Amy Maiello Hagedorn
National Facilitator Training Institute
Housed at the Humanities Institute at Stony Brook University and named after the late Herstory writer and supporter Amy Maiello Hagedorn, the institute trains people in Herstory’s unique pedagogy.
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The institute offers three to six training programs a year for teachers, MSW candidates, court advocates, human services providers, people working in carceral settings, and others interested in memoir writing as a tool for social change. Each cohort of six to 12 participants is drawn primarily from people whose lives have been impacted by racism, poverty, incarceration, political or domestic violence, and discrimination, and who are motivated to take their work into the social justice arena. After engaging with the training for a minimum of five weeks, they move into active practice in a school, prison, or community setting, working there an average of two to five years, with many remaining with the project much longer.
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Herstory’s pedagogy is at the heart of an ever-evolving network dedicated to writing for justice and peace and has been used to help underserved communities write and share their stories in Afghanistan, Kenya, Iran, Lebanon, Mexico, and Nicaragua, in addition to in the United States.
Experience firsthand how Herstory's writing circle method can help you deepen your own work while empowering the communities you work with
Summer 2026 Facilitator Training Institute
Join our Founder and Training Institute Director, Erika Duncan, for a free, half-day introductory intensive workshop on how to write and facilitate the Herstory way — in community, using our signature empathy-based pedagogy, the tools that let a stranger-reader walk in another person's shoes.
The Herstory team will share how our approach has taken root across classrooms, prisons, healthcare settings, and community and coalition-building and how a Herstory workshop can be embedded into a larger project in education, empowerment and leadership development, community change, and advocacy.