Meet My Friend Laurie

Um, she's an AMAZING writing teacher.  I am so blessed.  I have had some great teachers and I am still in a great writing class with another AMAZING teacher named June Calendar.

June teaches me to pay attention, to write with my whole brain or what's left of it and Laurie, well, she's the one who teaches me to write the stuff you probably will never see.

So, without further ado........here's Laurie!!!

Wild Writing Into the Journey of Our Lives

Laurie Marks Wagner is a published writer, artist, and creativity coach who has been making things with her imagination, her hands and her heart for many years.

Raising children, writing books and stories, and working with thousands of writers over the years has nurtured her sense of herself as an artist and a teacher, and has helped her to understand what she cares about on the page and off.  

Besides coaching artists and writers on their projects, Laurie teaches all sorts of creative nonfiction classes online at writers.com, as well as Wild Writing classes at her home in Alameda, California.

Laurie also hosts the amazing 27 Powers Traveling Writers Series, which brings the brightest, grooviest, most unusual writers to Alameda to teach.  You can find out more about Laurie and her work at: www.27powers.org.

Starting on Sunday, November 9, 2014 a luxurious villa hotel in the central region of Umbria in beautiful Italy is the setting for a week of writing with Laurie Marks Wagner. Come and be creative, live, laugh, love and experience the hospitality of Umbria. If you are an experienced writer, a new writer or if you dream of writing, you will find the experience to be transformative in so many ways. 

You don’t have to be a writer to take the class… But merely someone who wants to let loose, take risks, push past well-worn territory and move into something new.

Here's what Laurie has to say about Wild Writing Into the Journey of Our Lives....

Writing has the capacity to open our eyes and wake us up. When we relax into our natural voice to tell our stories, we reveal who we are, where we’ve been, what we care about and how we live. It’s a beautiful way to locate the heart of who we are.

We’ll wake up each morning straight from the land of our dreams and move into our stories. We’ll start with a speaking practice called Story Slices, and move from there into Wild Writing, an automatic writing practice that easily unleashes words onto the page, bypassing the critical mind and allowing us to find our authentic, natural voice.

We’ll write about our lives, but we’ll also write about our adventures in Umbria as we explore the delicious food, the wine, the Italian people, the old ladies in doorways, the countryside, the way the moon looked, how the kitchen smelled, what we noticed, what surprised us and who we met along the way.

 We’ll meet experienced authors and poets who have made their homes in Italy and we’ll have the opportunity to build new networks and long-lasting friendships.

This is a perfect practice for beginning and even seasoned writers. It’s deeply healing and beautiful writing comes from it.

Join us on this amazing journey

As well as spending quality time in workshops with Laurie each morning until lunchtime, your week will include exciting afternoon trips, with visits to some of Umbria’s most fascinating hill towns, a day in the beautiful Assisi and a visit to a real working olive oil mill. You will be in Umbria for the olive harvest!  This area has fabulous wines. We have arranged an afternoon of tasting with local producers.  Meet the faces behind the wines! All your meals will be provided while you are in Umbria, some at the villa hotel, some at local authentic Umbrian restaurants!