They’re in a black plastic box, bottom drawer, right side of the IKEA dresser. When I open the case I discover the tiny bottle of oil meant to keep the blade from rusting has spilled. It takes a few minutes to wipe all the different attachments clean, but that gives me time to contemplate. Am I sure? Do I really want to do this?
I step into the bathroom, plug the clipper into the socket by the sink and attach the number five guard. My finger presses the button, the machine begins to vibrate and I feel a familiar surge of weighted power. When I hold the cold metal to my right temple my brain is tickled by the deep industrial hum. I comb the blade through my hair and strands of dyed auburn drop to the floor. I continue to drag the clipper across my scalp and monitor progress in the mirror. As more of me begins to break through it feels as if I’m watching a moth emerge from its cocoon.
I have done this before. Many times, in fact. The reasons are complex. They weave themselves together like the intricate French braids my friends wove for one another when I was young. I wish I had the strength to untie the ribbon that binds my intentions together. I can tell you that sometimes I shave my hair because I’ve fallen into a deep and sudden despair. Sometimes I shave my hair to mark a transition. The end of one story and the beginning of another. Sometimes I shave my hair because I’m bored. No matter the logic behind my actions the urge rises up in me and the more I try to push it back down the more difficult the urge is to resist.
I was called sand.
My family and I didn’t travel to beaches full of it. We couldn’t. Being Iranian in the 1980s and 1990s came with a label: terrorist.
My nickname didn’t come from a beautiful beach.
It came from hatred.
Dear Ezra,
I know we’ve never met…
And yet my hungry mind keeps feeding me
slow-burning images of you in your kitchen.
December 22nd
One day after winter solstice
Five hours, forty-four minutes and twenty-seven seconds of daylight
Sunrise: 10:13 a.m.
Sunset: 3:41 p.m.
LOVE
noun | \ lev : an intense feeling of deep affection; a great interest and pleasure in something.
LUST
noun | \ lest : very strong sexual desire.
With the first true pass of the clipper, the one we can call the point of no return, I feel defiant. The buzz of the blade across my scalp is like a rebel’s call to freedom. I have a giddy commitment to the process and cannot stop. I’m tempted to switch the five guard for the four but I won’t go too short. I’ll go just short enough. Short enough to neutralize. Short enough to strip away any pretense of femininity. Short enough to be plain on the outside but pretty on the inside. That’s what mom always said to comfort me, “It’s all right. You’re pretty on the inside.”
I try to convince myself that my choice of hairstyle tells the world I mean business. That I don’t have time to worry about my looks. But that’s not true. I have no regrets but the initial sense of defiance never lasts. I know from experience that within an hour I’ll be drawing in eyebrows long lost to menopause. Adding a pair of silver hoop earrings. Putting a swish of coral pink on my cheeks. I’ll attempt to be less plain and more pretty. I’ll acknowledge that there isn’t a sweatshirt baggy enough or jeans loose enough to hide the fact that I inherited my mother’s curves.
The last strand falls. There’s always a bit of trimming to do around my ears with scissors. Once done I brush the hair from my body and step into the shower to wash myself clean. Stripping my head of hair is washing myself clean. Delivering myself from sin.
My mother loved her curves and used them to her advantage. She had a monumental rack to the day she died and swore it was sleeping in a Playtex bra every night that kept her bosom so impressive. Her breasts were like Sirens to men. Dangerous and alluring. She didn’t leave the house without them cantilevered to attention and a slash of Revlon’s Really Red across her lips.
I watched men cycle through, I listened from behind closed doors to the fighting and was thrown against a wall more than once myself. I was born from sin.
-Mimm Patterson
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.’
Mimm Patterson is a yoga therapist and transformational coach specializing in chronic pain and trauma. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her partner Ben and seventeen-year-old cat Bruce.
The bathroom light hummed above me, too bright and too sharp, like it was trying to expose something I was not ready to see. Two pink lines. My breath caught in my throat, suspended in the thick, humming air. My hands stayed steady, but something inside me shifted; a hairline crack under pressure. I stared at the test as if staring hard enough might undo it, might turn the lines back into the uncertainty I had been clinging to. For a moment, everything went still. Not peaceful stillness, the kind that comes right before something breaks. It was the kind of stillness that feels like a held breath, a pause in the universe, a moment when the world waits to see what you will do next. I remember thinking, this cannot be real. And then, almost immediately after: Of course it is.