Arachne's Winter is the first seasonally inspired workshop series in 2025. Via Zoom, we will gather to write and workshop for five Saturdays in a row; each week we will meet from 11:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. MST. The series begins January 18th and culminates February 15th (with the Salon/ Celebration/ Closing Ceremony on Sunday, February 16th, 11:00-12:30 MST). Once bitten, you will be injected by the creative juices of the ever ambitious Arachne, ready to weave words from the loom that is the page. This thematic workshop will cast a web of inspiration in the corner of your studio space where you will catch new ideas to feed the writing to come. As always, we will focus on the craft of writing by studying Arachne's tapestry to make our own connections and unique patterns. We will investigate every strand before we interlace them to create a successful big picture that shimmers in the moonlight of our imagination and the imagination of our readers-to-be. We will also contemplate the fabric of time itself, by interrogating the magickal loop of the number 8, and then by listening to the fireside sessions of the Fates themselves as they spin, cast, weave, and cut the cord.

 

This series is for poets and prose writers alike. Genre writers welcome. (W)rites of Passage falls under the School of Divinatory Poetics and we will engage in oracular strategies to enter the space that is your/our story. In addition to divination, other prompts and approaches might include Dada & Surrealist games, Jungian writing journeys, mapping, daydreaming, and ritual/(w)ritual. Writers enrolled in the series will be encouraged to build an ongoing altar to their work using the overall theme series theme they are investigating and experimenting with. (W)rites of Passage has been described by past participants and devoted regulars as a church for writers, a safe place designed to liberate ourselves from the gatekeepers and the critics (especially the ones that exist within ourselves). Sarah Elizabeth Schantz serves as a writing midwife for the writers who make the collective.

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The five-week series is $350.00 and includes a 11-page critique from the instructor as well as feedback each week from peers and the teacher. You will be expected to generate up to 1,000 words to workshop each Saturday based on the sub theme and the prompts/constraints Sarah provides. Participating writers will be assigned literary samples to study as well as the occasional craft essay (all saturated by the seasonal theme and the sub themes within). You will participate in the workshop process, both giving and receiving feedback. Writers will be inspired to push themselves to grow as artists, and to support each other as a cohort, a collective, a literary coven. If you would like to register, please email at writesofpassage13@gmail.com.

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We are currently giving priority to those writers who can do all five weeks of this seasonal series and to those who were enrolled in the prior series, Effigy Fall. We offer rogue versions of the series to a select few participants who would either like to audit the class or take it asynchronously. If you would like to take the series asynchronously it is $175.00 and you will get all the readings and writing prompts plus receive feedback on 1,000 words per week and on an 11-page manuscript at the end of the series). If you'd like to audit the class instead, it is $100.00 and you will get the readings and the writing prompts but no feedback on the writing you do on your own). The live version on Zoom is limited to 8 writers only because we aim to provide the intimacy all artists need to feel seen and to grow. 

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