Saturday, May 13

9:00am-1:00pm at Paonia Books

$70

Our most powerful stories can be the most brutal to write, leaving us frustrated, emotionally activated, and stuck. What gets in the way? How can we push forward without damaging our mental and physical health? In this 4-hour workshop hosted in-person by Paonia Books in Paonia, Colorado, we'll build a toolbox for unlocking urgent stories that have so far resisted telling.

Katherine Standefer's debut book Lightning Flowers was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize in Nonfiction and the Arizona/New Mexico Book Award in Memoir, selected as a New York Times Editor's Choice/Staff Pick, and shortlisted for the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Prize from Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. The book was named one of Oprah Magazine's "Best Books of Fall 2020," selected as the Common Read 2022-2023 at Colorado College, and featured in People Magazine, on the goop podcast, and on NPR's Fresh Air. Standefer's previous writing appeared in The Best American Essays 2016 and won the Iowa Review Award in Nonfiction. She earned her MFA in Creative Nonfiction at the University of Arizona and spent time as a Logan Nonfiction Fellow at the Carey Institute for Global Good. She is based out of Wyoming.

As a trauma writing doula, Standefer accompanies nonfiction writers through the underworld process of extracting stories of trauma through the body and the challenge of building trauma narratives beautifully on the page. She brings to this work more than 30 hours of training at the Arizona Trauma Institute, a decade as a sexuality educator, and her own time within the brutal, embodied work and spiritual practice required to birth Lightning Flowers.