Alchemy Writing Workshop was created due to a need for writers to learn the craft and to gain the experience necessary to become successful in the writing world as professional writers. As a single mother with dreams of becoming a writer, not having the finances or ability to attend an MFA or writing retreats/workshops left me outside of the game to learn and enhance my writing.
This workshop is for those who are serious about their writing but don’t have access to an MFA program or other workshops, classes or retreats due to family responsibilities, jobs, or income. Responsibilities should never stop you from achieving your dreams. The writing workshops, lectures, and classes will be taught by various professional writers, performers, artists, and organizations in your writing communities. These are talented individuals who are interested and motivated to help you become successful. Each workshop or class will be taught in-person (once safe) or on an online platform easily accessible to the community, whether on a user-friendly website such as Wet Ink or via Zoom.
All are welcome. We are fiercely inclusive of LGBTQIA BIPOC and promise to create a liberated space. *All workshop instructors are trained using Felicia Rose Chavez’s The Anti Racist Writing Workshop: How to Decolonize the Creative Classroom.
Every writer has different areas of interest and needs. We are here to ensure you learn skills and are educated on crafts and topics that will help you become successful on your journey to becoming a professional writer, regardless of circumstance. Alchemy Writing Workshop is dedicated to helping you fulfill your dreams. Your words matter.
How much do workshops and classes cost?
The workshops and classes are priced based on length and time. Part of the proceeds go to a scholarship fund established by Alchemy Writing Workshop to help students and members in the writing community to cover costs associated with applying for grants, publication submissions, and other writing/creative costs. Alchemy Services encourages BIPOC Writers to apply. Scholarships are always available. BIPOC and LGBTQIA Writers will be given first priority.
In need of a scholarship?
Check out our scholarship application page! Are you wanting to apply for a grant or writing retreat? Do you have a contest submission or journal submission you want to send your work to, but the fees are unaffordable for you? Click here and read more about how to apply for help!
Do you want to teach a class or workshop for Alchemy Writing Workshop?
Email alchemywritingworkshop@gmail.com with your class or workshop proposal and a brief statement on why volunteering to teach for your writing community is important. Those seeking opportunities to gain experience in teaching without access to a TA program or other means can learn valuable teaching skills through Alchemy Writing Workshop. Interested in an internship? Check out the Internship Program with Alchemy Author Services.
☿ Community Coven: A Ritual Space for Writers
COMMUNITY COVEN is a community-based workshop born out of the necessary: to develop a writing community and learn what you want to learn without the worry of cost. There should not be a price for learning. Here, our instructors volunteer their time and expertise to teach all levels and areas of writing craft. What practices, tools, tidbits, and to-do’s do you want to create, catapult, and conceptualize within your words? It’s all about you and supporting our local communities/small businesses/artists/creators. Each month we will showcase one community business or creator to help spotlight them and/or their business. All are welcome. We are fiercely inclusive of LGBTQIA BIPOC and promise to create a liberated space. *All workshop instructors are trained using Felicia Rose Chavez’s The Anti Racist Writing Workshop: How to Decolonize the Creative Classroom.
Want to teach? Message me at alchemyauthor services.com
Let’s hang out
Workshops and classes are constantly being added, as well as new teachers.
A Listing of Alchemy Writing Workshop Courses:
CATCHING QUETZALCOATL: OVERCOMING THE MYTH OF WRITER’S BLOCK (ZOOM)
This will be online via Zoom. Please message me for accommodations if needed (camera off, closed captioning, all accommodation requests will be met).
Instructor: Edward Vidaurre
Date/Time: Saturday, July 8th, from 1:00 – 3:00 CST
Why Quetzalcoatl? The Aztec god of wind and wisdom supports learning, priestly study, writing, and books. His form and imagery embody what it is to be a poet, from his feathers to his wind breastplate.
Using Quetzalcoatl’s image and story as a focus, we will examine examples of how to turn anything that grabs your attention into an opportunity to write!
In this generative workshop, you can expect to leave with several drafts of poems that you can refine in your own time.
We will use Duende and Muses as other images and inspiration, focusing on the following themes:
- Defining self
- Liberation
- Inheritance
- Finding Community
- Atonement and measures to correct them
DISCOVERING THE FLASH IN FLASH FICTION WORKSHOP (ZOOM)
This will be online via Zoom. Please message me for accommodations if needed (camera off, closed captioning, all accommodation requests will be met).
Instructor: Hillary Leftwich
Date/Time: TBA
Zoom meeting dates will be the following dates from TBA
In this generative workshop, we will focus on the elements of flash fiction and what sets it apart from longer forms and discuss examples from various flash writers. With a focus on imagery, emotional balance, theme, and overall structure, students will understand the architecture of flash fiction while generating work of their own in a supportive environment and peer review in class. By the end of this workshop, each student will have at least one piece of flash fiction completed.
So You’re a Neurodivergent Writer: Now What?
TBA
Instructor: Said Shaiye
Have you struggled with traditional writing advice? Do you hate feedback and revision of any kind? Do you find it difficult to call yourself a writer because of these things? I have some good news: there’s nothing wrong with you, and you’re more of a writer than you’ve been led to believe. How do I know? Because I’ve learned the hard way that no single approach works for everyone. Being Autistic, I see the world in ways that depart from what we’ve been taught is “the norm.”
Neurodivergent people communicate differently because our minds work differently. This can make life difficult, but it also makes writing easy (if you write how your brain wants you to). Once I learned to trust my instincts and embrace my differences, the world of writing opened in miraculous ways.
In this generative workshop, you’re invited to explore some of the insights I’ve gained along my journey and use them to build your generative writing practice. We’ll affirm that the traditional critique/feedback method isn’t the only way to grow as a writer–that it may be what’s holding you back–and discover why our approach to writing needs to mirror our approach to life.
Participants are welcome to work on new writing or previous writing with the goal of thinking about new approaches to writing. We will focus on self-revision strategies and prompts for new writing or to bring to life/a new lens on previous work.
Participants will take away new work, ideas on creating new writing after the workshop ends, and tips for developing and sustaining a generative writing practice moving forward.
There will be plenty of time to write and no negative critique. Just love. If you feel that traditional pedagogy excludes you, this workshop is for you. You don’t have to stare into the sun to know it’s there. You merely need to feel its warmth on your skin.
In this four-week online workshop, we will be working together within the framework of writing exercises, craft articles, and writing examples as you produce a draft each week in the hybrid form. With your fellow students, we will workshop and support your writing with a weekly Zoom call to discuss, vent, laugh, and read your work out loud. You will also receive extensive editing suggestions from me on your work and additional one-on-one meetings are available as well. Once the workshop is over, you will leave with the beginning of a hybrid collection to continue to work on after gaining confidence and support during our workshop and meetings. Priority to BIPOC and LGBTQ writers.
Building Discernment and Trust in Our Editing Practices–COMMUNITY COVEN WORKSHOP
Instructor: Lauren Samblanet
Our editing practices can easily be taken over by fear, anxiety, concerns about marketability, imposter syndrome, and compare & despair syndrome. when our minds contract, as they do in states of fear and worry, we lose sight of the heart of our work and may make editing choices that don’t strengthen the heartbeat of our project(s). this two-hour workshop is designed to get us in touch with our truest creative desires, to find & hold close the heartbeat of our project(s), and to discern when our editing choices are aligned with the integrity and heart of our work vs when our editing choices are being motivated by other factors and/or emotions. this workshop will include a meditation, mindfulness offerings for your writing and editing processes, and a generative exercise to help us practice discernment and trust as we edit. Online via ZOOM. Please let us know if you have any accommodations if needed.
Date/Time: This workshop will be offered twice to accommodate participant’s work schedules/life:
Moved to June: TBA
COLLAGE AS A LITERARY PORTAL-ALCHEMY WRITING WORKSHOP (FORTHCOMING IN JULY, 2022)
Collage can be defined as “art [that] results from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole” (wikipedia). while we may most often think of collage as a visual art practice, makers in many mediums have been using collage techniques to create not just a new whole, but also to shift from the individual to the collective, from an “i” to a “we”, or to move through the personal to speak to a larger politic. we’ll spend our time in this workshop exploring collage in various mediums – from visual art to film to writing – as a way to understand the possibilities and portals that collage can offer us as writers through referential poetics, collaborative writing, and interdisciplinary writing. this workshop will include generative exercises including interdisciplinary and collaborative exercises.
SYNCHING POP CULTURE WITHIN OUR NARRATIVES: SEARCHING FOR ART IN A POP CULTURE WORLD Alchemy Writing Workshop
Instructor: Cynthia Atkins
Using Pop Culture—how do icons inform and how do they work as metaphor? Time periods? Pop culture in relation to history and archival relationships?
Pop culture, celebrity figures, music, art, advertising. How does it sync with the subject and narrative? What does it excavate, explicate?
This class will focus on the subject matter, style, voice, as well as learning about imagery, tone, and rhythm (see workshop page for more details below).
Date/Time:
Zoom meeting dates will be the following dates from 7 pm – 9 pm EST:
Tuesdays: June 7th, June 14th, June 21st, and June 28th
This will be online via Zoom. Please message me for accommodations if needed (camera off, closed captioning, all accommodation requests will be met).
☿ Alchemy Author Services 