WRITING INSTRUCTION, EDITING, PUBLISHING/WRITING CAREER CONSULTATION

Coaching * Editing* Workshops * Courses * Retreats * Publishing/Career Consultations

Through supportive and rigorous editing and workshopping, we'll crystallize the heart, essence, and artfulness of your nonfiction work.

Private Consultation and Coaching

I offer editing; writing coaching; essay, manuscript, and book proposal consultations; and writing career and publishing consultations in person or on zoom. My writing clients have published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, McSweeny's, Slate, and other publications. Contact me here to inquire about availability and rates.

Class/Workshop/Coaching topics:

  • Personal Essay and Memoir

  • Reported Nonfiction

  • Memoir

  • Short Stories

  • Writing About the Body

  • Writing about Illness

  • Literature of Motherhood

  • Literature of Happiness

  • Lyric Essay/Avant Garde Forms of Creative Nonfiction

  • Nature Writing

  • Jewish Writers and Writing

  • Querying/Publishing

  • Freelance Writing Career

  • Getting Creatively Unstuck (The Artist's Way)

Upcoming Courses  

All courses take place on Zoom.
Coming this winter/spring….. (message me to get on wait list)

Creative Nonfiction Master Class
This class is for nonfiction writers who want to advance their craft through workshop, and who want to learn through the reading and discussion of the work of others. In this 9-week course, students will have the opportunity to submit up to 10 pages (2,500 words, double-spaced) three times for intensive workshop, receiving written feedback in the form of line edits and macro-comments from instructor and classmates, as well as discussion of their piece in class. Workshops will be at once warm and instructive, encouraging and honest, pushing each writer beyond what they’ve been able to do on their own, while fostering community and camaraderie among the class. Class time may include brief lessons and writing exercises as needed to hone specific craft elements such as tone, plot arc, pacing, or dialogue. In this online class, students will refine their craft, strengthen analytical skills of their own and others’ work, gain a writing community with connections that often outlast the length of the course, and leave with a renewed sense of what they can accomplish with their writing. Open to all types of nonfiction, including personal essay, memoir, reported nonfiction, and experimental forms like lyric and collage essay, the class will have capped enrollment to ensure adequate time spent on each student’s work and individual attention from the instructor.

Motherhood and Writing Workshop
In A Life’s Work, Rachel Cusk said of a mother and her children: “When she is with them she is not herself; when she is without them she is not herself…The question of what a woman is if she is not a mother has been superseded for me by that of what a woman is if she is a mother; and of what a mother, in fact is.” 
In Motherhood, Sheila Heti asked: “What is a woman – who is not a mother – doing that is more important than mothering? Is it possible to even say such a thing – that there is anything more important for a woman to do than mother? I know a woman who refuses to mother, refuses to do the most important thing, and therefore becomes the least important woman. Yet the mothers aren’t important, either.”  
What is a mother? How is a mother? Why is a mother? 
We’ll read and write these questions through a literary lens, considering the core themes of:
Motherhood and mind/creativity/work 
Motherhood and relationships 
Motherhood and humor 
Motherhood and mental health/neurodiversity 
Motherhood and culture/society
Class will include readings, discussion, writing exercises, the opportunity to develop longer pieces, and hearing and sharing stories of motherhood and mothering with other creative, thoughtful, searching, and soulful writers. There will be opportunities to share writing and receive feedback from the class and instructor, if desired. We’ll read and discuss some of the most evocative recent writing on motherhood and mothering, including work from Jamaica Kincaid, Katherine May, Sheila Heti, Toni Morrison, Claire Dederer, Audre Lorde, Anna Prushinskaya, Louise Erdrich, Sabrina Orah Mark, and many others. 

Writing about Illness: Creating Art and Wisdom from the Night-Side of Life
Considering how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change that it brings . . . it becomes strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love, battle, and jealousy among the prime themes of literature. 
- Virginia Woolf
Since Woolf wrote these words there has been a burgeoning of illness literature that chronicles the experience of the body and mind in sickness, and sometimes the journey back to health, other times the adjustment to a new normal. In this online class, we’ll read and discuss some of the most evocative illness and healing writing of our time, including work from Porochista Khakpour, Esmé Weijun Wang, Suleika Jaouad, Sonya Huber, Eula Biss, and many more. We’ll explore the sub-themes of illness, including disability, mental health, chronic pain, and disparities of health outcomes and access to treatment across various populations. Guided by readings, discussions, and in-class exercises, we’ll write our own journeys through “the night-side of life,” as Susan Sontag describes illness, while we consider craft elements such as tone, pacing, dramatic structure, and point of view. There will be opportunities to share writing and receive feedback from the class and instructor, if desired. Because of the sensitive and personal nature of this nonfiction content, extra care will be taken to ensure a safe, supportive, and confidential class environment. Writers will develop an appreciation for and understanding of illness writing in the literary canon, and create art and wisdom from their own experiences of illness.

Writing and Motherhood, continued
A continuation of the class, open only to members who have completed the Motherhood and Writing Workshop where we continue as we have – reading, discussing, writing and sharing. We will also have the opportunity to present a longer piece of writing to the class for discussion and feedback. 
Round Two topics include:
Motherhood and Friendship
Motherhood and Rage
Motherhood and Invisible/Emotional Labor
Motherhood and Partnership
Motherhood and Home

Query Class – Foolproof Help for Pitching your Essays and Articles for Publication 
Are you sitting on essays and articles that are polished and ready to go but not sure how to  get them in front of the editors who can bring them to the public? Do you have ideas and stories you're wanting to present as pitches to an editor but aren’t sure how? A dream publication you strive to publish in but don't know how to break into?  In our query class we’ll learn who, how, and where to pitch, what to include, what to leave out, and the nitty gritty like how to determine if you’re being compensated fairly, which publication to go with if you have several options, when to send a completed draft or a pitch, timely pieces versus evergreen, when is it ok to write for free, print vs online, and much more. 
Come prepared to hone your unique offerings as a writer, delve into what and who you hope to affect or influence with your work, and learn how to package and sell your ideas and stories so your work reaches your target readership. There will be opportunities to share your pitches and pieces and receive feedback and advice from the instructor and classmates. Come with your list of publishing and pitching questions, the work you want to pitch, and get ready to introduce your work to the world. 

Writing Consultation and Coaching - One-on-One or in a Group
I offer editing, writing coaching, essay and manuscript consultations, book proposal work, and writing career consultations in person or via phone or zoom. My writing clients have published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, McSweeny's, Slate, and other publications. You can read testimonials from clients here.

Recent Courses

Writing Workshop on Motherhood and Time
One of the best barometers of time is children, they make its passing visible with how dramatically they change from day to day, week to week, month to month, year to year. But children also bend and distort time, rendering it meaningless, infinite, and incalculable. Christine Smallwood writes, “Time works differently after you have a child. What was once a steady beat suddenly moves at crazy, uneven speeds. Children fill up time that you didn’t know was empty. They are clocks with all the gears on display; you watch the time pass in them.” In this workshop, we'll explore how having children has changed our sense of time. We will read and discuss relevant published work; write our own pieces guided by writing prompts, exercises, and free-writes; and will build community through optional sharing of writing in partners, small groups and the group as a whole. "The world tips away when we look into our children’s faces. The days flood by. Time with children runs through our fingers like water as we lift our hands, try to hold, to capture, to fix moments in a lens, a magic circle of images or words.… In the growth of children, in the aging of beloved parents, time’s chart is magnified, shown in its particularity," writes Louise Erdrich. This workshop is open to anyone who identifies as a mother. 

Creative Nonfiction Master Class
This class is for experienced nonfiction writers who want to advance their craft through workshop, and who want to learn through the reading and discussion of the work of others. In this 9-week course, students will have the opportunity to submit up to 10 pages (2,500 words, double-spaced) three times for intensive workshop, receiving written feedback in the form of line edits and macro-comments from instructor and classmates, as well as discussion of their piece in class. Instructor Gila Lyons says, “Workshops will be at once warm and instructive, encouraging and honest, pushing each writer beyond what they’ve been able to do on their own, while fostering community and camaraderie among the class. Class time may include brief lessons and writing exercises as needed to hone specific craft elements such as tone, plot arc, pacing, or dialogue.” In this online class, students will refine their craft, strengthen analytical skills of their own and others’ work, gain a writing community with connections that often outlast the length of the course, and leave with a renewed sense of what they can accomplish with their writing. Open to all types of nonfiction, including personal essay, memoir, reported nonfiction, and experimental forms like lyric and collage essay, the class will be capped at 10 students to ensure adequate time spent on each student’s work and individualized attention from the instructor.

Writing about Illness: Creating Art and Wisdom from the Night-Side of Life
Considering how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change that it brings . . . it becomes strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love, battle, and jealousy among the prime themes of literature. 
- Virginia Woolf
“Since Woolf wrote these words there has been a burgeoning of illness literature,” says instructor Gila Lyons, “literature that chronicles the experience of the body and mind in sickness, and sometimes the journey back to health, other times the adjustment to a new normal.” In this online class, we’ll read and discuss some of the most evocative illness and healing writing of our time, including work from Porochista Khakpour, Esmé Weijun Wang, and Semezdin Mehmedinović. We’ll explore the sub-themes of illness, including disability, mental health, chronic pain, and disparities of health outcomes and access to treatment across various populations. Guided by readings, discussions, and in-class exercises, we’ll write our own journeys through “the night-side of life,” as Susan Sontag describes illness, while we consider craft elements such as tone, pacing, dramatic structure, and point of view. There will be opportunities to share writing and receive feedback from the class and instructor, if desired. “Because of the sensitive and personal nature of this nonfiction content, extra care will be taken to ensure a safe, supportive, and confidential class environment,” Gila says. “Writers will develop an appreciation for and understanding of illness writing in the literary canon, and create art and wisdom from their own often chaotic and overwhelming experiences of illness.”

Chaos Into Form: Writing the Personal Essay 
“Personal essay takes the messy unfiltered stuff of life and molds it into something of beauty, meaning, wisdom, and hopefully, a great story,” says instructor Gila Lyons. “It is no small task, but wrangling the blur of life into something crystalline reinforces Isak Dinesen’s famous words, ‘All sorrows can be bourne if you put them in a story.’ And I would add, all joys, confusions, and ponderings as well.” In this course we’ll read and talk about a diverse array of personal essays by some of the greats, including Alexander Chee, Jo Anne Beard, Sherman Alexi, Sarah Manguso, Joy Harjo, and more. Class will be comprised of generative writing exercises and workshops in which we’ll cover such elements as character development, dialogue, plot, humor, and self-revelation. Come see why this innovative form is enjoying such a renaissance for beginning and advanced writers alike.

Writing about the Body: Getting Under the Skin
“I’ve only ever wanted to write about what it feels like to be alive, and it turns out being alive is always about being in a body,” Leslie Jamison reflects. The best writing is physical, visceral, makes us feel that we are living a story rather than reading one on the page. In this one-day course, we'll read and discuss the greats who write about the body, including Roxane Gay, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Alexander Chee, and more. Through generative writing exercises we'll sharpen our ability to write with all five senses, and invigorate our stories by rendering the body on the page. We’ll explore what it's like to live in bodies that experience sickness, health, gender, race, class, disability, mortality, sex, desire, and more. By learning to write with, through, and about the body, we will imbue our work with the extra sense of reality that distinguishes a great story from an unforgettable one that gets “under the skin.”

 Lyric Essay and the Avant Garde
The lyric essay has emerged as a revolutionary form that transcends the boundaries between the genres of poetry, prose, reportage, essay, and story, and draws on the best of all of them. In this course, students will investigate how modern writers build on the traditional essay by playing with structure, narration, tone, plot, logic, sequence, and language. An examination of the contemporary leaders of literary nonfiction, such as John D’Agata, Carole Maso, Lia Purpura, Ander Monson, and Maggie Nelson, will illustrate what this form makes possible. In addition to reading, discussing, and writing about the work of established writers, students will write, workshop, and revise their own pieces.

Writing, Literature, and Happiness: A Personal Essay Workshop
Our country is founded on the principles of “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” But what does happiness look like or feel like in our world today? Is the pursuit of happiness a worthy one or should happiness be the by-product of a life well-lived? What does happiness look like across cultures and time? In this course, we’ll attempt to answer these questions by looking at a wide range of literature, from Laozi to David Brooks, Aristotle to the neuroscientist Giles Fraser, the Bhagavad Gita to psychologist Daniel Gilbert, as well as essays and poems by artists and writers. We’ll write our own thoughts and experiences of happiness (or lack thereof), and have the opportunity to share with fellow writers for light feedback. Join us for a powerful opportunity to find and hone your voice as a writer and as a messy, complicated, joyful person with something to say.

Abridged Teaching CV:

San Francisco State University
Writing instructor focused on personal narrative, argumentative essay, process analysis essays, and multi-sourced researched essays.

Writing Salon, Berkeley
Writing instructor for Writing about the Body; Chaos into Form: Introduction to Personal Essay; and Generative to Gleaming: Advanced Nonfiction Workshop. 

Brandeis University
Creative writing instructor for summer course including short story, poetry, personal essay, and free writes from prompts. Course culminated in a reading for the public.

Boston College
Guest lecturer on writing about illness and the body.

Pine Manor College
Writing instructor for course on happiness which looked at happiness from spiritual, ethical, philosophical, scientific, anthropological, and psychological perspectives.

Bunker Hill Community College
Writing instructor focused on personal narrative, argumentative essay, process analysis essays, and multi-sourced researched essays.
Writing instructor for an upper-level literature course focused on the reading and critical analysis of poetry, short fiction, and drama.

Cambridge Friends School
Writing and literature instructor for seventh and eighth grades, focused on creative writing, critical thesis-driven essays in response to literary text, personal essay, literary journalism, and comprehension and analysis of literature. I also staffed, edited, and published the school’s literary journal.

Veritas 
Created curriculum and taught a creative writing course for mothers battling substance abuse and addiction in a prison alternative program. The course focused on short story, poetry, personal essay, and culminated in a reading for the public. 

Earthlands Retreat Center
Writing retreat and workshop facilitator for adults. Retreat included yoga, meditation, nature writing, writing personal essay, and workshop. 

Temple Israel
Created and taught curriculum for a high school course for Jewish students in which we read the work of Jewish writers, and wrote on Jewish topics and themes.

A Solutions House
Created and taught curriculum for a writing group for men in a residential treatment center for drug addictions.

Blue Hills Recovery Center
Created and taught curriculum for a writing group for adjudicated boys.