I hope this list of upcoming and ongoing writing opportunities, classes, and retreats will serve to help you find community, belonging, and inspiration for your writing and your life alike.
Eye of the Heart Center Writing Programs
The Eye of the Heart’s writing programs tend to both writer and writing, trusting that the fruits of creative endeavors nourish both our lives and the wider world. Because we do our most effective work within a caring community, all programs build connections between participants. There are many in-person Minneapolis events and groups, as well as online options. Stay up-to-date by subscribing to Eye of the Heart’s newsletter!
Eye of the Heart’s Online Writing Community
Are creativity and spirituality intertwined in your being, yearning to emerge? Are you eager to thrive as a writer and grow as a loving human being? Do you ache for generative conversations, meaningful connections, and an invigorating writing community? If these questions stir your heart, welcome. We’d love to have you join us! You can learn more & join here. The best part? The community is free!
Want a taste of Eye of the 
Heart’s Writing Programs? Try out a FREE writing class with us.
This free micro-course welcomes you into a healthy, lively, fruitful, and meaningful writing practice. We can extract ourselves from a transactional, market-economy relationship with creativity, with its relentless focus on the end produce and what others think; we can move into a life-giving, generative process that feeds our souls, strengthens our writing, and nurtures anyone who reads it. This 1.5-2 hour long, asynchronous online writing course orients our online writing community to the gift economy and will teach you how to flourish in your writing. Learn more and join us here!
Writing Your Sacred Journey: Stories to Transform Self and World
Join Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew to explore the art and practice of spiritual memoir
writing. Each session will give participants the opportunity to write, time for conversation, inspiration from model writers, and insights about craft, content, and practice. These monthly practice sessions are meant for writers of all levels, including absolute beginners.
In Person: Monthly on Fridays, 1:30-3:30 PM CT: 1/31, 2/21, 3/21, 4/18, 5/23, 6/27 at Plymouth Congregational Church, 1900 Nicollet Ave, Minneapolis, MN 55403
Online: Monthly on Mondays from 6:00-8:00 p.m. CT: 1/27, 2/24, 3/24, 4/21, 5/19, 6/23
New! Asynchronous Writing Your Sacred Journey Classes Online
If you haven’t been able to attend the Writing Your Sacred journey classes in the past, now you can take them at your own pace, online, and with the option to join an online writing community oriented around the same inspiration and themes. Each online session will give participants the opportunity to listen, read, write, share within an asynchronous community space, and practice their own writing. You can view all the asynchronous classes here.
Writing the Sacred Journey: Introductory Workshop on Spiritual Memoir
Online, self-paced
During this self-paced, two-and-a-half-week independent study, writers can view Elizabeth’s video lectures, respond to writing prompts, and immerse themselves in the genre and practice of spiritual memoir through readings and a community forum.
Your Story as Scripture: An Introduction to Writing Spiritual Memoir
Join Elizabeth Jarrett Andrews in this 75-minute self-paced workshop. You’ll get an introduction to the art and practice of spiritual memoir, inspiration from model writers, an opportunity to write, and perspective on the transformational power of working with personal narrative. You’ll come away seeing your life experiences as sacred–and worth engaging with writing.
2025 Retreats & Workshops
March 2-6 intensive: The Gifts of Writing: Honoring the Spirit’s Movement in Creativity at the Episcopal House of Prayer, Collegeville, MN.
We writers can free ourselves from the burdens of seeking validation and measuring worth; we can thrive as creative agents in and beyond the writing process. In this writing intensive, we’ll foster the habits of mind, heart, and body that support our projects’ flourishing by reframing creativity as gift exchange. Together we’ll explore how inspiration enters, moves through, grows, and is passed beyond the writing process.
This retreat offers serious writers time to dive into creative solitude, be supported by community, and receive guidance from an experienced author. Each day will include three hours of instruction and conversation. Participants will have abundant time to write and an opportunity to meet one-on-one with the instructor.
July 6-11: Writing Your Sacred Journey Retreat at the Well Spirituality Center, La Grange Park, IL – or Online!
Join Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew to explore memoir as a spiritual practice. Whether you write as a form of private prayer, as a gift for family and friends, or for publication, this week-long retreat welcomes you into the transformational possibilities of writing. We’ll introduce spiritual memoir, reflect on memory as a sacred faculty, address the challenges and hazards of writing from memory, and learn how to sustain and deepen the practice. There will be ample time for solitude.
The Release: How Writing in an Economy of Gifts Liberates Writers – Online Writing Workshop
Collegeville Institute alum, Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew, will offer a virtual workshop based on her most recent book The Release: Creativity and Freedom After the Writing is Done. Join us on zoom Monday, September 29, 2025, from 6:00–7:30pm Central Time.
This event is free, but registration is required.
Nov 7-9: Writing about Transformation, Transforming our Writing at the Episcopal House of Prayer, Collegeville, MN.
Writers often find inspiration in experiences of surprising, radical, or gradual personal change. How can these moments become dynamic agents, changing us as we write and changing others as they read? Together we will generate narratives about transformations both profound and ordinary. We will learn practical techniques to bring potential readers along on an experiential ride, and we’ll practice opening our hearts to inspiration’s movement in the writing process. This retreat is for beginning and intermediate writers of creative prose and poetry.
Other Writing Retreats
Issachar Fund Scholar’s Retreat
The Issachar Fund is pleased to offer clergy, scholars, writers, thought leaders, and artists a retreat opportunity in a cottage near Lake Michigan for research, reflection, writing, and production of scholarship or creative work in alignment with their Foundational Questions.
Workshops
Collegeville Institute
Each summer, the Collegeville Institute opens its doors to pastors, ministers, lay leaders, and other thinkers and writers for week-long, intensive workshops geared toward various levels of writing skill, genre and interest.
The Glen Workshop
Situated in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the Glen Workshop is equal parts creative workshop, arts festival, and spiritual retreat. The Glen’s arresting natural environment is contrasted by its casual and inviting crowd of artists, writers, musicians, art appreciators, and spiritual wayfarers of all stripes.
Conferences
Calvin Center Festival of Faith & Writing
The Festival of Faith & Writing is a biennial celebration that draws more than 2,000 people from across the world to the campus of Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Rooted in Reformed theology about common grace and the goodness of creation, the Festival of Faith & Writing creates space for meaningful discussion and shared discovery among people with different religious beliefs and practices. Over three days every other April, the Festival brings diverse voices together to offer thoughtful reflection through lectures, readings, conversations, films, workshops, concerts, plays, and more. It’s an absolute feast for readers, including those who also write.
Writing for Your Life
Writing for Your Life produces in-person writing conferences featuring leading authors and industry experts presenting on various topics in the areas of “how to write” “how to get published” and “how to market”. You do not need to be an experienced writer to attend. Their conferences have a reputation for very high quality speakers, collegiality, and a lack of competitiveness among attendees, so please do not be intimidated if you have not yet published much.
Wild Goose Festival
“At Wild Goose, people flock together to celebrate a way of life rooted in faith, justice, creativity, and beauty. It’s like a family reunion where you meet relatives you never knew you had. It’s a wild and wonderful convergence of stimulating conversations, campfires, music, kids, art, lawn chairs, prayer, fun, dance, frisbees, tents, food, sunshine, rain, laughter, and fresh air. There’s nothing like it, and I look forward to it as one of the best weeks of my year.” -Author Brian McLaren