If you’re interested in memoir-writing, you’ll love the Dirty, Messy, Alive: Memoir-Writing Workshop Bundle

Explore memoir-writing from start to finish and learn from 20+ skilled memoirists and writing teachers - with sessions on outlining, overcoming writer’s block, craft, revision, promotion and more.

$500+ worth of presentations and workshops to help you continue to move forward on your healing journey.

Ongoing Workshop & Presentation Access

Instead of searching around trying to find these teachers and workshops (many unavailable to the public) you can enjoy these 20+ presentations on your own time.

Enjoy exploring 20+ memoir-writing and creative non-fiction writing techniques to help you stop feeling stuck and finally get your memoir started, written and promoted.

This Workshop Bundle is full of practical and clear workshops and presentations to help support your memoir-writing.

Not to mention, ongoing access to the presentations means you can revisit them whenever you need to without feeling rushed.

  • Discover various forms of memoir-writing and ways to write and revise your personal stories

  • Tap into the wisdom of your body through writing (and discover how memoir-writing is connected to your healing)

  • Finally get started (or unstuck from where you stopped) and write with delight and enthusiasm

  • Discover ways to tell, share and promote your personal stories

Meet your Memoir-Writing Guides

Just look at this stellar lineup of kind and skilled memoirists and writing teachers you’ll learn from at the Dirty Messy Alive: Embodied Memoir-Writing Workshop Series!

Getting Started, Writing the Dirt and the Dirty

We’ll kick things off with the dirt (as in, soil aka the substance that grows things, the juicy stories), with the ‘dirty’ (as in that which sparks guilt, shame, confusion, pleasure). We’ll also add in desire (as in, the state of strongly wanting something), and with these ingredients at play, we’ve got the perfect ingredients for a great memoir!

Identify what stories you want to write, and how to approach writing them.

  • The Memoir-Writing Process for "The Widow's Guide to Dead Bastards"

    Jessica Waite (she/her), Author

  • The Art of Auto-Ethnography: Exploring Culture, Subjectivity & Technology Through the Looking Glass

    Dr. Treena Orchard (she/her), Anthropologist & Author of Sticky, Sexy, Sad: Swipe Culture and the Darker Side of Dating Apps

  • Of Heat & Need & What It Takes: How Desire Propels Your Memoir And Brings It Alive For Readers

    Jeannine Ouellette (she/her), Writer & Writing Teacher at Writing in the Dark

  • Be the Person Who Does the Thing: How to Finish Major Projects Despite...Everything

    Jessica Abel (she/her), cartoonist, author, and coach

  • Lessons in Revisions

    Racquel Henry (she/her), Writer, Editor, & Writing Coach

  • You Will Get Rejected: how not to let it stop you

    Brooke Warner, Publisher, She Writes Press

  • Plan Your Week Like a Productive Writer

    Rhonda Douglas (she/her), Writing Mentor of Resilient Writers

  • Booking Media for Your Memoir (as a non-celebrity) (LIVE)

    Robin Barnett (she/her), Vice President of PR, Icon Media

Navigating Challenges and the Messy Middle

What do you do when your memoir-writing gets messy? Whether it’s the sheer volume of writing you’ve already generated, navigating the ethics of writing about other people, or feeling overwhelmed about getting started, the memoir-writing path can feel messy and confusing.

These sessions will help you turn a mess into map.

  • Sex, Sexts, & Text Oh My! An intro to bringing (hot) sex into your writing

    Shawnrey Notto, Embodiment & Creativity Guide, Author of Sensual Intelligence: The Lost IQ

  • Writing About Family in Your Memoir: navigating code-switching, shame, cultural expectations and ethics

    Nurjahan Boulden (she/her), Dancer, Storyteller

  • Writing to Alchemize Big Little Traumas

    Tina Bruce, Author, Breathwork Mentor and Retreat Leader

  • You are Only as Sick as Your Secrets: telling your story is the medicine that can save your life

    Gabrielle Pelicci Ph.D., Author and Writing Retreat Leader

  • Getting Started on Your Graphic Memoir

    Tom Hart, Graphic Novelist, The Sequential Artists Workshop

  • Writing Diverse Characters: How to write about real people who are different from you

    Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer, Creator of FictionCourses.com

  • Seven Drafts: Self-editing for Powerful, Publishable Writing

    Allison K Williams, Writer & Editor

Writing the Alchemy of Being Alive, Animated and Alert

Writing about beauty, marvel and awe is anything but frivolous. Pleasure is a part of our stories, and deserves as much space as trauma, and, tending to our aliveness gives us a multitude of memoir-writing options.

Sessions will help you explore uncommon ways to write memoir, and bring everything altogether.

  • Diverse Narrative Structures for Memoir-Writers

    Henry Lien, Author/Instructor

  • Hermit Crab Essays: finding freedom in forms

    Rayya Liebich (she/her), Writer and Educator

  • How to Serialize Your Memoir on Substack

    Mercedes O'Leary (she/her), Writer

  • ADHD, Neurodivergence and Uncommon Writing Strategies

    Cathy Kirch, writing prof, writing consultant, of My Writing Hero

  • Writing Yourself as a Character: fiction-writing techniques for memoir

    Daniel David Wallace (he/him), Teacher

  • Uncovering Your Memoir’s Structure as an Intuitive Writer

    Brooke Adams Law (she/her), Intuitive Writing Coach & Founder of Writing Brave

  • How to Find Places to Get Your Writing Published Using the Chill Subs Platform

    Karina Kupp and Ben, Chill Subs founders

Claiming, Writing and Sharing Your Stories

Who are you as a character in your memoir? How do you study and write about yourself? What makes you compelling? And as your write, how do you be yourself, while also being a character in your memoir, and the author sharing their story?

We explore how how and why writing and telling our stories is so very important, as well as how to get your work out there.

  • Outline Your Memoir Using Fairy Tale and Myth as Your Guide Workshop

    Janelle Hardy, host and creator/teacher of transformational memoir-writing course, the Art of Personal Mythmaking

  • Self-Publishing and Funding a Hybrid Memoir Using a Modest Kickstarter Campaign

    Yin Xzi Ho (何吟曦) (she/her), Author and Live Poet

  • Writing Class Radio's Tips Clinic & Writing Workshop (LIVE)

    Writing Class Radio, Allison Langer & Andrea Askowitz, Co-producers

  • Human Design for Writers and Creatives

    Megan Febuary, Trauma-Informed Writing Coach

  • Navigating Editing Services: Understanding the Process and Finding Your Editor Best Match

    Kirsten McNeill, Confidence & Writing Lifestyle Coach

  • Talking About Yourself Publicly: social media and marketing for memoir-writers

    Shelby Leigh (she/her), Book Marketing Teacher

As you can see from these thoughtful and wide-ranging presentations and workshops, this is a uniquely curated event.

Meet your host

Hi! I’m Janelle Hardy.

I’m a writer, somatic (body) healer and transformational memoir-writing teacher.

I’ve been on a writing path since I was a child, and had my first byline in the Yukon News when I was 17, with a monthly column on life as a Canadian high school exchange student in Japan.

I’ve been on healing path since I was 20, seeking to find relief from extreme shyness, loneliness, chronic fatigue, intense tooth grinding and tummy troubles.

I currently combine writing and somatic (body) healing because I’ve found transcendent relief through this combination.

I’m the the creator/teacher of a transformational memoir-writing course called The Art of Personal Mythmaking, as well as the host of the online Healing Through Writing Festival, Stories From the Body Writing Challenge and the Memoir Body, Healing Story Podcast. 

All of which is to say - you’re in good hands with me :-)

I care deeply about the people I serve.

I trust this work, I trust my training and experience, and I trust the incredible lineup of skilled (and kind) memoirists and writing teachers you’ll hear from during the Dirty Messy Alive: Embodied Memoir-Writing Workshop Series.

Most of all, I trust you and your desire to tell your stories. To get dirty, messy and alive!

Join us to start, write and promote your memoir with supportive writing processes and fascination craft-of-writing options and workshops.

Dirty, Messy, Alive was created with your memoir-writing goals in mind.

It’s a workshop and presentation series that trusts you.

  • That trusts your discernment, your hunger for growth, the wisdom of your body, your creativity and your stories

It’s a workshop series, not just about memoir-writing, but also about exploration: inviting in confidence, depth and creative, alternative forms of memoir.

The Dirty Messy Alive: Embodied Memoir-Writing Workshop Series was specifically created for sensitive, thoughtful, creative writers like you. People who:

  • love writing and other creative practices

  • have a tremendous desire to write their life experiences into stories, and are struggling to get it done

  • are hungry to grow beyond what their cultures, societies and families have told them they are

  • feel the deep and potent promise of a transformative process (aka memoir-writing)

  • have stories that have been held inside too tightly for far too long

  • don’t want to do all their writing alone

This is about giving you embodied, experiential practices and ways to write your personal stories.

Dive into this enriching, experiential, Dirty Messy Alive: Embodied Memoir-Writing Workshop Series to learn, explore and feel the possibilities that await you.