to understand their origins and therefore their destinies, and contemporary memoirs address some of the same archetypal themes found in ancient myths such as origins, the fall, the parent-child relationship, quest, descent, and return.

The story we tell ourselves and others gives us a sense of identity. It helps us organize our life in a way that gives it meaning and direction. Although not every memoir reflects a mythic theme, most memoir writers unconsciously reveal mythic themes in their desire to find meaning in their lives. Who am I? What is my tribe, my family? Where am I going? How do I make my way? What is my purpose? Both myth and memoir arise from a human need for connection and that is why memoirs are so popular in culture today. 

In 1949, Joseph Campbell presented a model of the mythological journey of the hero, which has since been used as a template for the psycho-spiritual development of the individual and a pattern for many screenplays. The mythic pattern we will explore, however, is the journey of the heroine, the quest to heal the deep wound of our feminine nature on a personal, cultural and spiritual level. We will use the stages of The Heroine’s Journey as a framework for our writing to look at the most significant moments in our lives. The journey often entails an initial separation from the mother and feminine values, seeking recognition and success from the metaphorical father, experiencing spiritual aridity and death, and turning inward to reclaim the power and spirit of the sacred feminine. Through memoir exercises and examining excerpts from published memoirs, we will write our own journey.

In this writing space, we’ll call on our sense of awe and wonder with the seeming mundane to access this complex and rich genre. We’ll explore the wide range of styles within the genre, as we seek to build a strong foundation for story and create compelling characters to bring the magic to life.

What does visibility mean to you – and what has it meant for artists like Audre Lorde, Prince, Phillis Wheatley, and others? Through guided exercises, free writes, meditations, and deep dives into poetic works, we will create and share work that deals with visible invisibility.

Like Hermes, the archetypal mediator between the realms of heaven, earth and the underworld, the memoirist mediates between time past and time present. Memoirs bring forward an event of the past and re-enact it by giving it form in writing. Myth fuels the psychic desire of humans to understand their origins and therefore their destinies, and contemporary memoirs address some of the same archetypal themes found in ancient myths such as origins, the fall, the parent-child relationship, quest, descent, and return.

The story we tell ourselves and others gives us a sense of identity. It helps us organize our life in a way that gives it meaning and direction. Although not every memoir reflects a mythic theme, most memoir writers unconsciously reveal mythic themes in their desire to find meaning in their lives. Who am I? What is my tribe, my family? Where am I going? How do I make my way? What is my purpose? Both myth and memoir arise from a human need for connection and that is why memoirs are so popular in culture today. 

In 1949, Joseph Campbell presented a model of the mythological journey of the hero, which has since been used as a template for the psycho-spiritual development of the individual and a pattern for many screenplays. The mythic pattern we will explore, however, is the journey of the heroine, the quest to heal the deep wound of our feminine nature on a personal, cultural and spiritual level. We will use the stages of The Heroine’s Journey as a framework for our writing to look at the most significant moments in our lives. The journey often entails an initial separation from the mother and feminine values, seeking recognition and success from the metaphorical father, experiencing spiritual aridity and death, and turning inward to reclaim the power and spirit of the sacred feminine. Through memoir exercises and examining excerpts from published memoirs, we will write our own journey.

Just as a song is a note-by-note arrangement, just as a painting is a brushstroke-by-brushstroke composition, just as a dance is a move-by-move presentation, a poem is a word-by-word (-by-comma-by-line break) composition. In other words (ha!), a poem is a body of words (not a body of thoughts and feelings); a poem is a body of language’s gestures, just as any artwork is a body of its medium’s gestures. How, in our drafting and revising process, do we assess, smartfully and heartfully, the poetic value of our linguistic gestures? We will explore sample poems gesture-by-gesture—a depth of interrogation that will strengthen how we read and how we write any literary work. This is not a critique group, nor an editing workshop, but a discernment practice.

Like Hermes, the archetypal mediator between the realms of heaven, earth and the underworld, the memoirist mediates between time past and time present. Memoirs bring forward an event of the past and re-enact it by giving it form in writing. Myth fuels the psychic desire of humans to understand their origins and therefore their destinies, and contemporary memoirs address some of the same archetypal themes found in ancient myths such as origins, the fall, the parent-child relationship, quest, descent, and return.

The story we tell ourselves and others gives us a sense of identity. It helps us organize our life in a way that gives it meaning and direction. Although not every memoir reflects a mythic theme, most memoir writers unconsciously reveal mythic themes in their desire to find meaning in their lives. Who am I? What is my tribe, my family? Where am I going? How do I make my way? What is my purpose? Both myth and memoir arise from a human need for connection and that is why memoirs are so popular in culture today. 

In 1949, Joseph Campbell presented a model of the mythological journey of the hero, which has since been used as a template for the psycho-spiritual development of the individual and a pattern for many screenplays. The mythic pattern we will explore, however, is the journey of the heroine, the quest to heal the deep wound of our feminine nature on a personal, cultural and spiritual level. We will use the stages of The Heroine’s Journey as a framework for our writing to look at the most significant moments in our lives. The journey often entails an initial separation from the mother and feminine values, seeking recognition and success from the metaphorical father, experiencing spiritual aridity and death, and turning inward to reclaim the power and spirit of the sacred feminine. Through memoir exercises and examining excerpts from published memoirs, we will write our own journey.

Just as a song is a note-by-note arrangement, just as a painting is a brushstroke-by-brushstroke composition, just as a dance is a move-by-move presentation, a poem is a word-by-word (-by-comma-by-line break) composition. In other words (ha!), a poem is a body of words (not a body of thoughts and feelings); a poem is a body of language’s gestures, just as any artwork is a body of its medium’s gestures. How, in our drafting and revising process, do we assess, smartfully and heartfully, the poetic value of our linguistic gestures? We will explore sample poems gesture-by-gesture—a depth of interrogation that will strengthen how we read and how we write any literary work. This is not a critique group, nor an editing workshop, but a discernment practice.

Like Hermes, the archetypal mediator between the realms of heaven, earth and the underworld, the memoirist mediates between time past and time present. Memoirs bring forward an event of the past and re-enact it by giving it form in writing. Myth fuels the psychic desire of humans to understand their origins and therefore their destinies, and contemporary memoirs address some of the same archetypal themes found in ancient myths such as origins, the fall, the parent-child relationship, quest, descent, and return.

The story we tell ourselves and others gives us a sense of identity. It helps us organize our life in a way that gives it meaning and direction. Although not every memoir reflects a mythic theme, most memoir writers unconsciously reveal mythic themes in their desire to find meaning in their lives. Who am I? What is my tribe, my family? Where am I going? How do I make my way? What is my purpose? Both myth and memoir arise from a human need for connection and that is why memoirs are so popular in culture today. 

In 1949, Joseph Campbell presented a model of the mythological journey of the hero, which has since been used as a template for the psycho-spiritual development of the individual and a pattern for many screenplays. The mythic pattern we will explore, however, is the journey of the heroine, the quest to heal the deep wound of our feminine nature on a personal, cultural and spiritual level. We will use the stages of The Heroine’s Journey as a framework for our writing to look at the most significant moments in our lives. The journey often entails an initial separation from the mother and feminine values, seeking recognition and success from the metaphorical father, experiencing spiritual aridity and death, and turning inward to reclaim the power and spirit of the sacred feminine. Through memoir exercises and examining excerpts from published memoirs, we will write our own journey.