The Open Book Festival is running a workshop week between 5 and 10 June and two Karavan Press authors, Dawn Garisch and Melissa Sussens (together with her The Red Wheelbarrow colleague, Jacques Coetzee), are running a life writing workshop and a poetry workshop respectively. Please join them to hone your craft and be inspired!
Full programme here: Open Book Workshop Week
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The Life Righting Collective has been running powerful workshops for a number of years and those who have attended any of them can attest to their ability to transform how one understands one’s own story. Dawn Garisch will facilitate two full day workshops on the 26th and 27th of July. Please note that these two workshops are not connected. If you would like to attend both, you will need to complete two bookings.
Have a look at other Open Book Festival workshops here: Open Book Workshop Programme
The Life Righting Collective (LRC), founded by Dawn Garisch, is offering a memoir course in Joahnnesburg at the end of the month. Dawn will be facilitating the course:
We all have a story to tell from our own lives about how we became who we are. Stories about the way we were born, or about how someone helped us. About how we got ill or overcame a terrible loss.
Stories about how someone we loved to hurt us, or how a political or spiritual circumstance almost broke us. Stories about how we were bullied, about how an accident changed the course of our lives, or about how we were able to make a difference in someone else’s life. These stories are often invisible to others. They might still influence the way we think and feel in ways we don’t fully understand.
Writing about your own life can help you connect with the story you are living, and it can help to heal or manage the effects of trauma. It is a powerful way for us to communicate and to grow compassion for ourselves and for each other.
During this course we will find refreshing approaches to assist us in putting our personal stories down on the page.
Beginner writers are welcome!
DATES: Saturday 30 April – Monday 2 May 2022
TIME: 9 – 2 pm daily
VENUE: Family Life Centre, 1 Cardigan Road, Parkwood, Johannesburg
FEE: R3 000
FACILITATOR: Dawn GarischIf you are keen on joining this course please make your bookings via admin@liferighting.com and kindly forward to anyone you feel might be interested.
Remember, for our health and safety, all LRC in-person courses will be conducted in strict compliance with current Covid-19 rules and procedures.
We look forward to having you on the course!
With thanks from the LRC team.
LRC
A note from Dawn: People who cannot afford the full course fee, please get in touch with the organisers (contact details above) and they will try to accommodate you.
STUNNING NATURE & ART LOCATION | ULTRA-MODERN DESIGNER ACCOMMODATION
Dear Writer,
You haven’t seen anything like this before.
Imagine having five heavenly days to write and write and write in the heart of the wilderness yet with all the modern amenities available to you. Not only that, you’re a step away from an amazing outdoor art exhibition in the NIROX Sculpture Park that you can visit at any time. Located in the Cradle of Humankind, all this could be yours for just R100 entry ticket for this Life Righting Collective lucky draw competition.
Huge thanks to LRC friend Clara Cruz-Almeida for offering this special place as a writing retreat micro-home pod for our LRC fundraiser!
WHERE?
The POD is located inside the NIROX Sculpture Park in the Cradle of Humankind on the R540, 20 minutes from Lanseria Airport; 45 minutes from Johannesburg & Pretoria. Entry to the park is free for dwellers of the POD. A very safe and protected area, the property has guards who inspect the fences at night.
PLEASE NOTE: Travel costs to and from the POD location are for the winner’s account.
A beautifully fitted kitchen has a two-plate gas hob, fridge but no oven or microwave. There’s a braai grille but please bring your own wood, coal and firelighters; you can pick up kindling in the forest. All the necessary cutlery, pots and plates are provided.
A mezzanine bedroom is accessed via a built-in ladder, sleeps two and all linen and towels are provided.
WHEN?
DATES: Monday 1 Nov to Friday 5 November 2021. Check-in is from midday 1 Nov and checkout by 11:00 am on 5 Nov.
WEATHER
Weather is a bit colder in the evenings than Joburg, with lots of dew and spider diamond webs in the early morning before humans move around. It is close to the Bloubankspruit river.
WHAT TO BRING
Bring clothes, warm layers and a T-shirt or two; also an extra blanket to wrap yourself in so that you can enjoy the braai in the evening. Bring a torch so you can take walks in the park at night to scare away the snakes. Yes, there are snakes. It is the wilderness. And boots, as the dew on the grass wets your trainers at sunrise. Bring your own food and drink, firelighters and wood; the restaurant “and then there was fire” is open but booked weeks in advance (you could try and book ahead). There is a bar /sandwich service you can access if you haven’t booked. NOTE: Please keep the POD locked and all openings closed when you go for a walk as a troupe of monkeys can create havoc. You can practise your aim at the monkeys with the slingshot there, and reconnect with your childhood naughty self.
YOUR ONLY OBLIGATION, APART FROM WRITING
If you post on social media about your stay, please hashtag #podidladla and #liferightingcollective or check-in on Facebook, or send Clara a review of your stay that she can quote you on!
HOW TO ENTER
All you have to do is purchase a lucky draw ticket by paying R100 to the LRC Banking account:
ABSA
Life Righting Collective
Cheque account number: 40 9382 6013
Branch code number 632005.
Please include your full name as reference.
IMPORTANT NOTE:
Send your POP to terry@liferighting.com with your name and contact details: email and phone number please, so we can contact you if you’re the lucky winner. All proceeds will go towards supporting the LRC. You’re very welcome to purchase more than one ticket and increase your chances of winning!
Members of the Life Righting Collective EXCO are excluded from the competition. The winner will be decided by drawing a random name and will be contacted to make booking arrangements directly with Clara.
The competition is now open and will end on 13 October 2021. The winner will be announced on the 15 October 2021.
Please share and forward this to anyone who might be interested in buying tickets for this fabulous writing retreat.
You could be a winner! And whatever happens, you’re supporting a winning cause… 🙂
Love 
And the LRC EXCO team
PS: We’d be so grateful if you would consider joining 24 other LRC supporters and become a Patreon member of the LRC for as little as R95 a month. Click on the button below.
“For writer, author, poet, doctor and teacher Dawn Garisch, writing is life. Listen as she explains how it’s helped her navigate her own journey – and also how it’s worked for so many others who have found themselves through her Life Righting Collective. Dawn is both our Finding Herself candidate and WZ Book Club Guest Author for April.”
karavanpress.com 