Writing is a spiritual act, but most writing courses and workshops shy from embracing this truth. They focus exclusively on craft and marketability, ignoring the parallel spiritual development that must take place if an artist is to create works of true value and insight. As a result of the imbalance, artists become stuck, jaded, cynical, entitled. They suffer because their relationship to their work is imbalanced and unhealthy.

Healing Your Relationship To The Work is a course that will help transform your art practice into a sustainable way of life. This does not mean we will not struggle with frustration or blocks! Instead we will reframe our notion of “progress” and learn to see that the eddies and torrents of creativity are all necessary and meaningful parts of the process. In the course we combine craft and workshop elements, and address spiritual approaches to art making, with a diverse and flexible interfaith framework.

To benefit, your prose does not have to be overtly spiritual. In fact, many of the world’s most powerful artworks are imbued with the unstated presence of the divine. You need only the conviction that you have stories that must be told, and the desire to establish a healthy and balanced art practice necessary to tell them well.

Course Structure

The course will take place on zoom from April through May on the second and fourth Mondays of the month with virtual meetings on 4/10, 4/24, 5/8, 5/22. On the first and third Mondays of each month, you will be invited to literary salons featuring special guest speakers and generative write-ins, facilitated by poet and prose writer Dawn Angelicca Barcelona.

Full Course Schedule

Monday, April 3rd, 6-8p PT: Welcome Salon (optional)
Monday, April 10th, 6-8p PT: Class #1
Wednesday, April 19th, 6-8p PT: Literary Salon featuring Lillian Howan and Grace Loh Prasad (optional)
Monday, April 24th, 6-8p PT: Class #2
Monday, May 1st, 6-8pm PT: Literary Salon featuring Meg Hayertz (optional)
Monday, May 8th, 6-8p PT: Class #3
Monday, May 15th, 6-8p PT: Literary Salon featuring Lisa Rosenberg (optional)
Monday, May 22nd, 6-8p PT: Class #4
Monday, May 29th, 6-8p PT: Closing Salon and Student Reading (optional)

Cost

The full workshop cost is $450.00 which includes:

Four 2-hour classes (8 hours)
Five optional 2-hour literary salons (10 hours)
One 30-minute one-on-one consultation with Mary

About Your Instructor

Mary Volmer is the author of two novels: Crown of Dust (Soho Press, 2010) and Reliance, Illinois (Soho Press, 2016). Her essays, reviews, and short stories have appeared in various publications, including Mutha Magazine, the Farallon Review, Women’s Basketball Magazine, Fiction Writers Review, Historical Novel Society Review, The New Orleans Review, Brevity, and Ploughshares. After earning a master’s degree at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, where she was a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar, she earned an MFA in Creative Writing at Saint Mary’s College (CA). She has been awarded residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and Hedgebrook and was the spring 2015 Distinguished Visiting Writer in Residence at Saint Mary’s College (CA) where she now teaches.

Learn more about Mary on her website!

Prose: Healing Your Relationship to the Work | Class, Salons, Consultation