I remember lying under the church pew as a child.
“How much longer?” I would loudly whisper to my mother, my seven-year-old self never knowing how to wait.
“Not long,” she would answer, her faithful, copper brown eyes never losing focus. Her attention was glued to the altar. She was an Episcopalian to the core. And, meanwhile, I couldn’t even pronounce the word.
My father would later say that her church wasn’t biblically focused, that they only spoke memorized prayers and never spoke from the heart.
I never felt the need to ask questions to gain understanding. I just stood on the outskirts of judgment, with my Evangelical-obsessed shell paired with an inner core of deep fear and exhausted work-performance salvation.
But my mother’s eyes remained glued to the altar.
The NICU carried a low, steady hum that seemed to live inside the walls. Machines breathed in rhythm. Monitors blinked in soft pulses. My daughter, Charlie, lay beneath a warmer that cast a pale glow across her skin. She was six weeks early and small enough for my hands to meet around her torso.
I am a mother and a daughter. But I was not mothered—at least not in any traditional sense. Five months after they met, my parents were married: She’d just turned twenty-one; he was six months younger. They bought a house with red stairs, a half-block from the beach in Santa Monica. Five years later, in 1970, they had me. But in March 1973 my mother divorced my father, and a few months later, she called to tell him that she was leaving me at her parents’ house in Berkeley. The next day, my maternal grandmother met my father at the Oakland airport with me in her arms. My mother cut off all communication with her family and friends.
I found out I was pregnant at three in the morning after the Spring Equinox Witches’ Market. Spring still felt very far away, I was still in my big Canadian coat, still wearing rubber gloves under my winter cycling gloves to break the wind, which the man in the Leith Walk bike shop taught me to do. Before I accepted the new job in Edinburgh, my husband and I talked endlessly about the weather. Was it really as bad as we imagined? Could we really live up there?
Four days after the passing of my father-in-law, my wife and I welcomed our foster son. He came to us at five months old, barely sitting up on his own, and deliciously full of baby rolls. Twenty months later, he left our home and went to live with his biological mother for the first time in his life. We were parents for almost two years, but that title was taken from us.
Not all transitions come with clarity.
Some arrive as quiet unraveling.
The day he left for graduate school, the air in the house felt different.
Not heavy. Not sad. Just…suspended. Like everything was still waiting for something to happen, even though it already had.
The insertion of my daughter’s feeding tube was sold as a simple procedure- up the nose and down the throat, swallow, swallow, swallow, the nurse explained. Like threading a piece of spaghetti through your face!
I glanced at my cell and saw a confusing text from Dad: Does Shoshana know? We have to tell her. My gut seized. Something was wrong. My parents split when I was an infant but kept in touch, long after I grew estranged from my mother and extended family. Dad occasionally provided updates on their recent calamities. Surely, this was one of them. I called him. Nothing. C'mon. I called again and this time he picked up. No hellos.
I expected to like being a mother.
I expected to be good at being a mother.
I expected to raise children who would appreciate that I wasn’t an embarrassment, not obese or out of style, or driving an old beat up Buick.
Before Thomas was born, I’d had two miscarriages. Both early according to the calendar, but both late enough to fill me with a deep, empty sorrow. When my first pregnancy had been confirmed, I felt euphoric. I had a miracle within me, a new soul the world had never known. And then it was suddenly gone, fading away in pools of blood until nothing of the wonder was left at all.
My mother has always loved traditions and memories and rituals. She planned the same summer vacation every year so we would all be able to build memories and share stories year after year after year.
I have always been known as the adventurous one in the family, the risk-taker, the never-sit-still, keep-it-interesting-or-I-will-leave kind of sibling.
But my mother, she is gentle and steady. Her Louisiana upbringing blended with her singsong Alabama sound, she loves the piano and will never be seen in public without her Crimson Tide lipstick on.
Her eyes on the altar, her ears set to the tune of angels standing outside our window. She is grounded, yet bold. Floating down the river of peace that calms our hearts, the river that calls us home.
-Mary Margaret Randall
The hermit crab essay is a term originally coined by Brenda Miller and Suzanne Paola in their craft book Tell It Slant: Creating, Refining, and Publishing Creative Nonfiction. Like its namesake, the hermit crab essay borrows an existing container, such as a list, set of directions, tarot card reading, or real estate listing, and makes it its own.
In this workshop, we’ll explore how different authors use the Hermit Crab Essay as a creative vehicle for approaching topics that may feel too difficult, vulnerable, or traumatic to write about directly. I’ll share writing exercises, practical tools, and techniques that you can take with you to experiment with this form and begin crafting your own next essay.
The success of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl (2012) heralded a new era of domestic suspense. Most of the novels that came to define this genre featured white women narrators behaving badly. While this convention invokes the precedent of the pathologization of hysterical women, we must also consider how this convention relies on contemporary white privilege. How do Caro Claire Burke’s Yesteryear (2026), Alice Feeney’s My Husband’s Wife (2026), and Meagan Church’s The Mad Wife (2025) use unreliable narration to suggest that madness is a privileged state?
Women characters are still too often judged by one question: Is she likeable? That question can do a lot of damage on the page. Anger gets softened. Ambition needs an explanation. Bad decisions need a sympathetic reason behind them. A woman can be selfish, difficult, ruthless, jealous, furious, or want something she probably shouldn't, but writers often start sanding those edges down because they're afraid the reader won't like her. But liking a character and wanting to keep reading about her are two very different things. Stop Making Her Likeable is a 90-minute workshop about what actually keeps a reader invested in a complicated woman. We'll look at why readers can become completely absorbed by characters they don't approve of, what makes difficult behaviour fascinating rather than simply frustrating, and how motivation, contradiction, desire, and agency affect the way a reader responds to her. We'll also look at our own pages. Where are we explaining a woman because we're afraid she'll be judged? Where are we making her apologize for wanting something? Where have we given her a tragic reason for behaviour that we might simply allow from a male character? The goal isn't to teach writers how to create an “unlikeable female character.” It's to stop treating likeability as the price a woman has to pay to be worth reading about.
In this course, author Piper L. White will discuss feminism through the use of fairytales and how to take these beloved childhood stories and twist them into our modern writing by delving deep into the psyche of women-identifying people and their everyday horrors to craft their own prose pieces.
This product gives you access to all four weeks of the workshop. Purchase one or more drop-in sessions here.
Build a habit in 20 sessions. In this 4 week workshop that meets Mondays through Fridays from 8:00-9:00 AM CST, we will focus on generating new writing—making headway on a current project, reviving an old project that’s been gathering dust, or writing based off of the daily prompts Leigh provides.
The first 45 minutes of class are a gentle, camera-off, silent writing session. The remaining 15 minutes are an opportunity to share excerpts of our work, reflect on progress made, and set intentions for the following day. Then we will read a passage together on the writing life and close each class with a new learning about habit formation. By the end of this course we’ll have a morning writing habit that is each our own to continue and build upon.
This listing is for an individual class. To purchase access for the full 4-week workshop, click here.
Build a habit in 20 sessions. In this 4 week workshop that meets Mondays through Fridays from 8:00-9:00 AM CST, we will focus on generating new writing—making headway on a current project, reviving an old project that’s been gathering dust, or writing based off of the daily prompts Leigh provides.
The first 45 minutes of class is a gentle, camera-off, silent writing session. The remaining 15 minutes are an opportunity to share excerpts of our work, reflect on progress made, and set intentions for the following day. Then we will read a passage together on the writing life and close each class with a new learning about habit formation. By the end of this course we’ll have a morning writing habit that is each our own to continue and build upon.
Many writers feel drawn to write about their lives but struggle with uncertainty: Why this story? Why now? And who is it really for? This workshop is designed to help writers move beyond doubt and toward clarity by focusing on the deeper meaning and purpose beneath their story.
In this interactive, craft-forward session, participants will be introduced to the Memoir Compass, a practical framework that helps writers articulate their motivation (why they are writing), mission (who the story serves), and message (what meaning or insight the story carries). Through guided reflection and writing exercises, participants will begin shaping a personal narrative rooted in intention rather than overwhelm.
This workshop is ideal for writers interested in memoir or personal narrative, as well as fiction writers drawing from lived experience, who want to move forward with greater confidence, focus, and direction.
Some of the most compelling creative nonfiction begins with the feelings we are tempted to avoid: anger, resentment, shame, fear, or the sense that we have an axe to grind. In this six-week workshop, writers will explore how to follow that emotional heat toward deeper, more honest work—without sacrificing compassion, complexity, or craft. Through close readings, writing exercises, discussion, and constructive feedback, we’ll consider how to transform strong feelings into writing that reaches beyond catharsis and connects with readers.
IT’S NO SECRET THAT FEEDBACK IS AN IMPORTANT PART OF THE WRITING PROCESS.
In fact, we argue that it might be the most important part of the process.
But it’s hard to find a writing community. It’s hard to find the people who are willing to take the time and the effort to read your work and give the feedback you really, truly deserves.
That’s where HerStry Critique Groups come in!
HerStry Critique Groups are small groups of 6 women who gather online for 6 weeks to share their writing, give constructive feedback and gain skills as writers.
Weekly online sessions last approximately ninety minutes, with three women sharing their work each week. Writers of all genres and levels are welcome and you may share both works of fiction and nonfiction.
Sessions take place on Mondays 7PM CT, Tuesdays 11AM CT, Fridays 11AM CT
WHAT’S INCLUDED IN THE HERSTRY CRITIQUE GROUPS?
Six 90 minute live workshop sessions
Three 20 minutes sessions in the “hot seat” to get you work critiqued
Written and verbal feedback from your fellow workshop participants
A weekly in depth edit and critique of your work from the group leader after each session
Weekly writing goals and accountability check ins
Full video recordings of each session to keep for your records
Say goodbye to the lonely, stuck in your head writing life!
LET’S WRITE!
From conception to submission. Let’s make summer sizzle with stories.
Writing a short story doesn’t happen in one session. It takes multiple drafts to get it exactly right, to create characters that come to life for the reader and a world they can’t stop thinking about. In this seven week course we will work on a single short story from conception to submission ready. The seven week session will include generative brainstorming sessions, short story craft talks, multiple workshops for feedback from fellow writers, and detailed line by line feedback and edits from your instructor. Plus, we’ll talk about submission venues, cover letters, and when to know if your story is ‘finished.’
The slumbering house cradles the echo of your footsteps as you wander its sleepy halls. Sleep should have come for you hours ago, but your anticipation has successfully warded off any chances. The contractions come so lightly and irregular that you wonder if it’s even labor. Perhaps it is the Braxton-Hicks you read about.