Storytelling and the Body // with Danielle Bainbridge, Jane Hseu, & Kimberly Gomes

A new approach to deepening your creative relationship with your body.

Each new form/method introduced will open up new ways to approach memoir and personal writing.

In this class, creatives will learn how to use four different mediums to write about the body: memoir, poetry, song, and oral storytelling.

Taught by the skilled, creative trio of Danielle Bainbridge, Kimberly Gomes, and Jane Hseu, each week will feature a different style of writing and a way to intersect with the body. Your facilitators will model ways to tackle memoir writing through a variety of disciplines and each new form or method introduced will open up new ways to approach memoir and personal writing.

Students will leave the course with:

• a mixed methods approach to memoir writing and writing about the body
• the start of one new prose/memoir piece, poem, song, and oral story

This will give participants a treasure trove of inspiration to launch from in the coming weeks.

Class will culminate in a salon-style session where writers inspire each other by sharing a piece they created during the course.

Week By Week

May 6th—Week 1—Danielle Exploring the Body through Mixed Media 

• 15 minutes: introduction to the class, our objectives, and what you will gain from participating in this session. Also intros from students/attendees 

• 20 minutes: Writers will be asked to bring in a piece of art in any medium that reflects their relationship with their writing and their body. Each participant will give a brief explanation of the piece and how it relates to their practice.

• 30 minutes: Free writing using the piece you brought to class as a jumping off point/inspiration.

• 30 minutes: For this time period writers will be asked to take the writing they did during the free writing time and turn it into another art piece of their choice. This can be a song, a poem, a collage, a visual art piece, a skit, etc. 

• 25 minutes: open sharing about what was discovered during the 2 creative free writing sessions, conclusion, and wrap-up for session 1. Artists will share both pieces and see how they inform each other. Discussion of what will be covered in session 2.

May 13th—Week 2—Kimberly: Writing from the Body with Poetry & Song 

• 10 min Opening check in & somatic, dance exercise to drop into our bodies and channel specific emotions/phys sensations we want to release and dive further into for today’s writing. 

• 15 min We’ll then read 3 poems from different poets, one of which writes viscerally about the body from a shadow angle, another that uses form as an interesting container, and another where the poem speaks about the body with levity or sensuality. 

• 30 minute writing session intended to draft 1-2 poems

• 25 Switch to songwriting where Kimberly will give the group a melody/beat to work with to create a very simple, mantra-like song where we use body metaphors to each write our own (possibly our very first) song. 

• 30 minute sharing of what we wrote 

• Closing check-in + optional homework

May 20th—Week 3—Jane: Writing/Storytelling about Mental Health and the Body

• 15 mins.: Check-in (how do you come to the workshop today) 

• 30 mins.: Presentation and discussion about different works that write and tell stories about mental health (memoir, fiction, poetry, and oral storytelling)

• 15 mins.: Discussion of various ways participants creatively express and cope with mental health issues

• 30 mins.: Practice: Time to write; create (draw, play music, etc.); reflect/meditate; rest; and/or dream/daydream

• 30 mins.: Sharing and discussion, including thoughts about the salon

May 27th—Week 4—Salon + sharing takeaways from the class + optional sharing of goals/hopes we each have for our practice in the next month/season

Who Should Take This Class

All levels of prose writers, oral storytellers, poets, and songwriters interested in exploring a variety of mediums to express experiences, feelings, and new perspectives about the body.

People who will benefit from this are both beginner or seasoned writers who:

• feel like they’ve been wanting to explore stories about/from the body but are nervous to go there without structure.
• have previously written a lot about the body but want a new angle to approach the topic.
• are looking to explore a new creative medium in safe, supportive environment.
• are interested in learning how to use somatic practices to dive into and out of writing.

Format

Class will meet using Zoom on four consecutive Tuesdays: May 6, 13, 20, and 27, 2025 from 7:30-9:30 PM ET | 6:30 - 8:30 PM CT |  5:30 - 7:30 PM MT | 4:30 - 6:30 PM PT.

About The Facilitators

Danielle Bainbridge is an Assistant Professor of Theatre, Black Studies, and Performance Studies at Northwestern University. Her first academic book Currencies of Cruelty: Slavery, Freak Shows, and the Performance Archive is forthcoming in 2025 from NYU Press. Her first memoir Dandelion: A Memoir in Essays is forthcoming from Jaded Ibis Press in 2025, where it was the winner of the inaugural Uplift Voices Nonfiction Prize. Dandelion was a semi-finalist for the 2016 Kore Press Memoir Award, the 2023 St. Lawrence Prize from Black Lawrence Press, and the 2024 Creative Nonfiction Award from Autumn House Press and has received scholarships/residencies from Tin House, the Adirondack Center for Writing, and the Banff Centre in Canada. Her web series and media work have been nominated for 3 Daytime Emmy Awards and 1 NAACP Image Award. She lives and loves in Chicago with her partner and 3 naughty cats. 

Kimberly Gomes is a California-based writer and music maker. She’ the author of poetry collection, Love Notes the Body (Dancing Girl Press, 2019), women’s travel novel, A Road of Her Own (Red Light Lit Press, 2025), creator of a spoken word and musical album, First Bloom, and is currently writing a collection of personal essays. Her novel was a semi-finalist for the 2022 Black Lawrence Press Prose Book Award, her prose was named a top personal essay of 2021 by Entropy Magazine, and her poetry and has been featured in a variety of literary journals and performance art shows. When she’s not writing, she’s hosting community events for creatives, speaking on topics she’s passionate about, and trekking trails in her coastal home of Santa Cruz. Learn more about her work at kimberly-gomes.com or @writeon_kim.

Jane Hseu is Professor of English at Dominican University outside of Chicago, where she teaches classes about racial minority US literatures, writing, and storytelling. She has published personal essays on funky Chinese American names, growing up in her mother’s Shiseido cosmetics store, and mental health and recovery. Jane is currently working on her memoir, Growing Up Evangelical, Chinese, and Depressed. She is a board member for the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame and core organizer for Banyan: Asian American Writers Collective. She is committed to building community by bringing people together for literary events and workshops, and so has contributed presentations and organizing for venues such as the American Writers Festival, Printers Row Lit Fest, Transformative Language Arts Network, Pour One Out storytelling series, AWP, APIDA Arts Festival, and Casa de Las Americas. Find out more at janehseu.com.