2025 Writing Workshop for Women with Jane Sprague (Long Beach, CA and Online)

This group is a project to gather and write together as we form a community of women writers more interested in the writing process than critique. We won’t do critique at all. This workshop will be a hybrid experiment with its focus as in-person writing in many different genres where participants will write together in-person at Jane's home* in Long Beach, CA, while others will be present online.

Handwriting is preferred but use whatever tools you find best for your writing- laptops, cell phones- whatever helps make writing happen for you is welcome.

We will write, read aloud and listen.

Contact Jane if you have any questions about the workshop, getting the zoom link and/or to get her address if you wish to meet & write at her home*. Meetings will be on the following dates:

• Tuesdays - 1/28, 2/4, 2/11, 2/18, 2/25, 3/4, 3/11, 3/18
• 6-8 pm Pacific Time (time zone converter)
• There is no fee.
  
  

This workshop is led by Jane Sprague, poet, educator and publisher of Palm Press. Her published works include The Port of Los Angeles, poetry (Chax); Imaginary Syllabi, pedagogy (Palm);  as well as numerous chapbooks and journals / magazine publications (Chicago Review; etc.). She  produced the conference Small Press Culture Workers in Ithaca,NY and produced the West End Reading Series (Ithaca,NY) that featured poets Bernadette Mayer, Lisa Jarnot and many others. Sprague has taught writing at campuses in NY (Bard), Colorado (Naropa) and California (CSULB; various CCs; Chapman) as well as Pre-K-12  classrooms in NY state in her capacity as a Teaching Artist for Lincoln Center Institute. She taught Creative Writing and Book Arts to incarcerated women at a maximum-security prison in NY.

She has taught book arts and writing for book arts workshops online since, as a person living with disability, the pandemic and the advent of Zoom enabled her to participate in the world in a much wider way. She is committed to leading writers through immersive experiences that privilege the imagination and focus on the process of fresh ways of creating and exploring language experiences.

This workshop is also designed to encourage our thinking to be affected by the writing of
other participants. Jane longs for many analog ways of yore. This workshop is an attempt in that direction: To come together in person as women who value the experience of their imagination and lived experiences  in order to get that stuff down on paper to share with others in a supportive community of other equally engaged women. If you identify as female you are welcome in this space.

Bring the materials you like to have with you when you write: notebook, pens,  thermos for coffee or tea. This house is disability friendly- let me know if you need a ramp or any other accommodation. Folks using Zoom will be seen through the TV so we can have you writing with us and experience your person in the room when you read.

*If you are allergic to cats, let me know.

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO EXTEND THIS INVITATION TO OTHERS

Happy 2025!

Jane Sprague
janesprague@gmail.com