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 The old harsh-critique-based model of the writers workshop is outdated.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

Natassja started Monarch Writers Workshop after teaching in academia for four years. Though Natassja loves teaching at the college level, bogged down by grades and red tape, she decided she could better assist creative writers outside academia. In her experience as a writers workshop student, critique sometimes felt more like badgering than helpful discourse. She kept writing despite the workshop, 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 wasn’t. 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 after taking this course, her own writing improved immensely.

She started treating her own critiques of 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.

Natassja holds a nonfiction creative writing MFA from the University of California, Riverside. Her memoir Don’t Touch is about working as an exotic dancer on the island of Guam, and is out on submission now. Natassja has been published or has pieces forthcoming 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. At UC Riverside, Natassja 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. Her cat, Raja, is slowly going blind, but still loves to fetch. (Persistence is a trait they both share.) A lover of creatures, she fostered monarch caterpillars during her time in Southern California. To learn more about Natassja and her work visit natassjas.com.

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.