Online / zoom

Instructor: Marilyn McEntyre, PhD

Series Description: These 90-minute workshops will address a different topic each month. Each session will include a brief presentation, prompts, a bit of writing and workshopping time, and suggestions for developing a particular writing practice. Handouts offer guides for cultivating new dimensions of your writing. We will talk about language, faith, form, and what a lively, committed writing life entails. All levels of writing experience are welcomed!

This month: Stories are never seamless. They may change focus and scene with little transitional or connective tissue. We’ll look at strategies for using discontinuities intentionally and to good effect as we also consider the important role of “gaps” in the narrative.

Registration Fee: General Tuition $25/ "Living Lightly" Supported Tuition $15

About Marilyn McEntyre: Dr. McEntyre, a longtime professor of literature and medical humanities, teaches for New College Berkeley and Westmont College, and is on the faculty of Western Seminary’s “Sacred Art of Writing” doctor of ministry program as well as the “Forest Dwelling” program at the Oblate School of Theology. She offers spiritual retreats and writing workshops and continues to write about spirituality, language, healthcare and earth care. She also works as a writing coach. Her recent books include When Poets Pray, Speaking Peace in a Climate of Conflict, and Midwinter Light: Meditations for the Long Season.

First Saturday Writing Workshops 2025-26 Overview: Join this series every month or occasionally, as you are able. Handouts and writing exercises are different for every interactive workshop. Register for each workshop individually here.

January 3, 2026: Gaps and Discontinuities

February 7, 2026: What Your Narrator Knows

March 7, 2026: Poetry As Practice

April 4, 2026: Literary Portraiture

May 2, 2026: Writing from Your Place and Time