So Much Springing Up!
Dear Friends,
What a hard, beautiful, long, cold, hard, exciting, wonderful, hard, transformative first quarter of the year it has been. The world continues to remind us that life is fragile, complicated, violent, and painful, while also offering genuine moments of transcendence and light. My own life reflects the same. Despite enduring a root canal, some unnamed long flu, and then Covid (all from January through March), backdropped by a harsh Minnesota winter that stretched right through March, April, and into May, many good things have also emerged during these past few months, and I’m thrilled to tell you about them now, because without all of you, none of it would add up to anything.
The big buckets of my announcements: New Writing, Upcoming Retreats, and Community Building. I hope that somewhere within these developments you might find something that speaks to you.
New Writing
I gave myself a year to devote to the proper birth and care of The Part That Burns, which turned one in February. During that year, I tried not to pressure myself too much about writing and publishing new work. Also, it was a pandemic! But in 2022, I’ve felt some urgency again to re-engage with making and publishing short work. In part, I need little milestones to keep me going while I work on this novel project, which is hard. May was a good month for my writing, with two new pieces coming out:
The first, a craft essay about the complexities of ethical storytelling in an era where social justice and antiracism come first for me and for many others. You can find essay, called (in response to a recent New York Times op-ed on the same topic), Why Are You Telling This Story?, in Brevity.
The second is a tender, naked essay about my relationship with my father, which evolved in the shadow of the abuse I experienced with my stepfather. Called “What My Father Knew About the Other Man I Called Daddy,” it came out yesterday in Los Angeles Review of Books.
I hope you will find things to love in these new works!
Upcoming Retreats
I have two upcoming retreats open for registration, and a third that will open soon. The amazing thing about these retreats is that I am co-teaching with my daughter, Billie Oh, who recently completed yoga teacher training after ten years of serious yoga practice. I cannot tell you how exciting this is for both of us! It was Billie who co-wrote the essay “Bent: Daughterhood Recalled Through Skin and Bone” with me, the essay that won an award in the Margarita Donnelly nonfiction contest sponsored by the feminist literary journal Calyx. Just last week, Billie’s essay “Beneath the Break” was accepted by the intersectional literary journal So to Speak. Billie is skilled both as a guide for our yoga and meditation and as an insightful participant for our writing work. I can’t wait to work with Billie in these retreats, and for you to join us!
The Visceral Self, June 10 – 12, Minneapolis
This three-day in-person intensive will explore embodied writing. Visceral means “relating to the viscera,” or your internal organs. It also means “relating to deep inward feelings rather than to the intellect.” We all have bodies, and yoga and meditation offer tools to help us write vividly into and through those bodies, rather than simply about them. Intentionally paired movement and writing prompts help us access stories that have been living inside us all along. Writing through the body brings our work more fully alive on the page, gives it a stronger pulse, more breath and electricity. We will follow visceral writing techniques wherever they lead us, including the Big Ones: sex, birth, illness, trauma, pain, recovery, etc. We would love to have you join us in this powerful workshop! Three spots left—find details are here.
Radical Revision in Troncones, December 3 – 10, Troncones Mexico
This is my first weeklong in-person manuscript retreat for those who have (or want to have) a significant work in progress! You will receive thoughtful, devoted attention and feedback from a supportive and inspiring small group. I have strong and passionate feelings about workshopping and I promise that you and your work will be treated to the highest level of care while also benefiting from the closest and most invested level of curiosity and insight. We will also explore craft and generative exercises, all supported with daily yoga and meditation, while basking in the beauty of the Pacific, the roar of the waves, the embracing sun, and the paradisiacal surrounds of Present Moment Retreat Center in Troncones, Mexico, one of the most magical places I have ever led a retreat. I cannot wait to return. Five spots left—details here!
Last of all, I’m on a mission in 2022 to create a vibrant, long-term community of writers who invested in developing their craft, reading amazing work, continually learning, and in an overarching way, engaging with their artistic practice as a means to become more fully human and see the humanity in others even in a world on fire. Art is an energy exchange, and there is nothing we cannot do when we come together through shared artistic exploration. I learned this unequivocally while teaching Writing in the Dark throughout the pandemic. I want to thank those who’ve joined the community I am launching, which lives on Patreon, with membership at different levels offering various ways and amounts of participation.
I am so grateful for your trust even as I’ve moved more slowly than expected due to the way illness and Covid interrupted my schedule these past few months and set me back in ways I’m only beginning to fully recover from. I only announced the community in February—so it’s very new even to me— and it will take time to manifest into its full vibrancy, but the potential is profound, and I am wildly excited about bringing it to life. By summer, I’ll be offering quarterly salons, video craft lectures, member discussions, and more. I hope you will check it out and consider joining.
That’s all for now, and it feels like a whole lot! Please drop a line in response if you have news of your own to share, or questions about any of the above, and, meanwhile, love to you and yours.
