I offer a range of public writing and community education, including courses, coaching, writing groups, retreats, and workshops.
If you’re interested in support for your efforts of writing and striving toward justice (social, racial, and environmental justice), then consider one of these subscription options for individuals.
If you’re interested in a tailored program for your group, reach out to discuss options and learn more.
Possibilities include:
- writing for social justice
- interrupting and countering microaggressions
- strengthening emotional literacies to pursue racial justice
- healing through contemplative writing
- understanding power for speaking and acting UP
- witnessing, reading, and listening to counter epistemic injustice
- rehearsing interventions through Augusto Boal’s theatre of the oppressed
- unlearning linguistic prejudice
- teaching for “high impact” through community-based learning and undergraduate research
- aligning career decisions with commitments
- feeding our bodies, feeding our movements
- making commitments to justice actionable in everyday life …
My approach tends toward interactive presentations and hands-on workshops to raise awareness of how power functions in interactions, how normalized identities reproduce marginalization, how unintentional acts can still do harm, and how understanding the rhetorical context can help us imagine different ways to respond. As a former professor in writing, rhetoric, and literacy studies, I focus on communication (writing and reading, speaking and listening, recognizing and witnessing), as so much injustice is enacted through (a lack of relational, mindful) communication.
You can learn more about me by visiting the about page, reviewing publications, and exploring the blog. Reach out with questions or to discuss potential offerings.
Sample Presentations and Programming
Testimonials
Collaborating with Beth and Heart-Head-Hands has been a dream and a joy.
As I began my work as a new administrator of an endowment for literacy advocacy with the desire to develop a large-scale community literacies center, it was essential to have an expert, trusted, and effective community education professional to work with as I learned to crawl, walk, run and then fly in this work. Beth was that colleague.
In collaborating with Beth as facilitator of the first two programs—workshops on Planning Writing Projects and Contemplative Writing—in my then new role, I felt supported at every stage. She took the time to meet with me and my community partners to hear about what the patrons of our local libraries wanted. Afterward she worked with me to devise the workshops to fit the community’s call from among her many incredible offerings. The workshops were deeply appreciated and loved by the community partner, the Fayetteville Public Library. Feedback from the many community members who participated focused on Beth’s terrific skills as a facilitator and the enriching content of the workshop itself.
Beth is an incredible listener, a kind and yet incisive interlocutor, and the perfect person to hold space with you for something you hope to grow into existence.”
—Eric Darnell Pritchard, Founding Director of the Community Literacies Collaboratory and Brown Chair in English Literacy, University of Arkansas
I would not be where I am today—feeling more aligned with my commitments, more whole, and more joyful—if it were not for my work with Beth and the community she has helped cultivate. I am grateful for the clarity and compassion she brings to our interactions and the way that she makes justice a practice for daily life. I feel deeply grateful for participating in the variety of options she provides to better live out commitments through writing, teaching, and daily living.” —Calley in Colorado
Throughout the workshops, Beth was so patient and encouraging. Everything in our world sets up this [justice-oriented] work to feel and seem impossible, yet Beth models a way to persevere with generosity and kindness. That was inspiring. Beth always met people where they really were. I appreciated that.” —Dasha, Participant in North Carolina