I’m an author, speaker, and consultant illuminating how the intersection of culture and policy shapes both individual lives & the planet.

Bring me to your organization.

My job as a writer is to ask questions bigger than any one discipline can hold and to tell stories more truthfully than most individuals can hazard. I infuse the sacred and the embodied back into conversations more often analytical, academic, political.

The Trauma-Informed Creative Writing Classroom

I offer custom trainings on managing trauma in the creative writing writing classroom.

In a typical 6-hour sequence, we’ll begin with an overview of how trauma works in the body, how to recognize symptoms of trauma in the classroom, and what we know about the intersection between trauma and writing—how it can heal us and when it can break us. We’ll overview the best practices for syllabus disclaimers, tools for talking to students about their topical choices, and why content warnings are limited in their effectiveness. We’ll discuss the role of the writing teacher vs. the mental health practitioner, as well as the obligations of the facilitator in terms of self-regulation and structural awareness. We’ll explore shame as a form of trauma and a toxic presence in the creative writing workshop.

After a lunch break, we’ll proceed under the assumption that essays including traumatic material will show up in the pile, digging into the craft problems of the trauma essay in order to create familiarity and build a craft toolbox that prevents the content from eclipsing the form (and path forward in revision). We’ll overview issues like black-and-white characters, the fragmentation of memory, and cognitive disorganization, and discuss how to elevate a personal story toward the universal. We’ll keep an eye on how our feedback might land in an activated nervous system and overview what trauma-informed workshopping might look like. We’ll talk about how systemic racism factors into trauma in the classroom. And we’ll identify individual instructors’ own personal activations and any cultural beliefs that affect the way they respond to students (and take care of themselves).

Because we live in a society that is just beginning to understand what trauma is, because many instructors are living with over-activated nervous systems themselves, and because students are in many cases struggling to access mental healthcare and desperate for venues to explore their most devastating and charged experiences, I recommend leaving plenty of time for reflection, writing exercises, and conversations that allow faculty to fully take in this information and process their experiences.

Want me to consult for your organization, speak at your conference, visit your university, or appear on your podcast?

Submit a request below and I’ll be in touch with further questions or details. I can’t guarantee a “Yes!” until after I’ve examined my calendar, publicity flow, and income-generating commitments, but I’m so grateful for your interest.