Some people will find this post because they already know me; others may be coming to this post directly from social media. If you’re the latter, here’s my bio, and the basic pitch:

I’ve spent twenty years facilitating workshops – while people might assume that means “teaching poetry classes,” creative writing has really always been just a fraction of what I do. A lot of my facilitation work in non-creative writing spaces has happened organically, via relationships, but I thought I’d set up a page here to make some of my offerings explicit.

I would love to bring any of these to your local Indivisible chapter, or DSA chapter, or neighborhood group, or church group, or student org, or informal collective, or any other progressive activist formation. Not because I’m some amazing expert or authority (I’m not!), but because these kinds of workshops can be powerful opportunities to both build practical skills and forge relationships.

The following workshops can be in-person or virtual. Get in touch!

(And of course, while this post highlights these specific offerings, you can find info on all of my other work—school residencies, performances, keynotes, etc.—at that same booking link)

Be the Bullhorn: Performance and Public Speaking Fundamentals

When we are called to speak at an action, present at a teach-in, record a video PSA, or stand up on any stage and talk about what is meaningful to us, it is perfectly natural to be nervous. For those of us who don’t think of ourselves as bold, charismatic speakers, what are some tactics, tools, and tips for making public speaking both easier and more effective? Through analyzing examples, sharing real life experiences, and drawing some tactics from the arts world, we will push back against the idea that powerful speakers are just naturally gifted, as well as the idea that there is only one model or format to follow—there are many doorways into effective, memorable performance.

Social Media and Design Basics

And where big nonprofits may have whole teams dedicated to branding, content creation and outreach, smaller activist organizations, we are often just improvising, learning by doing, and trying our best. This workshop is about developing a “baseline” of good media/design practice: sharing specific tips, tools, and tactics for creating engaging content and trying to get as many eyes on it as possible.

Maybe you’re the person who just “inherited” the Instagram page of your hyper-local group. Or maybe you’re part of a team tasked with spreading the word about a brand new project—but no one has a digital organizing background. Or maybe you’re actually feeling pretty good about your group’s social media strategy but are just looking to keep learning. Whatever the case, a workshop like this can be a space to compare notes and avoid rookie mistakes.

Workshop Design and Facilitation Basics

Activist groups sometimes get trained on Robert’s Rules of Order; this workshop, however, is about sharing facilitation basics for more informal spaces: presenting at a conference, leading a teach-in or training, facilitating an onboarding meeting, etc. How can we go beyond the most basic “slide-deck-icebreaker-lecture” formats, while still delivering experiences that are more impactful than just a big chaotic conversation? How can we avoid forced “interactivity for interactivity’s sake” while still bringing people’s voices into the space and giving everyone opportunities to connect? This will be a space to share experiences as well as concrete tactics.

Personal note: facilitation is a skill! And most people don’t have a background in pedagogy, and/or experience building a workshop outline. But that’s okay—these are all things we can develop, and this workshop, while it could be a whole semester-long class, is built to be a single-serving “shortcut” into that longer conversation.

Zine-Making and Promotion Beyond Social Media

Zines (pronounced “zeens,” like “little magazines”) are handmade, self-published booklets for sharing information, art, and beyond. While zine-making has a long and rich history, its resurgent popularity today is driven by the idea that, in a world of screens and social media, zines are concrete, shareable expressions of what really matters to us. Zines are a great way to build community and practice creativity; for organizers, they can also be powerful, practical tools for hand-to-hand information sharing. In this interactive workshop, we’ll share some tips, tools, and tactics for making your own zines, and also explore how the concept of zines relates to the larger idea of finding ways to promote our work beyond just posting online.

Narrative Interventions Lab

We may already know that telling stories is generally more powerful than just sharing facts. But we can “zoom in” on that kind of principle even further, drawing out lessons related not just to how we communicate, but how our communication is connected to issues of identity, audience, and narrative on a more fundamental level. How might we organize events, build programs, or craft messages that are attention-grabbing, anthemic, and mobilizing, connecting to deeper narratives that everyday people are already primed to support?

In this interactive workshop, participants will explore “narrative interventions:” specific projects and approaches that can disrupt harmful narratives and/or cultivate healthy narratives in our communities. We will cover some narrative organizing basics, analyze existing examples of narrative interventions, and have space to vision and explore possibilities connected to our work.

Creative Writing for Organizers

Note: the blurb below is for the workshop I co-facilitated with Miski Noor via the Forge back in 2022; that was a one-time thing, but it’s a good intro to the basic idea of what this kind of workshop can look like.

As organizers, we know that art and culture are vital elements of movement work. But while it’s easy to have a poet perform at an action, or have a friend’s band play a campaign fundraiser, there’s so much space for deeper, more intentional skill-sharing, community-building, and growth when we lean into our creativity. This workshop will explore questions like: How can our values and principles be translated into images and stories? What is the difference between words people like, and words that move people (whether it’s a speech, op-ed, poem, or any other kind of writing)? What lessons can organizers draw from the creative process, whether or not we consider ourselves “artists?”

This workshop is for folks who are involved in organizing, and who want to explore creative writing both as a worthwhile practice in-and-of-itself, and as a means to do culture-shifting, counter-narrative work. Through analysis of existing writing, writing prompts, workshopping, and open dialogue, we will focus on both process and product, writing as liberatory for the self and as a powerful tool for engaging with our communities.

Beyond Buzzwords

As the language of advocacy, activism, and movement work shifts, opportunities for cooptation and dilution become more commonplace. Whether it’s a politician talking about systems change, a nonprofit director talking about intersectionality, or a random person on the internet talking about allyship—these are all terms that mean something more concrete and specific than the decontextualized “word salad” we sometimes encounter. “Beyond Buzzwords” is a catch-all title I use for the many workshops I facilitate on traditionally “DEI” topics like identity, privilege, allyship, counter-narrative masculinity, consent, etc. So an individual workshop can have some other, more specific concept as the focus, like “Beyond Buzzwords: Microaggressions” or whatever else.

Another specific example of this: One of my favorite workshops to facilitate, and one that might be relevant to a number of activist groups, is simply an introduction to identity as a concept. We discuss how we all hold various identities, how those identities are tied to history and power, how they do not define us entirely but do impact how we move through the world, and how all of that might manifest in our work. As a DEI workshop, it’s really basic, fundamental stuff… but that’s sometimes what’s needed, especially for groups of brand new activists.

MPD150 and Abolition Basics

I was part of the group that, back between 2017 and 2022, produced and shared the MPD150 report, “Enough Is Enough: A People’s History and Performance Review of the Minneapolis Police Department.” Thousands of people here in Minneapolis have read that, but it’s also the kind of thing where new folks cycle into movement work, and it’s good to offer “refresher” sessions for a topic like this. We’ll talk about the report (and share as many FREE copies as you want), and also go over some abolition fundamentals: useful for folks who are new to (or even suspicious of) the concept.

And Beyond

These are all examples of workshops I have facilitated for groups in the past, but I also pride myself on not just bringing “canned” presentations into spaces. I work with organizers to make sure each program is as relevant as possible to its specific audience.

Also: all these ideas are for workshops or facilitated discussions. But I’m also, of course, a performer (like here). Want to integrate some art/poetry into an upcoming meeting, teach-in, guest speaker, etc.? Whether it’s me, or someone I could recommend? That can be another reason to connect.

A Note on Budget

Yeah, this is the kind of work I do for a living, so I usually get paid for it. And if an org does have a budget for these kind of professional development/skill-building experiences, that’s great. But I also want to be very clear that, when it comes to mission-aligned organizations in my community (the Twin Cities, but I’d also extend that to MN and WI in general), especially when they’re smaller or more informal, I am much less concerned about budget, happy to do some pro-bono (free) work, and mostly just want to be useful.

So if anyone out there is interested, please feel free to contact me via my booking form here. There is a “budget” field on that form, but please don’t let that be an obstacle, even if it’s $0.

Finally, I’ll just also share one more reminder that my virtual class, Meeting the Moment: Political Poetry and the Anthemic Impulse, is available now! For anyone out there interested in all the stuff in this post, but maybe not part of a group yet, or not able to book me for something, that fully-online, asynchronous course can be a good alternative.