NEW DATE FOR 2026:
SUNDAY FEBRUARY 22ND FROM 12:00-5:30
$140
THIS IS A LIVE, IN-PERSON WORKSHOP.
Weekend workshops are a wonderful way to sink into the writing process for several hours, and a nice alternative for those who can't commit to a weekly meeting right now. They offer the opportunity to begin a project, explore an idea, and even leave with a developed piece. For all of these reasons, the daytime, weekend workshops are unique.
The gay men's workshop offers something else: a chance to explore ideas or topics that you may not feel as comfortable addressing in a mixed group. The actual experience of writing with a group of gay men is unique, because we're able to write freely, and to connect as a community outside of the usual (often alienating) environments, like bars and clubs.
My very first workshop began with a group of five gay men (in 1992), and the experience was as profound then as it is now. I am continually amazed by the brave, funny, beautiful, sexy writing produced at these workshops, and for the way these fellow writers treat one another with such respect. It is an honor to witness a group of men listening to one another this way, and to have so many wonderful writers in this virtual space.
Since 2003, Lake—the Laguna Writers journal— has proudly published participants’ writing. The pieces in Lake were written during timed free writes, and most of the pieces are only slightly edited.
This issue (our seventh) is a bit different: it contains writing from the first two years of the Covid-19 pandemic, from March 2020—March 2022. The majority of these pieces were generated in online writing workshops during the long, isolating months of “shelter in place.” It is our contribution to the record of this time.
To order your copy of Lake, click on this link.
Need a writing prompt? Check out The Writing Catalyst on Substack, where you can find many prompts, Christopher's writing in response to those prompts, and many poems and inspiring quotes. Each post is a virtual workshop. Subscribe and you'll get a prompt in your inbox every week!
There are are also hundreds of writing prompts on Christopher’s blog The Catalyst, which contains 15 years of posts (no subscription necessary).
Some of the writers who have attended Laguna Writers have posted their comments below. If you have further questions, please contact Chris.
Dennis Debiase
"It’s so amazing to me to discover my love of words all over again, as if for the first time --and to know that other people who love words and toss them around with such precision and beauty and triumph can actually lighten and delight my hardened heart."
Eve Stern
"You are so genuine and warm and caring and your beauty emanates from you. I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to write with you."
Simone Cameron
"I was finding the whole process of writing individually with no feedback lonely and uninspiring. Taking a workshop forced me to write every week in a supportive environment where I could have fun with the creative process. This method really works -- at long last I have work ready to be submitted, and most importantly, I now realize that writing doesn't have to be drudgery, it can be fun!"
Amy Hoffman
"I can't thank you enough for your fabulous writing workshop, gentle encouragement, warm hospitality, and of course, your BROWNIES! Writing with you has changed everything for me--thank you for providing an amazing environment and a catalyst for making me a writer again."
Jill Lander
"It was really life-changing for me. . .The workshop seemed to unscrew the lid off whatever has been stymieing me and I really want to write more. Somehow I feel like I found my voice this weekend."
Eric Fraser
"I've taken many writing classes and workshops. Chris' workshop is the most supportive and enjoyable, as well as being informative and productive. A thoroughly enjoyable experience and highly recommended."
Marni McGee
"Thank you so very much, Chris, for your ability to draw people out, to make them feel safe and sure. With your prompting and coaxing, you drew out some amazing writing as well as lovely, insightful comments. "
Don Skipworth
"A male midwife named Chris helped us birth our feelings to the page."
Patti Ruane
"I really love what is happening with my writing through these workshops... little by little I am emerging from the confines of my old stories."
Heather Tuggle
"The inspiration and encouragement I get from writing with others propels me to write more when I am alone."
Beverly Hanley
"The sustenance of snacks and coffee and light and safety; the serious, playful invitation to enter our own great realms of story and explore the internal forces."
Laurel Lyle
"You are a slyly gifted teacher and I am so glad to have come into your sphere."
Eileen Burkemoody
"Where to begin? The solicitous hosts? The wonderful writers? You decide. Thank you Chris for a sensitively facilitated writing workshop. Thank you everyone for trusting me with your words. Your trust is well placed."
Kenneth Caldwell
"I looked around the group and saw individuals sharing the story without judgment. Kind of a miracle, really."
CHECK BACK SOON FOR OUR NEXT DATE IN 2025
NOTE: There are two grief workshops every year: one is online and one is in-person.
11:00-4:30 (The live workshop Includes lunch)
$200 live
$150 online
(The online workshop co-facilitated with Kaye Cleave)
Have you experienced a meaningful loss in your life? Are you searching for a way to find words to express your grief and also to navigate the healing process? Then please join workshop co-facilitators Kaye Cleave and Christopher P. DeLorenzo for an afternoon writing workshop.
The writing sessions will be facilitated in the Amherst Writers and Artists method (AWA), which focuses on spontaneous writing prompts, voluntary reading, and positive feedback only. This isn't a therapy group, rather, it utilizes the AWA method as a healing art, a way of shaping meaning around our grief. Everyone is free to share his or her writing, or decline to read. We're also free to write about other subjects, but the writing prompts and handouts will each address grief and healing in some way.
During the workshop, we'll explore our ideas, thoughts, and stories generated by loss and surviving those we have loved. We'll also address the various ways we can approach the healing process and acknowledge the spectrum of experiences that represent grief and healing.
This all day workshop includes a lunch with plenty of vegetarian options, and a DeLorenzo Dessert.
To contact Christopher, click on the contact link above, or call Laguna Writers at 415-206-9771.
About Kaye Cleave:
Kaye has travelled extensively and worked in various countries as a waitress, a taxi–driver, a professional public speaker, a counsellor, a grape-picker on a kibbutz, a sales-woman in Germany, and croupier in London. Kaye is now a life coach and an AWA writing workshop facilitator in the Bay Area; she completed the AWA Training Program in 2009.
She began her career as a teacher, first in Australia, and then in England. She earned an MFA in writing from the University of San Francisco (2002), and a PhD in creative writing from the University of Adelaide, Australia (2006). From 2008–2010, she was a research scholar with the Graduate Theological Union at UC Berkeley. Her thesis involved interviewing bereaved mothers to determine if meditation helped them to grieve. She is very interested in the subject, being a mother who lost her only child.
Her first book, Once More with Feeling (How to Manage Your Emotions in the Workplace), was published in 1996. In 2016, Kaye wrote a children’s picture book, A Kangaroo Tale,to raise funds to build a school in a remote village in Western Nepal in memory of her daughter, Catherine. Her journey to the ribbon-cutting ceremony is chronicled in the award-winning documentary, Catherine’s Kindergarten (See the link below.) Her chapbook of poems, Cartwheels of Love and Loss, was the alternate winner in the Minerva Rising Press Dare to Speak contest, and was published by Red Bird Chapbooks in 2019.
To read more about Kaye, and to learn more about her work, see her website: http://www.kaye-cleave.com/
To learn more about Catherine’s Kindergarten,and to watch the trailer,click here.
To contact Kaye:
My returning participants used to joke that they came for the brownies, but they stayed for the writing exercises. I make all kinds of sweets now for the live meetings, but back in the early days, I always made a fresh batch of brownies for every workshop.
You can find the classic brownie recipe below, and a flourless brownie recipe below that. Scroll down a bit more to find my blondies recipe too. For even more recipes, check out my cookbook, Kitchen Inheritance: Memories and Recipes from my Family of Cooks.
To order your own homemade delight, check out DeLorenzo Desserts.
Laguna Writers Brownies
Ingredients:
4 oz semisweet or dark chocolate, melted (52% cacao or higher)
1/2 cup butter
3 eggs, lightly beaten
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup all purpose flour
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Melt chocolate until soft, then add butter (2 minutes in the microwave, or medium high heat in a double-boiler). Mix melted chocolate and butter until smooth, then add sugar until it is mixed in thoroughly. Add remaining ingredients, except flour, which should be mixed in separately and last. Stir together until smooth, and pour into a greased (buttered) eight inch, square baking pan.
To make the brownies extra fudge-like, melt an additional ounce of Baker's chocolate in a microwave-safe bowl with three tablespoons of water (one minute on high). Mix water and melted chocolate together until the mixture is thick, but pourable, like gravy.
Spoon the melted chocolate over the top of the brownie mixture in the pan in thin strips, from top to bottom, and also from side to side (making a criss-cross pattern on the top of the mixture). Run a butter knife through this pattern to form a ragged "fleurs-de-lis" pattern that will melt into the top and take the brownies to a whole new level. (A special thanks to AWA Affiliate Joan-Marie Wood, who taught me this).
Place rack in the upper third of oven, and bake for 25-28 minutes, or until edges begin to brown. Cut into small squares.
Eat, write and enjoy!
Laguna Writers Flourless Brownies
Ingredients:
4 oz semisweet or dark chocolate (52% cacao or higher)
1/2 cup coconut oil
1/4 cup coconut sugar (sometimes called “palm sugar”)
1/4 cup maple syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 eggs
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (sifted)
1 tablespoon instant espresso (or 2 tablespoons strong brewed coffee)
Directions:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Cut a sheet of parchment or waxed paper and use coconut oil or coconut spray to "butter" a 9 x 9 inch baking pan (an 8 x 8 will work also).
Line the bottom of the pan with the paper, leaving enough extra paper to hang over two opposite edges of the pan. (These will be your "handles" when you lift the brownies out of the pan later to cut them.)
Melt the chocolate in a pan over very low heat, then add coconut oil. When oil is melted, remove from heat and whisk until smooth. Set aside.
Using a hand mixer or a standing mixer, combine sugar, maple syrup, vanilla, and eggs. Add eggs one at a time until just blended: over-blending this batter will make it tough.
Add the melted chocolate mixture and mix until batter just comes together.
Add cocoa and espresso and mix until there are no more cocoa chunks.
The batter may be slightly sticky or viscous, so use a silicone spatula to edge it to the corners of the prepared baking pan.
Tap the pan against the counter to get all air bubbles out.
Bake for 16-18 minutes, or until the center is no longer gooey.
Note: the brownies may bubble up and look lumpy; if this happens, gently tap the pan when you remove it from the oven. The brownies will eventually flatten out on their own.
When the pan is cool enough to touch, run a plastic knife around the edge to prepare the brownies to be released from the pan.
Once the brownies are cool, lift the paper from the pan and transfer to a cutting board.
Using a large, sharp knife, carefully cut the brownies into 16 even squares.
If you're feeling gluttonous, sprinkle with powdered sugar before serving.
Beautiful Blondies
Blondies are often referred to as brownie substitutes (as if there could be such a thing). Most recipes call for half white sugar and half brown, and white chocolate chips only (hence the blonde in blondie). Christopher insists on adding dark chocolate chips, and also finds that using all brown sugar really gives them a rich, butterscotch flavor.
The blondies used to only show up for special events: the Lake reading, for example, or the end-of-workshop potlucks to celebrate the end of nine-week session. But then he started making them whenever he got bored of the brownies, and they really caught on. Christopher gets requests for them now, and he gladly obliges.
Ingredients:
1 ½ cups light brown sugar
1 cup unsalted butter
2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon fine salt
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup dark chocolate chips
3/4 cup white chocolate chips
1 cup mini peanut butter cups (Trader Joe’s is best) or peanut butter chips
Directions:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Butter and flour a 9 x 13 Pyrex (glass) baking dish (metal pans won't work as well)
Firmly pack the sugar and place in a large bowl. Melt the butter in a small skillet or in the microwave in a glass measuring cup. Stir the butter into the sugar until smooth. Cool to room temperature.
Meanwhile, in another medium bowl, whisk the flour, baking soda, and salt together.
Beat the eggs lightly, then add with vanilla into the sugar mixture. Add the flour mixture a bit at a time and mix until a smooth, thick batter forms. Stir in the chips.
Spoon the batter to the prepared dish and spread to evenly fill the dish. (note: it will be sticky, so work that spatula!)
Bake until the blondies are light brown around the edges and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean: 20 minutes is just perfect.
Remove from the oven and let cool. Cut into squares and serve.
