Everyone Has a Story: Mindful Writing with the Five Senses With Caroline M. Grant
Week of August 16, 2025
Everyone Has a Story
Caroline Grant was on track for a career as a college professor when her first child was born and abruptly changed her focus. Instead of writing literary analysis of novels and films, she began blogging (remember blogging?!) and writing personal essays to explore her new reality as a mother. In her evening presentation, Caroline will interweave personal stories with readings from her published work to demonstrate how, with mindful attention to small details, we can write our lives.
Workshop Descriptions
Everyone has a story, but what’s the best way to tell it? Do you start with your birth and tell a chronological story? How can you organize fifty, sixty, seventy or more (!) years of life and experience to tell a story that’s engaging, relatable, and readable? Using mindful writing techniques and focusing on our senses, we’ll identify key objects which illuminate moments in our lives. Each workshop will include a brief reading, guided meditation, free-writing time, and an optional opportunity to share your work. The sessions can be attended in sequence or individually.
Caroline Grant builds creative communities as a writer, editor, and teacher. She’s published essays in the New York Times, Washington Post, and other outlets, and has co-edited two anthologies, The Cassoulet Saved Our Marriage: True Tales of Food, Family, and How We Learn to Eat and Mama, PhD: Women Write About Motherhood and Academic Life. She was editor-in-chief of Literary Mama, and has taught writing at UC Berkeley, Stanford, and San Francisco Art Institute. Caroline is also co-founder, with her husband, of the Sustainable Arts Foundation, supporting writers and artists with children. They recently sunsetted SAF and returned its funds to indigenous communities.