Speaking your truth despite the obstacles: a poetry and prose workshop (online)

(Pay what you can afford policy available if needed.  The maximum class size is 10.)

Speaking your truth despite the obstacles:
(a poetry & prose workshop open to all)

Sponsored by the Shambhala Center of Philadelphia at 2030 Sansom St., Phila. PA.


Taught by Jeffrey Ethan Lee

       This creative writing workshop’s intent is to enable participants to overcome the many ways that one can avoid saying what really matters and what is the most meaningful to oneself. Some fun and/or challenging exercises will be offered to enable participants to identify their own areas of difficulty, their own taboo areas. Some exercises may be aimed at understanding how fear and outrage can be transformed into tools for developing empathy in writing.  There may also be some time set aside to discuss the importance of speaking truthfully in an era when lying works so extraordinarily well.
       Sharing in the workshop will be optional but strongly encouraged. After the first meeting, there will be group workshop critiques possible for any who want to submit (usually shorter works) to a workshop process. Longer works can be shared in sections.
       There will be an online private google group created for this workshop so that participants can share new works before every workshop and written responses after every workshop.
       There will also be suggested readings from free online resources so that the class may discuss some great contemporaries and great writers from the past.
       Financial constraints should not prevent participation. Participants can ask to pay what they can afford.

Teacher bio:
        Jeffrey Ethan Lee’s novel The Autobiography of Somebody Else was published by White Pine Press (2016.)  His poetry book, identity papers, was a 2006 Colorado Book Award finalist and his first poetry book, invisible sister (Many Mountains Moving Press, 2004), was praised in American Book Review etc.  Towards euphoria was co-winner of the editor’s poetry chapbook prize from Seven Kitchens Press (2012). He won the 2002 Sow’s Ear Poetry Chapbook prize ($1,000) for The Sylf (2003), and the chapbook Color Schemes was a finalist for Moonstone’s first poetry chapbook prize in 2015.  He has taught Creative Writing at Muhlenberg College, Temple University, West Chester University, University of Northern Colorado, etc.