Once a year at the place I work we have this training. It starts off like most trainings you’d have at your work. Everyone comes together, complaining that they have better things to do than be here at this. You find your friends and sit together and talk about your day so far. We have an expert come in and talk to us, and then we do some group work on the topic and call it a day. It’s a workplace training that myself and the people I work with are used to. It’s a training for what to do if there an active shooter in my building. My building is an elementary school that is filled with 800 children everyday. The active shooter training is the one we dread the most. We are educators, not police or military. We are experts in reading, and math, not barricading and disarming. Yet, there we are. Learning how to do those very things from some very brave police officers.
The worst part about the training is when we actually pretend there is an active shooter there. The person fires blanks and tries to get into our classrooms—tricks us into thinking its safe to come out, and will occasionally take a hostage. It’s pretend. We know it’s pretend. But the sounds are real, the smells are real, and our actions have to be very real. We have children to protect. Precious children who have been entrusted to us by their parents. Every single adult I work with would put themselves in the line of fire to protect those children. It’s not even a question.
So, like clock work, once a year we practice. As we huddle in classrooms, knowing truly we are safe, the thoughts still run through our head—the what ifs, and wheres, and whens. The thoughts of Newtown and Columbine. Thoughts we dare not speak in that training, because as pretend as the training is, we get a fractional glimpse of what it was like there. And it terrifies us. We think of the faces of our beloved students and tell ourselves, “whatever it takes, I’d do it, I’d keep them safe whatever it takes.”
Pencils, three, sharpened. Done. Pens, three, filled with blue ink. Done. Writing board with clamp set ready. Done. Water bottle filled. Done. Hair oiled and tightly plaited. Done. Dressed into a comfortable salwar-kurta. Done. Eat? If, and only if, there were idlis. Soft, piping hot idlis with coconut chutney.
God, or kismet, or intuition, or chance, wakes me up. My cell phone’s home screen lights up my bedroom. I reach for it. My news app notifies me that there is an ACTIVE SHOOTER targeting NED PEPPER’S BAR in the OREGON DISTRICT of DAYTON OHIO. The alert was originally sent fifteen minutes ago. I immediately dial Brianne’s number, one of three numbers I’ve committed to memory. I need to know if my friend is oh please I can’t even think it.
Like many eccentric children, I had often wished I could be afflicted with some kind of physical ailment, imperfection or secret status—something that would make me unique and special.
I have my face waxed every few weeks.
Hot wax is smeared down the sides of my face, over my cheeks, across my jawline and to my neck. Then, it’s ripped off in an instant. In that second before it is ripped off, my body automatically tenses, waiting for the pain that I know is coming.
Once a year at the place I work we have this training. It starts off like most trainings you’d have at your work. Everyone comes together, complaining that they have better things to do than be here at this. You find your friends and sit together and talk about your day so far. We have an expert come in and talk to us, and then we do some group work on the topic and call it a day. It’s a workplace training that myself and the people I work with are used to. It’s a training for what to do if there an active shooter in my building. My building is an elementary school that is filled with 800 children everyday. The active shooter training is the one we dread the most. We are educators, not police or military. We are experts in reading, and math, not barricading and disarming. Yet, there we are. Learning how to do those very things from some very brave police officers.
But should we have to think that?
Should we teachers, aides, counselors, and principals have to think that?
I work at an elementary school, not a military base.
Should we have to have a training where we learn how to take down an armed intruder who has come into our world of songs, and books, and art, and love?
Should we have to panic every time we go on lock down because we don’t really know what’s going on, or if this is it?
I don’t know the answer. I’m an educator, not a policy maker. It’s a hard question and an even harder answer. I’m not sure if we’re ready to hear it as a nation, but I look at my co-workers during the training, they try to act like it’s normal, as we push tiny desks up against the door and plan how we’d instruct first graders to throw books at whoever comes through that door. Practice yelling the location of the shooter. Rehearse asking the officer to show me his badge because he might be tricking me. We practice running out of the building to safety. But I see it. I see the fear and the questions in my coworkers. I feel it myself. There are so many questions. But I know we need an answer.
-Kelly Albrecht
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.’
I read an article in our local newspaper about a high school coach who had just been fired for abusing his male students. I was in my early forties, and remember taking in the article (yes, back in the day when people still read an actual newspaper) and contemplating the unpleasant information that a football coach in a city just north of where I lived had inappropriately touched his male students. My next thought was, Oh, that happened to me.