Writing Community
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story can make all the difference.
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Sparks: Prompt-Style Writing
No writing experience necessary. This prompt-style workshop is for all levels of writers and non-writers who want an environment in which to practice.
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Fire Starters: Writing for Critique
Now that you have some experience writing your personal stories it's time to take your story starts from the The Spark Workshop to a finished piece via gentle critique.
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Free Pop-Ups
Monthly virtual workshops focused on providing writing opportunities around specific themes & populations within the breast cancer community. Each workshop is 90 minutes.
Give yourself the gift of writing in a community of others who understand being diagnosed younger with breast cancer. In these workshops, you’re never odd one out — “the cancery one.” Together we’ll write away some of our stress and find healing in the long run by using writing as a tool to find meaning. Some describe these groups as therapy, and some say they are better than therapy. Writing enables you to go deep and connect with yourself. Doing so in a group allows you to meet others who are doing the same. You’ll make new friends and fill a notebook along the way. Even if you don’t consider yourself a writer!
Your Facilitator
April Johnson Stearns, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Wildfire Magazine. A lifelong writer, April was diagnosed at 35-years-old with Stage III breast cancer that she found while breastfeeding her daughter. Four years later, while struggling to “go back to normal” and find other young women in similar circumstances, April launched Wildfire Magazine as a way for younger women to tell and read breast cancer stories. April believes strongly that helping women tell their stories has the dramatic effect of turning a traumatic cancer experience into an empowering one. April lives with her husband and young daughter on the coast of California. Although she loves town life, she also likes to get away from all the hustle and bustle whenever she can to hike in the woods, but writing remains April’s purest escape.
What People Are Saying
“Thank you so much for the workshop and all that you are doing for the community of women living beyond a breast cancer diagnosis. I loved the prompts leading into the actual writing. It was very healing and has lead me to want to write and share more.”
— Stacy
“You have really reminded me how rewarding and healing writing can be.”
— Kai
“You balanced everything so nicely, sharing just enough of your own experience to where we all felt comfortable sharing ours. It felt very safe and I think that the way you facilitated it contributed to that. I would definitely do something like this again. I got a lot out of it and it made me want to try more writing exercises.”
— Pamela
“Our weekly writing time is my happy place.”
— Anne
“You gave me some ideas and permission to write things that don’t flow, connect or make sense to others. There is so much inside me that I wasn’t even aware of before my diagnosis. It is not necessary for others to ‘get it’ or even read it. It’s for me.”
— Suzanna
“I didn’t think I was a good writer until you taught me how to tell my own story.”