Summer…time to heat up your creativity! Are you seeking deeper inspiration and clarity for your work-in-process? Trying to start a new project or choose between multiple storytelling options? Struggling with writer doubt (who isn't)? The Signs, Synchronicities & Storytelling BEtreat is for you!
Join us for a day of literary inspiration through creative workshops, nature exploration, meditation, compassionate conversation and Tarot power — and enjoy time to write in a beautiful, calming space.
This BEtreat offered by Be Well Be Here in collaboration with Blaze Tarot features New York Times / international bestselling author and co-founder of A Mighty Blaze, Jenna Blum, who specializes in Tarot readings for creatives and their projects, especially books! Jenna will share writing wisdom and offer personal Tarot sessions to help guide you toward inspired next steps in your writing life.
Jenna will be joined by celebrated memoirist, speaker and healthcare activist, Maryanne O’Hara, author of Little Matches: A Memoir of Finding Light in the Dark. Maryanne’s Mindful Storytelling Session will explore how the synchronicities that we humans experience help us find meaning and purpose in our lives. Using images and reflections that speak to universal themes, Maryanne will shares her story of resilience, of finding light in our darkest hours, and offer suggestions for discovering one’s purpose.
Have a scene or section of your work that feels stuck? Be Well Be Here founder Lara Wilson, longtime writing teacher, short story author and curator of the Concord Festival of Authors will guide you through an inspirational editorial exercise with 3 pages of your work to help you Process your Process. Lara will also share popular BWBH practices: meditation for creativity and a mindful Nature Walk.
The Signs, Synchronicities & Storytelling BEtreat invites you to Be inspired, boost your creativity and come home to your natural way of wellBeing!
Here’s the tentative schedule on Sunday, June 26:
9:00-9:30 Welcome
9:30-10:00 Meditation for Creativity
10:00-11:30 Mindful Storytelling Session with Maryanne O’Hara
11:30-12:00 Nature Walk with Lara
12:00-12:45 Catered Lunch from Debra’s Natural Gourmet in West Concord, MA
1:00-1:30 Creativity & Tarot Talk with Jenna Blum
1:30-5:30 Time to Write, Walk, Contemplate
30-minute Process your Process Editorial Sessions with Lara
30-minute Individual Tarot Readings with Jenna (booked separately)
5:30-6:00 Closing Mindful Practice
$330 per person. Limited to 8 participants. BEtreat details, directions and info about sharing a 3-page excerpt for your afternoon session with Lara will follow.
Tarot Reading with Jenna for an additional $50. Book your 30-minute personal Tarot Reading by emailing your preferred time between 1:30 - 5:30 pm to info@bewellbehere.org
Be Well Be Here offers scholarships and subsidized fees to share practice with ALL.
Jenna Blum is the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of novels Those Who Save Us, The Stormchasers, and The Lost Family; the novella “The Lucky One” in the collection Grand Central; and the memoir Woodrow on the Bench, about her senior black Lab and what his last seven months taught her, available now from Harper Collins.
Jenna is one of Oprah’s Top Thirty Women Writers, with her work published in over 20 countries, and cofounder/CEO of literary social media marketing company A Mighty Blaze. Jenna’s New York Times and internationally bestselling first novel, Those Who Save Us, won the Ribalow Prize, awarded by Hadassah Magazine and adjudged by Elie Wiesel; Jenna interviewed Holocaust survivors for the Steven Spielberg Survivors of the Shoah Foundation for five years. Jenna is a sought-after public speaker, traveling nationally and internationally; for her 1st novel, she visited over 800 book clubs in the Boston area alone.
Jenna is based in Boston, where she has been running master fiction and novel workshops for over 20 years. She earned her M.A. in Creative Writing from Boston University and was the fiction editor for AGNI Literary Magazine. For more information about Jenna and to share her real-time adventures, please follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Maryanne O’Hara’s deeply moving story has been featured in The New York Times, TIME Magazine, The Boston Globe and Psychology Today. Her book Little Matches: A Memoir of Finding Light in the Dark has been a People Magazine Book of the Week and led to a New York Times Magazine cover story. Since the release of Little Matches, Maryanne has spoken to hundreds of general readers, medical professionals, and students, and has been hosted by Harvard Medical School’s Author Series as well as other universities, bookstores, libraries, and hospitals. Maryanne is also the author of the novel Cascade, which was the Boston Globe Book Club’s inaugural pick, a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award, and a People Magazine Book of the Week. Her story collection was a finalist for the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction and the Iowa Short Fiction Award. After volunteering as an end-of-life volunteer at care facilities in Boston and Pittsburgh, Maryanne trained as a certified end-of-life doula at the University of Vermont’s Larner College of Medicine in 2019.
Maryanne earned her MFA at Emerson College, where she taught creative writing and spent many years as the Associate Fiction Editor for Ploughshares, the award-winning Boston literary journal. In addition to teaching at Clark University, she won grants from the St. Botolph Club and the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
Learn more about Maryanne’s literary journey on Instagram and Facebook, and sign up for occasional updates, doses of optimism and more.
