Creative writing is a tool for knowing yourself, understanding the world, and connecting with other people. Led by author Seema Reza and accomplished guest writers—including poets, memoirists, novelists, and storytellers—these generative community workshops follow the model developed by Community Building Art Works (CBAW) over the course of a decade of bringing people together in military and hospital settings. Each workshop is designed to help participants put their personal stories on paper in a supportive environment.

Whether you’re just starting out or have been writing for years, you are welcome; no experience is required. Bring a pen, a notebook, and an open mind!

The Wonders of Worm Level Writing: An Online Creative Writing Workshop with author Keetje Kuipers in Partnership with Strathmore

About This Workshop
The Latin root of the word humility means “of the earth.” So to humble ourselves—to try to answer the question of what we might have sometimes gotten painfully, even harmfully wrong in our lives or in relation to those we love—is work that requires getting a little muddy. In this generative workshop, we will concentrate on writing towards the places in our poems where we can get down in the dirt: that humble, vulnerable space of worm level. We’ll write guided by a poetics of humility that yields poems of wonder—at change, at realization, at the endless, humble prospect of still-to-be-seen possibility.

Keetje Kuipers is the author of four books of poems, all from BOA Editions: Beautiful in the Mouth (2010), which was chosen by Thomas Lux as the winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize; The Keys to the Jail (2014); All Its Charms (2019), which includes poems honored by publication in both The Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry anthologies; and Lonely Women Make Good Lovers, winner of the Isabella Gardner Award, forthcoming in spring 2025. Keetje’s poetry and prose have appeared in The New York Times, American Poetry Review, Yale Review, VQR, Poetry, and over a hundred other magazines. Keetje has been a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, the Katharine Bakeless Nason Fellow in Poetry at Bread Loaf, the Emerging Writer Lecturer at Gettysburg College, and the recipient of multiple residency fellowships, including PEN Northwest’s Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Residency. Previously a board member at the National Book Critics Circle, Keetje is currently the Editor of Poetry Northwest, and teaches at universities and conferences around the world, including at the dual-language writers’ gathering Under the Volcano in Tepoztlán, Mexico. Her home is in Missoula, Montana, on the land of the Salish and Kalispel peoples and directly at the foot of the Rattlesnake Wilderness Area. She lives there with her wife and their two children, where she co-directs the Headwaters Reading Series for Health & Wellness and keeps an eye out for bears in her backyard. Find her online at keetjekuipers.com.

These Strathmore workshops are recorded (unless otherwise specified) and a link to the recorded version is available for registered participants only, upon request. The recorded version is edited for participant privacy and focuses on the instructor’s lessons. Our partners at Strathmore want these workshops to be as accessible as possible, so they are priced as “pay what you can.” You will be prompted to enter an amount of your choice when you register. (If you are registering for free, please enter $0.) If you are able to pay for these workshops, every dollar goes to support Strathmore’s education programs.

REGISTER HERE