27 powers: a la carte

MONTHLY CLASSES, TAUGHT BY TALENTED WRITERS AND CREATIVES

Each month I invite a writer or a creator of some kind into the classroom to talk about their work, about their process and about creativity. These 90-minute events are meant to inspire and encourage writers and creatives to keep going with their work, to take a deep breath and to move forward courageously, knowing they aren’t alone.

Each session includes an intimate conversation with the guest speaker where they share their experiences, their work, and what they’ve learned along the path. The last 30 minutes of each class are opened up for participation and group discussion.

HYBRID: THE CREATIVITY OF CROSS POLINTANING THE PAGE

with Liz Rosner and Laurie Wagner

Genre-bending has been taking place among literary forms for a long time — but cross-fertilization seems more popular than ever. How can we borrow and learn from a variety of practices — poetic, journalistic, scientific, speculative — and create stronger, more interesting pieces?

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DOORWAY TO LISTENING: POEMS OF STILLNESS, ATTENTION AND GRACE

with Marie Howe and Laurie Wagner

Please Join me in welcoming our friend, Marie Howe, one of America’s most prominent living poets, as she explores the journey of writing poetry, and how she learned to become a deep and trusted listener. During our time together, Marie will read from her own work, dropping into the particular experience of each poem and what it asked of her.

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HOW TO MAKE A POEM

with Joy Sullivan and Laurie Wagner

Joy is not just a wonderful writer, someone whose work is fresh, honest and accessible, but she’s also a fantastic teacher who knows how to lead writers into the heart of a poem so that it vibrates with beauty and meaning. I love bringing writers int to show us how the sausage is made. It’s part art, part dream, part sitting down and discovering what matters on the page.

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FINDING THE MUSE

with Jacqueline Suskin and Laurie Wagner

In 2009, Jacqueline Suskin opened up her Poem Store, which meant packing up her typewriter everyday, taking off on her bicycle and setting up shop at the Hollywood Farmer’s Market in Los Angeles to write poems for people. In the 10 years she made that her job, she wrote over 40,000 poems for ordinary citizens. This is how she learned about humanity, about people, how we all have the same longings, and the same heartbreaks.

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BREAKING FAMILY SECRETS: THE MOVE INTO MEMOIR

with Leslie Absher and Laurie Wagner

Leslie Absher knows the cost of keeping secrets. Growing up as the queer daughter of a father who worked for the CIA, but who didn’t admit it for years, coming and going, but never telling the family where he was off to, she understood that in her family, there were topics that were not to be discussed. She also knew the value in speaking her truth.

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FINDING YOUR BELONGING

with Ann Randolph and Laurie Wagner

How as creatives do we keep going? How do we commit ourselves to the creative path if the world around us isn’t always popping champagne corks in our direction? How do we trust ourselves as artists, and find our creative belonging?

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TRUE CONFESSIONS: INTIMACY, TRUST AND CONNECTION IN OUR WORK

with Alison Luteman and Laurie Wagner

I am thrilled to introduce you to Sun Magazine Essayist and Poet, Alison Luteman, as we share how to take the more intimate details of our lives to create deeper intimacy and connection in our work.

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THE IMAGE: THE HEART OF THE POEM

with Ellen Bass and Laurie Wagner

Ellen is one of my favorite poets and people. A sister and a mentor, her work is instructional and generous, showing writers not only how to create depth and beauty on the page, but how to live it off the page as well. That matters so much to me; I’m in it for the long game, not just the byline.

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WRITING INTO PARADOX

with Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer and Laurie Wagner

It is our pleasure to welcome poet, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, a writer who knows how to host the most vibrant kind of love, hand in hand with the deepest grief. This has made her one of the most holy poets that I know, a woman who writes to understand and to survive. A poet who asks, what does this life, this poem have to teach me?
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THE OLYMPICS OF CREATIVE SELF TRUST

with Maria Bowler and Laurie Wagner

Maria Bowler calls herself a marriage counselor between you and your creativity. Her aim is to help writers and creatives get out of the way so they can trust the sound of their glorious, weird voice, and create from that place. In this conversation Maria talks about the importance of leaning into and amplifying the quirks that are your own style, as well as the importance of vulnerability in your work as a way to connect to readers.
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MAKING HARD THINGS BEAUTIFUL

with Andrea Gibson and Laurie Wagner

A week before this class, spoken work poet, Andrea Gibson found out that they had their second reoccurrence of cancer and that there was no clear path toward remission. This conversation about creating work in the midst of a diagnosis, and how we use what is in front of us to create beauty from is a profound conversation about living, and about waking up into our lives with one of those most honest, vulnerable writers alive today.
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THE BRAIDED ESSAY

with Lidia Yuknavitch and Laurie Wagner

Lidia Yuknavitch is one of the most out of the box, creative writers working today. In this class on the braided essay, we learn how to break a story up into three different strands/story lines that might not seem to be related, but which add complexity and tension to a story, bringing it alive in an unforgettable way.
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WRITING AS A PATH OF KNOWING

with Mark Nepo and Laurie Wagner

The creative path is a practice of showing up with vulnerability and surrender – on the page and off. This talk with poet and teacher, Mark Nepo, is a master class in dropping the veil and showing up as our deepest, most true selves. Whether we’re writing or simply living, it’s the vulnerability that brings us into connection to ourselves and to our community of readers.
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SETTING THE WILD ANGEL FREE

with Maggie Smith and Laurie Wagner

Poet and memoirist, Maggie Smith spins the material of her life into gold, whether she’s writing poems or crafting a memoir. The poem that took her work viral was written as she was going through her son’s pant’s pockets before tossing them in the wash. It’s so tempting to think we need to discover the big stories to write something worthy – we don’t. Our stories are right at our feet.
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YOUR STORIES, YOUR FAMILY

with Lauren Fleshman and Laurie Wagner

Writing about family is always tricky. Elite runner, Lauren Fleshman, is one of the most honest writers that I know, which means that she spent a good amount of time getting the delicate stories in her book right and making sure they were true. In this interview we talk about her book, Good for a Girl, where she examines the complicated relationship she had with her father, one of her biggest supporters, and also someone she had to separate from in order to move forward.
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10 LINES THAT CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE

with Maya Stein and Laurie Wagner

Maya Stein, the poet Laureate of Belfast, Maine, is also the not so secret muse of our Wild Writing community. Maya’s work is deep, accessible and inspiring to all of us in the practice. In this conversation we talk about her practice of writing a 10-Line poem each week and sending it out to readers. She also shows us how to write one ourselves.
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A PAGE OF ONE’S OWN

with Jeannette Encinias and Laurie Wagner

Poet Jeannette Encinias talks about how she broke free from the tight and unforgiving conversations that had previously kept her from the page. This is a conversation about the courage to write what is true as an act of courage and freedom.
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PANNING FOR GOLD

with Sue Ann Gleason and Laurie Wagner

Sue Ann Gleason, long time friend and writer, joins me in a conversation about taking the messy first drafts of Wild Writing from our notebooks and journals, polishing them and turning them into finished pieces. Our approaches are different; Sue Ann is organized and precise, I am messy and intuitive. There’s something here for everyone.
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WRITING INTO THE POETRY OF OUR LIVES

with James Crews and Laurie Wagner

In this wonderful talk, poet James Crews talks about everyday magic and where he finds his poems. Tender and sensitive, James is a wonderful teacher who reminds us that the poems are always in front of us waiting to be discovered.
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TAMING THE WILD: WRITING PERSONAL ESSAYS

with Laura Fraser and Laurie Wagner

Writing about our lives and turning them into essays is a wonderfully challenging and satisfying craft. In this talk, nonfiction writer Laura Fraser, details her process of taking a messy first draft and creating the arc of the personal essay she is wanting to tell. She also offers an accessible template that helps structure our pieces.
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A CONVERSATION ABOUT POETRY

with Danusha Laméris and Laurie Wagner

Living and writing as a seamless and graceful act of living. That’s the message from this gorgeous master class from poet, Danusha Laméris. We were all stunned by this conversation with this woman who walks the world with reverence and grace. A gorgeous class on writing and poetry.
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A CONVERSATION ABOUT SELF-PUBLISHING

with Six Wild Sisters and Laurie Wagner

The Wild Writing Family is loaded with writers who have taken the time to gather their work and self-publish. This class covers the choices they made with their work; how to organize it, how to edit, and which print choices to make to get their work out into the world. Everyone on the panel has done it differently and there are lots of great tips here.
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A SMALL PRESS, THE WORK WE DO

with Toad Hall Editions and Laurie Wagner

If you’ve ever been interested in working with a small press, this conversation with Toad Hall Editions, a small press out of Maine, will give you an idea of what it would be like to work intimately with a dedicated group of people who are committed to bringing your project to life. Toad Hall edits, shapes and advises. Separate from their own imprint, they also offer a service where they help writers self-publish their own work. You’ll come away asking yourself whether self-publishing is for you and how to get started.
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WRITING MEMOIR

with Laura Davis and Laurie Wagner

Teacher and writer, Laura Davis spent 10 years working on the memoir she wrote about her mother, and has lived to tell the tale. Learning how to reveal a complicated truth about the people we love and what happened in the past is just part of this rich conversation with Laura. There are lots of good insights here for memoir writers.
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