We are so grateful to the writing workshop leaders who are joining us to Write Around the World! To help us raise money, leaders are offering a marathon of writing groups from October 15 – 21.

We asked these leaders what inspires their generosity and they told us:

“I love AWA workshops because they allow us to listen deeply, week after week, to the pulse of a community. I love AWA workshops because writing together allows us to shine a new, perhaps kinder light into parts of ourselves that may have become remote, brittle, unheard. AWA Workshops allow me a marvelous view of the collective each week as I hold supportive space for the voice of my community to come forth. I love the panoply of voices in response to a common prompt, so often revealing astonishing beauty and insight, a wholeness that none of us alone can generate — or fathom. The AWA training is one of the very finest trainings I’ve experienced in a long professional life of many trainings. The cohort I trained with was full of smart, intuitive, supportive people who continue to provide direction and a sense of strong, committed community. I received financial assistance from a friend who paid my tuition and travel expenses to attend the training. I want to help other low-income facilitators be able to enter this exceptional forum and be able to gain access to this way of serving and working in their own communities. “Write Around the World” is a way I can give back, a way I can say Thank You, a way I can introduce more isolated or lost writers to this joyous, transformative practice of writing in community with others.”

Dana Cunningham Anderson, Writing Alive! Workshops

“AWA has a beautiful way of opening up a new way of seeing ourselves and the world around us which can transform our writing into things we never imagined possible. “

Kate Madara

If you’d like to join a writing group, please visit Write Around the World 2017. There’s a list of when and where leaders are offering groups. To join an event, click on the workshop leader’s name to send them an email or visit their website.

Workshop leaders who want to host an event, there’s still time! Please email AWA and let us know you’d like to join.

Not able to participate but want to follow along? We’ll be using the hashtag #WriteAroundtheWorld2017 on Facebook and Twitter. There’s a great Storify of events from last year to check out. You can also read some of the writing that happened in last year’s Write Around the World workshops on our blog.