Sacred Space & Intention: Threshold Writing in Midwinter with MK Chavez & Maw Shein Win

SUNDAY, January 4th|Rituals in writing can be as varied as the fonts we prefer to write in or the specific times and places we choose to write.

This workshop’s three-hour journey is designed to explore the powers of ritual in our writing practices. We will prospect our personal writing for known and unknown rituals, habits, and routines and move on to study their impacts on our creative outputs. Taking place in January, a threshold month where we stand between what has been and what’s yet to come, this class invites you to use the quiet clarity of midwinter to renew our relationship with intention. It's an ideal time to listen inward, create new patterns, and kindle fresh creative energy.

Participants will be offered complex generative writing exercises to create first drafts of writing with more depth and insight than most generative prompts. We will create a sacred space for writing and enhance our ability to channel creative energy and focus. Whether you want to understand your writing habits better or create new rituals to aid your writing process, this workshop welcomes you.

This workshop is appropriate for all creative writing genres and writers of all levels.

MK Chavez is a writer, educator, and creative coach whose body of work explores
mixed-race identity, social justice, ecological resilience, horror cinema, magic, ritual,
and the intricacies of the creative spirit. As the founder of Ouroboros Writing Lab, Chavez cultivates a space where literary experimentation is embraced as a radical act of liberation. She supports BIPOC and LGBTQI+ writers, and creative people who are committed to igniting meaningful change. Through workshops and personalized coaching, Chavez supports writers as they find and refine their voices as tools for transformation. Chavez has received the Pen Josephine Miles Award, the San Francisco Foundation/Nomadic Press Literary Award, and the Ruth Weiss Maverick Award. Her published works include the poetry collections Dear Animal and Mothermorphosis, the lyric essay chapbook A Brief History of the Selfie, and Virgin Eyes. Chavez's recent creative endeavors extend into interdisciplinary art, notably featured in the installation Manifest Differently, affirming her commitment to reshaping narratives and pushing artistic boundaries.

Maw Shein Win's latest full-length poetry collection Percussing the Thinking Jar
(Omnidawn, 2024) was shortlisted for the Northern California Book Award in Poetry. Her
previous full-length collection Storage Unit for the Spirit House (Omnidawn, 2020) was
longlisted for the PEN America 2021 Open Book Award, shortlisted for the Golden
Poppy Award for Poetry, and nominated for the Northern California Book Award in
Poetry. She is the inaugural poet laureate of El Cerrito, CA, the 2025 Berkeley Poetry
Festival Lifetime Achievement Awardee, and a 2025 Recipient of the Nomadic/San
Francisco Foundation Literary Award. Win's previous collections include Invisible Gifts
and two chapbooks, Score and Bone and Ruins of a glittering palace. She teaches
poetry in the MFA Program at the University of San Francisco and in the Low Residency
MFA Program at Dominican University. mawsheinwin.com