Sharing Our Stories:

A Coming-of-Age Storytellers’ Workshop

A structured space for developing your work through critical frameworks, peer witnessing, and tailored editorial engagement.

I’m building an 8-week workshop for queer and disabled storytellers working across forms—fiction, memoir, film, poetry, and beyond. Together, we’ll engage the coming-of-age genre not as a fixed model, but as something to question, reshape, and work through in relation to your own project.

Details:

·      8 weeks – live on Zoom (weekly)

·      Begins the week of May 11, 2026 (TBD)

·      Applications open April 20, 2026

When the story you’re trying to tell won’t take the shape it’s supposed to

Many queer and disabled storytellers don’t struggle because they lack material.

They struggle when it comes time to bring the material together—into something with shape, movement, and coherence.

Often, the default solution is to turn to familiar and available models of storytelling.

But coming-of-age narratives, in particular, tend to rely on structures that:

·      Assume a clear trajectory

·      Privilege moments of recognition

·      Move toward resolution in ways that don’t reflect the experiences of many queer folx and people with disabilities.

So, when your story doesn’t follow that arc, the problem isn’t just creative—it’s structural.

You may have:

·      A strong sense of what you want to say

·      A body of writing that matters

·      But very few models for how to bring it together

When the available models for storytelling don’t fit the lives or stories we’re trying to represent, the challenge isn’t just what to say—it’s how to give it shape.

This workshop is built, in part, around that gap.

A different kind of workshop

This is not a workshop build around fixing drafts or following a model.

It’s a space designed around three interconnected forms of work:

1.     Teaching

Each week includes short, focused teaching and theoretical provocations drawn from queer theory, disability studies, and narrative theory—offering frameworks you can actively use to think through your own project.

2.     Workshopping (as a space for witnessing)

Most weeks include a focused workshop of one participant’s work.

But this isn’t a space organized around critique or correction.

It’s structured to allow for a different kind of engagement to take place—one that centers attention, relation, and how meaning emerges across different readers and different stages of work.

3.     Editorial Engagement

You’ll receive direct, detailed engagement with your work—attentive to structure, narrative movement, language, form, etc.

Not to bring it in line with a model—but to help clarify what it’s already doing, and what it might become.

Different stages, shared work

This workshop makes room for participants to enter at different points in the storytelling process. Some are gathering ideas. Others are drafting. Still others are refining work for sharing or publication.

Rather than separating those stages, this workshop is designed to hold them in relation to one another.

That means:

·      Those in earlier stages are not “behind”

·      Those in later stages are not working in isolation

·      Each stage brings a different kind of insight into the process of storytelling

Collecting

You’re developing ideas, methods, or direction.

Through extended 1:1 coaching sessions, you’ll leave with:

·      A clearer sense of your project’s shape and direction

·      An outline or organizing structure

·      Concrete next steps to continue working

Telling

You’re drafting and shaping work.

You’ll leave with:

·      Detailed developmental feedback on a section of your work (up to 10k words)

·      A clearer understanding of your narrative’s movement

·      Specific areas for revision and expansion

Presenting

You’re refining work for sharing, submission, or publication

You’ll leave with:

·      A carefully revised section of your work (up to 15k words)

·      Line-level insights and edits

·      Strategies you can apply across the rest of your project

When these stages meet

Because participants are working at different stages, the workshop becomes a space where insight moves in multiple directions.

Someone gathering material may notice patters that help another participant shape a draft. Someone deep in drafting may clarify what a project is trying to do in what that shift how others approach their own work. Someone revising many recognize how narrative movement is taking form—while someone earlier in the process may point to tensions that resist easy resolution.

What emerges is not a hierarchy of progress, but a shared engagement with the challenges of storytelling itself—especially when existing narrative models don’t quite fit.

On witnessing and becoming

If coming-of-age narratives are, in part, about becoming a subject, then witnessing is central to that process.

Becoming doesn’t happen in isolation.

It happens in relation—to readers, to listeners, to others who are working through similar questions.

One of the places this becomes most visible is in the question of structure.

When you’re trying to bring a project together—especially on that doesn’t fit familiar narrative arcs—it can be difficult to know:

·      What holds the story together

·      Where its movement comes from

·      What counts as transformation or change

In this workshop, witnessing becomes one of the ways we work through those questions together.

By engaging each other’s work across different stages, participants begin to:

·      Recognize patterns that aren’t immediately visible from within their own work

·      See how others are working through similar structural, thematic, and conceptual challenges

·      Develop forms that emerge from the work itself, rather than being imposed from outside.

In this sense, witnessing operates on multiple levels:

·      Your work is engaged by others who understand its stakes

·      You encounter how others are navigating similar narrative constraints

·      Insight moves across different stages of the creative process

This is not simply feedback.

It is structured peer witnessing—a way of reding and being read that allows both your work and your understanding of it shift.

Who this is for

You might find this approach useful if you’re working on a project that doesn’t quite fit familiar expectations.

If the structure feels unclear—not because there isn’t one, but because it doesn’t follow a recognizable arc.

If you’ve had the sense that your work is being read against the wrong set of assumptions.

Or if you’re trying to understand what your project is doing before deciding what to do with it.

Structure of the workshop

In session:

Each session (1.5-2 hours) is divided into two parts:

First half:

·      Short teaching component

·      Discussion of key concepts or theories

·      Writing or reflection prompt

Second half:

·      Focused workshop of one participant’s work

·      Collective engagement and peer witnessing

·      Guided facilitation and editorial input

Outside of session:

·      2 x 1:1 coaching sessions (before and after workshop component)

·      Editorial engagement tailored to each participant’s needs

What this space is designed to make possible

This workshop is built not only to support individual projects, but to make visible the connections between them.

As participants share and engage each other’s work, a broader filed begins to emerge:

·      Patterns across different stories

·      Shared tensions with genre and form

·      Overlapping questions about identity, time, and becoming

What takes shape is not just a set of individual narratives, but a web of stories and knowledge that extends beyond any one project.

At the same time, this is a deliberately human space.

In a moment when creative work is increasingly isolated—and often mediated by tools that distance us from one another—this workshop is grounded in:

·      Presence

·      Attention

·      And the experience of being read by others who are fully there

The aim is not only to develop your work, but to do so in relation—to other people, other stories, and a shared process of meaning making.

About the facilitator

I come to this work with a background in English (PhD), history, critical theory, and university-level instruction, and over 15 years of experience working across a range of disciplines.

My approach to storytelling is shaped by:

·      Literary and cultural analysis

·      Queer theory and disability studies

·      Histories of gender, sexuality, race, and embodiment

I work with writers and other storytellers not only to develop their work, but to help them understand what their work is doing—and what it makes possible.

Timeline

·      Workshop begins: week of May 11, 2026

·      Duration: 8 weeks

·      Applications open: April 20, 2026

Stay connected

If this feels like a way you’d want to work, you can join the interest list.

I’ll be sharing more details soon, along with an application for the first cohort. The application isn’t about screening for experience—it’s there to help shape a small, thoughtful group and to support the kind of space this work requires.