This is a workshop using the Amherst Writers and Artists workshop method designed to strengthen writers’ voices on the page, to stimulate creativity, encourage new work and support other writers. Writing to prompts, reading our work, providing and receiving positive feedback, we will learn what makes writing strong. Responses and discussion will provide insight into elements of craft including point of view, setting, sensory detail, voice, rhythm and mood. The belief behind AWA is that, simply, a writer is someone who writes, no matter her experience, education, age or identity outside of writing. In the AWA method, a small group of writers gather and the workshop leader gives a writing prompt. This can be a line of poetry, an object, a photograph, really anything that might stir memory or imagination. The group then quietly writes, from memory or imagination, whatever comes to mind. The writing continues for a specific, usually short amount of time, from five to twenty minutes. When the writing time ends, the writers read to the group what they have written. Because all work is new, only positive responses are allowed: what I liked, what was strong, what stays with me. AWA keeps writers feeling safe in their writing by demanding confidentiality of the writers. Nothing about the writing leaves the room, even in discussion with other writers. All writing is presumed fiction. There is no discussion about the subject of the writing, only the writing itself and only in context of those three responses. (www.amherstwriters.com)