Storyscapes Studio

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Everyone Has a Story to Tell

Launching in January 2022, the Storyscapes Studio offers writers of all genres and all levels the opportunity to find the stories within them and bring them onto the page. Find the voice that makes you unique. Using the Amherst Writers & Artists (AWA) method, we’ll meet online weekly for six weeks, using time-based prompts as inspiration. All material is considered fiction and all work receives responses about what resonates or sticks. There is no critique. Certified AWA-facilitator Barbara Krasner will provide the prompts.

About the Amherst Writers & Artists Method

Pat Schneider founded the method through her book, Writing Alone and with Others (Oxford University Press, 2003). Nothing could be more appropriate to the COVID times we’re living through right now. The AWA method adheres to Five Essential Affirmations:

  1. Everyone has a strong, unique voice
  2. Everyone is born with creative genius
  3. Writing as an art form belongs to all people, regardless of economic class or educational level
  4. The teaching of craft can be done without damage to a writer’s original voice or artistic self-esteem
  5. A writer is someone who writes

Upcoming Workshops

Writing Family History

Perhaps you’ve come across a photo or a family heirloom that intrigues you. Maybe you’ve found your immigrant grandparents’ citizenship papers. In this four-week cycle, we’ll write to timed prompts to help you put your thoughts on the page. Each session will last 90 minutes via Zoom on Sundays, 2:00 – 3:30 pm ET. Family history can be preserved forever if someone, maybe you, writes it down. Fee: $120, starts January 9, 2022 with a free, introductory workshop on Sunday, November, 14, 2020 at 2 pm ET.

Writing Memoir

Memoirist Sue William Silverman writes in her craft book, Fearless Confessions, that memoir involves the connection between the voice of experience and the voice of innocence. We’ll write to a variety of prompts to bring these voices together with insight and respect. We’ll meet via Zoom for 90 minutes each week in a four-week cycle on Saturdays, 11 am – 1 pm ET. Fee: $150, starts January 8, 2022.

About Barbara Krasner

AWA-certified facilitator Barbara Krasner has been writing with the AWA method since 2011 and received her training in 2013. A former literary agent, she writes fiction, nonfiction, and poetry for adults and young readers. Work using the method has appeared in Jewish Literary Journal, Poetica, Michigan Quarterly Review, South 85 Journal, Peregrine, and other literary journals. She has been nominated for a fiction Pushcart and her middle-grade novel in verse, 37 Days at Sea, about the ill-fated 1939 voyage of the MS St. Louis debuted Spring 2021 from Kar-Ben. Her young adult biography in verse, Ethel’s Song: Ethel Rosenberg’s Life in Poems, will be published by Calkins Creek in Fall 2022.