I facilitate community workshops around Rhode Island that cultivate reflection, invite vulnerability, and deepen trust among participants. My workshops have run with partnership and support from local organizations and schools, including College Unbound, LitArts RI, Rhode Island State Council on the Arts (RISCA), and Hattie Ide Chaffee Home.
“Jessica pushed me to somewhere I thought I would never go. Through her mentorship, I began to craft autobiographies, personal stories, and memoirs. She empowered me to delve into my past with confidence.”
“[Jessica’s] feedback and insight were not just constructive but empowering as well, and motivated me to experiment with different techniques and styles”
“This course was healing for me. It allowed me to see and feel the strength I have within myself.”
“Jessica played a major role in assisting me in formulating effective strategies for maintaining a daily writing routine. It was a tremendous help while refining my craft.”
Ongoing Workshops
Experimental Essay Writers Group (in-person; currently full)
Sponsored by LitArts RI, this group is for writers of short nonfiction that bends conventions of genre and form. We welcome lyric essays, hybrid memoirs, essays that combine visual and textual elements, and any other creative forms you may invent. Meetings will focus on discussing group members’ works-in-progress, with each cohort incorporating additional activities to meet their members’ interests. Writers of all experience levels are welcome. [Details]
Narrative Writing for Older Adults (in-person)
With my co-facilitator Leigh Vincola, I use multisensory prompts to spur older adults to share stories from memory. This program is run for residents at Hattie Ide Chaffee Home in East Providence, RI, with support from local grants.
Past Workshops
Practicing What We Teach: A Workshop for Writing Educators
In this 3-week workshop, writing educators revive their own writing practice and reinvigorate their work with students. In it, I guide participants through writing a narrative essay on their experiences as writers and educators. Together, we practice strategies for daily writing, share works in progress, and apply peer feedback, and we apply insights we gain into our writing processes to our work with student writers.
This workshop was made possible in part by a grant from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts (RISCA) and was held at LitArts RI. [Details]
Putting Illness Into Words
This 8-week workshop explores how memoir writing illuminates illness experiences, creating opportunities to deepen personal and collective understanding, healing, and empathy. Together, we read illness memoirs and write short memoirs of our own illness experiences — whether through disability, physical or mental illness, addiction, or caregiving — through a combination of expressive writing activities and writer-centered workshops. Taught through a trauma-informed lens, this workshop gives writers the opportunity to explore and develop emotionally sensitive works-in-progress in a respectful, supportive environment. It was developed & piloted at College Unbound.
Coming Soon
Feedback Circle (Virtual)
In this 6-week workshop, 6 participants will each have the opportunity to workshop up to 6,000 words of writing each. each participant will receive feedback three times, either on a different piece each time or multiple drafts of one.
Writing for Educators (in-person)
This single-session workshop reconnects educators with writing as a thinking tool for themselves and their students. Participants use informal writing activities to reflect on their learning and teaching experiences and learn informal writing approaches that can be integrated into classrooms across disciplines.
JessTabak.com 