Courses & Workshops

For anyone who wants to explore their life story with words and images. Guided activities and creative prompts will spark your thinking, get your creativity flowing, and inspire you to represent the story you hold within you. No formal writing experience is required, just an interest in telling your story — or finding out what your story is! 

Conversation and teachings about memoir for anyone who wants to write their story or their family’s story. Bring your interest, enthusiasm and questions! Writing about your life is one thing — shaping it into a coherent story for others to read is another. We’ll discuss structure and form; voice, perspective and tone; publishing and distribution options. If you have some life writing pieces in hand but aren’t sure how to weave them into a story or if you don’t know how to get started, this workshop is for you. Join us for conversation that will inform and inspire, and for some prompts that will help shape your story and (re)invigorate your memoir-writing project. Listen to a CBC Radio interview about the workshop here.

This is life-writing in short form: We each have our own story to tell. No matter your age, the life you have lived — and are living — is the stuff of story. It is your story and it is worth capturing on the page. But where to start? How to generate material? How to shape it? This 6-session course will focus on generative writing, guided by weekly themes to stimulate your thinking. New themes for Fall 2024 session. By the end, you will have a collection of memoir vignettes (18 or more) to continue working with. The objective is to generate material in a supportive environment that includes free-writing to prompts; reading aloud with feedback as you feel comfortable; and conversation about life-writing and memoir. 

Fuel your writing practice with a weekly prompt sent to your email inbox on a specific day, followed later in the week by a collaborative, supportive conversation with a small cohort of enthusiastic and committed writers just like you. You will be inspired by reading your work aloud and by receiving constructive and encouraging feedback. All new sparks for Fall 2024 sessions.

Spark I is about writing on your own, then reading aloud in the group. Spark II continues with writing and reading aloud, and incorporates a focus on the writing process and different writing forms. NOTE: Spark I is pre-requisite for Spark II.

This is a new project, currently no more than a glimmer in Amanda's mind: Writers perform their work on stage in front of a live paying audience. Breathing our words into the world from a stage is a creative way to be 'published'. More than just a reading of the writers' work, the performance will engage the audience with production features relevant for the work being presented. All details will be fleshed out by the project group. If this creative work interests you, email us to get on the list to join the working group; to be a possible writer/performer; or simply to be kept informed of performance dates.

By invitation & application. 8 weeks. Hybrid format: in person + online. We work with a handful of graduates who have taken several of our courses to provide one-on-one editorial feedback on an existing work in progress. 

A weekend writing retreat in the city: a Friday evening gathering, with sessions over Saturday & Sunday. Not fancy, just a focus on Life Writing with others, in a Winnipeg setting, for fun and creative time together. Email us to receive updates for 2025.

Join us for writing-based creative work that will ignite your thinking and nurture your empathy and understanding -- for yourself and for others. We teach via Zoom; in person in Winnipeg's McNally Robinson Community Classroom; and in a private classroom. Join us for creative learning! 

Reading, reflection & representation

via one author (ex. Gertrude Stein or Virginia Woolf) or via an approach to writing (meta fiction)​​​. ​ Facilitator: Deborah Schnitzer

Email us if this interests you.