Workshops

Workshop Offerings for 2026

"I try to leave out the parts that people skip."   - Elmore Leonard

Monday Night Creative Writing Workshop Series In-person and on zoom

• October 26 - November 30, 2026
• 6 sessions in this series
• 6:30 - 8 pm 
• $220 

A fun and generative workshop especially for writers, and artists of poetry, fiction, short story, novel, and screen writing. Do you wish you wrote more? Want to feel a sense of community when you write? Want to start a project or finish a book?

This creative series is the most popular and longest-running workshop I offer.  Craft, technique, and prompts for fiction of all forms. A kick in the butt for your writing life! Waiting for inspiration is also called procrastination.  So don't wait - connect with a community and improve your writing process and practice. Mondays from 6:30 to 8 pm. This series will fill up fast as I keep the size of the group intimate. Sign up by email to tangledrootswriting@gmail.com or call 530-386-3901.

Truckee Library Creative Writing Workshops: Writing for memoir

Join a supportive community - write stories from your life! Friday mornings Truckee Library 10031 Levon Ave, Truckee. Just show up! 10:30-Noon. All Welcome/all ages. Free 

Next workshops:

• Sept 11
• Oct 2
• Nov 6
• Dec 4 

Flights of the Imagination: Creative Writing Workshop and Brunch Oct 4

Join us for a creative workshop with coffee, tea, and breakfast goodies Sunday morning, Oct 4 from 10 am – Noon at the 9848 Gallery, 9848 Donner Pass Rd, Truckee. This creative writing workshop will be a supportive and productive experience for writers and photographers and night-sky admirers of all levels of experience. Bring an open mind and a hungry belly - coffee and pastries provided!

Sunday October 4

10 am – Noon

Free

“And I thought that, like the Earth and Moon and all the planets, perhaps every one of us is ancient and full of unknowable history. look up at the sky, or out across the earth, and you can be swept away by glorious flights of the imagination, and the humbling realization that in the true scheme of creation, all the many things we know amounted to almost nothing at all.” – Tracy K Smith

Inspired by the words of Tracy K Smith, this workshop caps Truckee’s Keep it Dark Astrotourism (Oct 1-4) weekend, a contemplation of the stars and the night sky that hang above us, visible and invisible, throughout our daily lives. Writers blend science with poetry, exploring connections between concepts of space, metaphor and time. Through reading poems by poets such as Ada Limon and Dana Goia, guided discussion, and innovative writing prompts, we will explore intersections with our personal lives and the larger planetary story, how to be human and how to exist with the other than human.

 Tahoe Literary Festival Oct 9, 2026

The Power of Poetry: Poet Laureates in Conversation 

1:45 - 2:45 pm Tahoe Art Haus 

 Join California Poet Laureate Lee Herrick and Nevada Poet Laureate Shaun Griffin for an inspiring conversation on the transformative power of poetry. Together, they explore how poems help us make sense of the world, deepen our connection to place, and give voice to our shared humanity. Drawing from their own creative journeys, Herrick and Griffin discuss craft, community, and the role of poetry in cultivating empathy, resilience, and belonging. Whether you're a lifelong poetry lover or simply curious about the art form, this engaging conversation offers fresh insight into why poetry matters now more than ever.  

Writing Intersections of planetary story, personal lives and other than human: Author Conversation with Cara Benson and Karen Terrey  

3-4 pm Tahoe City Library

 An Armsfull of Birds: A Personal Field Guide to Love, Loss, and Commitment – A Conversation with Author Cara Benson and Karen Terrey, Nevada County Poet Laureate

Join poet, essayist, and storyteller Cara Benson for a discussion of her new memoir with Karen Terrey, Nevada County Poet Laureate. Building on a long writing friendship that started in graduate school, this intimate conversation will explore questions of why a vulnerable and individual human voice matters in the evolving world of AI, how to discover the intersection of the larger planetary story within our personal lives, and methods for keeping our hearts in the game of manifesting change as we collectively take care of the more than human. Benson will also touch on the project of writing about her personal tragic loss, finding an agent, and ultimately a publisher for her memoir.

An Armsfull of Birds: A Personal Field Guide to Love, Loss, and Commitment was recently listed as one of 12 environmental non-fiction books of the year to read by Orion Magazine: “In moving through both her intensely personal and her planetary grief, Benson examines the cycle of boundless love, indelible loss, and hard-won recovery in this powerful climate memoir. This honest, emotional story about the importance of meaningful connection, engaged living, and our commitments to ourselves, our loved ones, and the ailing world around us, reminds us that ‘loss has everything to do with loving.’”

Cara Benson’s writing has been published in The New York Times, Boston Review, Orion, Sierra Magazine, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Electric Literature, and selected for Best American Poetry. Her first book, (made), is a collection of prose poems that was praised by The Huffington Post and The Brooklyn Rail. Benson has received a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship and lives in the ancestral homeland of the Stockbridge Munsee Band of Mohicans. An Armsfull of Birds is her first memoir.

The Writers Circle: Monthly Feedback Workshop 

December 2026 - May 2027

TBA - reach out to apply for this series

In this intimate workshop, the goal is to work with a consistent, focused group of writers to workshop, develop and revise your fiction and non-fiction writing projects. Each session will include tools for developing your project and feedback. We will workshop in a guided and supportive atmosphere with focus on strengthening your writing skills, developing your manuscript, and exploring meaning in your writing. 

This workshop is deadline- and goal-oriented to move forward with the next draft. You will get professional feedback for developing the heart of the subject as well as the organization and skill of craft. Learn techniques to creatively unearth what really matters so that your writing stands out as surprising and original to an editor.  Expect  a supportive community, session notes, reading other work and deadlines to keep you accountable and move your craft of writing and your project forward.

 

Submission Strategies for Publication Workshop Series: Where, how and when to submit 

TBA

$35 each/$105 for all three 

TBA

You can sign up for all three sessions at once, or join a la carte. These workshops are in person and on Zoom.

A practical workshop series presenting the newest and latest calls for submissions, insights and strategies for organizing, planning, and tracking your submissions, and help with manuscript preparations. We will work on our research, selection, plans, and prepping the second half of the time together as we gather and submit our work. One take away will be a long term plan for organizing your submissions over the next 6 -12 months, taking a look at project goals and timing them with future open reading periods. Get the details you need to plan where, how and when to submit. Handouts, tea, and chocolate too.

Work in a supportive community of writers to research the field, prepare your manuscripts, and submit them to a carefully selected field of publications:

·       Contests

·       Literary journals and Magazines

·       Anthologies

·       Calls for submissions

·       Collaborative arts

Discover new opportunities for your writing:

·       reviews

·       translation

·       prose and verse chapbooks (short story and essay)

·       first chapter submissions

·       artist residencies

·       conferences

“Literature is where I go to explore the highest and the lowest places in human society and in the human spirit, where I hope to find not absolute truth but the truth of the tale, of the imagination and of the heart.” – Salmon Rushdie

One on One Coaching

Take charge of your writing career, a book project, professional communications, or your PhD dissertation by hiring a writing coach. I can help you improve your writing skills and offer support and guidance to reach your deadlines. Call me to talk about your goals.

 

 For Students - Prepare College Essays and Scholarship Applications

One specialty of my coaching is working with elementary and high school students in customized coaching sessions to develop and improve writing skills and a passion for writing. Call me to talk about what would best support your student.