Letters to the Future: Writing Beyond the Self - Workshop
Thursday 26th June - 2-4pm
18th Street Arts Center, 1639 18th St, Santa Monica, CA 90404
Facilitated by Sheila McMullin
Limited Spaces - RSVP Using the Form Below to attend this free workshop.
Workshop Description:
In this intergenerational, generative workshop for writers 18+, we’ll explore what it means to write not just about our lives—but through them. Drawing from autobiographical, confessional, and speculative writing traditions, we’ll ask: What do we want to leave behind? What stories, truths, and lessons do we carry that could be a balm, a blueprint, or a spark for someone yet to come?
Together, we’ll write as a form of legacy—honoring the pain, joy, resistance, and transformation that brought us here, and crafting work that speaks across timelines. Through guided prompts, short readings, and group reflection, we’ll experiment with writing that holds grief and wisdom, rage and resilience, honesty and hope.
This is a space to expand the meaning of memory and legacy, to write toward those we love (and those we may never meet), and to create something that says: We were here. And we made something of it.
All genres and experience levels welcome. Bring a notebook, a pen, and a story you’re still learning how to tell.
About Sheila McMullin
Guided by the belief that building creative confidence is a pathway to self-actualization, Sheila (she/her) cherishes the privilege to work with people’s stories and delights in the process of bringing what is stored in the heart onto paper. She also understands that this is not necessarily easy, and the meaning we may be searching for might present itself in unexpected forms. Undeterred by challenging subjects, Sheila views iteration and revision as a way of life.
Replacing judgment with curiosity, beginning right where we are, enjoying the pleasures of playfulness, and believing that story is powerful medicine, Sheila is ready to hold your writing with tender encouragement and expert guidance.
More on Sheila’s background
Award-winning poet, editor, writing coach, and community gardener, Sheila McMullin is the author of daughterrarium selected by National Book Award recipient Daniel Borzutzky for Cleveland State University Poetry Center’s First Book Prize. An Arts for Los Angeles Arts Delegate, she advocates at the intersection of civic participation and local artist resources. She teaches nature writing classes with Los Angeles County Department of Parks and Recreation. Through her love for words, herbs, and composting, she crafts handmade paper out of herbal marc, seeds, and recycled materials as an act of devotion to the natural world. With a dedication to continual learning, she studied under Stacy Sims, founder of The Well, to develop mindful embodiment facilitation skills and is a UC ANR Master Gardener. She sits on the board of the Contemporary Irish Arts Center of Los Angeles and holds an MFA in Poetry from George Mason University.
As a literacy and story coach, she co-edited The Day Tajon Got Shot, the Black Lives Matter novel-in-stories written by middle school writers from the Beacon House Community Center in NE Washington DC, and Humans of Ballou, the non-fiction collection of high school students living in Anacostia who know a different side of Washington DC, both from Shout Mouse Press.
As a writing coach, she provides boutique manuscript development and writing services for aspiring authors, academics, and seasoned professionals. She facilitates creative and professional writing and somatic workshops for all ages.
As a youth mentor, she coaches middle and high school students on persuasive writing and call-to-action speech delivery to advocate for social issues about which they care deeply. She has supported high school seniors in brainstorming, outlining, writing, and revising college personal narratives. Sheila’s students have been accepted into Stanford, the UC’s, UPenn, Boston University, University of Maryland, NYU, Howard University and many HBCUs.
Sheila apprenticed under Marysia Miernowska and completed 140 hours of herbal training through the Gaia School of Healing & Earth Education in California. Continuing her herbal education, she is studying herbal medicine for women under Dr. Aviva Romm, renowned Yale-educated M.D. and midwife.
After earning her Teaching English as a Foreign Language certificate (TEFL), she taught English at the Shandong University of Science and Technology in China and continues to support English as a Foreign Language creative writers based in the U.S.
She currently works within the traditional lands of the Chumash, Kizh, and Tongva Nations with gratitude to this home that supports us and the people past and present who have and continue to steward it.
For more, visit www.sheilamcmullin.com