solar year

Wednesdays, 7-8:45pm/EST 
June 18, 2025 - June 3, 2026
13 meetings, across one solar year

An orbit for your book, culminating in a celebratory reading

  • SUMMER = VISIONING > fire

  • FALL = STRUCTURING > earth

  • WINTER = FLOWING > water

  • SPRING = RE-VISIONING > air

This is not a workshop, it’s a generative, communal force.

Using the framework of the SOLAR YEAR, our creative orbit starts with peak fire energy near the upcoming summer solstice. We’ll meet every four weeks (13 sessions total, one 6 week mid-winter break) to support the collective progress (and, if desired, completion) of your book-length project. All media & genres welcome. We’ll primarily be referring to poetry texts, but our first two cohorts included poets, essayists, fiction-writers, journalists, photographers, sci-fi writers, scholars, and memoirists.

$525-975 sliding scale

  • > SUMMER = VISIONING > fire energy
    June 18, July 16, Aug 13, Sept 10

    > FALL = STRUCTURING > earth energy
    Oct 8, Nov 5, Dec 3

    > WINTER = FLOWING > water energy
    Jan 14, Feb 11, Mar 11 

    > SPRING = RE-VISIONING > air energy
    Apr 8, May 6, June 3 

    We’ll focus on generative rituals and habits, consideration of craft & structure, and, most importantly, supportive community and gentle accountability. This space is designed to nurture your projects, collectively and individually.

    You’ll be encouraged to periodically share excerpts of your work, and to discuss, in some depth, your process. But you will not be critiquing each other’s full projects. If group members would like to swap on the side, that is, of course, welcome, but not an expectation.

  • suggested exchange:

    $525=pressured resources
    $750=balanced resources
    $975=abundant resources

    payment plans available

    payments of $975 will receive a one-hour 1-1 writing consultation & a year-long subscription to Open Language (substack newsletter, with special subscriber-only benefits) 

    If SOLAR YEAR sounds like what you need and you want to join but can’t pay in full, or at all, please include a message when you register, and I will be in touch about available scholarships.

register for solar year

hear what others love about solar year

  • “The workshop has been an essential watering hole in my journey of turning a tiny handful of poems into a draft of a book!”

  • “I can't believe it, but over the year my poetry project (previously 23 random word documents) has solidified into something that looks like a poetry manuscript. SOLAR YEAR has helped me confront my hesitations about writing about these topics, then use them to get deeper into the themes rather than running away like I was initially (and often) tempted to do. That is the most precious to me — the sense that I've experienced and hopefully internalized a new method of writing and working on my craft. One that is questioning and exploring and pleasurable and courageous.”

  • “I committed to the novel I'd been running away from.”

  • “I've written more poetry, and taken more photography for my project as well as feel a continued openness to creation that I wasn't feeling before. I am finding the prompts in class and meditations to be super helpful. They get me flowing and give me good jumping off places for my work on my own. I find the accountability of a group to be huge for me. I need it!”

  • “SOLAR YEAR has been really helpful in removing the ways I was getting in my own way for my project. I have been so impressed with the combination of somatic, generative and creative offerings and the ways they've helped open me to further possibilities within my work.”

  • “I love that we start with tuning in to our bodies and our environments. It sets a grounded tone. The exercises helped me to articulate my vision for my book. The readings inspire me to follow new avenues of research and expand my thinking on how to structure this and future collections. I have started new sections/poems that fill in gaps that I didn’t know were there.”

  • “I am so impressed with the structure of the whole workshop and I love the long arc of it!”

  • “The whole group is wonderful and wise.”