We put together these articles, videos, worksheets, and more to help you be the best workshop leader you can be. If you’re interested in sharing something you have created with your fellow affiliates, please get in touch with us. We would love to add it to these offerings.
Training Materials
Manual
We’ve made a digital, searchable version of our training manual. You can download that PDF by clicking this link.
Where Your Authority Comes From
Many people asked for a copy of the history we share at the end of the training. So, here it is for your reference and encouragement!
Introduction to AWA Affiliation
When you complete your training, we review the benefits of your affiliation and tell you how you can make the most of your membership. Here’s a PDF guide that covers similar topics, structured into a week-long email series we sent in January 2021.
Retreat Recordings
If you attended or signed up for AWA’s online retreat in 2020, you have access to recordings from the event. If you didn’t attend, you can now purchase access to them.
Taking AWA Online
While we’re unable to safely gather in-person, we still want to write together. In March and April of 2020, AWA offered a special post-certificate training about leading AWA groups online.
If you’re interested in learning more, we’ve shared a recording and transcript, from each of the two similar sessions, for your reference.
Logos
This logo quickly tells people you are an AWA affiliate. We invite you to use it in all advertising to support your work as a leader. We have versions you can easily download in red, teal, and blue.
If you’d like a different color, a transparent background, or to link the image back to amherstwriters.org, we can help. Please reach out to Sue Reynolds at sue@amherstwriters.org.
Community
- How to host an online or in-person gathering of AWA leaders. Plan your meet up based on region, interest, or keep it open to all affiliatets.
- How to begin a chapter of AWA. These can be regional or interest-based. Currently, we have these chapters (ones that are actively running are in bold):
- Amherst Writers of Jewish Identity , contact: Barbara Krasner
- AWA Canada, contact: Website
- AWA Ireland, contact: Website
- AWA Northeast (for writers in New England, NY, and NJ), contact: Andrea Vassallo
- AWA Down South, contact: Lane Goddard
- AWA Capitol Region, contact: Facebook page
- AWA West (for writers in CA, OR, and WA), contact: Guy Howard Klopp
Business
- Instructions for setting up your AWA affiliate listing
- Sample monthly cash flow template by Elizabeth Sprague
- Daily, weekly, monthly tasks checklist by Lane Goddard
- Worksheets:
- Five-year planning exercise by Sue Reynolds
- Marketing exercise by Sue Reynolds
- Workshop design exercise by Sue Reynolds
Prompts
- Collections of Emergency Prompts, compiled by our community and provided to all affiliates in 2018, 2019, and 2020
- An ongoing thread of prompt discussion and suggestions in our affiliate forum
- Coronavirus-focused prompt slide deck, shared by Deborah Bluestein
- A collection of prompts inspired by AWA’s founder Pat Schneider
- Prompts for younger writers, shared by 916 Ink, a nonprofit that uses the AWA method with K-12 students
Diversity and Inclusion
- A library of articles about how to create an inclusive workshop and respect writers’ differences
- AWA’s Anti-Discrimination Policy, which you can use or adapt as you see fit
- “Unravelling Racism through Creative Writing” by Sahada Alolo and Suzanne Doerge
Data Collection: How AWA Is Healing Work
- Articles shared by Dr. Ginny Chandler about the Science Behind the Art
- “Adolescent Resilience” by Anita J. Hunter, Genevieve E. Chandler
- “AN EVALUATION OF COLLEGE AND LOW-INCOME YOUTH WRITING TOGETHER: SELF-DISCOVERY AND CULTURAL CONNECTION” by Genevieve E. Chandler
- “A Creative Writing Program to Enhance Self-Esteem and Self-Efficacy in Adolescents” by Genevieve E. Chandler
- Summary of a study regarding “New evidence of the benefits of arts education” by Brian Kisida and Daniel H. Bowen
- Pre-workshop and post-worshop evaluation forms (coming soon)
Press about the AWA Method
- “The Writing Workshop that Runs Itself” by Ben Dolnick in LitHub
- “Writing for Myself and With Others: My Experience With the AWA Method” by Brad Buchanan in Poets & Writers
- Writing Our Future: 300 books, 5000 published authors, and an octopus by Donna Apidone in Sacramento News & Review (about the work 916 Ink does with the AWA Method in Sacramento)
- “Turning the Writing Workshop Model on its Head,” by Sue Reynolds, originally shared in the Substack newsletter of the Shit No One Tells You About Writing podcast. If you’re not a subscriber, you can read the article here without running into the paywall.
- “Writers Space Fosters Creativity in Jacksonville” by Tony Boom for the Mail Tribune
- “Writing workshops across Pioneer Valley help women set their inner voices free” by Max Marcus in the Greenfield Recorder
- “Suzanne Rancourt’s Authentic Voice: One Writer’s GPS to Wholeness” in the Poets & Writers blog
- “Writing Workshop Empowering Women in Barrhaven” and “Unravelling Racism through Creative Writing” by Sahada Alolo and Suzanne Doerge
- “Writing with a Vision” by Wendy Dartnell in Writer’s Centre of Queensland’s membership magazine