Monarch Writers Workshops offers memoir writing classes designed to help writers who feel daunted by the task of personal essay writing, but still have the desire to try. A safe, welcoming, and gentle writers workshop experience that helps writers grow their craft while also growing their sense of self-love.
Monarch Writers Workshops gently lead writers through the messy task of making a narrative of their own life experience. Our writing workshops are perfect for those who have wondered how to write a memoir effectively. Though the approach is positive at it’s core, Monarch Writers Workshop memoir writing classes are productive writing workshops that will pull the best prose out of each student — no matter where they are in the process. The old harsh-critique-based model of the writers workshop is outdated. The creative writing workshop needs an upgraded model! At Monarch Writers Workshop, we provide a new approach.
monarch Writers workshop founder and workshop leader
Natassja Schiel
About Monarch Writing Workshop Founder Natassja Schiel
Natassja is a creative writing and literature PhD candidate at Florida State University and holds a nonfiction creative writing MFA from the University of California, Riverside. She has been teaching and publishing creative nonfiction writing for over a decade. Natassja’s work has been featured at Longreads, Bitch Magazine, Los Angeles Review of Books, the Millions, and more. She was also a Contributing Editor at the literary journal Pigeon Pages and Nonfiction Editor at Santa Ana River Review. Natassja has been nominated for the PEO PhD Scholar Award for the 2025-26 academic year. At UC Riverside, she was a Chancellor’s Distinguished Fellow, won the McQuern Graduate Award for Nonfiction, and received a competitive third year MFA Fellowship. She was writer-in-residence at the Yefe Nof: Redesign Residency and a Jane Geuting Camp Fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Natassja believes that all people should be afforded the same rights which should be extended to those working in the sex industries. She loves: purple gel pens, urban gardening, brewing kombucha, and yoga inversions. She has two sibling kittens Maeve and Jules who love to fetch. A lover of creatures, she has fostered monarch caterpillars during her time in Southern California and, again, while living in Florida.
About Monarch Writing Workshop
Monarch Writers Workshop is a fresh approach to teaching creative writing after teaching in academia for more than a decade. Though Natassja loves teaching at the college level, bogged down by grading and red tape, she decided she could better assist creative writers outside academia. In her experience as a writing workshop student, critique sometimes felt more like badgering than helpful discourse. She kept writing despite the often toxic workshop environment, rather than because of it. As an MFA student, this changed when she met her professor and mentor, Emily Rapp Black. Emily ran workshop differently. She focused on the positive—what worked well— saying this often helped writers as much as knowing what doesn’t work well. Emily also gave feedback with actionable steps the writer could take instead of simply pointing out what wasn’t working. This approach helped Natassja grow as a writer and her writing improved immensely.
She started treating critiques of own her work this way. A safe, sensitive, positive writing workshop approach can lead the way to massive improvements in all writing, but especially memoir writing. The memoir and personal essay workshop needs a self-love makeover. If our writing instructors and peers can treat our creative writing with delicate care while still pushing us to work hard at improving, maybe that will become our internal dialogue around our own work as well. This is Natassja’s goal in reimagining what the workshop model can be at Monarch Writers Workshop.
Monarch Writing Workshop, additionally, offers courses that integrate Tarot-generated prompts to invigorate the creative process. Tarot as a tool can be used to explore our inner-depths and pull some of our greatest insights, a requirement for effective personal writing.
Get In Touch
In addition to seminars and workshops, Natassja is available for one-on-one consulting.
Please also feel free to email directly for more information or any other inquiries!
Email: natassjas@gmail.com
To reach Narassja’s agent, contact Chris Bucci at Aevitas: cbucci@aevitascreative.com
““Natassja is an excellent instructor. Her advice helped me become a better writer, student, and person. She is easily approachable, helpful, and an overall great person. I will gladly take another one of her creative writing classes. ”
Monarch writers workshop goals
Students leave refreshed, hopeful, and ready to dig in and improve their writing.
Students create or refine a writing practice that they want to show up for.
Students take actionable steps to bring the work inside of them into the world one step at a time.
A safe, welcoming, gentle writing workshop that helps writers grow their craft while also growing their sense of self-love.