Essays & Other Writing

  • “The End of the Hallelujah Chorus,” Mothers Always Write.
  • “Small” Readers Notes, Ruminate.
  • “Snapshot on Youth, Writing, and Identity,” Transformative Language Arts in Action, Expressive Writing Series, Ed. Ruth Farmer and Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Lanham: Rowan & Littlefield.
  • “Transforming the Stories Of Adolescent Girls.” Radical Psychology. Volume Nine, Issue 1.
  • “A Marriage of Spiritual Memoir & Community Workshops,” TLA Worlds of Change Blogspot.
  • “Personalizing Myth,” Diving in the Moon Journal, Issue 5.
  • “The Essential Angel: Tillie Olsen,” TRIVIA: Voices of Feminism, Issue 5.
  • “Debate: Do Schools Ask Too Much of Us?” Brain,Child.
  • “Two for the Road,” Family Life.
  • “Daughter of My Dreams,” Family Life.
  • “Being a Mother Has own Reward,” Houston Chronicle.

Awards

  • Fab Five Finalist, “Women’s Fiction,” Wisconsin RWA – 2018.
  • Honorable Mention, Houston Writers’ Guild Novel Contest – Spring 2010.
  • 2009 Hero Among Us Award – Nominated by ARTreach Board of Directors as an Advocate for Arts Education and Outreach
  • Honorable Mention, BrainChild Essay Contest – Spring 2002.

Transformative Language Arts Workshops

While earning my MA degree with a concentration in Transformative Language Arts (TLA,) I created a program called “It’s All About You,” a writing and expressive arts workshop for adolescent girls. The eight-week program focuses on encouraging and empowering girls in self-expression, identity, goal setting, and relationships. Over the years, I’ve facilitated the workshop in a variety of venues including public and private schools, after-school programs, and county juvenile probation departments. In encouraging writing as a TLA practice, each participant in the workshop receives a journal.

My own journal writing through the years has been an invaluable gift—a vessel for my voice, a fount of inspiration, an alchemical mystery that extracts wisdom from life’s experiences. People talk about writing their hearts out, but I think I’ve spent hours and hours writing my heart in. I write as a personal TLA practice, while also writing fiction and nonfiction for a broader audience.

What I love about TLA is what I tell my workshop participants:  When we write about what matters most to us, our hands become a magic wand, transferring what lies deep within us into an insight or epiphany on the page.Through the act of writing, or other TLA practices, we discover and rediscover ourselves in unexpected, profound ways. In all the busyness of everyday life, it’s too easy to be propelled along without thinking about where we’re going or what we’re doing. TLA reminds us, over and over again, to follow the compass of our hearts and to listen to the voice in our souls. It sounds so simple, yet in the midst of all the noise and distractions around us, that compass is still and that voice is quiet. Can you hear it?

(Originally published in Changing World With Word: Transformative Language Arts  By Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg and Ruth Farmer)

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