Workshop – INSIDE OUT: Creative Journaling and Generating for Publication

Do you enjoy writing but find yourself feeling stuck when you sit down at the page? Or maybe you feel like journaling would help you move through difficulties, but you never seem to make time for it. Or do you want to push your personal writing from the pages of your own notebook and out into the world, but you’re not sure how to create anything that other people would find worth reading? In this three-hour workshop, you’ll be guided through a diversity of prompts ranging from the shortest, lowest of stakes written tasks, to more complex, strategic, and deeper exercises, in order to take your personal nonfiction to the next level — whether it be for you alone or for a wider audience. You’ll leave with tools, activities, and ideas that you can use on a daily basis or anytime you need a little push to get unblocked. Writers at all levels will benefit from this experiential dive into the processes that allow us to use language to untangle ourselves.

Sophie Lucido Johnson is an award-winning memoirist and New Yorker cartoonist. Her first book, “Many Love: A Memoir of Polyamory and Finding Love(s)” was nominated for a LAMBDA literary award, and was published by Simon & Schuster. “Dear Sophie, Love Sophie: A Graphic Memoir In Diary Entries, Letters, and Lists” was published by Harper Collins. She has had work in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Believer, Bon Appetit, The Chicago Reader, and many other places. She teaches writing at The Chicago High School for the Arts and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.