Developed and led by Charity Hume, 2023–2025 Fellow at the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia, former director, NYU Creative Writing Program.
Explore a Few of My Signature Classes
Part of a wider creative writing practice for personal insight, transformation, and healing.
Psyche’s Quest: Navigating the Underworld of Grief
Explore how grief transforms the inner world. Through structured writing, memory recall, and guided descent into feeling, participants rediscover the enduring presence of those they have lost. This session helps reframe grief as a source of creativity and continuing relationship.
Lost and Found: Writing into the Hidden Meaning of Childhood Artifacts
Objects from childhood become portals into memory, identity, and unconscious feeling. Participants engage with a chosen artifact to unlock associations, clarify past experiences, and explore how early objects shape the self.
The Invisible Cathedral: Writing and the Architecture of Memory
How do places shape the psyche? This workshop revisits emotionally significant locations—homes, bedrooms, ancestral spaces—to excavate memory and meaning. Writing exercises guide participants in uncovering the emotional architecture of their inner worlds.
Establishing Point of View: Narrative Techniques for Reframing the Past
How we tell a story determines what it means. This session explores point of view as a tool for emotional clarity. By experimenting with first-, second-, and third-person narration, participants reframe experiences and gain insight into how voice shapes meaning.
Our Ancestors, Our Histories: Writing Through Family Artifacts
Originally designed for educators, this session guides writers in using family heirlooms or stories to craft historical memoir or fiction. Participants are invited to imagine their way into another time and place through narrative.
The Three-Item Story: Ekphrastic Writing with Art and Memory
Developed with WriteGirl at the Huntington Library, this session uses artworks or meaningful objects as catalysts for nonfiction storytelling. Participants explore how image, association, and memory weave together into personal narrative.
Know Thyself: Writing into the Self, Memory, and the Unconscious
These classes have been hosted at leading institutions including the Huntington Library, WriteGirl, the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia, and Writing Down the Soul retreats.
Each session blends guided writing prompts, creative techniques, and reflective discussion grounded in literary craft and depth psychology. Whether you’re a therapist, writer, educator, or creative seeker, these classes offer profound access to the inner world through the act of writing.
Format and Booking
All classes are offered via Zoom and may be scheduled as:
- Private individual sessions
- Creative writing workshops
- Multi-week series for institutions or continuing education programs
Individual sessions: $150/hour. To inquire about scheduling classes and group pricing, please use the contact form.
Private coaching and group sessions available by request.
We had 104 WriteGirl mentees and 73 volunteers spend six hours learning how to craft creative non-fiction pieces evocative of one thing: the truth. With help from prompts (i.e. Describe your mood using weather as a metaphor), the beautiful grounds of The Huntington, and saccharine hot chocolate to keep us warm, our muse became anything we wanted to “collect” and store in our journals.
Author of The Path to Creativity and prolific guest speaker Charity Hume helped us on this mission teaching us how to “Zoom In,” to render every spotted detail into a piece rich with sensory details. Even something as simple as a grain of sand can be spectacular up close, once you simply take the time to look.
-Elan Carson, WriteGirl Volunteer