Last year on my 27th birthday I wrote myself some advice. I told myself to stop comparing my life to those around me. I told myself to start living and stop worrying so much about what the future would hold. Today, I am 28 and I’m trying to figure out where the year went and what I was doing that whole time. Did I follow my own advice? I’m not sure.
In October of last year, just a few weeks after my birthday, I applied and interviewed for a new job and got it. Since then the year has had so many different up and downs I can barely count them and some days I feel like I am only hanging on by a thread, and even then my hands are slipping because it’s actually really hard to hang onto thread. To say the least, its been a trying year. I won’t go into detail but here are some of the highlights—good, bad, and in between.
I got a new job.
I tried to work a full time job and two part time jobs and basically fell apart.
I went to the emergency room on January 1st because of an allergic reaction to medication.
My partner and I lost our house we were renting and were given less than 30 days to move.
We moved in with friends three months ago.
We are moving again in three weeks.
I’ll soon be working from home again and I am not 100% sure how I feel about that.
So, that’s it. That’s my year in a nut shell. There were lots of other things that happened. Lots of good things. Lots of love. But there were also lots of tears and fights and my realization that I finally did need to see a counselor. It wasn’t a bad year, but its maybe not a year I would choose to do over again.
The trees are a riot of color as I drive past the grounds of the Episcopal Church in my town. The field that becomes the annual pumpkin patch worthy of inclusion in a Peanuts special is heartbreakingly bare. Every fall since I moved to this New England town over twenty years ago, the arrival of the pumpkins has been a seasonal passage.
Dear Younger Me,
I’m not that old, only 24…but I’m old enough to want to talk to you and tell you everything I’ve learned so that maybe you can feel better about who you are.
Last year on my 27th birthday I wrote myself some advice. I told myself to stop comparing my life to those around me. I told myself to start living and stop worrying so much about what the future would hold. Today, I am 28th and I’m trying to figure out where the year went and what I was doing that whole time. Did I follow my own advice? I’m not sure.
In August of 1915 my great grandmother was turning 27. She was married, living on a farm in Kansas, and had somewhere around four children (she would go on to have thirteen children when all was said and done). In October of 2015, one hundred years later, I am truing 27. Sometimes I think about my great grandmother’s life, how one hundred years and two month separate us. What kind of thoughts was she having on her birthday in 1915? Was she fulfilled with life? Was she happy? Did she wish she had done things differently—perhaps ended up somewhere else, with someone else? I think of her often, living a parallel life to my own one hundred years apart. And I’m thinking of her this week, as I turn 27 and examine my life so far.
As I approached my 28th birthday I keep wondering, have I followed my own advice? Have I stopped comparing myself to other people? Have I stopped wishing I was someone else, somewhere else? I don’t think I have. I catch myself looking at Instagram sometimes, at the lives of strangers, and wishing my life was like their life. Wishing that I could be part of their adventures. But then I have to remind myself that Instagram doesn’t tell the whole story. Social media lets us live two lives and I have to remind myself which one is reality. To look around at all I have and not wish it away, not wish it into something different.
This year I want to give myself hope as I go into the next year. Hope that I will make my life what I want it to be. That I will learn to be happy with what I have and change what I am not happy with. I see my own frustration mirrored in the lives of so many of my friends and I know I am not alone, even though some days it feels like I might be the only one in the world without my shit together. I don’t believe that next year on my 29th birthday I will sit here and write about how I figured life out. I think that I will have a new set of problems, a whole different adventure. When I look back at 2016 and my 27th year it has been one of deep learning, deep change, and even some pretty deep failures. But it has also been one of deep love, of great adventure, deep laughter, and even deeper self-discovery. Every day I am becoming more and more myself and I think that’s really the only thing that I can ask out of this life. That I am able to love myself and be myself no matter where I am in the world.
-Julia Nusbaum, Creator
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.’
Julia is the creator of HerStory Blog and currently lives and works in Nashville, Tennessee. She loves yoga, books, kittens, history, intersectional feminism, and telling your stories.
The brick-arched doorway houses two twin wooden doors. It smells of early-summer piss. Under the marquee, a small blue and white sign reads, "Air Conditioned." But it's a lie: the club will be sweltering.