TLA Network upcoming events

Breathing into Bloom: A Spring Writing Practice for Renewal // with Tasjha Dixon (29 April 2026)

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 05:00:00 GMT

Come breathe, write, and begin again.

From a space of embodied awareness, you will write intuitively, reflect deeply, and reconnect to your own seasonal becoming.

Spring is a season of emergence, of breath, of beginning again. This 4-week course is an invitation to honor the breath as a sacred teacher—always recycling, always renewing—mirroring the energy of the Earth’s reawakening. As sap rises in trees and blossoms push toward sunlight, our breath invites us to rise and unfurl into new versions of ourselves. Through breath we arrive, release, remember, and begin again.

Each session is a living ritual—a return to the sacred rhythm of inhale and exhale as a creative wellspring. We will center pranayama (yogic breathwork) not just as a grounding practice, but as a spiritual and creative doorway. From this space of embodied awareness, you will write intuitively, reflect deeply, and reconnect to your own seasonal becoming.

This course is not about performance or product. It is a space of pause, presence, and personal ritual. With each breath and page, we soften toward our becoming. There are no outside readings or academic expectations—only the invitation to listen inward and write from the breath itself.

Whether you are beginning again, shedding something old, or blooming into a new version of yourself, you are welcome here.

Week by Week

Week 1 – The Inhale: Arriving to the Page - We begin by slowing down and tuning in. Breath as teacher, breath as anchor. This week introduces body-based journaling, awareness practices, and freewriting from the breath. We explore how the inhale brings us into presence and reminds us that we are here.Pranayama: Dirga Swasam (Three-Part Breath) to expand awareness and grounding.Prompt: “When I listen to my breath, what truth do I hear?”

Week 2 – The Pause: Writing from the Center - This week explores the stillness between inhale and exhale as fertile ground for creativity. The sacred pause holds space for what is yet unspoken. We'll journal from this still point and hold presence with what has not yet become.Pranayama: Kumbhaka (Breath Retention) to deepen introspection and anchor presence.Prompt: “What waits for me in the silence between?”

Week 3 – The Exhale: Releasing on the Page - We write to let go—of shame, perfection, or stories that no longer serve. Through breath-led movement, cleansing rituals, and honest reflection, you’ll write into what’s ready to leave. This is our composting moment.Pranayama: Nadi Shodhana (Alternate Nostril Breathing) to balance and purify emotional flow.Prompt: “What am I ready to exhale, release, or surrender?”

Week 4 – Integration: Breath as a Blessing - We close in gratitude and clarity. Breathing into a vow, a vision, or a love letter to self. You’ll reflect on the journey of breath and becoming, writing one final offering in honor of your own sacred rhythm.Pranayama: Sama Vritti (Equal Ratio Breathing) to invite harmony and integration.Prompt: “What does my breath want me to remember about becoming?”

Who Should Take This Class

This course is for anyone craving stillness, truth, and renewal. Writers, healers, parents, artists, survivors, caregivers, and beginners are welcome. If you can breathe, you can write. This class is a space to remember that your breath is sacred—and your story is too.

If cost is a barrier, we offer scholarships based on income as well as some partial scholarships for people living with serious illness and/or disability or people of color. Please fill out this scholarship application form so that we can find the best way to make the class accessible to you.

Please note: Registration closes five (5) days before the class start date.

What students are saying about learning with Tasjha

“This was exactly what I didn’t know I needed.”

“Tasjha’s presence is warm, powerful, and deeply affirming.”

“This is what writing for the soul looks like.”

Where and When Does this Online Course Meet?

This is a hybrid online class, hosted on the online teaching platform Wet Ink with additional sessions hosted on Zoom.

The day before class begins, you will receive an email invitation from Wet Ink. There are no browser requirements, and Wet Ink is mobile-friendly. The Wet Ink platform allows students to log in on their own time to post comments and critiques directly to authors’ works. You can also view deadlines, track revisions, and watch video or listen to audio. At the end of the class, each student will receive an email that contains an archive of all their content and interactions.

The facilitator will be in contact with Zoom session information. Zoom sessions will be recorded and made available only to the class.

About the Teacher

Tasjha Dixon (she/her) is a poet, trauma-informed writing facilitator, and Buddhist social worker who guides sacred spaces of voice, breath, and becoming. Founder of Empowering KC, Tasjha has 20+ years of experience in healing-centered care and completed her MFA at Naropa University in August 2025.

Website: empoweringkcwithtasjha.com

Instagram: @tasjhadixon | Facebook: facebook.com/tasjhadixon

Holding the Flame: A Night of Writing & Renewal // with Sharon Pajka (30 April 2026)

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 23:00:00 GMT

On the night of April 30th, communities gather to celebrate Walpurgisnacht, a liminal evening...

...when bonfires blaze, voices rise in chant, and winter’s lingering spirits are driven away to make room for spring’s creative bloom.

Rooted in centuries of folklore, this enchanted night invites us to treat language itself as spellcraft—words that warm, illuminate, protect, and transform.

In this 2-hour session, we’ll explore witchcraft as both metaphor and method in our writing practice. Through the elemental themes of fire, imagination, liberation, and seasonal transition, we’ll tap into the creative energy that emerges when the world shifts from cold dormancy to vibrant possibility.

Participants will be guided through writing prompts, short readings, and embodied rituals designed to melt what has felt frozen on the page or within ourselves.

We’ll craft Spring Eve-inspired spells, incantations, and flame-bright pieces that celebrate renewal and invite personal and artistic transformation. No experience with ritual or witchcraft is necessary; writers of all backgrounds are welcome. Bring your curiosity, your creative spirit, and a willingness to let language burn brightly as we cross this powerful seasonal threshold.

What You Will Experience

During this two-hour gathering, we’ll begin with a brief opening ritual that includes grounding, a gentle introduction to the history and symbolism of Walpurgisnacht, and a simple candle-lighting to mark our entry into sacred creative space. From there, we’ll move into our first writing prompt, “What Winter Left Behind,” an opportunity to explore what still clings from the colder months and what we’re ready to release.

A short reading on fire, magic, or renewal will guide our discussion as we shift into the craft portion of the workshop, where we’ll experiment with rhythm, repetition, and imagery to create writing that feels enchanted, incantatory, and transformative.

Our main practice, the “Fire Words” Ritual, invites participants to craft a personal or creative text that melts stagnation, frees the voice, or calls in spring’s brighter energies. Afterward, we’ll gather in small groups for optional sharing and witnessing before returning to the full circle for a brief, playful Walpurgisnacht chant created collaboratively in the moment. We’ll close with a final fire blessing and reflection, releasing any lingering “winter spirits” and affirming the intentions participants wish to carry forward into the new season.

Who Is This Workshop For?

Writers, poets, artists, and anyone drawn to seasonal ritual, fire symbolism, creative renewal, or the playful enchantment of Walpurgisnacht. All backgrounds and levels of experience are welcome.

The TLA Network offers scholarships based on income as well as some partial scholarships for people living with serious illness and/or disability or people of color. Please fill out this scholarship application form so that we can find the best way to make the class accessible to you.

What people are saying about learning with Sharon:

I already miss this class for the depth, creativity and intimacy of the subject matter, our facilitator and classmates, and the safety provided. I am very grateful to TLA; Sharon P. our facilitator; and all my classmates for a rewarding, informative and challenging experience.

LOVED this class, and the instructor. Would love to learn more in follow up class.

How fascinating, intriguing and rewarding the subject matter was; and how accepted and truly connected I felt — with the facilitator and classmates; especially considering my current level of writing and participation (first class).

Where and When Does this Workshop Meet?

This workshop will be presented Thursday, April 30, 2026 from 7-9PM ET/ 6-8 PM CT/ 5-7 PM MT/ 4-6 PM PT / 11 PM -1 AM UTC as a one-time, two-hour Zoom session. The event will be recorded and shared with with anyone registered for Holding the Flame: A Night of Writing & Renewal.

About the Facilitator

Sharon Pajka is a Professor of English. She holds a Ph.D. in English Education and a graduate certificate in Public History. Her writing combines a love of words and the stories of those who came before us. She is the author of Women Writers Buried in Virginia (2021) The Souls Close to Edgar Allan Poe: Graves of His Family, Friends and Foes (2023), winner of the 2024 Saturday Visiter Awards by Poe Baltimore, and Haunted Virginia Cemeteries (2025).

On the weekends, you can find her in the cemetery volunteering, giving history tours, researching and writing about cemeteries. Find more information on her website: https://www.sharonpajka.com/

Writing the Here and Now: Mindful Writing // with Marianela Medrano (03 May 2026)

Sun, 03 May 2026 17:00:00 GMT

NOTE! NEW DATE: MAY 3

“If you only take one thing from this class, let it be how poetry is the metabolic process of emotions.”

The whole world can rest in the comfort of words and the vastness of poetry. Poetry is a portal to higher consciousness; it opens up doors both inside and outside our connection with others.

In this one-day writing workshop, the practices will include mindfulness meditation, writing, and other contemplative activities.

Each practice is intended to solidify mindfulness in the general sense and specifically for writing.

Mindful writing is this process of using writing to externalize one’s consciousness and tie together the inner and outer worlds.

Mindfulness allows people to get in touch with the body and the mind, facilitating creative writing.

What You Will Experience

Each practice is intended to tap into body, mind, and spirit to awaken parts of the self to render it whole. We’ll explore four pathways illustrated by poems that can help generate integration. The practice of meditation and the seeking of wisdom lead to what is called a wholesome human being.

We’ll get to know each other and discuss in depth the central tenets of the pathways to wholeness in Mindful Writing. The kind of writing we’ll do together has the potential to open new pathways in the brain to help us venture into the vastness of being focused on the present moment and free from fragmentation.

In summary, the day will include:

Reading poems and responding to them
Meditation of many sorts
Group interactions
Mindful movement

Who Should Take This Workshop?

Anyone interested in the power of words!

What people are saying about learning with Marianela:

I am beyond thankful for Dr. Marianela Medrano’s generosity. She was my mentor and supervisor during my CAPF (Certified Applied Poetry Therapy Facilitator) training with the International Federation for Biblio/Poetry Therapy. I cannot think of anyone better than her for this process. Her knowledge and experience greatly impacted my work as a bilingual Poetry Therapy facilitator. We have co-facilitated several bilingual poetry therapy workshops in North Carolina, and all our participants keep asking me to bring her back. She is my Maestra forever.— Irania Patterson, CAPF

Where and When Does the Workshop Meet?

This is an online workshop. It will meet live via Zoom on Sunday, MAY 3, 2026 for four hours from 1 PM - 5 PM ET | 12 PM - 4 PM CT | 11 AM - 3 PM MT | 10 AM - 2 PM PT | 6 PM - 10 PM UTC. The workshop will be recorded and the recording shared only with registrants.

About the Facilitator

Marianela Medrano was born in the Dominican Republic and has lived in Connecticut, USA, since 1990. She is a poet and writer of nonfiction and fiction. She holds a PhD in psychology. Her work appears in anthologies and magazines in Latin America, Europe, and the United States. Her poetry has been translated into Italian and French. She cares deeply for the Earth and dreams of a healthy planet. Her research focuses on Afro-Taino peoples, the impact of historical trauma, and the spiritual roots of these traditions. Dr. Medrano’s work is also centered around building and supporting Ecodharma initiatives. She is a certified Mindfulness meditation teacher and leads efforts to build libraries and writing workshops for children in her native country. In 2023, Dr. Medrano received a grant from the Bess Family Foundation, which she is using to investigate mindfulness as a vehicle to advance ecological initiatives focused on interspecies care in the Dominican Republic. Dr. Medrano has lectured in many countries, including Spain, India, Colombia, El Salvador, Panama, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico. She has worked with various populations and on various mental health issues, including drug and alcohol addiction, eating disorders, depression, anxiety, and family/marriage counseling. Dr. Medrano’s books include Oficio de Vivir (Buho,1986), Los Alegres Ojos de la Tristeza (Buho,1987), Regando Esencias/The Scent of Waiting (Alcance,1998), Curada de Espantos (Torremozas, 2002), Diosas de la Yuca (Torremozas, 2011), Prietica (Alfaguara, 2013), and Rooting (Owlfeather Collective, 2017). Some of her articles can be found in the Journal of Poetry Therapy (Taylor & Francis), the Sandplay Therapy Journal, and Sisters of Caliban, among others.

The Flash Fiction Club Masterclass & Discussion Circle: “Character” As Resistance // Facilitator: Riham Adly (06 May 2026)

Wed, 06 May 2026 19:30:00 GMT

Are you tired of your truth being redacted by noise?

Do you feel like a fragment in someone else’s narrative?

Ready to witness how 400 words can become a radical act of resistance?

The Flash Fiction Club: Craft as Resistance & the Soul of Survival.

In a landscape of global war and systemic betrayal (The Epstein Files), reading is no longer a passive hobby, it is a survival tool. When “grand scale history” is corrupted, micro-fiction allows us to zoom in on the human cost the world tries to erase.

Welcome to a discussion circle designed for flash fiction enthusiasts, truth-seekers, memoirists, and deep-reading writers. Whether you are a dedicated practitioner of the ultra-short form or simply or simply curious about its unique power. We gather to do more than just read; we distill reality until only the soul remains.

Why This Club is Vital Now:

Reclaiming Agency: We discuss the tension between a character’s external commitment (Loyalty to Systems) and their internal needs (belonging, justice, peace). This is our blueprint for survival.
The “Micro” as Resistance: In an era of disinformation brevity is your greatest weapon. We focus on the mastery of exactly 400 words.
The Architecture of Absence: We analyze the power of the “Unsaid”. Absence can be the most powerful presence on the page.

Your Survival Toolkit (Included in Registration):

The Masterpieces: You will receive three 400-word masterpieces from the Best Micro-fiction 2026 anthology to read in advance. (They are so short you can finish reading in one sitting even if it’s a couple of hours before we start).
The Inspiring prompt: After our discussion you will receive a specific writing prompt to help you find your own “independent clause” amid the noise.
High Value Professional Critique: To ensure your voice is heard every participant is entitled to a professional critique from Riham on the draft born from this session.
The Recording: Access to the session recording for your craft arsenal.

The Flash Fiction Club: May 6, 2026 "CHARACTER" edition: What You Will Experience

The Discussion Experience: Using three 400 word masterpieces from the Best Micro-fiction 2026 anthology, we will analyze:

Silence as weight: How characters are revealed when placed in situations that shatter their self-image.
Inner vs. outer worlds: Navigating the friction between who we are who the world demands we be.
Desire and conflict as plot: In micro-fiction a character’s emotional need is the engine pushing through the noise.
Revealing the invisible: We look at complicity and the “unspoken” where ordinary characters are caught in an extraordinary mess.

Who Should Take The Flash Fiction Club: May 6, 2026 "CHARACTER" edition?

Writers and Readers: Those fascinated by the precision of the flash fiction form.
Memoirists and Activists: Those feeling the weight of the “unsaid” in today’s world.
Therapists and students: This circle serves as a powerful channel for self-discovery and community healing.

Registration Details:

When? May 6 2026
Where? This is an online workshop meeting live via Zoom
Duration: 3 hours
From 3:30 PM - 6:30 PM ET | 2:30 PM - 5:30 PM CT | 1:30 PM - 4:30 PM MT | 12:30 PM - 3:30 PM PT | 7:30 PM - 10:30 PM UTC
Tuition: 60$ for members, 75$ non-members, 40$ students
Scholarships: Equity is part of our survival. The TLA Network offers scholarships based on income as well as some partial scholarships for people living with serious illness and/or disability or people of color. Please fill out this scholarship application form so that we can find the best way to make the class accessible to you.

What people are saying about learning with Riham:

I know many of you love to write, and. more importantly, love to LEARN. Riham Adly is an incredible writer and teacher. I am so grateful that I gave myself the gift of this course a couple of months ago, and also recommended it to a friend, who also enjoyed the process immensely. — Lisa Boulware Molina

Riham is a phenomenal writing instructor and coach. If you have any interest in writing flash fiction, Jung, Tarot, Dream analysis, and going deep with your writing, this is a a class not to be missed. — Theresa Coty O'Neil

If you are starting to write, like me, you will really benefit from this course. I took Riham Adly's writing courses and they are so thoroughly researched and she introduced me to such new things. It was extremely productive. I highly recommend. — Annie Banerjee

I highly recommend. If you are looking for something different that dives deeply into emotions and other driving motivations that enhance your characters and narrative, don't miss this opportunity. — Lorette C. Luzajic

Where and When Does the "CHARACTER" edition Workshop Meet?

When: Wednesday, May 6, 2026

Where: This is an online workshop meeting live via Zoom on Wednesday, May 6, 2026 for three hours from 3:30 PM - 6:30 PM ET | 2:30 PM - 5:30 PM CT | 1:30 PM - 4:30 PM MT | 12:30 PM - 3:30 PM PT | 7:30 PM - 10:30 PM UTC.

Recording: The workshop will be recorded and the recording shared only with registrants.

Scholarships: Equity is part of our survival. The TLA Network offers scholarships based on income, disability. Please fill out this scholarship application form so that we can find the best way to make the class accessible to you.

The Flash Fiction Club Masterclass & Discussion Circle is a Series of three independent workshops.

You can register for one or all. NOTE: You will need to register for each workshop separately.

May 6, 2026 will focus on CHARACTER
May 13, 2026 will focus on PERSPECTIVE AND P.O.V.
May 20, 2026 will focus on SETTING

About the Facilitator

Riham Adly is an award-winning flash fiction writer from Giza, Egypt. Riham is a Best of the NET and a Pushcart Prize nominee. Her work is included in the Best Micro-fiction 2020 anthology. Her flash fiction has appeared in over fifty journals such as Litro Magazine, Lost Balloon, The Flash Flood, Bending Genres, The Citron Review, The Sunlight Press, Flash Fiction Magazine, Menacing Hedge, Flash Frontier, Flash Back, Ellipsis Zine, Okay Donkey, and New Flash Fiction Review among others. Riham has worked as an assistant editor in 101 words magazine and as a first reader in Vestal Review magazine. Riham is the founder of the “Let’s Write Short Stories” and “ Let’s Write That Novel” in Egypt. She has taught creative writing all over Cairo for over five years with the goal of mentoring and empowering aspiring writers in her region. Riham’s flash fiction collection Love is Make-Believe was released and published in November 2021 by Clarendon House Publications in the UK.

Keep in touch with Riham on Instagram.

Threshold of Tongues: Writing from our Ancestral Wombs // with Kashiana Singh and Pramila Venkateswaran (09 May 2026)

Sat, 09 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT

What if someone said you could create powerful, living poetry from both the stories and the silences you carry?

In a time when the world feels increasingly fractured—marked by geopolitical uncertainty, climate crisis, and the shifting sands of identity—poetry offers both anchor and compass. With thoughtful prompts and expert guidance, Kashiana Singh and Pramila Venkateswaran will help you craft poems that draw on ancestral and cultural syntax, inviting sensitivity, honesty, and connection.

This workshop creates space for the stories we carry—those buried in the silences of elders who could not or would not bring them across thresholds of migration, displacement, or trauma.

Through embodied language and intentional writing practices, we’ll call forth these silences and transform them into powerful, living poetry.

For both beginners and experienced poets, the workshop provides a sanctuary to explore the intersections of heritage and the present moment.

In a world navigating deep uncertainty, Threshold of Tongues becomes a vessel—not just for reflection but for resilience, offering participants a way to yield to the world’s challenges while discovering inspiration in its complexities.

Week by Week

Description of the Panel:

Poetry serves as a portal for those whose heritage has been disrupted by violence, colonization, and displacement. This panel is an invitation to air out the stories we often tuck away in attics, closets, journals, or even deep within our bodies. With discernment, we’ll explore what to salvage, what to unlearn, and what we must leave behind. We will call forth these gnarled stories, finding sound for them and housing them in poetic altars—where they can be honored and reshaped.

Through poetry, texts, and references, this panel will create space for participants and panelists alike to unlearn and rediscover what is essential, grounding, and liberating within our histories.

The stories, whether remembered or forgotten, live inside us, waiting for the right moment to emerge. This panel offers an opportunity to open the doors to these words, rhythms, mantras, and wisdom. While some stories may feel gnarled or deformed by time and trauma, they are no less a source of deep-rooted truth—the truth that transcends data, facts, and historical records, and instead speaks to the unchanging core of who we are.

Join us as we reclaim, reconnect, and reimagine what our heritage can offer in these uncertain times.

The four sessions will flow to and through the following :

Holding Space - Reading from reference texts to ground the discussion –

● How I Became a Tree by Sumana Roy

● The Overstory by Richard Powers

● Our Ancestors Did Not Breathe This Air Anthology

● Every Poem Has Ancestors by Joy Harjo

● Ancestors by Ada Limón

● Crazy Brave by Joy Harjo

● “The Aisling” Irish dream poem in which Ireland appears to the poet personified as a woman.

● Poetry of Immigration, Refugees, and Exile

Session 1: Invocation—May 9, 2926

In this session, we will engage in readings from poets whose works are deeply inspired by ancestral words, languages, and the intricate weave of displacement. These texts will serve as a gateway to understanding how distance and history shape our identities, calling forth the echoes of our ancestors in poetic form.

Session 2: Gazing Inwards—May 23, 2026

With a ceremonial fishbowl, we’ll invite participants to ask questions that lead us into a still space of deep reflection. This introspective exploration will focus on the roots and root systems of our ancestors—those foundations that nourish our poetic voices. Poems and texts will guide us into this space, helping us integrate both personal and collective histories into the creative process.

Session 3: Going Outwards—May 30, 2026

Now, we will turn our gaze outward, opening doorways for our participants to bring forth examples of their own communities—folk tales, places, food, and superstitions. Like a collective ritual, the poems generated in Session 2 will be shared and welcomed into the cohort, expanding our understanding of heritage through diverse lenses and experiences.

Session 4: Contemplation—June 6, 2026

In our final session, we will leave with more than just first drafts of poems—we will carry our bodily and soul selves forward, enriched by the reflections and creative energy of the workshop. Our poems will open new doorways, ushering in fresh creativity and deeper connection to the legacies we’ve explored.

Who Should Take This Class

Poets as keepers will engage with poetry of persistence and resistance. Pathways to our Ancestral systems that ignite memory and hidden narratives. We will gently unbind and trace our roots, roots that have either been axed, twisted, corroded, or displaced. Through these roots, we will start to locate pathways that lead us into the tree system of our ancestors.

Join us if you are:

Interested in ancestral and cultural exploration – People seeking to connect with or better understand their lineage and heritage.
Engaged in healing or transformative work – Those exploring identity, intergenerational trauma, or self-discovery.
Writers, poets, and creatives – Especially those who use art as a means of reflection, resistance, or reclamation.
Educators, historians, or students – Individuals open to alternative narratives that challenge conventional histories.
Spiritual seekers – Participants drawn to practices that honor intuition, memory, and inherited wisdom.

If cost is a barrier, we offer scholarships based on income as well as some partial scholarships for people living with serious illness and/or disability or people of color. Please fill out this scholarship application form so that we can find the best way to make the class accessible to you.

What former students have to say:

“Such rich content.” Leslie

“I wrote something and from something I had tucked away behind years of learned patterns.” Jena

“How refreshing to have two diaspora poets lead these workshops and speak in authentic voices.” Pramila

Where and When Does this Online Course Meet?

This online course will be presented through live Zoom meetings on four Saturdays, May 9, 23, 30, and June 6 2026 at 1:30 PM ET / 12:30 PM CT / 11:30 AM MT / 10:30 AM PT / 5:30 PM UTC. (Note: no class on May 16.) Zoom information will be provided two days before the course begins.

About the Facilitators

When Kashiana Singh is not writing, she lives to embody her TEDx talk theme of Work as Worship into her every day. Author of 4 collections with Witching Hour released in December 2024 with Glass Lyre Press.

Pramila Venkateswaran, poet laureate of Suffolk County, Long Island. Author of 8 collections she is a Professor of English at Nassau Community College (SUNY).

Both are actively involved in giving workshops and readings and lead the Matwaala South Asian Diaspora Poetry collective.

The Flash Fiction Club Masterclass & Discussion Circle: “Perspective & P.O.V.” // Facilitator: Riham Adly (13 May 2026)

Wed, 13 May 2026 19:30:00 GMT

Are you tired of your truth being redacted by noise?

Do you feel like a fragment in someone else’s narrative?

Ready to witness how 400 words can become a radical act of resistance?

The Flash Fiction Club: Craft as Resistance & the Soul of Survival.

Why This Club is Vital Now:

Reclaiming Agency: We discuss the tension between a character’s external commitment (Loyalty to Systems) and their internal needs (belonging, justice, peace). This is our blueprint for survival.
The “Micro” as Resistance: In an era of disinformation brevity is your greatest weapon. We focus on the mastery of exactly 400 words.
The Architecture of Absence: We analyze the power of the “Unsaid”. Absence can be the most powerful presence on the page.

Your Survival Toolkit (Included in Registration):

The Masterpieces: You will receive three 400-word masterpieces from the Best Micro-fiction 2026 anthology to read in advance. (They are so short you can finish reading in one sitting even if it’s a couple of hours before we start).
The Inspiring prompt: After our discussion you will receive a specific writing prompt to help you find your own “independent clause” amid the noise.
High Value Professional Critique: To ensure your voice is heard every participant is entitled to a professional critique from Riham on the draft born from this session.
The Recording: Access to the session recording for your craft arsenal.

The Flash Fiction Club: May 13, 2026 "PERSPECTIVE & P.O.V." edition: What You Will Experience

After a brief reminder of what is flash fiction, it's formula, and why is it on the rise:

We will explore what is Perspective and how it reveals character and causes conflicts and desires.
We will discuss the effect of perspective on narrative style ( tone, mood, word choice, and syntax)
We will look at how authors used perspective to create emotional resonance and relevance with readers
Point of view: What is it really? Why do we chose first, second, or third person when writing.
We will analyze why the authors choose the point of view through which they narrated their stories.
Finally we will ask : Is the point of view and perspective (world view) of the character reflecting that of the inner world or subconscious belief of the writer?

An optional writing prompt exercise will be provided at the end of the discussion.

Who Should Take The Flash Fiction Club: May 13, 2026 "PERSPECTIVE & P.O.V." edition?

Writers and Readers: Those fascinated by the precision of the flash fiction form.
Memoirists and Activists: Those feeling the weight of the “unsaid” in today’s world.
Therapists and students: This circle serves as a powerful channel for self-discovery and community healing.

Registration Details:

When? May 13 2026
Where? This is an online workshop meeting live via Zoom
Duration: 3 hours
From 3:30 PM - 6:30 PM ET | 2:30 PM - 5:30 PM CT | 1:30 PM - 4:30 PM MT | 12:30 PM - 3:30 PM PT | 7:30 PM - 10:30 PM UTC
Tuition: 60$ for members, 75$ non-members, 40$ students
Scholarships: Equity is part of our survival. The TLA Network offers scholarships based on income as well as some partial scholarships for people living with serious illness and/or disability or people of color. Please fill out this scholarship application form so that we can find the best way to make the class accessible to you.

What people are saying about learning with Riham:

Where and When Does the "PERSPECTIVE & P.O.V." edition Workshop Meet?

When: Wednesday, May 13, 2026

Where: This is an online workshop meeting live via Zoom on Wednesday, May 13, 2026 for three hours from 3:30 PM - 6:30 PM ET | 2:30 PM - 5:30 PM CT | 1:30 PM - 4:30 PM MT | 12:30 PM - 3:30 PM PT | 7:30 PM - 10:30 PM UTC.

Recording: The workshop will be recorded and the recording shared only with registrants.

The Flash Fiction Club Masterclass & Discussion Circle is a Series of three independent workshops.

You can register for one or all. NOTE: You will need to register for each workshop separately.

May 6, 2026 will focus on CHARACTER
May 13, 2026 will focus on PERSPECTIVE AND P.O.V.
May 20, 2026 will focus on SETTING

About the Facilitator

Keep in touch with Riham on Instagram.

The Flash Fiction Club Masterclass & Discussion Circle: “Setting" // Facilitator: Riham Adly (20 May 2026)

Wed, 20 May 2026 19:30:00 GMT

Are you tired of your truth being redacted by noise?

Do you feel like a fragment in someone else’s narrative?

Ready to witness how 400 words can become a radical act of resistance?

The Flash Fiction Club: Craft as Resistance & the Soul of Survival.

Why This Club is Vital Now:

Reclaiming Agency: We discuss the tension between a character’s external commitment (Loyalty to Systems) and their internal needs (belonging, justice, peace). This is our blueprint for survival.
The “Micro” as Resistance: In an era of disinformation brevity is your greatest weapon. We focus on the mastery of exactly 400 words.
The Architecture of Absence: We analyze the power of the “Unsaid”. Absence can be the most powerful presence on the page.

Your Survival Toolkit (Included in Registration):

The Masterpieces: You will receive three 400-word masterpieces from the Best Micro-fiction 2026 anthology to read in advance. (They are so short you can finish reading in one sitting even if it’s a couple of hours before we start).
The Inspiring prompt: After our discussion you will receive a specific writing prompt to help you find your own “independent clause” amid the noise.
High Value Professional Critique: To ensure your voice is heard every participant is entitled to a professional critique from Riham on the draft born from this session.
The Recording: Access to the session recording for your craft arsenal.

The Flash Fiction Club: May 20, 2026 "SETTING" edition

This is the third installment of the Flash Fiction Club Craft Series. A stories club that is not unlike a book club. We explore the flash fiction form and see how it links directly to subconscious emotions, desires, and beliefs that come forth in writing.

The past two installments focused on character, and perspective and point of view. We looked at stories through the lens of a reader and a writer, discovering and exploring how a story so short and brief can touch on larger than life moments and emotions that hit the reader and leave a lasting imprint.

This last installment of the series will be all about setting in flash fiction. Setting isn't just time and place. It's a dynamic player that often acts a mirror to our characters and their perspectives at times, and at other times--like we'll discover-- it can be another character. You'll see!

What You Will Experience

A brief reminder of what is flash fiction, it's structure, why it works, and when to use it.
Exploring what setting really is. Is it just time and place or is it much more?
We're looking at what setting does in the stories:
1. Setting as a tool that reveals and mirrors the internal world of our characters.
2. Setting as context for bigger and more difficult stories that could not take place anywhere else aside from the setting chosen.
3. Setting as an interactive player in the story.
4. Setting as a character in and onto its self interacting with other characters.

An optional writing prompt exercise will be provided at the end of the discussion.

Who Should Take The Flash Fiction Club: May 20, 2026 "SETTING" edition?

Writers and Readers: Those fascinated by the precision of the flash fiction form.
Memoirists and Activists: Those feeling the weight of the “unsaid” in today’s world.
Therapists and students: This circle serves as a powerful channel for self-discovery and community healing.

Registration Details:

When? May 20 2026
Where? This is an online workshop meeting live via Zoom
Duration: 3 hours
From 3:30 PM - 6:30 PM ET | 2:30 PM - 5:30 PM CT | 1:30 PM - 4:30 PM MT | 12:30 PM - 3:30 PM PT | 7:30 PM - 10:30 PM UTC
Tuition: 60$ for members, 75$ non-members, 40$ students
Scholarships: Equity is part of our survival. The TLA Network offers scholarships based on income as well as some partial scholarships for people living with serious illness and/or disability or people of color. Please fill out this scholarship application form so that we can find the best way to make the class accessible to you.

What people are saying about learning with Riham:

Where and When Does the "SETTING" edition Workshop Meet?

When: Wednesday, May 20, 2026

Where: This is an online workshop meeting live via Zoom on Wednesday, May 20, 2026 for three hours from 3:30 PM - 6:30 PM ET | 2:30 PM - 5:30 PM CT | 1:30 PM - 4:30 PM MT | 12:30 PM - 3:30 PM PT | 7:30 PM - 10:30 PM UTC.

Recording: The workshop will be recorded and the recording shared only with registrants.

The Flash Fiction Club Masterclass & Discussion Circle is a Series of three independent workshops.

You can register for one or all. NOTE: You will need to register for each workshop separately.

May 6, 2026 will focus on CHARACTER
May 13, 2026 will focus on PERSPECTIVE AND P.O.V.
May 20, 2026 will focus on SETTING

About the Facilitator

Keep in touch with Riham on Instagram.

Sustainable Marketing for Writers, Changemakers, and other Magical TLArtists // with Tracie Nichols (03 June 2026)

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 04:00:00 GMT

I’ll bet your work and art is quietly (or not so quietly) life-changing.

I’ll also bet not enough people know about it—or you—right?

Sustainable Marketing for Writers, Changemakers, and other Magical TLArtists will help you (re)define marketing and promotion (as well as terms and concepts like business growth, strategy, and community building) as practices that can be both sustainable and successful while also being aligned with your values, creative and business goals, and available expendable energy. (In other words, how many spoons can you devote to this?)

At the end of our four weeks together, you will:

know what you want your marketing to do for you/your business.
have the foundation of a sustainable marketing strategy grounded in:
- language and methods of communication meaningful to both you and your community.
- knowing the best pace for your available time and energy.
- researching the best places/platforms for the ways you most effectively and genuinely communicate.
be part of a network of other creatives working to build sustainable marketing practices.
be supported by a collection of resources and tools specific to you, your working rhythms, and your goals for your business.

In short—this is a professional development course designed to make strategies for growing your community and business sane and sustainable.

Week By Week

Week 1: Evicting your inner late-night infomercial huckster, (or how your assumptions about marketing are probably not helping you grow your business)

This week we will:

look at the ways ubiquitous, relentless, mainstream marketing consciously and unconsciously shapes what we think marketing is, the language we use to define it and ourselves, and what it must look or sound like.
redefine and/or reclaim “marketing” and “promotion” as actions you take to help your community understand what you do and how it helps them so they can make a conscious, informed choice to work with you, (buy from you, join your thing).

Week 2: You & your community—intersecting ecosystems. Creating a sustainable marketing strategy starts with knowing yourself and your community.

Our activities this week will:

delve into who you are as a TLArtist; your values, your native communication style, the personality and neurologic traits that underpin how you think, create, and take action.
explore who are the people in your community, how can you connect with them, what are the ways they will be looking for help?
clarify/define the kind of conversation and/or reciprocal relationship you and your community want to be having.

Week 3: Keeping it (sane) and sustainable.

This week we will:

do some noticing and writing around personal rhythms—what kinds of activities consume more energy and what replenishes?
spend some time noticing your responses to platforms and places where marketing happens.
explore (potentially) new places, both in-person and online, where you might market with the goal of finding a few that feel sustainable.

Week 4: Market like a tree: be rooted; offer oxygen. Crafting your sustainable marketing strategies.

This week we will plant the seeds of a marketing strategy:

aligned with how you communicate, your goals, your working rhythm and expendable energy.
that feels genuine and inviting to your community.
that is both a short and a long-term strategy—meaning actions you can take right away and actions you can build up to over time.

Who Should Take This Class

You should come if you're a writer, changemaker, or Transformative Language Artist interested in building your community and/or your practice without burning out, becoming overwhelmed, or feeling inauthentic. This applies to both solo practitioners and people who are responsible for community building for an organization.

NOTE: While this approach to marketing is especially helpful for introverts, ambiverts, Highly Sensitive People (HSP) and/or people with ADHD and/or AuDHD, anyone who feels alienated by traditional marketing methods will find inspiration here.

*Who are TLArts practitioners? Teachers, counselors, writers, storytellers, performers, songwriters, poets, community leaders, activists, and other artists using language for individual or community transformation.

We offer scholarships based on income as well as some partial scholarships for people living with serious illness and/or disability or people of color. Please fill out this scholarship application form so that we can find the best way to make the class accessible to you.

What people are saying about working with Tracie:

“ 'Sustainable' -- that was the magic word for me. I’m comfortable marketing my writing coaching services, but the only thing consistent about my marketing has been its inconsistency. Too many things to do! Tracie’s expertise, empathy, and compassion not only refreshed my approach to strategy; it helped me better align ideas and tasks with how I work and think. She was great at identifying specific approaches and messaging that surfaced from assignments and suggesting ways to use those effectively. And yes, sustainably!"—Judy Fort Brenneman, Greenfire Creative, LLC

"Thank you for an incredible class! I look forward to diving deeper into the resources shared and continuing my reflections on how to bring in the people who resonate with my work." —Sustainable Marketing Strategies student; spring 2025

"Tracie gave excellent, insightful comments and feedback, and there was some lovely interactive discussion and sharing between students as well."—Sustainable Marketing Strategies student; spring 2025

"Solid introduction to marketing that aligns with individual values and abilities -- not cookie-cutter, etc. SO important!"—Sustainable Marketing Strategies student; spring 2025

Where and When Does this Online Course Meet?

Course materials will be delivered through a hybrid of weekly Zoom sessions and online, asynchronous discussion and resources in a Google Classroom space.

The majority of the work will happen in the weekly 90 minute Zoom meetings, held on four consecutive Sundays from 3-4:30 PM ET (2-3:30 PM CT | 1-2:30 PM MT | 12-1:30 PM PT | 7-8:30 PM UTC): June 7, 14, 21 and 28, 2026. Sessions will be recorded and made available to students only.

This class utilizes personal reflection, group discussion, and writing exercises to explore and redefine marketing so it becomes a useful and sustainable business strategy for creatives like TLArtists. You should plan to spend about three hours per week on course work between the Zoom meetings and outside writing exercises and research.

About the Facilitator

Tracie Nichols is a poet, facilitator, and the current Managing Director of The Transformative Language Arts Network. Over the past 20 years, inspired by her graduate work in Transformative Learning and Change, she has designed and facilitated hundreds of virtual and in-person learning experiences for people seeking personal transformation and growth. You can connect with her through her website https://tracienichols.com/ and she loves new subscribers to her Substack https://tracienichols.substack.com/.

Deep Immersion: The Five Senses as Scaffolding of the Soul. A 6-Week Masterclass in Characterization, Structure, and Writing that Resonates // with Riham Adly (10 June 2026)

Wed, 10 Jun 2026 05:00:00 GMT

Have you ever written a story that sounded beautiful but felt empty—is your work merely keeping readers company or truly inspiring them to change?

Are you using imagery only to describe a scene, or are you also using it to reveal a character’s hidden truth and the depth of their soul?

What if your descriptions did more than paint a picture—what if the five senses were doorways to deeper immersion rather than just decorative tools?

Deep Immersion is a pioneering six-week masterclass in characterization, structure, and writing that resonates.

Deep Immersion is designed to move writers beyond decorative description and into the realm of psychological architecture.

While traditional workshops treat the five senses as mere "seasoning," this course uses them as the scaffolding for characterization and structure.

Grounded in the principles of cognitive psychology, students will explore how a character’s dominant sensory perception reveals their deepest needs, conflicts, and internal truths.

What Makes This Different?

Most writing workshops treat the five senses as "seasoning"—a dash of salt to satisfy a "show, don't tell" requirement. This course pioneers a different path. We use the senses as scaffolding.

Cognitive psychology tells us that the senses a character favors reveal their deepest personality, needs, and conflicts. By mastering Perception and Perspective, you create a lens through which your character sees the world, shaping their desires, their plot, and your own narrative voice. A character reveal is a soul reveal.

Each week will consist of engaging and eye-opening lessons. I designed this course not just to help you write better but to also help you discover how you perceive the world.

Week by Week

Week One | The Sense of Vision: The Architecture of Judgment

The Psychology: What is vision? Is it to see? To watch? To observe? Vision is the sense of distance. It allows us to take in the world without entering it, to judge without participating—to hold reality at arm's length.

The Character: The "visual" person seeks to understand by observing, not by engaging. They are the witness, the judge, the one who sees but is not seen. Their danger is detachment; their gift is clarity.

The Technique: The Framed Narrative. An observer watching an observer. This structure mirrors the visual person's relationship to reality: always outside, looking in. The frame becomes a meditation on the act of seeing itself.

The Work: You’ll write a story using the framed narrative technique, anchored by a protagonist whose primary mode of engaging the world is through vision.

Week Two | The Sense of Hearing: Audition and the Rhythm of Belonging

The Psychology: Did you hear that? Audition! Is hearing about them or us? Is it about Belonging or an Audition for the movie we want to live in? Auditory processing is tied to rhythm and social connection—the frequency of a lie beneath a promise.

The Character: Attuned to what lies between the words—tone, silence, and music—this character hears the cry beneath the laughter. They are always asking: Do I belong? Am I being heard in return?

The Technique: Stream of Consciousness & The Auditory Echo. By mastering syncopation, varying sentence lengths, and choosing visceral verbs, we show how "seeing with our ears" shifts the prose. We focus on how the world is received, not just how it looks.

The Work: You’ll write a story that places the reader inside an auditory consciousness—a character whose truth is carried in the music of their thoughts.

Week Three | The Sense of Smell: The Signature Scent of Subtext

The Psychology: A scent is never just a smell. What do you mean when you say a situation "stinks"? Or that you "smell something fishy"? Smell is memory's express lane—the past arriving uninvited.

The Character: These are the leaders and the fixers. Like a bear scenting for salmon, they gather invisible data to map their path. They "sense" a crisis before it breaks the surface, though they risk self-loss by submerging too deeply in the worlds they sniff out.

The Technique: The Proust Effect & Olfactory Synecdoche. Using Synecdoche, we find the one specific "part" of a scent—the damp wool, the burnt butter—to trigger the Proust Effect. Not flashback as exposition—but memory as invasion.

The Work: You’ll write a story where a single olfactory synecdoche triggers a "memory invasion," using the scent to crack the present moment open.

Week Four | The Sense of Taste: The Act of Consumption (Your Gusto)

The Psychology: Taste is experience. The bitter and the sweet in the bittersweet. Why sweet? Why bitter? Why both? To taste is to take the world into your body—an act of trust, or violation.

The Character: This character cannot remain neutral—they are always ingesting the world, always being changed by what they consume. Injustice tastes like metal; love tastes like ripe fruit; neglect tastes like stale water.

The Technique: Metaphorical Ingestion. This technique externalizes internal states by describing emotions and experiences as things the character literally eats. The story isn't just told—it is digested.

The Work: You’ll write a story where the protagonist's internal state is revealed through what they taste, consume, or refuse to swallow.

Week Five | The Sense of Touch: Tactile Verification and Body Ownership

The Psychology: Touch is the sense of Proof. Can you hallucinate the resistance of a wall against your palm? Touch tells us "this is mine"—the ability to distinguish self from other. It is the only sense that requires contact.

The Character: For this character, every connection must be pressed against to be proven real. Every truth must be handled to be believed.

The Technique: Tactile Verification. A method developed for this course, rooted in haptic perception, where the character's first response to any significant moment is physical contact. The prose itself lingers on texture, temperature, and resistance before allowing emotion or meaning to arrive.

The Work: You will ground abstract emotions like grief or love in physical resistance, structuring a work where every "touch" is a verification of existence.

Week Six | The Integration: The Multi-Sensory Lens

The Psychology: In this closing week, we take a broader look at the term "Point of View"—what it serves in terms of distance, intimacy, and perception. No one really relies on just one sense; true reality is a mix and match of sensory inputs—the frequency of being.

The Character: We explore characters who perceive reality through two or more primary senses. What is it like when a character uses both vision and touch? How does that combination translate into unique personality, conflict, and a deeper transformation?

The Technique: The Integrated Scaffolding. We move into a mix and match format, exploring how shifting between sensory modes affects your diction, syntax, and narrative mode.

The Work: You will finalize your story's structure by ensuring the sensory scaffolding is invisible but unbreakable, ensuring the character’s final transformation is not just read, but felt as a multi-sensory reality.

Who Should Take This Class?

This class is ideal for flash fiction writers, writers of short and long-form fiction, and memoirists. It is very beneficial for those who want to discover the inner workings of the psyche to better plan characters for longer works. The workshop also works for people who use writing as a coping mechanism to help them vent and explore their feelings—and hopefully, through awareness and acceptance, start the healing process.

What to Expect:

Participants should expect to respond to weekly writing prompts, assignments, and revisions, and to read and comment on the work of other participants. Participating in live discussions and sharing work-in-progress will take place through Zoom sessions.

Zoom Schedule: Live sessions take place on consecutive Saturdays from 2:30–3:30 PM EST starting Saturday, June 13, 2026. We’ll create a safe and supportive environment offering respectful support that inspires the development of every writer’s voice. Feedback and critique will be provided to all submitted assignments. Zoom sessions will be recorded and made available to registrants.

Our Digital Classroom: Wet Ink

The Wet Ink platform allows writers to log in on their own time to post comments and critiques directly to the author’s work. You can also view deadlines, track revisions, and watch video or listen to audio.

Archive: At the end of the class, each student will receive an email that contains the archive of all their content and interaction.

Access: The day before class begins, you’ll receive an invitation to join Wet Ink. There are no browser requirements, and Wet Ink is mobile friendly.

What students are saying about learning with Riham:

I know many of you love to write, and, more importantly, love to LEARN. Riham Adly is an incredible writer and teacher. I am so grateful that I gave myself the gift of this course a couple of months ago, and also recommended it to a friend, who also enjoyed the process immensely. — Lisa Boulware Molina

I highly recommend. If you are looking for something different that dives deeply into emotions and other driving motivations that enhance your characters and narrative, don't miss this opportunity. — Lorette C. Luzajic

Where and When Does this Online Course Meet?

Deep Immersion is an asynchronous, online course hosted through the classroom platform, Wet Ink, supported by weekly live Zoom meetings.

All class materials (lessons, assignments, and extensive resources) will be shared each week in Wet Ink. Students who cannot make a live call have the option of watching or listening to the recording and responding to the prompts/questions in the asynchronous classroom platform, Wet Ink.

Weekly live Zoom sessions will be held on six consecutive Saturdays beginning June 13, 2026 from 2:30-3:30 PM ET. Click here to convert to your time zone. All sessions will be recorded and shared with registered students.

The week before class begins, registrants will receive an invitation to the Wet Ink classroom and the Zoom session information.

The Wet Ink platform allows students to log in on their own time to post comments and critiques directly to authors’ works. You can also view deadlines, track revisions, and watch video or listen to audio. At the end of the class, each student will receive an email that contains an archive of all their content and interactions. Wet Ink is mobile-friendly and there are no browser requirements.

About the Teacher

Riham Adly is an award-winning flash fiction writer from Giza, Egypt. She is the author of the flash fiction collection Love is Make-Believe (Clarendon House Publications, 2021). Her work has appeared in over fifty journals, including Litro Magazine, Lost Balloon, and The Flash Flood.

A Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominee, Riham’s work is featured in the Best Microfiction 2020 anthology. She has worked as an assistant editor for 101 Words and a first reader for Vestal Review. She is the founder of "Let’s Write Short Stories" and "Let’s Write That Novel" in Egypt and has mentored writers across Cairo for over five years. She designed this course to bridge the gap between cognitive perception and storytelling, offering writers a unique "scaffolding" to build stories that resonate at a soul level.

Technical Questions? If you have any questions about technical requirements, please email tlan.coordinator@gmail.com.

TLA Network Virtual Salon (14 June 2026)

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 21:00:00 GMT

TLA Network Virtual Salon

Sunday, June 14, 2026

Join Us!

5:00–6:30 pm ET (UTC-5)

4:00–5:30 pm CT // 3:00–4:30 pm MT // 2:00–3:30 pm PT // 10:00-11:30 pm UTC

Click here to find your timezone.

Our Virtual Salons feature TLAN members who all use the written, spoken, or sung word for personal and community transformation. TLAN members have incredibly generous spirits, and we are excited to provide a venue to feature their artistic work.

The Transformative Language Arts Network (TLAN) virtual salons feature presenters who are active members of TLAN. Each presenter will have 5-7 minutes to present their written, spoken, or sung work.

After the reading, there will be an artist talkback and time for questions and engagement from the audience.

Want to present your spoken, written or sung words at our June 14 Salon?

We'd love to share your creative spirit with the TLAN community! Keep in mind, the call closes on Sunday, May 24, 2026. Each presenter will have 5-7 minutes to present their written, spoken, or sung work followed by a brief period of audience response.

Please note: To present at the Virtual Salon you must be an active member of TLAN. Active members are current on their dues. Check on your membership status or re-join TLAN here: https://www.tlanetwork.org/Membership.

If you are interested in presenting, please fill out call for presenters form asap. If we have a multitude of entries we may have to feature you at a future salon.

Yes! I'd like to apply to present!

Registration is FREE and open to anyone, not just members of TLAN. You must register if you would like to attend.

A Zoom link will be sent to all registrants the day before the event. We look forward to seeing you there!

The salons are free to attend.

And, donations are very welcome and allow us to continue to sponsor free, open access events like this.

You will be able to choose to make a donation when you register.

Stay Tuned to Meet Our June Presenters!

SAY IT SO THEY CAN’T LOOK AWAY! A Language Lab in Rhetoric, Spoken Word Craft, and the Architecture of Public Speech // with Tasjha Wanonah Dixon (17 June 2026)

Wed, 17 Jun 2026 05:00:00 GMT

Public speaking is often framed as a matter of confidence. In reality, effective speech relies on craft.

Behind every memorable address or spoken word performance lies a series of deliberate decisions: how a speaker opens a room, how narrative tension develops, how rhythm anchors meaning, and how audiences are guided through moments of resistance or recognition.

This six-week course investigates the craft of spoken language.

Participants will study rhetorical techniques drawn from spoken word poetry, storytelling, and persuasive speech. Together we will examine how effective speakers structure arguments, build narrative momentum, and shape sonic patterns that make language memorable.

The course draws philosophical inspiration from the ethical reflections found in Alan Wallace’s The Four Immeasurables alongside the contemplative language of Cole Arthur Riley’s Black Liturgies. These texts offer a lens through which to consider how clarity of intention influences the impact of speech.

Within that framework, the primary focus remains craft and composition.

Participants will draft and revise short pieces designed for spoken delivery while examining the structural decisions that make public speech compelling.

Because language evolves in response to the cultural moment, the course structure allows flexibility for discussion of contemporary speeches, emerging cultural conversations, and discoveries made by participants during the process.

The course culminates in a live spoken-word performance during the final session, where participants present a piece developed throughout the course.

Course Format:

These courses follow a studio-based learning model in which most instruction occurs asynchronously.

Participants will engage with weekly craft materials on the Wet Ink platform. These materials may include examples, discussions of technique, and writing explorations that participants complete independently throughout the week.

Each Friday from 1:30pm - 3:30pm CST there will be a live Zoom session.

The weekly live Zoom sessions are not instructional lectures.

Instead, the Friday gatherings function as literary studio salons where participants share work developed during the week, listen closely to each other’s language, and reflect on how craft techniques operate when speech meets an audience.

In practice this means:

Craft instruction happens asynchronously on Wet Ink
Participants write and revise during the week
Friday Zoom sessions are dedicated entirely to sharing work and building literary community.

Week by Week

The most powerful speeches are rarely improvised. They are carefully constructed architectures of language designed to capture attention, build momentum, and alter how an audience understands the world.

Weekly Craft Inquiry Zones

Each week examines a different dimension of spoken language craft.

Week 1: Attention and Opening Moves

How speakers establish authority and capture attention in the first moments of speech.

Week 2: Framing and Precision

How complex ideas are introduced, clarified, and structured for listeners.

Week 3: Narrative Construction

Using storytelling to create emotional engagement and credibility.

Week 4: Rhythm and Sonic Pattern

Exploring cadence, repetition, and the musical architecture of spoken language.

Week 5: Audience Dynamics

How speakers adapt language when addressing listeners who may resist or challenge what is being said.

Week 6: Performance and Delivery

Refining pacing, emphasis, and vocal presence for live delivery.

Who Finds Their Way Into This Class?

This course is designed for people who regularly encounter moments when language must carry weight.

Participants often include:

educators who speak in classrooms and want to refine how they structure spoken ideas
poets interested in strengthening the transition from page to stage
clergy or facilitators who regularly address groups and want their language to land with greater clarity
community organizers or advocates who speak in spaces where persuasion matters
writers curious about the craft decisions that make speeches memorable

You might especially enjoy this class if you have ever:

listened to a powerful speech and wondered how it was constructed=
written something that sounded different when spoken aloud
studied why certain speakers command attention while others struggle to hold a room
wanted to develop greater control over rhythm, pacing, and rhetorical structure

Participants do not need prior performance experience—only curiosity about how language behaves when spoken aloud.

What students are saying about learning with Tasjha

"I took Tasjha's class, because SHE was teaching it!"

"I didn't know Tasjha well, but I really enjoy both her energy and her poetry/work. I'm SO glad I took the course! I am considering taking the next one with her!"

"Tasjha is truly a hero to me, a standard bearer, standing up and teaching the words and wonder of revolution at a time when we all need it the most!"

"Participating in Tasjha's class has been very fulfilling for me!"

Where and When Does this Online Course Meet?

This is a hybrid online class, hosted on the online teaching platform Wet Ink with additional sessions hosted on Zoom.

Each Friday from 1:30pm - 3:30pm CST there will be a live Zoom session.

This course follows a studio-based learning model in which most instruction occurs asynchronously.

Each Friday from 1:30pm - 3:30pm CST there will be a live Zoom session.

The weekly live Zoom sessions are not instructional lectures. Instead, the Friday gatherings function as literary studio salons where participants share work developed during the week, listen closely to each other’s language, and reflect on how craft techniques operate when speech meets an audience. The Zoom sessions will be recorded and shared with registrants.

The week before class begins, registrants will receive an invitation to the Wet Ink classroom and the Zoom session information.

About the Teacher

Tasjha Wanonah Dixon is a spoken word poet and national conference presenter and educator whose work explores the intersection of language, social inquiry, and creative practice. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics and is a trauma-informed therapeutically-trained registered yoga teacher (RYT-500) and YACEP (Yoga Alliance Continuing Education Provider).

Tasjha’s teaching centers on the belief that language is both craft and catalyst. Her courses invite participants to investigate how words function in the world—how they shape attention, challenge assumptions, and create new possibilities for understanding.

Through studio-based classes, writing laboratories, and community-centered learning environments, she encourages participants to approach writing and speech as deliberate acts of design.

Her work integrates contemplative awareness, literary craft, and cultural reflection, creating spaces where writers can develop both technical skill and creative authority.

Tasjha is the founder and creative director of Empowering KC.

For more information on her wellness practice and her regular offerings/classes visit empoweringkcwithtasjha.com

Find her easily on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Substack and YouTube, searching @tasjhadixon or @empoweringkcwithtasjha where you can see, hear and experience her radical leadership and inspired visionary efforts to create a better, more just world for us all!

Foundations of Facilitation // with Amanda Faye Lacson & Tracie Nichols (02 September 2026)

Wed, 02 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This course introduces the foundations and best practices of facilitation to TLA practitioners.

You will learn about yourself as a facilitator and explore principles for designing and facilitating effective workshops that carefully consider ways to support different populations.

You will emerge from the class with a Capstone Project, a detailed workshop proposal that covers the content and structure of your program; considerations for marketing, ethics, technology, and moving in the physical space depending on the populations you plan to welcome in; and how you might facilitate the work beyond the workshop space and connect to a larger community.

Weekly Zoom sessions and Wet Ink lessons with extensive resources will cover course content and offer opportunities to engage with and practice facilitation principles. Weekly assignments will include readings, written responses, and self-care practices.

Week by Week

Week 1: Roles & Rules: Introduction to Facilitation

In this opening session, we’ll introduce ourselves, the course, and the foundational principles of facilitation. These principles are rooted in the idea that whatever the subject or situation, the goal of facilitation is to support individual and collective transformation. We’ll also cover the importance of establishing ground rules and prioritizing self-care.

Week 2: Good Bones: Structuring Workshops for Effective Facilitation

Effective facilitation depends on a program that has “good bones.” In this session, we’ll explore foundational principles and techniques for planning, organizing, and reviewing facilitation sessions. We’ll focus on ways to build a solid yet flexible structure that supports your goals and meets the needs of your participants.

Week 3: Considering Power Dynamics of Rank and Class

As a course designer and facilitator, you bring a position of privilege and higher rank into a room from the beginning. Tied up with rank, especially in our society, is class, which isn’t just salaries earned, but what access people have to good education, meaningful employment, and safe communities. In this week we will discuss what ranks we live with on a regular basis, and the ones that we take on and off, depending on the situation. We will also discuss perceived power, and what you may or may not want to do to take on or cede power in the groups you facilitate.

Week 4: Facilitating across Identity:

In this session, we will look at different ways to facilitate groups of mixed identity, including affiliations with race, gender, sexuality, generations and parenthood. We will learn how we are socialized to think about different identities; if/how we have had experience with conversations across identities; and what considerations we can adopt when creating a space that will be welcoming across identity.

Week 5: Facilitating across Disabled, Neurodiverse and Aging Bodies:

In this session, we will discuss how to prepare for and facilitate across disability, neurodiversity, serious illness, and aging bodies. We are operating from a social model of disability, which says “individual limitations are not the cause of disability. Rather, it is society’s failure to provide appropriate services and adequately ensure that the needs of disabled people are taken into account in societal organization.” We want to discuss how we can create spaces that do not “disable” our participants. How can we structure access in our workshops from the beginning, instead of having to create accommodations as issues arise?

Week 6: Trauma-Informed Facilitation:

No matter what kind of workshop or event you facilitate, a majority of your participants will have experienced at least one traumatic event in their lives. And as transformative language artists, we often work with specific survivor populations to offer tools and opportunities for personal and communal healing. In this session, we’ll discuss trauma, its impact, and why a trauma-informed approach is so important in facilitation. You’ll learn the key principles of trauma-informed facilitation as well as practical steps to take before, during, and after facilitating. You’ll also be reminded of the importance of self-awareness and self-care as a trauma-informed facilitator.

Week 7: Facilitating for Community Transformation:

One of the unique tasks of a Transformative Language Artist is that we use words not only for personal transformation, but to effect change in our communities. In this session, we will discuss ways to bring your work and the work of your participants out into the community. How can you continue the conversation beyond the workshop space? Who, in your community, needs your work? What is the change that you wish to see in your community? Through reviewing examples of TLA in the world, we will consider ways you as a facilitator can contribute to community dialogue and transformation.

Week 8: Capstone Project Presentations:

The final week will include the opportunity to present your Capstone Project, a document that outlines the offering you would like to present in your community, and what considerations you plan to take in your facilitation approach. As this is a living document that you will work on throughout the class, we will discuss: How has your vision evolved from the beginning of class? What challenges or barriers do you anticipate in fulfilling this work? What considerations have you most appreciated? What considerations may you have missed?

Who Should Take This Class

This class is required for the Certification in TLA Foundations. It is appropriate for beginning and seasoned facilitators who are new to TLA; TLA practitioners who are seasoned in their art and looking to facilitate work in their community; and TLA artists and facilitators who want to update their practices with current language and best practices around community identities.

Where and When Does this Online Course Meet?

Foundations of Facilitation is an asynchronous, online course hosted through the classroom platform, Wet Ink, supported by weekly live Zoom meetings.

Weekly live Zoom sessions will be held on eight consecutive Saturdays beginning Sept. 5, 2026 from 3-4:30 PM ET. Click here to convert to your time zone. All sessions will be recorded and shared with registered students.

About the Facilitators

Amanda Faye Lacson (she/hers) is a Filipina-American writer, photographer and historian. She examines how our identities are shaped, how they impact the way we move in the world, and how we write our history through her creative nonfiction and playwriting; photography documenting the artistic process; oral history-oriented podcast interviewing; and by creating and facilitating community-based workshops for the family historian. Amanda is a board member and Membership co-chair of the Transformative Language Arts Network; writer, performer and director with the Playful Substance theater company; and producer, host and editor of Goddard in the World Podcast. She is also the founder of FamilyArchive Business, a studio designed to support the family historian at any point in the archiving process, from organizing photos in boxes to creating a final product to share with the family.

Recent projects include: writing and performing work based on her experience as a Pinay child and mother in the devised theater piece Raised Pinay: The 5^th Generation; presenting a generative writing workshop on using Transformative Language Arts to create and deepen one’s family archive at the TLAN Power of Words conference; writing a satirical monologue from the perspective of Christopher Columbus reckoning with his legacy in the afterlife, for Playful Substance; and photographing classical Indian dance performance by Brooklyn Raga Massive for Chelsea Factory. Keep up with Amanda's work at amandafayelacson.com.

Tracie Nichols (she/her) is a poet, facilitator, HSP, over-thinker, introvert, and woman of deepening years. When she's not doing managing director things for the Transformative Language Arts Network (TLAN), she writes poetry and creates seasonal word adventures for shy but curious people.

Tracie’s appreciation for the power of words to heal and transform started decades ago when she began writing poems to navigate early trauma. She knew she'd found home with the Transformative Language Arts Network community when she realized it merged the principles of her graduate degree in Transformative Learning and Change with her passion for writing as a path to healing and growth.

Today, she lives in southeastern Pennsylvania with her husband, occasionally her adult children, and a very large ginger tabby cat named Strider. She writes poems from her tiny desk under the wide reach of two old Sycamore trees. Tracie is honored that her recent work has appeared in kerning, Rogue Agent, Text Power Telling, and The Weight of Motherhood anthology.

Connect with Tracie at tracienichols.com.

Stories from the Body // with Lewis Mehl-Madrona & Barbara Mainguy (23 September 2026)

Wed, 23 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

“Stories from the Body” is an immersive eight-week course that guides participants in discovering, unlocking, and transforming the stories held within the body.

Drawing on the work of Lewis Mehl-Madrona and Barbara Mainguy, this series integrates narrative therapy, somatic awareness, and indigenous wisdom to support healing.

Each weekly session blends ceremony and community-building with practical exercises in breath, movement, and mindful listening, creating a safe and welcoming space for personal exploration.

What you will experience:

Participants learn to attune to the body’s messages, dialoguing with sensations, pain, and tension to uncover hidden narratives beneath conscious awareness.
Through a combination of journaling, guided imagery, art, and movement, individuals explore how family histories and cultural influences are embodied.
The course emphasizes embodied storywork, encouraging re-authoring of old patterns and envisioning new possibilities for growth and well-being.
Rituals and ceremonies support the communal aspect of healing, while creative modalities, such as drawing and dramatization, help participants express and integrate their stories.

By the course’s end, each person will have practiced techniques for finding and transforming body-based stories, and will leave with tools for ongoing self-discovery and storytelling.

This course is ideal for those interested in holistic healing, personal narrative, and mind-body integration, providing practical skills and communal support for lasting personal change.

Week by Week

Week 1: Ceremony and Creating Safe Space

Introductions, course overview, shared intentions.
Ceremony to open the group; importance of ritual to set context.
Building radical acceptance and safety as a basis for storytelling.
Introduction to the body as a source of story.

Week 2: Listening to the Body’s Messages

Somatic awareness practices: breath, movement, and presence.
Exercises for attending to physical sensations and symptoms as story clues.
Journaling: bodily sensations as the start of narrative threads.

Week 3: Eliciting the Story of the Pain

Techniques for dialoguing with the body.
Guided imagery and movement to access “body memory.”
Group and paired work: sharing stories linked to physical feeling.

Week 4: Exploring Family and Cultural Stories in the Body

Exploring how ancestral, family, and cultural stories live in posture, movement and pain.
Mapping inherited patterns and their bodily expression.
Creative exercise: drawing or sculpting “the body’s history.”

Week 5: Transformation Through Embodied Narrative

Re-authoring: changing perspectives on bodily symptoms through storytelling.
Breathwork and gentle touch to support safe body-based narrative change.
Practice: group story-weaving with alternate outcomes.

Week 6: Movement, Art, and Story

Integration of movement, dance, and art to deepen story from the body.
Puppetry, drawing, dramatization: other forms to access and express somatic narrative.
Sharing artwork and movement-based stories in small groups.

Week 7: Healing Ceremonies and Community Storytelling

Indigenous frameworks for healing circles and communal narrative work.
Designing and participating in a group ceremony for story-sharing and release.
The role of witnessing, drumming, and song in embodied storytelling.

Week 8: Integration and Practice Clinic

Guided “body story” sessions in small groups; practice integrating all techniques.
Peer and faculty feedback, review of experiences.
Final ceremony: closing the circle, intentions for ongoing personal work.

Each session will begin and end with a brief ceremony or mindfulness practice to create structure and honor the themes of ritual and community.

The curriculum encourages active participation, creative expression, and respectful witnessing of others’ stories.

Who Should Take This Class?

No prior experience in bodywork or storytelling is necessary—curiosity, openness, and a willingness to participate are the primary requirements.

The supportive, nonjudgmental environment welcomes participants of all backgrounds and levels of experience, offering accessible practices for anyone wishing to more fully understand and transform their body’s wisdom and story.

Personal Growth

This course is designed for anyone seeking a deeper connection between body and narrative—well-suited to individuals interested in holistic healing, mental health, creative self-discovery, and personal growth. It will benefit people who sense that their bodies hold unspoken stories or unresolved emotions, as well as those experiencing chronic stress, tension, or unexplained physical symptoms.

Professional Development

Therapists, counselors, bodyworkers, and health professionals will find practical techniques to integrate into their own client work, expanding their understanding of trauma, memory, and healing beyond traditional talk therapy approaches.

Creative development/Craft

Artists, writers, and creative seekers will be supported in exploring new pathways for inspiration, while those with a desire for more community and ritual in their healing journeys will benefit from the course’s emphasis on group ceremony and collective storytelling.

The TLA Network offers scholarships based on income as well as some partial scholarships for people living with serious illness and/or disability or people of color. Please click the button and complete our scholarship application form so that we can find the best way to make the class accessible to you.

Scholarship Application

What people are saying about learning with Lewis and Barbara:

“Doing a Healing Intensive with Lewis was inspiring and transformational on all levels: physical, emotional, spiritual, and cognitive. He utilized ritual, healing energy, imagery, Cherokee bodywork, journaling, and community to invoke healing on a deeper and more comprehensive level than any individual approach could have offered. Lewis is an amazing, knowledgeable, and compassionate healer.” – Lorna, New York

“The experience of the weekend with Lewis was amazing. His nature and ability to make everyone feel connected and welcome was palpable and created a space for truth and healing. I found my own spirit again, something I didn’t realize I had lost. The workshop gave me the gift of connecting with amazing people and their beautiful spirits. I feel ‘at home.’” – Workshop participant, Melbourne, Australia

“Lewis’s teaching of story as medicine is subtle yet powerful. His approach creates a field of connection that integrates the sufferer into a larger community, fostering profound healing.” – Deena Metzger, California

Where and When Does this Online Course Meet?

This is a hybrid online class, conducted through Zoom meetings and the online classroom Wet Ink.

Zoom meetings will be held at 4:30 PM ET / 8:30 PM UT on consecutive Wednesdays beginning 23 September and ending 17 November 2026. Sessions will be recorded and made available only to registered students.

Online readings and an asynchronous discussion board will be hosted on the online teaching platform Wet Ink. The day before class begins, you will receive an email invitation from Wet Ink. There are no browser requirements, and Wet Ink is mobile-friendly. The Wet Ink platform allows you to log in and complete the coursework on your own time. At the end of the class, each student will receive an email that contains a link to download an archive of all their content and interactions.

About the Facilitators

Lewis Mehl-Madrona, MD, PhD, is a physician, clinical psychologist, and author known for integrating Indigenous healing traditions with conventional medicine. A Stanford University School of Medicine graduate, he is certified in family medicine, psychiatry, and clinical psychology. Dr. Mehl-Madrona has taught at multiple medical schools and currently serves as an associate clinical professor at the University of New England. His work focuses on the transformative power of storytelling in healing, exemplified in his acclaimed trilogy—Coyote Medicine, Coyote Healing, and Coyote Wisdom—as well as Narrative Medicine and Remapping Your Mind (co-authored with Barbara Mainguy). He is founder and executive director of the Coyote Institute, which centers on narrative, Indigenous wisdom, and mind-body healing. For insights and updates, visit his website at mehl-madrona.com and follow related work through the Coyote Institute at coyote-institute.org.

Barbara Mainguy, MA, LCSW, is a psychotherapist, creative arts therapist, filmmaker, and education director for the Coyote Institute for Studies of Change and Transformation in Orono, Maine. She holds a Master’s degree in Creative Arts Psychotherapy from Concordia University and an MSW from the University of Maine. Barbara blends psychotherapy with indigenous wisdom and narrative approaches to support mind-body healing and self-transformation. Her interests include working with individuals experiencing psychosis, chronic pain, and trauma, as well as exploring the intersection of art, healing, and psychotherapy. She is coauthor with Lewis Mehl-Madrona of Remapping Your Mind: The Neuroscience of Self-Transformation through Story. Barbara also maintains a private practice and teaches workshops that integrate body-centered storytelling and healing.

Changing the World With Words: TLA Foundations // with Amanda Lacson (28 October 2026)

Wed, 28 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This thorough introduction to Transformative Language Arts (TLA) encompasses the personal and the global, the contemporary and the historic, and how TLA can be practiced through writing, storytelling, performance, song, and collaborative, expressive and integrated arts.

We will also explore ethics and considerations for practicing TLA through facilitation, coaching, teaching, and more, with special attention to diversity and inclusion when it comes to bringing more voices to the table.

Each week includes short readings, a lively discussion, and invigorating writing prompts to help you articulate more of your own TLA callings. The weekly writing prompts and pertinent discussion questions give you room to work and play through what you know, are coming to know, and how this knowledge cross-pollinates with what you do and who you are. Websites, videos and/or podcasts, and essays to engage with, bring you face to face with you real-life expressions of TLA as this field, profession, and calling grows around the world.

You can order a copy of The Power of Words: A TLA Reader, the required text for class), here.

This class is required for TLA Foundations Certification.

Week by Week

Week One: TLA History, Fields, and Traditions

An overview of theory and practice, including genres, arts and community practices, ethics, and your own values informing your TLA. Explore TLA in many forms–from poetry therapy to social change theater to healing storytelling–and share what ignites your soul and work. We’ll also look at how we see ourselves in our TLA work and callings and how we’re likely to seen in various communities, and the essential role of self-care in our TLA work and as core to TLA practice.

Week Two: TLA in Service: Health, Healing, Spirituality, and Personal Growth.

We’ll explore how TLA can help people find their way home through health or emotional crises or wounds, spiritual callings, and many manner of personal growth. Starting with the personal, and recognizing how the personal is political, we look at ways in which TLA can foster health, healing, and homecoming, and also some of our cultural biases and blindnesses about such directions. Some of this week’s resources will help us see more of the breadth and depth in how TLA can be effective in various religious and spiritual traditions, mainstream and holistic healing practice, and home-grown and psychological counseling as well as for people living with disabilities or serious illnesses.

Week Three: TLA as Catalyst: Community, Culture, History, and Social Change.

We’ll look at TLA in relation to community-building, culture-shifting, history-revisioning, and social change, and particularly explore what it means and can mean to be part of various communities. To better understand the time and place where we live now, we’ll also explore TLA as a vehicle for diversity and inclusion, including addressing oppression, marginalization, privilege, and access. Additionally, we’ll look at what it means to practice TLA in ways that foster a community ethic of care (as well as supporting individual self-care).

Week Four: TLA & Right Livelihood: Ways to Make a Living and a Life.

What are our callings for how we make a living and how we live a life? We’ll dive into how TLA intersects with our life’s work (whether that work relates to a paycheck, volunteering, creating art or writing, or other aspects of our life), and develop plans for where we’re led to go. We’ll draw from the Buddhist roots of the term “Right Livelihood” to better understand how we can forge good work that makes a positive contribution to our communities and lives.

Week Five: TLA in Action: Facilitation, Consulting, Collaboration, Coaching, and More.

Looking at the ethics and facilitation of our work, art, and community involvement, we’ll discuss and write about the specific forms of TLA we do and want to do, and how strong facilitation of TLA – whether in the form of community meetings, writing workshops, collaborative storytelling or theater projects, or one-on-one coaching – requires us to lifelong students of the art of facilitation.

Week Six: TLA and You: Plans, Visions, and Maps.

Deepening our plans for the work, art, and community-making ahead, we’ll clarify what’s right for us to pursue next, what support and tools we need along the way, and the future envision. This week will focus on what resources and pathways are around us, and how to best discern our own best ways to move forward.

Who Should Take This Class

This class is ideal for a wide variety of people, including professionals who want to infuse TLA into their teaching, counseling, pastoral work, arts collaboration, and community work; community leaders and activists seeking to bring more voice and vision to the table in their communities; and writers, storytellers, performers and other artists who want to develop their facilitation of writing, songwriting, expressive arts, drama therapy and community theater, collaborative arts, storytelling, and integrated arts; and perspective or current students or alumni of TLA studies.

Please note: Registration closes Oct. 23, 2026—five (5) days before the class start date.

Where and When Will This Course Meet?

This is an online class which will be taught via the online platform, Wet Ink. Each week, a new week will open full of resources, reflections, discussion questions, and writing prompts. Note: No class the week of Nov. 23.

Students should expect to spend a minimum 4-6 hours per week perusing resources and readings, answering a discussion question, engaging in several writing prompts, and responding to peers’ work. From our interactions, we sustain a welcoming and inspiring community together.

We will have three optional Zoom meetings. These meetings will be an opportunity to check in with the facilitator, discuss the material and meet with your classmates. Zoom meetings will not be recorded. They will take place on the following Saturdays at 12:00 - 1:30 PM ET (11 AM-12:30 PM CT/10-11:30 AM MT/9-10:30 AM PT):

Saturday, October 31
Saturday, November 21
Saturday, December 12

Required Text: The Power of Words: A Transformative Language Arts Reader, edited by Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg and Janet Tallman. You can purchase the text through Amazon.

Supplemental Text: Transformative Language Arts in Action, edited by Ruth. A. Farmer and Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg. You can purchase this text on Amazon or Rowman and Littlefield.

About the Facilitators

Gathering Our Ghosts: Writing, Memory, and Creative Dialogue with the Dead // with Sharon Pajka (28 October 2026)

Wed, 28 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT

As autumn deepens and the veil between worlds grows thin, Gathering Our Ghosts invites writers and artists to step into the shadowed spaces where memory, grief, and imagination meet.

This six-week Transformative Language Arts course centers ghost stories, poems, and haunting texts as portals for exploring death awareness, remembrance, and ongoing relationship with the dead. Rather than seeking closure, participants are encouraged to dwell in uncertainty, listening for what lingers, whispers, and refuses to disappear.

Through guided discussion, reflective writing, ritualized storytelling, and collaborative dialogue, participants will engage language as a transformative tool for inquiry and connection. Writing practices include letters to the dead, elegiac fragments, invocations, and collective ghost stories, allowing participants to experiment with creative dialogue across time and absence. Visual art and symbolic practices further support embodied reflection and ethical imagination.

Grounded in care-centered facilitation and community engagement, the course creates a supportive container for exploring personal, ancestral, cultural, and imagined ghosts.

Participants will practice deep listening, respectful witnessing, and consent-based sharing while engaging difficult and tender material. The course emphasizes reflection, relationship, and meaning-making over answers or resolution.

Gathering Our Ghosts affirms that when we tell ghost stories, our own and those passed down, we strengthen our connection to the living world. By writing with and to our ghosts, participants cultivate creative resilience, deepen their artistic practice, and discover how language can hold what is unresolved, sacred, and still speaking.

Week by Week

Week 1 (Oct. 28): Summoning & Silence — Who Are Our Ghosts?

We begin at the threshold, where the veil thins and voices begin to stir. Through ghost stories, poems, and visual texts, participants engage in reflective practice by naming the ghosts that haunt their personal, cultural, and imaginative landscapes. Language becomes an invocation calling forth memories, absences, and presences while group discussion establishes a shared ethic of care for engaging death awareness and creative uncertainty.

Week 2 (Nov. 4): Memory & Murmurs — Grief as a Living Archive

This week lingers with what refuses to disappear. Ghostly texts guide participants into an exploration of grief as a living archive stored in objects, places, and half-remembered stories. Through expressive writing and reflective inquiry, participants practice attending to murmurs of the past, allowing fragmentation, silence, and echo to shape creative work and deepen understanding of loss as an ongoing presence.

ZOOM SESSION

Week 3 (Nov. 11): Correspondence & Conversations — Writing to the Unreachable

Here we write across impossible distances. Drawing on spectral letters, laments, and ghost stories, participants engage writing as relational and transformative practice. Through care-centered rituals of correspondence, writers experiment with addressing those who cannot answer, cultivating ethical imagination while allowing language to carry longing, unanswered questions, and the unsettling intimacy of continued conversation with the dead.

Week 4 (Nov. 18): Rituals & Remains — Art as Remembrance

This week turns toward the remains, ancestral, collective, and imagined, that shape our stories. Through haunting narratives and ritual-inflected texts, participants explore how creative acts become containers for grief and memory. Writing and multimodal practices emphasize symbolic language, shared witnessing, and cultural care, inviting ghosts to be honored through intentional storytelling rather than explained away.

Week 5 (Dec. 2): Darkness & Dialogue — Shared Ghost Stories

Ghost stories are rarely told alone. This week centers communal storytelling and dialogue as transformative practice. Participants gather in shared darkness to read, listen, and contribute their own ghostly narratives, engaging language as a tool for collective inquiry into mortality and grief. Emphasis is placed on deep listening, consent, and the power of being haunted together without the need for resolution.

ZOOM SESSION

Week 6 (Dec. 9): Blessings & Beginnings — Living with Our Ghosts

We close by considering which ghosts we carry forward. Through lingering stories where the dead remain as guides, companions, or quiet witnesses, participants reflect on transformation and integration. Writing and ritual support the articulation of ongoing relationships with the unseen, affirming language as a living practice that allows us to walk onward—changed, accompanied, and attentive to what still whispers.

Who Should Take This Class

Writers, poets, artists, and anyone drawn to the spooky vibes of the season. All backgrounds and levels of experience are welcome.

What People Are Saying About Learning With Sharon:

"I already miss this class for the depth, creativity and intimacy of the subject matter, our facilitator and classmates, and the safety provided. I am very grateful to TLA; Sharon P. our facilitator; and all my classmates for a rewarding, informative and challenging experience."

"LOVED this class, and the instructor. Would love to learn more in follow up class."

"How fascinating, intriguing and rewarding the subject matter was; and how accepted and truly connected I felt — with the facilitator and classmates; especially considering my current level of writing and participation (first class)."

Where and When Does This Course Meet?

This is an online course, hosted on the online teaching platform, Wet Ink and includes two Zoom sessions.

This course meets online in a Wet Ink classroom for six weeks from Wednesday, October 28 through Tuesday, December 15, 2026 supported by two Zoom sessions (dates and times TBA). (No class the week of Nov. 23.)

The week before class begins, registrants will receive an invitation to the Wet Ink classroom and the Zoom session information.

About the Teacher

On the weekends, you can find her in the cemetery volunteering, giving history tours, researching and writing about cemeteries. Find more information on her website: https://www.sharonpajka.com/