Herstory in the Community
Herstory in the Community Workshops are open to the public
Community workshops, offered in English or Spanish, are the cornerstone of Herstory, providing opportunities for people from different socioeconomic backgrounds, age groups, nationalities, and ethnicities—people who otherwise might never find themselves in the same room—to share their stories with one another and shape them for a broader audience.
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Whether a workshop lasts a few months or many years, or whether it encourages writing about a particular theme or nurtures stories on a range of topics, community members create a space of mutual understanding and respect where they can rediscover and reclaim their voices as they write stories of survival, resilience, pain, love, triumph, and loss. By working week
after week alongside one another, participants experience and witness their own and each other’s turning points and transformations, while together making their private journeys toward healing and contributing to public movements for social change.
Herstory’s portable, flexible model allows us to respond to requests from a specific community or demographic group to deliver workshops they tell us they need, often as a way of grappling with what may be affecting them in a given moment. Our workshops take place in venues ranging from libraries to community centers to farms as well as online to facilitate access. Regardless of where the workshops take place, they are designed to build bridges across the differences that too often keep us apart.
Ongoing Herstory in the Community Workshops
Shaping Spaces: Memoirs of Disability Brilliance and Resistance
Disabled people have unique perspectives to offer our communities. We use ingenuity to navigate a world that is not shaped to our needs. We can draw insight from the challenges we face, the ways we adapt to and reshape the world around us, and how we resist the narratives others spin for us, as well as the ways we find or create light in our lives. In Shaping Spaces: Memoirs of Disability Brilliance and Resistance, we weave these lessons and experiences into memoir that calls for a better world for everyone. Our stories speak back to a society that often overlooks or tries to diminish us. Shaping Spaces is producing a tapestry of literature portraying the different ways disabled people navigate and make sense of the world, while advocating for our place in it.
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This workshop is open to anyone with a disability, including psychological and chronic health conditions. Come once or twice to tell a particular story that needs to be told or continue week after week to shape stories for readings, web publications, or book-length projects. No prior writing experience necessary!
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Contact Janelle at jgagnon @ herstorywriters.org to join the workshop.
Recent Herstory in the Community Workshops
Herstory & Sangha Education Center
Memoir Moments: Two-Session Creative Writing Workshop for Neurodivergent Teens & Young Adults
Is there a story from an important moment in your life waiting to be told?
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Do you feel your story could help or educate others?
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Join Herstory Writers Network for this in-person, two-part writing workshop designed especially for the Sangha community. We invite any neurodiverse teens and young adults from Long Island to join. Together, we’ll help you shape a meaningful moment from your life into writing powerful enough to reach the people and communities around you. Through guided memoir-writing exercises and a supportive story-sharing circle, you’ll begin transforming your experiences into short memoirs you can proudly share with others.
Herstory & Planned Parenthood of Peconic Hudson
This free workshop is open to anyone who has a health, sexual or reproductive-health care story they wish to explore in a safe community setting.
In this challenging moment when reproductive health choices and access to sexual health care are increasingly at risk, spaces that empower, heal, and support the collective creation of a call to action are more urgently needed than ever. During this workshop, facilitators will help you craft a scene about your unique sexual and reproductive health care that is powerful enough to draw in readers. No prior writing experience is necessary!
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Herstory, Long Beach Latino Civic Association,
New York Immigration Coalition & CARECEN
This workshop co-hosted by the New York Immigration Coalition invites immigrant community members to explore how guided memoir writing can be a powerful way to spark social change. Participants will be writing alongside other students and community members, looking at how personal stories connect to bigger social and political issues. By finding their voice and sharing their experiences, participants can feel more empowered and be part of meaningful change. Along the way, participants will sharpen their writing and communication skills, learn how to listen actively and give helpful feedback, and get a fresh perspective on the power of storytelling and building community.