Taking Control of Your Stories: A Ritual in Writing Resilience
w/ Hillary Leftwich

Four Tuesdays beginning April 8th over Zoom from 5-7PM PST (4/8, 4/15, 4/22, 4/29)

This generative workshop will focus on using the lyric essay (or open-verse essay, lyrical essay) and its sub-forms to craft writing in the disguise of familiar forms, which serve as way to expose our vulnerable writing. The lyric essay is a form used to contain the most defenseless of words. Participants will learn the techniques to construct their narratives in a way that allows them to control their stories by practicing the following:

• Creating distance between ourselves and the subject, allowing for objectivity

• Learning to write in a non-traditional form, releasing the writer from expectations that often come from more traditional writing forms

• The lyric essay offers a disguise from which participants can write from an honest and imperfect position

We’ll read examples from writers Jenny Boully, Crystal Wilkinson, Elissa Washuta, Gwendolyn Wallace, and several others as examples of this form's wide range. With guidance, participants will choose their own house to build their words while sharing their narratives in a form that encourages vulnerability. Lyric essays require a balance of control and lack of control.

Each week will focus on learning the different forms of the lyric essay as well as generative writing exercises with space for workshop.

Pricing: The following payment model is inspired by and borrowed from the payment model of Bayo Akomolafe’s class, We Will Dance With Mountains: Into the Cracks.

This workshop offers a sliding scale based on your relative financial standing. In an effort to reflect disparity in economic condition and access to wealth, the following payment system is designed for those with more wealth to help cover the costs of those with less access to wealth and resources. We trust your discernment of your current financial situation and how you fit into the global economic context.

As you decide what amount to pay, please consider your present-day financial situation governed by income, but also the following factors: historical discrimination faced by your peoples; your financial wealth (retirement/savings/investments); your access to income and financial wealth, both current and anticipated (how easily could you earn more income compared to other people in your community, country, and the world; are you expecting an inheritance); people counting on your financial livelihood including dependents and community members; the socio-economic conditions of your locale (relative to other places in your country and in the world); your relationship to food & resource scarcity.

$325 Partner

$250 Supporter (Note: This amount reflects the “real” value of this course.)

$175 Companion

$100 Friend

Scholarships are also available for anyone needing further financial assistance. Please email Daniel at registration@corporealwriting.com for more info, or if you are feeling challenged in any way by the financial requirements of participation.

Hillary Leftwich is a neurodivergent writer and the author of Ghosts Are Just Strangers Who Know How to Knock (CCM Press, 2019 and Agape Editions, 2023 new edition), Aura (Future Tense Books and Blackstone Audio Publishing, 2022), and Saint Dymphna’s Playbook (forthcoming from Limit Zero, 2025). She teaches writing at several universities and nonprofits to adults, youth, and unhoused populations and has taught writing workshops at Literary Arts, Writing Workshops Online, Willamette Writers Conference, Writing Heights Writers Conference, Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers, and several others. She focuses her writing on class struggle, single motherhood, trauma, mental illness, the supernatural, ritual, and the impact of neurological disease. Recent work can be found or forthcoming in The Sun, Best Small Fictions, Denver Quarterly Fives, The Rumpus, and Santa Fe Writers Project. On the outskirts of the writing world, she is a professional tarot reader and speaks with the dead. She lives in Denver.