creativewritingworkshop

ARCANE MEMOIR: AN ONLINE WRITING WORKSHOP

| Allyson Shaw

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.

Register on Eventbrite

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

Find the Eventbrite page here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/arcane-memoir-an-online-writing-workshop-tickets-383322346457

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.

Writing Yourself Home: a masterclass

| Allyson Shaw

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. 

Ghost Missives Online Writing Workshop

| Allyson Shaw

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.