Write your story of medical, physical, or psychological challenges and trauma. Guided by an acclaimed writer on health and trauma join a safe space to talk and write about your personal experiences.

There are no available registration dates at this time.

Nonfiction writing about challenges both personal and global will be the focus of this five-day workshop led by Melanie Brooks who has long addressed health and trauma in the writing of her own forthcoming memoir, a craft book on tackling hard stories on the page, and essays and op-eds.

Pre-workshop reading and writing assignments, daily writing time, and lectures on related writings and craft issues will help writers interested in or working on stories of medical, physical, and/or psychological challenges and trauma. Whether they’re writing stories of their (or others’) healing from cancer, recovering from addictions, surviving abuse, healing from grief, or reckoning with the real-world issues of navigating the world as a woman, person of color and/or member of the LGBTQ community – or whatever their life or interests lead you to on paper – writers will find this workshop a safe space for exploration, and fertile ground for making progress toward the stories they want the world to read. Those with moderate writing experience, and any life experience, are welcome.

A special invitation is extended to those with backgrounds in social work, medicine, teaching, counseling, first response or other related medical and service fields.

Header image by Dave Bell.

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Instructor: Melanie Brooks

Melanie Brooks is the author of the memoir A Hard Silence: One daughter remaps family, grief, and faith when HIV/AIDS changes it all (Vine Leaves Press, 2023) and Writing Hard Stories: Celebrated Memoirists Who Shaped Art from Trauma (Beacon Press, 2017). She teaches creative nonfiction in the M.F.A. program at Bay Path University and professional writing at Northeastern University in Massachusetts. She holds an M.F.A. in Creative Nonfiction from the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast writing program and a Certificate in Narrative Medicine from Columbia University. She has had numerous interviews and essays on topics ranging from loss and grief to parenting and aging published in The Boston Globe, HuffPost, Psychology Today, Yankee Magazine, The Washington Post, Ms. Magazine, Creative Nonfiction, and other notable publications. She lives in New Hampshire with her husband, two children (when they are home from college), and two Labs.

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