Work With Me
Workshops, facilitation, retreats, and collaborative practice.
I facilitate writing and arts-based practices that create structured ways to make, attend, witness, and be with others. Grief, trauma, disability, caregiving, institutional harm, and the ordinary complexity of being alive are conditions the work may hold, rather than identities participants are asked to perform.
How I work
The invitation is to make something—not to perform recovery.
I have been trained in the Amherst Writers & Artists method since 2011. In my workshops, people write in the room, may choose whether to share, and receive attention to what is strong and alive in the work. I adapt the form for access, context, and the needs of the group.
These are structured, carefully facilitated creative spaces. They are informed by research on trauma and resiliency, but they are not clinical treatment or group therapy.
Selected programs
Current and continuing forms
Writing for Resiliency
Joining a workshop
An ongoing generative writing workshop for people exploring personal experience and the effects of individual, institutional, and structural violence. We write together, may choose whether to read aloud, and respond to the strengths of each new work. Writing is a practice of craft, attention, witnessing, and connection, without a requirement to disclose trauma.
Currently meeting Tuesday evenings, 5:30–7:30 p.m. Central. Ask about joining.
The Art of Loss
Grief touches every life, and it is not always possible to speak about loss in ordinary social encounters. The Art of Loss offers writing together in the Amherst Writers & Artists method, making room for grief, memory, creativity, and the experiences that matter to us. Writing and optional sharing create opportunities to witness one another’s work.
Developed through AWA’s Power of Story program. Read the full AWA description and find sessions.
Homecoming: Writing, Making, Belonging
A six-session arts-based writing program developed with Cunningham Township Supervisor’s Office and the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center. Participants write, make art, listen, and share work if they choose. The group explores home, safety, connection, and belonging through writing, collective making, and publication.
Rainbow Writing
A writing workshop for queer people and allies, co-facilitated by Meadow Jones and Matthew Curlewis using the Amherst Writers & Artists method. Together we generate new writing, explore queer experience and imagination, and share work by choice, with strengths-based responses.
New dates to be announced. Read the full workshop description at Amsterdam Writers.
On Awakening: Writing for Recovery
A developing writing workshop about recovery and the experience of awakening to a life in change. Through writing and optional sharing, participants can explore what they are experiencing, noticing, carrying, and beginning to understand. The workshop emphasizes creative expression and witness rather than treatment or required disclosure.
Community creativity workshops
Participatory writing, art, conversation, zine-making, and experimental pedagogy developed across community spaces, public programs, and institutional partnerships.
Custom workshops and curricula
Trauma-responsive writing, arts-based inquiry, caregiving, grief, embodied knowledge, disability, community participation, and organizational learning, developed for the needs of a particular group.
Recurring gatherings
Community practices
Sunday Night Spaghetti Dinner and Salon
A recurring home-based gathering for food, conversation, music, stories, and company. Spaghetti and salad bring people to the table; guests may bring something to share or simply come as they are. A practice of hospitality, belonging, and returning to one another.
Wednesday Night Meditation Practice
A recurring opportunity to sit together in meditation and practice attention. A shared time for quiet, presence, and contemplative practice.
Come write with us, or invite me to develop a workshop with your group.
For individual participation, ask what is open or coming next. I also develop workshops for community organizations, schools, care networks, staff groups, artists, and public programs.
September–October 2026 · Ann Arbor Zen Buddhist Temple
Writing and art at a Zen retreat
Writing and drawing from things participants saw, did, and felt in the past 24 hours.