Writing Workshops

CAPTURING THE AMERICAN SCENE
For the past 27 years I have roamed the American landscape, organizing writing workshops in cities and rural hamlets, in farmhouse dining rooms, church basements, schools, libraries, and colleges. Begun in 1989 with a workshop for the homeless in Nashville, Tennessee, I have since worked with people from all walks of life.

PUBLICITY
When the homeless workshop opened, non-traditional writing workshops (workshops for people without literary ambition) were virtually unheard of. I wanted to see them proliferate, and the national publicity that my workshops  generated in the early 1990s (All Things Considered, Morning Edition, and CBS Sunday Morning) spawned others. The movement continues t grow.

PUBLICATION
Many of the workshop stories have been published by Free River Press, a nonprofit publishing company whose mission is to document life in contemporary America.  The press was inaugurated in 1989 with two volumes of writings by Nashville homeless. Since then the series has issued 27 titles by farmers, native Americans, Hispanics, residents of rural villages, and others seldom heard from in the mainstream media.