5 sessions, Wednesdays, February 7 to March 6, 1-2pm Eastern

online, 10 students max, writers of all genres and experience level welcome

Writers at all stages of their careers—from beginners looking to publish their first personal essay or poem to award-winners with several novels—struggle with self-esteem, self-loathing, and general malaise. Considering the myriad of personal, political, socio-economic, and environmental catastrophes that shape our lives and our social media feeds, is it any wonder we feel shut down when it’s time to create?

In this five session workshop, we’ll explore techniques (weird writing prompts, wild readings, messy writers’ notebooks, collage, meditation, chair yoga, and more) to help us write in spite of, alongside of, and/or perhaps out of our personal and political pain and suffering. We will also work on a meta/process level to examine the moments when we go dark, shut down, and/or give up on our creative practices, so that we may better understand how to restart them. Lastly, we will give each other supportive and generative feedback to honor work at the very beginning of its inception.

Each student will also get a private 30 minute session with the instructor to work on whatever they wish.

About the Instructor

Carley Moore is a queer, disabled writer who has published two novels, Panpocalypse (Feminist Press, 2022) and The Not Wives (Feminist Press, 2019); an essay collection, 16 Pills (Tinderbox Editions, 2018); a poetry chapbook, Portal Poem (Dancing Girl Press, 2016; and a young adult novel, The Stalker Chronicles (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2011). Her debut poetry collection Heartless is forthcoming from Indolent Books. Her work has appeared in Aster(ix), The American Poetry Review, Book Forum, The Brooklyn Rail, Electric Literature, The Journal of Popular Culture, Lit Hub, The Los Angeles Book Review of Books, Public Books. Carley received a Best of the Net Award in Non-Fiction for her essay “My Big Gay Essay” and an Indie Foreward Award for her novel The Not Wives. The Not Wives was also a finalist for both a LAMMY in Bisexual Fiction and a Firecracker Literary Award. Carley’s novel Panpocalypse was a finalist for the Brooklyn Public Library’s Literary Prize and the ALA Stonewall Barbara Gittings Literature Award. Edition Assemblage will publish the German translation of Panpocalypse in 2024. Carley is a Clinical Professor of Writing and Creative Production at New York University and an Associate at The Institute for Writing and Thinking at Bard College where she has taught teachers across disciplines and grade levels to use more writing in the classroom. Carley lives with her daughter and two cats in Brooklyn. You can find her on Instagram @fragmentedsky or blogging on Substack.

Help! I Hate Myself and the World and I Can't Write! 5 sessions with Carley Moore