Cli-Fi Writing Workshop with Ellen Szabo

Creative Writing: Nature is Our Muse

Workshop Series Topics:

Workshop 1, Rebel Poetry, 1/17/26: Writing poetry can illuminate the familiar, and help us to see in new ways

Workshop 2, Writing Cli-fi, 1/24/26: Creating fiction that explores and reimagines nature in the future

Workshop 3, Writing Memoir. 2/7/26; Memoir can help us to discover who we used to be and how we got to be who we are

Wrokshop 4, Creative Editing, 2/21/26: The art of appreciating, organizing and polishing our finished products

These workshops will facilitate creative expression in an informative, supportive environment using PowerPoints, instructive discussions, writing prompts and facilitated feedback of participants’ writing. The focus is on exploration, transformation and discovery of each person’s unique writing voice; exploring and expanding writing tools and techniques; and writing/rewriting our relationship with the natural world.

No previous writing experience necessary, just a desire to discover and amplify the spirit and purpose of creative writing.

About Ellen Szabo:

Ellen Szabo, M.Ed., specializes in the use of creative writing as a therapeutic modality and as a tool for social justice activism. A graduate of Harvard College (A.B.) and Teacher’s College, Columbia University (M.Ed.), she merged her background in creative writing, counseling and social work to create a unique mentoring, coaching, and teaching style.

Ellen taught Creative Writing for Social Work at the University of Iowa School of Social Work for twenty-four years. She has been a guest speaker at conferences including the recent Annual DeWolf Innovation Center Forum on Life Changing Designs.

Currently in collaboration with Liam Crest, www.liamcrest.com, Ellen is developing a series of e-learning courses focused on the uses of creative writing for personal transformation and social change.

Ellen conducts writing groups, classes and workshops, and provides coaching and editing services for individual clients. She offers a range of workshops including Journaling for Caregivers and People Living with Chronic Conditions; Rebel Poetry; Writing Memoir, A Transformative Art; Changing the World One Word at a Time, Writing Cli-Fi; and Happiness is Complicated, Writing to Feel Better.

She is a published author, including two books Love and Apocalypse; Externalizing Your Inner Apocalypse with Creative Writing, and Saving the World One Word at a Time,Writing Cli-Fi. Her poem, I Am Here, was nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

For more information: www.szabocreativeconsulting.com

This event is part of Vinton's Big Read, a community-wide celebration of the arts and humanities. This project was supported in part by the National Endowment of the Arts, Arts Midwest, the Charles and Helen Yundt Charitable Foundation, and the Friends of the VInton Public Library in memory of George and Pauline Grovert.