Creative Alchemy: Writing from Where You Are

Deadline to Register: October 16, 5 pm

Instructor: Elana Bell

Do you find yourself struggling to make your creative expression a priority? Do your inner critic and perfectionism block you from writing as deeply as you’d like? Or writing at all? Creativity is not a luxury. From the global pandemic to racial injustice and police brutality, we are living at a unique moment in history that has a profound effect on us as individuals and as a society. In this workshop, we will use embodied practices, including breathing, sound meditation, and movement, to quiet the inner critic, calm the nervous system, and open the creative channel. From that place, we will explore generative writing prompts and texts designed to alchemize your emotions and experiences into creative expression. You will leave this workshop more deeply connected to your own vulnerable truth in language, and connected to the others who have joined you for the journey.

Elana Bell is a poet, sound practitioner, and sacred creative. Her debut poetry collection, Eyes, Stones (Louisiana State University Press, 2012), was selected by Fanny Howe as winner of the 2011 Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets. Her writing has appeared in Harvard Review, Massachusetts Review, AGNI, Barrow Street, and elsewhere. She has taught her Writing Toward Peace curriculum internationally with Seeds of Peace, the Tent of Nations, and Encounter. Bell currently teaches poetry to actors at The Juilliard School and sings with the Resistance Revival Chorus. She lives with her husband and son in Brooklyn.