Invitation
The first time I really tell someone, the words belong to her, like me and everything else in the world. We are alone, and I don’t remember where the rest of our friends are. Or maybe we aren’t alone and all of our friends are with us, but I can only ever think of her.
“I’m bisexual,” she says, from just a few steps ahead of me.
She says it so casually in that way she always does, in the same kind of tone she might use to mention a café she wanted to go to or point out an interesting bird she saw perched on a telephone wire above us. She says it like it means nothing. All I have to do is respond.
“Oh! Me too,” I say too quickly, in a kind of overexcited way that makes me feel foolish.
I always tell myself that I haven’t told anyone because I don’t feel there’s anything to tell. It isn’t something I have ever found shame in. It isn’t something I’ve actively hid from anyone, and so I feel no pressure to announce it. The moments have escaped me without action – dramatic pauses between arguments with my parents and quiet instances in conversations with friends. Missed opportunities I never consider because it doesn’t matter anyways. I’m not dating a girl and I haven’t ever. Saying something would be as pointless as learning to swim in a desert. When I say those two simple words of agreement at that moment, they aren’t pointless at all.
The words are an admission to the weight of my stares and lingering touches. They’re a concession to the veil of disinterest I wear in front of everyone else, a recognition of what she has probably correctly assumed.
I’d been told in my psychologist’s office that I scored “high” in areas of the MMPI (a psychiatric test used in the seventies to determine where one’s area of mental health needed attention)—translation, “Not good.” Identity and Orientation were the categories I rang the bell on and in a voice worthy of that slug character in Star Wars, my psychologist asked, “Are you aroused by women?”
I practice punching at the kitchen table. I practice on the couch. I practice in my sleep. I make a fist and see my life there. I make a fist and study the veins that press out against the skin of my forearms. Hating your hate of love, I practice punching at the kitchen table.
I couldn’t make myself heard for fifty years. Not even the boy could hear me, the boy I lived inside. My vocal anatomy worked fine—larynx, mouth, lungs beneath my breasts—I just didn’t have the words. Nobody did, not in the sixties. I had to resort to signals. Most of them he missed.
I was on my hands and knees trying to hide a twelve-piece dinner set under my single bed when I heard Mum calling from the bedroom next door. She’d been in bed for two days, suffering from either a bad back or codeine withdrawals. I pushed the crockery behind a box of stainless steel cutlery and some gingham tea towels I’d bought from Woolworth’s the day before.
I lost count after the first ten, twenty, seventy-five, a thousand. I remember the first time. Driving with my sisters, one of them said, I’ve had sex with a woman. Stunned into revelation, I blurted, so have I. But she was kidding. Entrapment, and I fell for it.
Paris, City of Love, where we lay our scene of adventurous study abroad college students. Me and the girls were out in a little bar late at night. The lights were cool, a featured musician was playing acoustic, and my friends and I were ready for some dessert.
The day I came out? I’m sure it’s not uncommon to come out on multiple occasions. I expect the circumstances in which I came out are a bit unusual though. To understand that takes context: My girlfriend was once my neighbor—at a Southern Baptist Theological Seminary—where we lived with our husbands—who were studying to be pastors.
The first time that I really tell someone, the words belong to her, like me and everything else in the world around us. We are alone, and I don’t remember where the rest of our friends are or maybe we aren’t alone and all of our friends are with us but I can only ever think of her.
hen I was 14, I walked into a church youth lock-in and fell head-over-heels in love with the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. I immediately knew four things:
1. I liked a girl. A lot.
2. I was a girl.
3. Girls couldn’t like girls.
4. This was an especially bad situation given that I was at church.
She stops walking and looks at me, a wry smile crawling up through the corners of her face. I know, says the upward twist of her lips. It seems then that she’s told me for a reason. Her smile acknowledges something I know we’re both feeling but haven’t yet named.
I feel my face flush. If she can see it, she says nothing. I wonder if everyone knows or if it’s only her eyes that can read me like I’m transparent.
In four days, she will be lying down in a bed beside me and make a comment that went something like so this is why you were so excited when I told you I was bi. In three days, she will steal the cigarettes from one of our friends’ jackets. We’ll leave to smoke them on the beach, but end up lying in the sand kissing. In two days, she will hold my hand as we roll through the countryside on a train and tell me she thinks she was meant to meet me. Tomorrow, she’ll kiss me for the first time in a club under a cover of intoxication.
For now, she loops her hand around my arm like a vine of ivy overtaking a building until it rests in my own and leads me through the twisting hills of Seoul. I follow her to wherever it is she’s taking me and feel the invitation through her skin.
This is how it begins.
-Caitlyn Ng Man Chuen
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.’
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!
October 7, 14, 21, 28, November 4 and 11 CT
WRITING THE SEX SCENE.
Writing a sex scene can be delirious fun, a harrowing challenge, a literary milestone—possibly the most important part of building your short story or book. In our six weeks together, you’ll experience just about every possible emotion as you explore the erotic in different modes: comic, tender, harrowing, soul-shattering … because it really is all about the characters’ feelings, not just the mechanics. So we’ll talk about tone. Vocabulary. Metaphor. Sensory detail. How to get big emotions on the page … and when to pull back and let the reader’s imagination go to work.
This is a course for writers who want to explore the intersection between the novel and short stories, and would like to weave their short stories into a story cycle (or collection of "linked stories" or "composite novel"). This is also a class about the interaction of form and content, and how one influences the other. We will read works of interlinked stories by writers from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds, focusing on modern classics and contemporary practitioners of these hybrid forms. Weekly discussions will center on elements of craft, such as the expansion and compression of time, setting as an organizing and connecting principle, character development within and between stories, structure and plot for interconnected stories, and responding to literary influences in the same genre.
This six-week course guides writers through the literary submission process, offering insider insight and practical tools to help you get your work into the world. We’ll demystify everything from reading submission calls to writing cover letters and choosing the right journals. Along the way, we’ll workshop short bios, develop submission trackers, and build personalized plans that align with your voice and goals.
By the end of the course, you’ll walk away with a polished piece ready to send, a tailored submission list, and the confidence to navigate the lit mag world with clarity and purpose.
Ideal for writers of literary fiction, poetry, personal essay, memoir, and hybrid forms.
Tension feels tangible to a reader, an active experience. But from a craft perspective, tension is often a function of restraint, palpable from what is withheld, delayed or left unresolved. Why do some stories feel urgent even in stillness while others fall flat despite dramatic events? Our impulse to resolve tension often comes from a deeply human instinct to seek coherence and moral clarity, but resisting that instinct creates compelling narratives. When we let characters misbehave or allow ambiguity in their actions, we pull readers closer to them.
This course examines tension as a narrative force. We’ll consider how writers can counter the impulse to resolve too quickly, to justify wrongful acts or to redeem a character’s behavior. By looking at ways to sustain tension without escalation into spectacle, we’ll experiment with evoking it in the ordinary and the unspoken. The class will combine close reading, craft reflection and writing prompts to practice distinct approaches to writing tension. This course is designed for writers working in fiction, nonfiction, and hybrid forms who are interested in deepening the psychological and structural complexity of their work. Ultimately, tension is what compels the reader to turn the page.
In this generative writing workshop, ecologist and poet Anne Marie Wells will introduce participants to some of today's eco-poets and essayists and guide participants through a series of writing prompts that will use the outdoors and personal experience as inspiration for creative expression. No writing experience is necessary to participate.
Caitlyn Ng Man Chuen writes with a commitment memory, perception, permanence and the ways in which they diverge. She recently ended a two-and-a-half year love affair with the city of Seoul.
In my married life in Palo Alto, in our new condo, with congenial neighbors and other friends who were all interested in the usual Boomer preoccupations—ethnic foods, excellent but cheap wines, places to travel to, movies--I kept pressing down cryptic feelings I couldn’t name or understand, was afraid to acknowledge but couldn’t ignore