Writing Time: A Workshop in Creative Nonfiction with Rachel Jamison Webster

Jul 14, 2025 1:00PM—Jul 18, 2025 4:00PM

Location

Write On, Door County 4210 Juddville Rd. Fish Creek, WI 54212

Cost $350.00

Categories

Topics

Writing creative nonfiction puts us into new relationships to time. First, we need to carve out time to write! And whenever we write memoir, we are confronting our earlier selves on the page and applying present-day wisdom to past situations. This workshop will cover a range of topics in creative nonfiction, all through the lens of time and timekeeping. We will look at how we keep time in our writing, and we will develop methods for “folding” and expanding time as a way of connecting our personal stories to wider contexts. We will witness the present moment. We will cultivate honest yet compassionate ways of writing about our earlier selves. We will invite our personal memory to extend into ancestral memory. And finally, we will approach geological time as we contemplate our place on earth. All of these exercises will be designed to bring new life to our process, and to help shape existing projects. Each day, we will begin with meditative freewriting designed to expand time and activate our memories. Then we will discuss one essay from our handouts and engage in another session of responsive writing. Finally, after a break, we will workshop participants’ essages in a generative way–by asking questions and making connections that will invite new lines of thought and new ways of working. Participants should come with one essay or memoir chapter about any subject (of 1,000-6,000 words) to be workshopped during the week. Please also bring a notebook for writing by hand, if possible, and an openness to self-reflect, ignite your curiousity, and generate new material.

Class meets in person, Monday – Friday, July 14 – 18, 1 – 4 pm

Class size: minimum 5, maximum 12.

Member discount: Members of Write On receive a 10% discount on all classes and workshops. To become a member, please click here. To receive the discount, members must log in to the website using their unique password and enter member10 in the promotion code box. The code is case sensitive.

Teaching Artist: Rachel Jamison Webster is the author of four books of poetry and the nonfiction book, Benjamin Banneker and Us, which was chosen as a Best Book of 2023 by The New Yorker and picked as an editor’s pick by The New York Times. Rachel writes about race, justice, ancestry, mystical women, grief, parenthood, and American history. Rachel has published essays in outlets including The Yale ReviewTin House, and the L.A. Review of Books.  Rachel’s book of poetry, Mary is a River, was a finalist for the National Poetry Series in 2014, and her book of art collage and erasure poems, The Sea Came Up & Drowned, is being put to music and will be performed by the choral ensemble, The Crossing, in 2026. Rachel is a professor of Creative Writing in the English Department at Northwestern University. She lives in Evanston, IL, with her husband, the poet John McCarthy, and their daughter Adele.