Singing in the Dark: An Online Support Group for Writers, with Emily Lackey

“Emily is professional, knowledgeable, experienced, and honest. She shared tools, skills, and knowledge, as well as her personal experiences… Emily uses humor and candor with a professional, caring demeanor. Emily is encouraging, great with workshop time management, personable, and in tune with what the people in the room need.” -Kim H.

This new period of uncertainty is presenting writers with an unprecedented set of challenges. In a time when so much is up in the air, our attention is being pulled in every direction other than our writing. There are the practical things to consider, such as carving out space and time for your work now that you (and everyone you know) is home, and existential ones: the projects we were working on before may seem suddenly irrelevant in light of everything that is happening in the world. But having a writing practice is even more important when things feel so unstable. A writing practice can help you to focus on what’s important in your life and what’s important to the world: your work, your voice, your stories.

This four-week support group will help writers refocus their creative energy, establish weekly goals for their work, and push through the day-to-day challenges that this new reality forces upon us. Each week, writers will check in with their goals for the week, discover innovative ways to work through new challenges, and support each other in establishing achievable goals for the week ahead. Each meeting will include prompts, inspiring articles, craft tips, connection, and, of course, time to write.

Due to popular demand, we have been running two support groups on Sunday. Please indicate in the notes section which time you would like to sign up for when registering for this workshop. To create an intimate and personal experience for our writers, our support groups are limited to six people each.

Sundays, 1:00 – 3:00 p.m. or 3:00 – 5:00 p.m.; 4-week July group starts July 5; 4-week August group starts August 2 ($100)

Emily Lackey is the Assistant Director of Writers in Progress. Her stories and essays have been published in Glimmer Train, Prairie Schooner, Post Road, Third Coast, The Literary Review, Longreads, The Rumpus, The Huffington Post, Bustle, and Hobart, among others. She was a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and an artist-in-residence at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts and Newnan ArtRez. After receiving her MFA from the University of New Hampshire, she taught writing at the University of New Hampshire and in the graduate writing program at Southern New Hampshire University. She is at work on a collection of linked stories and a memoir.