Join us for A Writing Practice, a program which builds on our Pencil In series, offering a welcoming space to write alongside others and find your voice on the page. 

This writing seminar features six sessions held across three months, alternating between guided teaching and communal workshops, designed for writers at any stage of their practice.

At this teaching session, participants will build trust in the most fundamental part of their writing practice: putting pen to paper. Writing is a vulnerable act, and participants will explore ways to express themselves in a variety of writing styles. Above all, this session is about play and experimentation, discovering what emerges when writers begin to lean into their own voice on the page. 

A Writing Practice is built around care: helping participants develop a steady writing practice alongside a genuine sense of community. Two questions run through it: how can writing become play, and how can it serve as an anchor for the curiosities and ideas we want to explore? Each session makes space for putting pen to paper, sharing work, and giving and receiving feedback with openness and trust.

Teaching sessions move through intuitive writing, form and poetics, and narrative building, anchored by a curated reading list that introduces participants to a range of literature as a site for inquiry and imagination. Alternating with these, workshopping sessions shift the focus to each other's writing, building the collaborative foundation of a community that challenges and supports each other to grow. 

Together, the two formats create a natural rhythm that supports writers who are developing a new practice or returning to an old one, leaving with more confidence and a more playful relationship with the written word 

Accessibility & Participation

Open to ages 18+ 

No prior experience required

Language: English and Arabic

About the Instructor

Sarah Afaneh is a researcher and writer interested in decolonizing knowledge production. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Literature and Creative Writing from NYU Abu Dhabi, with a double major in Social Research and Public Policy and a minor in Political Science. Sarah's recent work has been dedicated to understanding the body as storage; a space where emotion, memory, and knowledge are hosted consciously or subconsciously.