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Creating Space: Writing for Wellbeing with Hannah Calder

$250.00

In this workshop series, we experiment with creative writing and journaling techniques that foster self-discovery, mindfulness, emotional resilience, and creativity.

Let your writing do your emotional and mental heavy lifting! 


Many of us use journaling, poetry, and storytelling to cope and to thrive. In Writing for Wellbeing, we explore how and why writing benefits us emotionally, mentally, and even physically. Using insights from various writers and writing-for-wellness experts, including Kathleen Adams, James Pennebaker, and Deborah Ross, we discover how writing can change our lives for the better.

Classes include group discussion, writing time, and reflection.  The writing exercises involve short entrance meditations that bring us into the writing calmly and with intention.  Each technique we practice is designed to promote wellbeing.  

Participants are not required to share any of their writing with the instructor or group – unless they want to. Instead, we reflect on and discuss what we have written, how it made us feel, and/or what it made us think about.  Although one outcome of this course may be that we reach our creative goals with more ease, our purpose together is not to hone our writing skills.  Non-writers, occasional writers, and writers with terrifying internal critics are all welcome! 

Home practice is encouraged but optional.  

6 Sessions**

WHEN:
Thursdays, 6:30-8:30 pm
Feb 19, Feb 26, Mar 5, Mar 12, Mar 19, Mar 26

$250.00***

WHERE:
Caetani Cultural Centre Gallery, Vernon, BC

WHAT TO BRING:

Pen and paper / notebook

Registration closes February 14 2026

**Please note this workshop has a minimum number of required attendees to proceed. Refunds will be issued if this threshold is not met to the facilitator’s requirements. Maximum 10 participants per class.

***Financial subsidies are offered on a case-by-case, as-needed basis for Creating Space Workshops. Please email programs@caetani.org to apply.

In this workshop series, we experiment with creative writing and journaling techniques that foster self-discovery, mindfulness, emotional resilience, and creativity.

Let your writing do your emotional and mental heavy lifting! 


Many of us use journaling, poetry, and storytelling to cope and to thrive. In Writing for Wellbeing, we explore how and why writing benefits us emotionally, mentally, and even physically. Using insights from various writers and writing-for-wellness experts, including Kathleen Adams, James Pennebaker, and Deborah Ross, we discover how writing can change our lives for the better.

Classes include group discussion, writing time, and reflection.  The writing exercises involve short entrance meditations that bring us into the writing calmly and with intention.  Each technique we practice is designed to promote wellbeing.  

Participants are not required to share any of their writing with the instructor or group – unless they want to. Instead, we reflect on and discuss what we have written, how it made us feel, and/or what it made us think about.  Although one outcome of this course may be that we reach our creative goals with more ease, our purpose together is not to hone our writing skills.  Non-writers, occasional writers, and writers with terrifying internal critics are all welcome! 

Home practice is encouraged but optional.  

6 Sessions**

WHEN:
Thursdays, 6:30-8:30 pm
Feb 19, Feb 26, Mar 5, Mar 12, Mar 19, Mar 26

$250.00***

WHERE:
Caetani Cultural Centre Gallery, Vernon, BC

WHAT TO BRING:

Pen and paper / notebook

Registration closes February 14 2026

**Please note this workshop has a minimum number of required attendees to proceed. Refunds will be issued if this threshold is not met to the facilitator’s requirements. Maximum 10 participants per class.

***Financial subsidies are offered on a case-by-case, as-needed basis for Creating Space Workshops. Please email programs@caetani.org to apply.

Note: This course does not offer group therapy.  Hannah Calder is a writer, teacher and trained journaling coach – not a counselor or therapist.  This class is not recommended for people who are in crisis.  Participants may experience therapeutic benefits or effects and are advised to discuss these in therapy.   Participants will be asked to bring a pen and paper or notebook.

Outcomes

-to practice expressive writing techniques designed by a variety of writers and writing-for-healing experts

-to learn which techniques work well for specific life circumstances, particularly those circumstances that trigger uncomfortable thoughts and/or emotions 

-to use writing as a tool for mindfulness

-to explore life management skills, such as decision making or goal setting 

-to share the experience of writing and reflecting with those in the group

-to develop a relationship with the self-as-audience 

About the Instructor

Novelist (www.hannahcalder.com), creative writing professor, certified Journal to the Self instructor, and owner of Writing for All (www.writingforall.ca), Hannah Calder believes in the power of writing and reading to resolve conflicts, improve life management, and explore purpose. She offers her clients accessible, at-home writing techniques that can be used on their own or as a complement to therapy or coaching.  

Raised in a mentally and emotionally chaotic home environment, Hannah turned to journaling to cope. She journaled daily, recording thoughts, emotions, lists, rants, poems, stories, and dreams. Eventually, Hannah’s journaling germinated three novels – More House (2009), Piranesi’s Figures (2016), and Hester in Sunlight (2024) – all published with New Star Books in Vancouver.  Growing more resilient with each new book, Hannah realized the therapeutic effect of storytelling for an audience.  When studying for her B.A. and M.A. in English or when teaching literature to college students, Hannah also came to understand that reading is often as healing as writing. 

For Hannah, the page is a portal, an ear, a canvas, a friend. In her courses, she coaches her clients to discover the transformative, healing, and radically life-altering magic that happens when we put pen to paper.  

Hannah lives with her partner and teenaged daughter in Vernon, British Columbia, where she enjoys playing the guitar, hiking with her dog, swimming in Kalamalka lake, and walking the labyrinth at Fintry.



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