"You have every right to write"—Janet Burroway, Imaginative Writing

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​(W)rites of Passage has been hosting successful workshops, catering to both regulars and newcomers, since 2014. If you'd like to take a workshop, work with Sarah Elizabeth Schantz, or find out more, please peruse the menu above. We feature online classes including a Seasonally-Inspired Creative Writing Workshop Series that meets four times a year; The Guest Author Series; Tarot Tuesday; Craft Seminars; one-on-one writing midwifery for writers; and Youth (W)rites!

 

(W)rites of Passage both offers workshops in-person or on Zoom. Workshop leader and (w)riting midwife, Sarah Elizabeth Schantz, has an MFA in Writing & Poetics, and is the author of the novel Fig (Simon & Schuster 2015) and a chapbook titled Down in the Water (Gesture Press, 2020). In addition to long form and short fiction, she writes the occasional lyric essay or poem, and has been published widely in literary journals such as Hunger Mountain, Los Angeles Review, Third Coast, Midwestern Gothic, and more. Sarah also teaches for Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver (including for The Post-Grad Book Project) and for the MFA program at Naropa University. 

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Our mission is to create community for writers by building and holding the liberated studio space all writers need. (W)rites of Passage is a place to gather and daydream; a place to play; to revise and revitalize; to think about writing with other writers; a place to write, write, write. (W)rites of Passage utilizes divinatory poetics to both approach and to open/reopen the page. To foster this writing community, and the third mind that arises from such a collective, space is limited in the seasonal workshop series but more flexible when it comes to the other classes. As for one-on-one writing midwifery, including Toni's offshoot program Youth (W)rites!, space is also limited as we strive to create a customized experience for each and every writer; as a result, there are only so many writers and manuscripts we can handle with the honor you deserve. 

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Sarah's teaching style is akin to the work a midwife does when assisting someone in childbirth; her job is to inspire writers, to help them open the texts they hold within, and to trust their own process. She coaxes the writer into writing, and then she facilitates in the visionary process of re(vision). Author, Lidia Yuknavitch says, "The mistake is where the art is," and Sarah is equally interested in failure, and the potential to learn from it, to see what jumps forth from the rupture when we return to mend the wound; to see what happens when we experiment, when we get messy. She encourages writers to step outside their comfort zones into the space of potential where they can grow and their art can as well. Just as Joseph Campbell believes in the power of myth, Sarah believes in the power of metaphor. She also believes in the need for ritual in writing and the necessity for writing rituals. Expect to dig deep, to wrap your hands around your own roots, to re-wild your imagination, to expel your inner critic and embrace the creative energies of your inner child. Again and again, we have witnessed the magic that happens in a collective writing space. We have also seen the magic blossom in the one-on-one mentorship Sarah offers. 

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Experienced at teaching prose writers and poets alike, as well as writers working in different genres, Sarah can assist both the novice and the seasoned-writer. (W)rites of Passage has had the honor of working with award-winning novelists, widely-published poets, Pushcart Prize nominees, ground-breaking memoirists, well-established performance artists, esteemed writing professors, and those just beginning to give birth to words. One might worry that such a mix of writers working at so many different levels of craftspersonship, and in so many branches of the literature could be problematic, but we've found it doesn't have to be (furthermore, one writer can excel at one element of the craft and still need help with another). One of the best ways to learn anything is to teach it; the more practiced writers help the beginners by providing their own expertise, a process that reinforces such lessons for the person providing them, and in turn the beginners bring raw energy to the space and help to re-awaken and revitalize writers experiencing burn-out. Finally, the key to good writing is watching and listening to the world. Diverse workshop communities serve as a micro-cosmos of the greater human experience. (W)rites of Passage workshops are designed to benefit everyone. We will meet you where you are. You only need to arrive and be willing.

The seasonally inspired workshop series coincides with one of the four seasons, addressing particular themes that are either literally (or poetically) relevant to that time of year.  Sarah has a vast collection of unique writing prompts and exercises, endlessly pulling them out of magic top hats, enchanted trunks, haunted attic and cellar spaces, and her own bloody heart. We use Dada and Surrealist games such as erasure, cut-ups, and Exquisite Corpses, as well as collage, divination, sensory experiences, techniques for writing the body, treasure hunts, nature walks, Jungian-writing journeys, research, dreams, daydreams, mapping, meditation, visualization, and individual/community ritual to enter the text that is our/your story. Every Saturday has its own sub-theme and participating writers are given homework to be completed beforehand. Actual Saturdays are spent together, as a group, discussing the topic, critiquing each other's work, and writing, writing, writing. The workshops in the Spring and Summer are four weeks long whereas the ones in Fall and Winter are six. We meet on Saturdays from 11:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Six-week long workshops are $400.00 whereas four-week long workshops are $250.00. Single Saturdays are $75.00 each. Writers who attend an entire six-week workshop series also receive a 15 page critique of their writing in addition to the 6,000 words they get workshopped over the course of the series; for the four-week long workshop series, writers will get an 8 page critique in addition to the 4,000 words they will have workshopped. Each series culminates with a closing ritual/salon celebration, and anyone who participated (entirely or partially), is encouraged to attend. 

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​Sarah is available to work with you on an individual basis. If interested, click on the "MORE" button to find the tab for "OTHER SERVICES" or email her at writesofpassage13@gmail.com. 

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(W)rites of Passage offers limited scholarships and/or a sliding scale to writers who demonstrate need. For more information regarding financial assistance, please email Sarah at writesofpassage13@gmail.com. If you'd like to donate to the scholarship fund (or to (W)rites of Passage, a labor of love) contact Sarah to make the necessary arrangements or simply send your contributions via Venmo using Sarah-Schantz-6 or Pay Pal at anangka3@aol.com and Cash App using Storymama. For our records, please state this donation is indeed a donation. We will send you a receipt and a special thank you. 

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Sarah's literary assistants include the beloved Harris Armstrong (his pen name is H.P. Armstrong) and Jocelyn Wallen. Harris has done everything from patiently removing thrift store price tags from the books in Sarah's home library (which she uses for (W)rites of Passage) to giving her rides to workshops and running tech; he has also created thoughtful and evocative social media postings for Facebook and Instagram, but Jocelyn also creates such content and builds beautiful digital shrines. They are partly why (W)rites of Passage so commonly uses "we," but this plural pronoun also encompasses everyone who attends, who has ever attended, or will attend; furthermore, Toni Oswald offers services for Youth (W)rites! and then there are the Guest Authors who have come over the years to fortify Sarah's teaching. (W)rites of Passage isn't just a place to write and workshop, it's a writing community and space where we support each other as we navigate the challenges of living in a culture that's largely opposed to both art making and artists; (W)rites of Passage is also a place to celebrate the craft as a collective, a platform to celebrate the successes, both big and small, we each earn along the way. The (w)e also represents the third mind delivered forth by the writers who have attended (some religiously coming back) to then be nourished by newcomers. It is not uncommon to hear a (W)rites of Passage writer refer to (W)rites of Passage as their church.

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Please note: Sarah's husband Fish of twenty-six years died suddenly and unexpectedly from complications triggered by a massive heart attack on December 17th, 2024, so there will not be as many offerings in 2025, and possibly longer. However, no changes have been made to Tarot Tuesday and will continue as scheduled; while there was a seasonal workshop series in the winter of 2025, there was no spring, summer, or fall series, and the winter of 2026 remains up in the air as of now. Sarah is going to offer some short craft seminars to help pay the bills and so she can stay connected to her literary community. HOW TO GET TO GREASY LAKE is the first such workshop; three-hours long, the class is scheduled for November 8th, 2025 on Zoom from noon to 3:00 p.m. MST, and will focus on setting and summary. Her availability for 1:1 work is still very limited as is her availability for manuscript midwifery (but you can try asking). She took much of the 2025 summer off to move after living in the same house for seventeen years and she currently finds herself depleted and exhausted. This fall she is teaching a quarter of her usual course load, and she hopes to work on her own writing during the early winter months of 2026 because it's likely the only real healing she can do. If you'd like to help support her during this time you can donate funds to help with the loss of income or to support the sabbatical she hopes to take to work on her own writing once she's not so dumb with grief. She is beyond humbled by the generosity the (W)rites of Passage community has already demonstrated (this includes students and beloveds from elsewhere too). She wants it to be known that your community care helps more than you might ever know. Losing a life partner is difficult enough, but this grief is compounded by the death of her father in 2023 and of her oldest daughter Kaya back in 2018. Because Sarah is either an adjunct or a freelance teacher, she doesn't receive benefits such as bereavement pay let alone a salary, so she didn't take any time off after those two other major losses; because of the help she's received since Fish's death, she hasn't been working as much as she normally does, yet she did have to move which was physically and emotionally exhausting, and she recognizes now how crucial it is that she practice some serious self-care as soon as possible. She's strategically planning a sabbatical/stay-at-home writing retreat for when the initial shock wears off and the disassociation she is currently experiencing (hopefully) begins to subside. First she needs a period of time dedicated solely to restorative rest so she might regain the energy, strength, and mental clarity she lacks so she might write her way forward; then she's hoping for at least one month where she can focus solely on her own writing, primarily the revision of her already drafted novel,  Just Like Heaven, but she's also looking forward to the potential of just being able to play again, to explore other endeavors such as crafting candle spells, making visual art, and getting nourished by the amniotic fluidity of the creative flow-state. 

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