Events, Classes, and Workshops

Back again for a fourth series of sessions! In DWC’s Narrative Healing sessions, we will read a text or examine a painting together. In the shadow of this text, we will then be invited to self-reflect using a writing exercise. By close reading and writing together, we connect with others and learn new tools for living a meaningful life.

This series will include narrative practices and conversation revolving around the theme Tell me where it hurts: exploring the ways language shapes our experience of physical pain, emotional distress, and human suffering.

Sessions will be held from 10:30am-noon on the following Saturday mornings: 

April 18, May 16, June 13 at the Vernon County Museum: 410 S Center Ave, Viroqua, WI 54665

Drop-in basis: attend one session or as many as you'd like! No registration required.

Jacqueline  Redmer practices geriatrics and palliative care in the Driftless Region  of Southwest Wisconsin. She is also the mother of three school-aged  girls. She started writing poetry during the Covid pandemic to steady  herself during the brief pauses of a busy life. She completed the  Columbia University Narrative Medicine CPA program and has pursued  creative writing courses through Stanford University Continuing Studies  Program.  Her writing has been published in Examined Life Journal, The Intima Journal, Bramble, Wisconsin Poets Calendar, and Kevin MD Blog. Her first poetry book, Dissociate Effect was published in September of 2025.  website - jacquelineredmer.com.

Join us for a riveting reading from La Crosse-based author, Matt Cashion, who will share work from his new collection of stories, How We Do Things Here The reading will be followed by a community open mic. 

Matt Cashion’s most recent book, How We Do Things Here (Cornerstone Press), a collection of linked stories, was a finalist in the Flannery O’Connor Award for short fiction. His story collection, Last Words Of The Holy Ghost won the 2015 Katherine Anne Porter Prize, and his novel, Our 13th Divorce, won the Edna Ferber Book Prize. Other work appears in The Sun, Cincinnati Review, Willow Springs, Carolina Quarterly, The Writer’s Chronicle, and elsewhere. Born in the North Carolina mountains and raised in Coastal Georgia, he earned an MFA from the University of Oregon and now teaches Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. (www.mattcashion.com)

If you would like to read at the open mic, please send an email to driftlesswritingcenter@gmail.com with the subject line: IN-PERSON OPEN MIC, and include your name and contact information. Please prepare to read no more than 5 minutes of material.

Friday, May 8, 7-9pm

@ Vernon County Museum, 410 S Center Ave, Viroqua, WI 54665

Free and open to the public

This multi-genre generative workshop will encourage us to cultivate creative habits that employ spontaneity, improvisation, and counter-intuitive ways of imagining in order to surprise ourselves and our readers. We’ll explore the serious role of play. We’ll plunge courageously into territories of truth-telling that uncover stranger things. We’ll find fresh language and new angles of observation. We’ll train our senses to witness better the absurdities of the hour. We’ll keep it (sur)real. We’ll get wild with wonder and grow curioser and curioser. We’ll dreamstorm our ways into stories that become more alive than we could imagine.

Open to writers of all genres and levels.

Saturday, May 9th from 10am - 12pm

@ Vernon County Museum, 410 S Center Ave, Viroqua, WI 54665

To register, click here

Sliding scale tuition ($20-$50); scholarships are also available (please follow steps in registration link for scholarships.)  

Join us for our quarterly online submissions labs - a dedicated time to work on submitting your work for publication!

Join the DWC for online co-working sessions designed to help you power through those pesky submissions tasks. We'll meet online with the goal of sharing submission resources and stating our individual intentions for the session. Then we'll get to work on submitting our writing to the outlets of our choice.

Whether it’s journals, anthologies, residencies, or contests, if you’ve got work that needs to get out there, come co-work with other writers to get a jump start on the spring submissions season!

Please register for Connect & Write here to receive the Submissions Lab link. If you are already registered for Connect & Write, just log into the Submissions Lab with that same link.

The Driftless Writing Center is excited to offer monthly opportunities to work in person with  your fellow writers. "In-Person Connect & Write" brings writers together for focused writing time in a supportive community of peers. Join us for an  hour of focused writing time at Magpie Gelato, one Sunday per month,  hosted by DWC board member Rose Davey.

Walk-ins are welcome but RSVPs are helpful.
To RSVP or for more information, please email Rose Davey: rosendavey@gmail.com

Free and open to the public, donations also welcome.

We look forward to writing with you in Viroqua! 

Join us for a monthly casual monthly writing opportunity. Drop in and out anytime, from 9 am to 11 am. Write, chat a bit with other writers if you like, but mostly, grab the time to write and feel motivated by the writing energy around you. 

To RSVP, please email DWC board member and La Crosse Write-In host Jodi Vandenberg-Daves at jodivandenbergdaves@gmail.com to let her know you're coming. This will help with reserving seats for writers at The Root Note, which can be busy on a Saturday morning. If you don't get at chance to RSVP, drop-ins are welcome.

The Driftless Writing Center will sponsor another year of “First Friday” online open mics. All members of the DWC community are encouraged to read their work and/or be part of the listening audience. Look for an email message a couple of weeks before each event for specific details, including information on how to register to read. “First Friday” events are free, though donations to support this and other DWC programs are very much appreciated!

Contact dwc.openmic@gmail.com for more information on signing up to read.

The Driftless Writing Center's casual drop-in “Connect & Write” sessions  will continue throughout 2025 on the schedule above. Write a novel, pull together that poetry chapbook, explore your cross-genre ambitions, or focus on a single essay. Please join us whenever you can to work toward your writing goals!

All meetings are held online via Zoom. The DWC’s “Connect & Write” program is free, but registration is required. To register, click here.

The McIntosh Memorial Library in Viroqua recently featured Contours: A Literary Landscape in their Adult Summer Reading Program. Lisa Henner discussed the history and goals of the Driftless Writing Center, David Hough talked about the making of the anthology, and contributor Janet Rowe read from her work.

If you are interested in purchasing a copy of Contours: A Literary Landscape, you can do so here.

After the devasting flooding in late August and early September 2018, we wanted to do more than mop floors and haul away trash, and we decided to do what we do best—help people tell their stories. For more information on this ongoing community-service project, visit wisconsinfloodstories.org