Sunday evenings from 6:30-9:00pm at Story Parlor
6/23, 6/30, 7/7, 7/14, 7/21, 7/28
Student showcase 8/4
Early Bird pricing through May 31
Regular price effective June 1
Space is LIMITED to ensure an intimate experience. We recommend signing up EARLY!
Refund and Covid policies can be found here.
Writing from the Top of Your Head is a 6-week workshop for beginning through experienced writers, inspired by Emily Dickinson who wrote: “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry”.
The course is for writers who want to generate fresh material, feel stuck and struggle with writer’s block, or for those who have always wanted to write but are too afraid to start.
Participants will be guided, in a criticism-free environment of support and safety, to “open the tops of their heads” to access their inner voices without censoring or judging. Through evocative writing prompts and lively class readings and discussion, the inner hooligan and nonsense-maker will be given room to shine and shout. The wild place is most exciting! We will have loads of fun!
Participants will also benefit from learning invaluable brain-training tools and strategies that will help them move through their creative life with grace and resilience, and attain the freedom on the open page that they've been longing for.
We have a limited number of partial scholarships available for BIPOC and trans/non-binary folks. Contact writenina@writingfromthetopofyourhead to inquire further.
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Nina Hart is the founder of "Writing from the Top of Your Head" workshops. She offers writing workshops and 1:1 first draft book coaching, and is a certified KaizenMuse Creativity Coach and Gateless Method writing facilitator. Her workshops have also been inspired by the work of Paulo Freire and his philosophy of education for liberation and the work of Brene Brown, among others. Her first collection of surreal short fictions called “Somewhere in a Town You Never Knew Existed Somewhere” was a finalist in Foreword Reviews’ IndieFab Book of the Year Awards. Nina spends her time as a right-brained, highly sensitive, creative entrepreneur. She is passionate about helping writers find their voice and reclaim the hooligan kid spirit that most people have buried under an “adult” veneer. Nina considers herself to be an improvisational writer – she was a blocked writer until she rediscovered the curious part of herself who could play, experiment, and explore. She offers online workshops, writing retreats, and 1:1 coaching.
You can check out her website and join her newsletter here: www.writingfromthetopofyourhead.com.
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You struggle with writer’s block, perfectionism, fear, shame around sharing your work, procrastination, or self-criticism.
Your early work was rejected by an authority figure, or you were harshly critiqued in your arts education or academia.
You’re finally ready to write that poem, tell your story, but you don’t even know where to start. Or maybe you can’t get past chapter 5 of your book and you’re stuck.
Even the act of writing or creating feels like an extra vulnerable and sensitive undertaking.
You want to learn practical tools and strategies that will help you follow through on your creative dreams and goals.
You are ready to blow the rust off of your creative process, and access the great volcano of imagination inside of you!
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"I have struggled for years to write against a constant storm of inner criticism screaming, “Don’t write it like that. You can’t say that. You’re doing it wrong.” It’s been increasingly hard to summon up the courage to get to the page, let alone put words on it, and I end up retreating, sooner or later, under the torrent of self-abuse. I have read shelves of books on writer’s block and becoming more creative or productive, with little result.I’ve signed up for classes and creativity coaching, which I often don’t finish because the fear/perfectionism/self-criticism won’t abate enough to do the lessons... But Nina has structured the course so that, for the first time, those lessons could sneak, ninja-like, past my defensive barriers and take root. With the help of her talks and prompts—through which Nina’s compassion, wisdom, and playful spirit shine—I’ve finally created a small, safe space within myself where the words can flow without fear. It’s a feeling I’ve never experienced before, and I am so grateful to Nina for that gift."
— Tinatsu Wallace
“The content and material ALONE in this course is rich and deep enough to bring someone through substantial, substantive transformation not only in their creative lives, but in their lives, period. The hidden little traumas in all of us creatives get tweaked and exposed and witnessed in the process of these brilliantly diagnosed exercises that are laser-precise in what, where, and how they touch these places.”
- Karuna Haber
“Nina’s class blew me out of the water. I had done some things like it before so I felt like I was experienced… but this class! This class really opened up some sort of spigot in me and out came the words, the images, the magic. I don’t even know where it came FROM. It just came THROUGH."
— Mindy Beller, Student
“I have a degree in painting and drawing, but I don’t consider myself a writer. I joined Nina’s writing classes thinking they would help me with some technical writing for work. Boy, was that an undervision! This class completely blew the top off my creativity in a way that bled into everything in my art and life. It honestly taught me to just be myself and trust my own voice. I even make up words now, like undervision. I am free!”
— Sarah Thomas, Student
“These six weeks have changed my life, helped me set priorities, returned my vocabulary. I am reconnected to my young adulthood when I could say “I am a writer.” These classes are not about grammar and form but discovering the great creative mind rich with sentences and images. They are not about competition to be best but about each person’s unique discovery of their magical words and phrases. I am in a state of joy…”
— Bonnie Schell, Student
“When I started Nina’s class, I had mostly not written for two years – and was starting to wonder if I was still a writer. Now I’m on fire for writing. Nina is a truly creative soul – and a phenomenal cheerleader, coach, and creativity instigator.”
— MJM, Student
"No matter what kind of artist you are, this class is essential to your creative blossoming."
— Badria Jazairi
“This is the best thing that happened to me and my creativity.”
- Flora Le