About Me, About You: a writing workshop by and for women of color Mar 15th, 2027 Venue: Collegeville Institute Categories: Writing Workshop Tags: writing workshops This generative writing workshop will bring together women and gender-expansive folk of color from diverse backgrounds to write creative prose (fiction, nonfiction, and hybrid forms) rooted in personal experience. Participants will generate new work based on the group’s discussions and reflections on lineage, tradition, and faith.
Apart, and Yet a Part Mar 2nd, 2027 Venue: Collegeville Institute Categories: Writing Workshop Ingredients for a productive writing experience: a room with a view, meals provided, the opportunity to structure your writing time as you wish, and access to a professional writing coach. This program is designed to give participants maximum time and freedom for writing. Applications are due: Monday, January 20, 2025.
Creative Convergence: A Gathering of Words with Patrice Gopo Feb 11th, 2027 Venue: Saint Francis Springs Prayer Center Categories: Writing Workshop Patrice Gopo is an award-winning writer who crafts stories steeped in themes of place, belonging, and home. Her essay collections include Autumn Song, recipient of the inaugural Pattis Family Foundation Creative Arts Book Award, and All the Colors We Will See, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. Her picture books include Ripening Time, recipient of a North Carolina Book Award and finalist for a Southern Book Prize, All the Places We Call Home, and the forthcoming Beyond Alaska’s Window. Patrice is also the editor of the essay anthology We Deserve to Heal, a project deeply connected to the Collegeville Institute.
Waiting for Words: An Advent Writing Workshop with Lauren Winner Dec 8th, 2026 Venue: St. Francis Springs Prayer Center Categories: Regional Workshop, Writing Workshop Waiting and generating; patience and urgency—these are all ingredients to the writing life, and, indeed, to the spiritual life. In this five-day workshop, we will enter the season of Advent with prayerful attention and focus, and we will both wait patiently for our words and undertake reading and writing exercises that summon our words. Some of our time will be devoted to being creatively nourished through short readings, and through engagement with visual art, music, and other artistic media; some of our time will be devoted to generative writing exercises. Some of our time, we'll be together in a group; some time, in solitude. Arrive looking for inspiration and nourishment, ready to write and to listen to the Spirit. Writers of all levels welcome.
Autumn Rhythms, Rituals, & Writing: Nourishment for Creative Souls with Charlotte Donlon (a 3-part virtual workshop series) Nov 9th, 2026 | 7:00 pm Venue: Virtual Workshop Categories: Writing Workshop The contemplative writer Thomas Merton reminds us that "there is in all things an inexhaustible sweetness and purity, a silence that is a fount of action and joy." What if the season of Autumn itself became our instructor? How can falling leaves, cooling afternoons, the longer evenings form our creative practices?
Autumn Rhythms, Rituals, & Writing: Nourishment for Creative Souls with Charlotte Donlon (a 3-part virtual workshop series) Oct 12th, 2026 | 7:00 pm Venue: Virtual Workshop Categories: Writing Workshop The contemplative writer Thomas Merton reminds us that "there is in all things an inexhaustible sweetness and purity, a silence that is a fount of action and joy." What if the season of Autumn itself became our instructor? How can falling leaves, cooling afternoons, the longer evenings form our creative practices?
Autumn Rhythms, Rituals, & Writing: Nourishment for Creative Souls with Charlotte Donlon (a 3-part virtual workshop series) Sep 14th, 2026 | 7:00 pm Venue: Virtual Workshop Categories: Writing Workshop The contemplative writer Thomas Merton reminds us that "there is in all things an inexhaustible sweetness and purity, a silence that is a fount of action and joy." What if the season of Autumn itself became our instructor? How can falling leaves, cooling afternoons, the longer evenings form our creative practices?
Grounded by Place/Growing through Time with Camille T. Dungy Aug 5th, 2026 Venue: Collegeville Institute Categories: Writing Workshop In this generative workshop, we will work on bringing life and depth to our writing by conveying compelling connections to the patterns and textures of the living world. Thinking in communion with some of the sample texts we will read during our time together, we will spend our time building work that engages with ecological thought and practices.
Poetry, Scripture, & Imagination: A Workshop for Preachers with Jessica Jacobs Jul 27th, 2026 Venue: Collegeville Institute Categories: Writing Workshop In this workshop, poet and essayist Jessica Jacobs will draw on her experience researching and writing unalone, a collection of poems in conversation with Genesis—and on Ignatian contemplation; the midrashic practice of close reading; and the use of literary techniques like the expansive use of figurative language—to offer some new possible pathways into exploring the text and then compelling your listeners to join you on that journey.
Writing with the Mystics: A Generative Fiction Workshop with Garth Greenwell Jul 13th, 2026 Venue: Collegeville Institute Categories: Writing Workshop In this generative workshop led by PEN/Faulkner award winner Garth Greenwell, we will explore the writings of three profound thinkers of the Christian mystical tradition—Julian of Norwich, Marguerite Porete, and Meister Eckhardt—to suggest meaningful new territories in our creative work. At the heart of mystical or apophatic thinking is the same intuition that fuels much creative writing: a sense of the profound inadequacy of language to represent certain kinds of experience. This intuition can lead to remarkable linguistic innovation, an attempt to somehow supercharge language with meaningfulness, to make it a more expansive, more capacious medium.
