Online / zoom

Instructor: Marilyn McEntyre, PhD

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!

Consider times when, it appears, the opposite is also true. In this session we’ll play with ways to develop a paradox, increasing your own and your reader’s “negative capability,” the capacity to dwell in ambiguity or paradox without “straining after resolution.” And we’ll take a few minutes to consider the ways in which this particular skill matters.

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 a collection of Lenten readings, Where the Eye Alights.

The dates and topics for the other summer First Saturday Writing Workshops are (register separately here):

July 5, 2025: Critical Distance

August 2, 2025: Playing with Paradox