Edinburgh friends! Join me at Edinburgh launch for Ashes and Stones at the wonderful Lighthouse Books. I’m overjoyed & honoured to be hosted by Edinburgh’s radical bookshop—an ally to so many communities. 15 February, 7pm. Ticketing information at the Lighthouse Books Website.
Saturday, 10 September 2022, 7pm GMT online via Zoom. Tickets via eventbrite. Free.
Toil, trouble and tomes: two witches in conversation about difficult history, custodianship, and magic.
Carolee Harrison and Allyson Shaw in conversation discussing what it’s like to be the keeper of difficult books, specifically an original 1490 copy of the infamous witch-hunting manual, Malleus Maleficarum, or the Hammer of Witches, in the Portland State University Library. We’ll talk about the fascinating history of this five hundred year old edition of this book on witch hunting and what it can tell us about the current ‘witch craze’, our responsibilities as custodians of the history of witch hunting, and how this history informs our identities as witches today.
Carloee Harrison is a steward and conservator of Portland State University’s rare book collection and a sister-witch. Her work with Malleus Malificium involves making it publicly available for research as well as preserving and protecting it.
Allyson Shaw’s creative nonfiction book on the Scottish witch-hunts, Ashes and Stones: a Scottish journey in search of witches & witness, will be published by Sceptre, an imprint of Hodder & Stoughton, in January 2023. She’s a witch and independent researcher. Long ago and far away she worked in many libraries as a humble page, and her love of libraries is unbounded.
A workshop exploring the story of Tarot as a prompt and informant to our writing process and our personal narrative
August 20, 2022 7pm BST online via Zoom. £25. Book your place now.
In this two hour workshop we will use the iconography of the tarot’s major arcana as prompts to memory and personal narrative.
You don’t need to know how to read tarot to participate, but those who do work with tarot will find a new way to use your insights with this divination tool to broaden and deepen your writing.
I have thirty years of experience working with tarot. As a child, my first conversations with the cards were as a mysterious game. In this workshop we will rekindle a bit of this wonder as we delve into our pasts on the page.
This workshop is a safe space for women, people of colour and LGBTQ+ people. While we may discuss our writing process, any sharing of our written work will be voluntary.
At the end of the workshop you will have sketched out a short piece of memoir writing with a plan for development and revision.
You will need paper and pen, or something to input text. The major arcana cards from a personal tarot deck is optional—an online deck is available here. https://randomtarotcard.com
Allyson Shaw brings ten years of experience teaching writing at University of California and city colleges in the USA. She has delivered numerous community based workshops throughout her career, including online workshops for the Taibhsear Collective. Recent publications include Fireside Quarterly, Rituals and Declarations, and Fiddlers Green. Her creative nonfiction book, Ashes and Stones: a Scottish journey in search for witches and witness, will be published by Sceptre, the literary imprint of Hodder & Stoughton, in January 2023.
My newest workshop, Reclaiming Our Monsters, pushes boundaries and clears space for subversive imagination. There are still some spaces left–tickets available at Eventibrite. April 30th, 7pm GMT via Zoom.
This workshop is driven by feminist ideas, reworking the monstrous into new empowering guises. It’s also a way to explore folk horror as a wider genre with space for women and non-binary people.
April 30th is the second Halloween of the witches’ calendar. The veil is thin, the dead walk among us, werewolves are born and all good witches fly to the Brocken.
In films, TV and books I’ve always had sympathy with the demonised feminine. I drank up the power in these images, and it has served me well. Not that I’m older, I realise this was a kind of crone-medicine. The crone embraces a lived duality: she knows what she is, are even if the dominant culture and history says she’s extraneous, voiceless and grotesque.
There is a lot going on in the world right now that is truly monstrous. In times of upheaval and uncertainty, what messages do we amplify and share? What realities do we tend? Writing through disaster capitalism and the death throes of patriarchy isn’t a hobby or pastime, it’s a mode of survival and resistance.
How do we know who we are? Write must it—Write it out like the Cailleach on a night raid with her retinue of the dead. Writing it out like a spell, like a draught of blood.
From where I stand writing may be my only power against the forces of destruction that envelop us. It is the sword I have sharpened over decades in the forge of my own raging intellect, my furious imagination.
Teaching is my vocation. It’s a devotional work for me and something I’ve done in and outside of hallowed halls of academia and on the streets and in community centres. I’m thrilled that technology, though far from perfect, allows me to teach others online across the world.
In this two hour workshop we’ll explore the monstrous through an intimate, personal perspective. We’ll embrace the persona of the outsider, the not-quite-human, using subversive world-building, and writing through the eyes of the cursed, the spellbound, the exiled. You’ll need pen, paper and a six sided dice. Join us!
Online via Zoom, April 30th, 7pm gmt Tickets are £25 available from Eventbrite
In this two hour workshop we’ll explore the monstrous through an intimate, personal perspective. We’ll embrace the persona of the outsider, the not-quite-human, using subversive world-building, and writing through the eyes of the cursed, the spellbound, the exiled.
April 30th is the second Halloween of the witches’ calendar. The veil is thin, the dead walk among us, werewolves are born and all good witches fly to the Brocken.
Let’s celebrate and write stories together.
For this workshop you’ll need a pen, paper and a six sided die.
This workshop is driven by feminist ideas, reworking the monstrous into new empowering guises—but also a way to explore folk horror as a wider genre with space for women and non binary people. Every workshop I design is an offering of community, creative fuel and fire to the writers and makers around me. And this one is GONNA BE HELLA FUN.
My next writing workshop will be on Sunday, February 27th at 7pm GMT. This two hour workshop will explore rendering a sense of place in writing. Exercises will centre on facets of setting informed by notions of the Scottish diaspora and an anti-colonial re-enchantment of land, place, and home. Numbers will be very limited, with five spaces reserved for patrons. Tickets are £25 Book your place via the Eventbrite workshop page.
This is the first in a series of creative writing master classes focusing on new nature writing, folklore and ritual through the lens of technique. These writing classes will be aimed at serious writers and creatives, regardless of previous writing experience.
NOTE–These workshops have sold out. Please contact Taibhsear Collective to be added to a waiting list.
Very excited to be teaching a series of writing workshops for Winters last.
Dr. Alice Tarbuck will be teaching the first three workshops in the series, and I’ll be teaching the last three workshops, the Secrets of Our Craft:
For more information, see the Eventbrite page.
As part of the Winter’s Last program, I will presenting poetry as well as teaching an online writing workshop on January 29th.
Ghost Missives: A Writing Workshop Exploring Ancestors and Place
The nights are long and the veil is thin. We tell tales of the dead in verse and song and they tell of us in the wind, rain, ice, and stone.
In this collaborative workshop, I will facilitate the writing of letters in prose poetry to and from the ancestors. The writing will be rooted the Scottish landscape. To set the tone, the session will begin with readings specific to the liminal landscape, and move on to collaborative work. I will guide the group as they work with prompts or “Wilding Cards” I will have made up. These will be exchanged by the group. After some dealing and discussion we will get down to write using the prompts we all have. Writers will be invited to play with voice, speaking from the point of view of our ancestors, ourselves or the land itself. In the final section of the workshop there will be opportunity for further collaboration between writers as well as time to read and share with the group.
For more information on tickets and other presenters and workshops, go to the Tiabhsear Collective website.
I’m honoured to be presenting my work at Winter’s Last: A Celebration of Scottish Folklore, Traditions and Community Practices hosted by The Taibhsear Collective, the last in their trilogy of explorations into Winter customs. The weekend will be held on the 23rd and 24th January 2021 at the Scottish Storytelling Centre Edinburgh. In the event of a possible lockdown, the readings, performances and workshops will be held online over the course of several weeks.
Allyson Shaw, Author of Ashes and Stones 