Love With Nowhere to Go: Writing Through Grief & Loss

In-Person: Carnegie Library (East Liberty) - Meeting Room 3B

Thursdays Sept 25 - Oct 16, 6-7:30pm

Age Group: 18+

Level: All Levels

Description: The name of the workshop comes from the popular adage, “grief is just love with nowhere to go.” Writing and art are two attempts to give loss meaning and form again—to give that love somewhere to go.

There are many kinds of mourning, not limited to the death of loved ones. This workshop is geared towards people who have experienced any kind of loss, and who want to explore that loss through writing. It will focus on the narratives we build surrounding grief, the way imperfect memory and the need for coherent meaning can shape—and misshape—our stories and experiences.

The workshop will use a combination of guided conversations and writing prompts to move through the stylistic elements of writing and discuss how they relate to loss, grief, and the healing process. A particular emphasis will be placed on how grief interrupts memory, and how that interruption shapes our understanding of our own stories and the way we tell them.

By the end of this workshop, what will participants will have learned new ways to discuss the experience of loss and grief, to place that sense of loss into stories, and to use stylistic and storytelling techniques to more fully explore the ways that narrative of loss lives on within us.

About the facilitator: Liz Abeling is a writer and cemetery worker living in Pittsburgh, PA. She is a co-founder of the writing community, Scribblehouse, and the CNF Editor of After Happy Hour Review. Her work can be found in The Journal, Bat City Review, The Fiddlehead, and others.

Refund & Cancellation Policy: Attendees can cancel their registration 7 days or more before the event for a full refund (minus ticketing fees). If there is a need to cancel registration less than 7 days before the event, 50% of the ticket cost will be refunded (minus ticketing fees).

Write Pittsburgh reserves the right to cancel events due to unforeseen circumstances including low registration. If this happens, registrants will receive a 100% refund of the workshop cost (minus ticketing fees). Please note that Humanitix does not allow us to refund ticketing fees, so that is not something that we have any control over.