The Glen Workshop: My People

I spent last week on a green quiet campus in western Massachusetts. I spent hours curled up on a narrow bed in a monastic, light-filled dorm room with a window onto a lake, writing and reading and relishing the quiet. And I spent many more hours sitting around tables with fellow writers and artists, talking, writing, wrestling with big questions, laughing, singing, even crying a little.

I left with a dozen or more new ideas for the book I’ve been trying to write for four years, a mile-long list of poets and novelists and other writers to look up and try, a new band to listen to and love. I left with a series of heartfelt bear hugs and a collection of email addresses and Twitter handles and phone numbers. I left with the unmistakable feeling of having been among my people.

Listening on the last night

This is a rare tribe: a group of Christians with diverse denominational roots, many with painful stories of having been hurt by the church. Some of them have left church and come back. All of us have wrestled, continued to wrestle, with the God who grappled with Jacob, and with the way His story gets played out in the world by groups of fearful, imperfect people.

They are also – let it be said – a heck of a lot of fun. From the opening wine-and-cheese reception (at which I had a glass of wine with Kathleen Norris, one of my heroes) to the closing dance party, from late nights in the lounge telling stories to a fun free day exploring nearby towns, we had a ball. I haven’t laughed so hard in weeks.

The inimitable Lauren Winner taught our memoir workshop class, by which I mean she led discussion of the manuscripts we had all submitted beforehand, and asked so many good questions that my brain is still spinning. She is wry, quirky, thoughtful and brilliant, and our group of memoirists shares those traits. They are kind, generous, respectful and intelligent, and the level of discourse – about writing and life – was consistently high.

Kristin (my roommate/workshop-mate) and me

I’ve dreamed about going to the Glen Workshop for years, since I discovered Image and its excellent Good Letters blog as a college student, thanks to a creative writing professor who pointed me to both (and to the MFA in Creative Writing that shares a birthplace and a lot of the same excellent people with the Glen). All the pieces – time, cost, location, faculty, emotional impetus – never fell into place until this year. But when they did, they fell into place perfectly.

I’ll be sharing more specifics in the days to come. But for now I want to say: what a nourishing community. And I am so grateful to be part of it.

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