[ creative nonfiction + memoir ]

“In My Own Flames”: Life Writing for Fire Signs, with Darina Sikmashvili

  • 4 weeks long = $320 total / person

  • meets mondays 6-8pm eastern time

  • virtual (Zoom + Google Docs)

This zodiac-inspired workshop will unite writers whose sun signs are associated with the element of fire: Aries, Leo, or Sagittarius. With guidance from the workshop instructor, participants will explore the astrological worldview as a “biographical lens” — a tool for self-reflection that can kindle new insights in unexamined life experiences.

This creative nonfiction and memoir workshop is open to astrology enthusiasts, dabblers, and newbies alike. Whether your goal is to process a life experience, deepen your self-understanding, or simply to approach life writing in a new and unique way, we welcome you to sign up.

The course will welcome professional astrologer Alice Sparkly Kat as guest facilitator in at least one session. Read more about Alice below.

  • Darina (Dasha) Sikmashvili was born in Lubny, Ukraine and raised in Brooklyn, New York, where she moved at age eight with her mother. Before pursuing her MFA at the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan, she worked for a decade in the film industry, both in production and story development. Her writing has won the Hopwood Prize (screenwriting, & nonfiction), the Kasdan Scholarship (screenwriting), as well as the Henfield Prize (fiction).

    Darina was a 2019 grant recipient from the Can Sarrat Writing Residency in Spain, a 2020 grant recipient from the Laimun Residency in Italy, and a 2021 recipient of the Tennessee Williams Scholarship from the Sewanee Writers Conference. Her writing has appeared in New World Writing, Hobart, The Common, and Fence. She's at work on a novel.

  • Alice Sparkly Kat is an astrologer. They use astrology to re-chart a history of the subconscious, redefine the body in world, and reimagine history as collective memory. Their astrological work has inhabited MoMA, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and The Brooklyn Museum. They're the author of Postcolonial Astrology (May 2021).