Come write with me!

Writing to Right the World

For many years, I’ve taught writing and communications at the college level, guiding generations of students to become what I call “worldwrights”: those who write to make the world better.

Now I am delighted to share my expertise with a wider audience in two powerful series of classes: Writing to Right the World, hosted by Birth Your Truest Story, and Speak Your Truth, hosted by Bioneers Learning.

Both classes unfold in a series of four energizing online sessions, in which participants identify what matters most to them, and learn how to translate their passion into purpose, crafting a message that will resonate and make ripples of positive change in the world, both in writing and in oral, TED-style presentations.

Mystic fogbow. Photo by J. Browdy

Fall 2024

Writing to Right the World

In this series of four lively classes, learn how to turn passion to purpose; find the genre that best fits your creative and activist goals; cultivate a powerful community that will help you amplify your voice and vision; and get valuable feedback on your ideas and drafts. There’s no time like the present to become the worldwright you were meant to be!

Class One: Finding Purpose Through Passion

Monday, September 30, 6 – 7:30 pm Eastern

To become a worldwright, that is, one who uses writing to make a positive difference in the world, it’s necessary to tap into your emotions, giving your words the potent charge of your love, grief, and anger. In this session, we’ll explore how to channel your emotions into words, and how to let go of fear in order so that you can most powerfully write to right the world.

Class Two: Finding the Most Effective Genre and Voice

Monday, October 21, 6 – 7:30 pm Eastern

As Rumi put it, there are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the ground. There are a thousand ways to express your passion for being part of the grand human project of evolving our consciousness and creating a better relationship with each other and all life on Earth. What is uniquely yours to say, and how can you say it most powerfully? This workshop will help you zero in on the form best suited to your goals as a worldwright.

Class Three: Finding allies and joining the conversation

Monday, November 18, 6 – 7:30 pm Eastern

In the 21^st century, humans are connected as never before. We have always been highly suggestible to ideas and movements, and now we can use our online “hive mind” to organize and build coalitions that will help us advance our worldwrighting goals. In this session, we’ll explore some of the most effective online platforms for finding your tribe, and how to move beyond siloes into the productive conversations that will help spread and manifest your positive visions of the better world that could and should be.

Class Four: Draft workshop for worldwrights

Monday, December 16, 6 – 7:30 pm Eastern

Bring your drafts (up to 1000 words) to share with kindred worldwrights in this hands-on facilitated draft review session. We’ll discuss questions of audience, voice, tone and genre, seeking to discern how best to craft your message to bring it out most strongly into the world.

Cost for all four live online classes, $149. Registrants will have access to the recordings.

Register here.

Spring 2025

Speak Your Truth: Leadership, Writing & Public Speaking for Social & Environmental Justice

Take your writing off the page and into the spoken word in a hands-on class dedicated to guiding you in expressing your ideas with confidence, clarity, and eloquence.

As part of a collaborative team of writer-activists, we’ll look deeply at some of the major social and environmental issues of our time and consider how outstanding leaders have used creative expression to make a difference.

You’ll receive specific tools and tactics for effectively communicating your vision for a positive future, as well as strategies for building a campaign to make your vision a reality.

Class One: Step into leadership for social and environmental justice

Friday, February 28, 11 – 12:30 pm Eastern

In the first class we’ll consider leadership strategies offered by activists such as Margaret Wheatley, Joanna Macy, Nina Simons and Adrienne Maree Brown, and work collaboratively to explore ways that you can most effectively put your skills and experience to work for the well-being of the communities you care about and the planet as a whole.

Class Two: Communicate your vision through compelling writing

Friday, March 7, 11 – 12:30 pm Eastern

To inspire others, you must get their attention with a gripping story that galvanizes them to action. We’ll consider different genres and stylistic approaches to activist writing, drawing on work by successful writer-activists like Audre Lorde, Eve Ensler (now known as V) and Terry Tempest Williams. You’ll reach deep into your own heart as you begin to draft the story only you can tell about the issues you care about most.

Class Three: Moving from page to stage

Friday, March 14, 11 – 12:30 pm Eastern

In this workshop class, you’ll learn key techniques of oral storytelling as you transform your activist essay into a persuasive talk. You’ll be inspired by talented writer-activists like Wangari Maathai, Amanda Gorman and Greta Thunberg and draw on the collective wisdom of the group as you work individually and collaboratively to craft a lively speech that will open hearts and move your audience to action.

Class Four: Leadership means taking your vision out into the world

Friday, March 21, 11 – 12:30 pm Eastern

In our final class, you’ll have a chance to rehearse your speech and present it to the group, coming away with a recorded talk that you can share if you wish, along with a toolkit of skills and tactics for leading a movement for transformational change. The pathbreaking work of writer-activists like Bill McKibben, Eve Ensler (V) and US poet laureate Joy Harjo will offer strategies for bringing your vision strongly and meaningfully out into the world.

 In-person meet-up!

Join me in person at the Bioneers Conference, March 27 – 29 in Berkeley California, to continue building community and confidence in your activist expression!

Class registration link coming soon.

2024 Speak Your Truth Testimonials

“Thanks so much for facilitating the recent “Speak Your Truth” class online. It was great— inspiring, enriching, and a gentle kick in the a– to get stuff out there.” —KC

“I just wanted to thank you for the Bioneers course on “Speaking Your Truth.” I watched the class recordings online, and the content was excellent. Even though I ended up taking it as a self-paced course, it was really valuable material. I’m looking forward to doing the writing homework exercises sometime soon.  Again, many thanks for the great class!”  —SK

“Jennifer, thank you so much for offering your wonderful expertise through this class. I greatly appreciate this class being brought to life and for all the tools I gained to continue working on my piece.  I am excited to see how this class will evolve and grow after this first iteration to continue nurturing future environmental justice leaders through helping them find their voice in writing and public speaking.” —KQ

“Jennifer—thank you for such a great course, which enabled my attendance at the conference. Both were affirming and meaningful experiences. I will definitely call on you again, I and look forward to future participation in your workshops and coaching.” —KC

Spring 2025

Mythic Memoir Series

Starting in January 2025, I’ll be teaming up with Dr. Spring Cheng, founder of the Resonance Path Leadership Institute, to offer a 10-session course: “Birthing a Thriving Future: Weaving a Personal Narrative with Mythic and Planetary Threads.”

Find out more about the free introductory classes we’ll be offering in Fall 2024, as well as the full class, on Spring’s Resonance Path website, here.

Original artwork by Jennifer Browdy. 

Purposeful Memoir Workshops

In my writing workshops, whether in-person or online, you get the benefit of my decades of teaching lively small-group, discussion-based college literature and writing classes.

My classes are interactive and thought-provoking, with lots of generative writing that will open inspiring new doors into your story and get your imagination into gear.

My writing workshop pedagogy features:

• Open-ended prompts and questions
• Lists as seedbeds for more fully developed scenes
• Focused freewriting, otherwise known as sketching in writing
• Frequent pauses for reflective writing on the creative process

In my writers’ circles, I create a warm, welcoming atmosphere and carefully structured opportunities for instructor and peer feedback that is non-evaluative but highly effective and productive. Sharing is encouraged but always optional, and confidentiality is a must.

I seek to cultivate writing that is intuitive, generative and organic—emerging from within rather than based on an artificial structure imposed from without. My students are often surprised at how much they are able to produce in my workshops, and how deeply they are able to tap their own inner reservoirs of stories, images and metaphors. Try it and see for yourself!

“Dear Jennifer, Thank you so much for a deeply inspirational memoir-writing workshop. It made all the difference! Being in this magical setting with like-minded women and your thoughtfully designed prompts was just what was needed!”

—DM, 2017 

Specific memoir workshop series that I often offer, both in-person and online, include:

• The Elemental Journey of Purposeful Memoir, using the four elements as an organizing principle for delving more deeply into your life story.

• The Alchemy of Purposeful Memoir, saluting the positive and transmuting the negative in your life story.

• Aligning the Personal, Political and Planetary in Purposeful Memoir, locating your individual life story in the broader socio-historical landscape of your time and place.

• Ancestral Archeology, exploring the legacies of your ancestors’ life stories on your own life; what do you want to continue to pass down into the future, and what is better left behind?

**See a recent online class in ancestral archeology, hosted by Berkshire OLLI (Osher Institute of Lifelong Learning.

• Purposeful Memoir as a Quest for a Thriving Future, questing into our life stories in order to cultivate the positive qualities we need more of, and transmute life’s challenges into lessons that can help us co-create a better future for ourselves and our communities.

“Jennifer…a multitude of thanks to you for an extraordinary experience of self-reflection, self-acceptance, encouragement and your exemplary way of being…your beautiful expression in the world is much appreciated!”

—RF, 2016