Should a Workshop Be a Safe Space?

Dear Friends,

This post is a conversation between Alison Acheson and me. Alison and I both taught writing for many years as college professors. Now we are forging a path for ourselves as teachers and writers outside academe. If you are not already a reader of Alison’s Unschool for Writers, I hope you’ll explore her rich series. In this exchange we reflect on how the traditional classroom has changed, and why we still believe it is possible for writing to stand apart from our private selves.

Josh

Josh: Alison, you taught in an MFA program at the University of British Columbia for 14 years. It's uncommon for writers who have found a full-time teaching gig to give it up. What pushed you out of academe or drew you toward other opportunities? Was it a push or a pull or both?

Alison: I taught "Writing for Children and Young People" from 2002-08, and then again from 2014-2021. Not only was there an incredible shift in classroom focus between '08 and '14, but in 2015, our writing program blew up with accusations and the loss of our Chair...all of which sent reverberations within the entire writing community in Canada. I've written some about this and posted it in Brad Cran's "Truth & Consequences" newsletter here on Substack, so won't go on about that. 

At the same time – 2015-16 – I was caregiving my spouse through ALS, so was really not dialed in to all the madness. I was never tenure-track – that might have made a difference. I was at first a "sessional" (the equivalent of a US "adjunct"), and then a "lecturer" – someone with a handful of rights and benefits. Months turned into years of grief and loss on my part, and bizarre and divisive behaviour on the parts of those I worked with and for.

Josh: I've read about your caregiving, which is the subject of your latest book. How difficult it must have been to see your husband slipping away at the very time that the profession you loved was changing around you. 

Alison: Yes, it was what was happening in the workshops and classrooms that, in the end, caused me to move on. I would have stayed for the teaching. But the teaching became less and less.

There's such irony to the idea of a "creative" writing workshop being a safe space. It's not that it should be a place of attack or fear, no. But there is nothing safe about creating. I always expected that the workshops I facilitated would be places of respect...but for the most part, the respect should be for what the piece of work wants and needs to be. Egos and bruises should be left at the door, and there should be a sense of deep caring for what we are all doing together. 

I no longer felt I was able to work in the ways that were expected of me. And was experiencing physical symptoms that told me it was time to leave. We need to listen to our bodies; our minds don't always let us know, and hearts have a way of pretending to be occupied.

Josh: You're bringing back memories of the last five years or so that I taught in Iowa. Students were changing, sure, and there were some increased difficulties in the classroom. But I often felt that I could win over even the most skeptical audience over fifteen weeks. When I left, I still felt that sacred things were happening in the classroom. It was more the environment around the classroom that triggered physical stress. 

I remember a faculty workshop where the president had brought in a higher ed consultant (I guess what they call a "thought leader") who was going to help us think through strategic planning for a rejuvenated arts program. At some point he used the term "us-ness" to refer to the benefits of an arts program, and one of my colleagues – a poet – recognized that this was a guise for student retention. Get them to enroll, hook them with belonging through the arts, and get more of their tuition. My colleague said, "I thought we were going to talk about the arts." 

It was that kind of gaslighting that set off alarm bells for me. I'm not sure I could even name the physical signs — a kind of roiling gut might have been one of them, certainly all the physical symptoms of anger (muscle stiffness, thudding pulse). What were the signs of distress for you, if I may ask? 

Alison: In the year following my leave-taking, a beloved colleague – my friend in that place – died of a heart attack, a by-product of stress. Or at least, the symptoms were attributed to stress, and otherwise ignored as he had tried to go on.

Even in the thick of Covid, when I was teaching from home, I would awaken on the days I had class, with painful stomach cramps, which would worsen until about ten minutes after the class began. When it came time to return, the thought of dealing with that within the institutional walls was terrifying.

I recalled the term before Covid, the last term in-class, and the blunt and negative comments about "old feminists who don’t understand where it's at now," the emails from a student unhappy with words I'd used — a sense of hair-splitting. I would think about returning to face-to-face teaching and grow shaky. 

Josh, do you have thoughts on what might be left at the door of the writing workshop or classroom, and what might be brought inside?

Josh: First, I'm so sorry to hear about your colleague. And I'm glad to know that you found your way out before you suffered irreversible injury. 

Your earlier point about the need for safety in writing workshops resonates with my recent experience with the Prague Summer Program for Writers. Most of the participants were much younger than me, and I found that they were looking more for affirmation than for the tough love that I've always wanted from a workshop. So I'm not sure that there was anything left at the workshop door — everything was brought inside and carried back out again. 

Maybe it's fanciful to think that it was ever otherwise? We are so conditioned now to think of the self and the personal brands that we curate on social media as interchangeable. So I wonder how open many of us are to critical input on our work without seeing it as a personal criticism — dust to be shaken off our sandals as we remain true to our curated selves. I think that there used to be more humility inside the workshop, that everyone enjoyed a kind of equality in that space, but I'm wondering if you felt that way as a woman. Is it possible to leave something like gender, race, or sexuality at the door of the workshop? Were we ever, truly, better at focusing on craft in isolation from identity, or was that a delusion? 

Alison: I wanted the work on the page to sit on its own, too; I wanted fellow workshoppers to respect what it was and what it was trying to be, and offer to that end.

I’ve had feedback on stories in workshop that had me in tears on the bus ride home more than once—I learned to wait until I was home to pull out the stack of written comments to read beyond what was said in the classroom. 

But I’m not convinced we have to see it as Tough Love vs Affirmation. 

Josh: Can you explain that distinction?

Alison: In my early days of teaching, I tried to read body language in the workshop, I tried to understand who needed what and when. But I realized that those tough guys who sit back from the table, arms crossed over their chest, can be breaking inside. I learned that a weepy person was not necessarily the most raw in the room. The final straw was an aging woman staring balefully at me all through class (I was inwardly quaking), at the end of which she congratulated me on being a "great facilitator.” She said that she’d had to focus to hear as she’s quite deaf, and the following week she sat closer with a rather convivial expression! After that, I gave up assuming. 

Josh: It’s true! Someone might be glaring at you and really just need to use the restroom. But it’s so hard not to project or assume. That’s a great story. 

Alison: For sure. And it helped to remind myself that to scrutinize the work itself, and give the work what it needed, was key. And to make it clear to the participants that I was doing just that.

I’ve never felt, in a workshop, as if I’m not seen as equal because I’m a woman. But within the workshop, when I was student, it was all about the manuscript for me, not about my identity. I saw my work as both an extension of me and as separate from me. Like a healthy child, I wanted to see the work go out into the world with independence. I’m not hovering over my children to explain them to people, and I won’t be there for my stories either; they’ll need to stand on their own. The workshop should—ideally—ease this pressure. The workshop should give the story some legs. 

Josh: Yes, you’re recalling two terms I often use in workshops, both borrowed from Peter Elbow: believing and doubting. 

Often I divide large group workshops in this way. The first time around the circle, we’ll all be doing our best to believe in the story or essay, looking for elements that are working and celebrating them or locating promising layers to develop. The second time around, we shift into doubting mode, watching for places where the narrative ceases to thrill or jostles us from our reading dream. 

I always find that writers appreciate that balance. We don’t want pure praise or unrelenting criticism – we want someone to believe in us and then help us reach a little further. That balance works well in coaching, too, in my experience.

Alison: Yes, perhaps this depends on the nature of the workshop or consultation: is it for those who want to be professional writers—i.e. people who would like to earn all or part of their livelihood from this work?

Or is it for people who want to find ways to express and self-discover—are they looking for a form of therapy? Writing can be extraordinarily therapeutic.

If it’s the former, they’re about to encounter a world of gate-keepers. If the latter, that’s a different goal altogether. 

I think there was a time when this didn’t have to be explained: if you were taking a course in a university, if you had to submit a portfolio to take part, then you knew where you stood. That seems to have gotten blurry. 

What gets messy is when both groups want to publish.

Josh: Ah, yes, and this conundrum lies at the heart of the Substack platform, where writers with both sets of goals can thrive. Perhaps we’ll save that for a future exchange! Alison, thanks so much for this lovely conversation. 

This is a friendly reminder that tomorrow, 11/29, from 1:00-2:30pm EST, I’ll be offering a live workshop for paying subscribers on writing a high-performing personal statement or college essay. A replay will be available on Friday, 12/1. For details, including the link to the live event, please see last week’s essay.

Also, if you haven’t visited the companion site Inner Life lately, check out last week’s essays by and J.E. Petersen, as well as new work later today from Sam Kahn.