The Todos Santos Writers Workshop offers online writing workshops from time to time throughout the year. You'll find our workshop offerings and a link to our enrollment form below. If you have any questions, instructors can be reached directly through our “Contact Us” form.
In addition, one-on-one consultations with any of our TSWW instructors are available throughout the year, and can be arranged and paid for directly by contacting the instructor through our “Contact Us” form.
Want to know when new online courses are announced? Please join our mailing list.
Jeanne McCulloch
THE ART OF THE PERSONAL ESSAY Fall 2021
4-class course: Mondays, November 8, 15, 22, 29SOLD OUT
6:00-8:30 PM EST $500
As the writer Nora Ephron famously said: “Everything is copy.” We are living through unprecedented times; each day reveals new challenges, new understandings, and new reflections on the world and our place in it. What better time to write some personal essays? The French writer Montaigne first used himself as a character in his literary investigations over four hundred years ago, and since then the personal essay has evolved to include all manner of style and inquiry: some use humor, some are fueled by memory, all are candid reflections of life and society as viewed through the intimate lens of our daily life. In class we’ll use weekly prompts, various writing exercises, and class feedback to develop work-in-progress. Essays by writers as varied as Virginia Woolf, James Baldwin, Joan Didion, Natalia Ginzburg, Annie Dillard, Nora Ephron, and David Sedaris will be discussed to complement our creative work. The goal will be to have a fully finished essay or more by the end of the four-week workshop. This class is open to anyone with a notebook, and now is a good time to start taking notes. Remember: everything is copy.
Co-sponsored by 1455 Literary Arts
Karen Karbo
Writing Emergency Intensive Weekend Workshop - Aug 2021
2 Sessions on Zoom, Aug 21 - 22 SOLD OUT
9AM - 2PM PST, 12 - 5PM PST
$100 SOLD OUT
When it looked as though CoVid was behind us, I traveled to Portland for a few weeks. One morning, I was waiting for the bus outside an art supply shop. Just as I peeked in the window, a boisterous, be-masked, sparkly-eyed girl opened the shop for the day. “Are you having a crafting emergency?” she asked. I asked her if that was actually a thing and she said, “Oh, you have no idea.”
Right now, writer friends, it feels as if we’re in the middle of a slo-mo catastrophe with no end in sight. The only way I know to remedy my personal anxiety and sense of malaise and fear is to anchor myself in writing. Writing is my life-preserver, sea sick medicine, wellness supplement -- the one activity in the world that calms me, and helps put everything in perspective. So often when shit gets real, we think this is no time to write, BUT IT IS EXACTLY THE TIME TO WRITE. During this online weekend writing intensive, I will lift you up and inspire you, and help you map out your emergency writing practice. Working from prompts, we’ll plunge into new ideas, open new doors, and strengthen our sense of ourselves as writers with power. We will be together. We will write and laugh and sip our drinks of choice.
Jeanne McCulloch
Pentimento: The Art of the Personal Essay: Summer 2021
4-class course: August 9, 16, 23, and 30, 6:00-8:30 PM EST $425 SOLD OUT
Karen Karbo
Memoir Mash-Up 101:Writing the Hybrid Memoir - May 2021
Saturdays, May 15 - July 3 (8 sessions) Sold Out
3PM EST, 2 CT, 1 MT (90 mins) $400
Are you someone who has as many interesting thoughts as you do experiences? Are you as passionate about telling your own story as you are about, say, goshawks, Moby Dick, D.H. Lawrence, the loves in our lives, the ghosts of our ancestors, the unsolved murder of an aunt, the 2004 tsunami in Sri Lanka, lying, baking, con artists? Do you like the idea of mixing biography, memoir, and advice? Micro-essays, nature writing, and poetry? Literary criticism and twitter threads? Are you genre-smashing curious?
This Zoom workshop will focus on developing and writing the hybrid memoir. We’ll look at some of the masterpieces of the genre, develop and discover the components of our own stories with in-class prompts, and engage in constructive reading of one another’s work. Between sessions, writers will receive a check-in + dose of inspo and weekly prompt in their inboxes to keep the juices flowing.