Using magazine clippings; photographs; found or created notes, letters, and postcards; and other items, construct a story from ephemera. Put the items in box and add to it as the week goes on. When you feel that you've compiled enough, write the story relying on the ephemera as a guide.

Find a text that is completely unrelated to what you normally read—a how-to manual, a 1950s interior design book, an old encyclopedia, a white paper on social media— and use it as the source of an erasure poem. Read through several pages and underline words and phrases that appeal to you and that relate to each other. Using a marker or Wite-Out, begin to delete the words around those you underlined, leaving words and phrases that you might want to use. Keep deleting the extra language, working to construct poetic lines with the words you’ve chosen to keep.

Dorothy Randall Gray is a certified life coach and best-selling author of Soul Between The Lines: Freeing Your Creative Spirit Through Writing (Avon/HarperCollins). In addition to six books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, her work has appeared in numerous anthologies, periodicals, and theater productions. Gray’s creative writing and personal growth seminars have inspired thousands throughout the world, including the participants in her P&W–supported workshops with Urban Possibilities. She has also served on the faculty at New York University, as a commentator for National Public Radio, and as special guest delegate to UNESCO. She can be reached at [email protected].

What makes your workshops unique?
When I teach workshops I feel like I am in my glory. I am energized and in love. I’ve been told that my joy is infectious. As a spiritual activist I believe I was put on this planet to make a difference. The motto on my business cards reads: “Transforming the world one word at a time.”

I’ve served local and global communities from Mumbai to Manhattan, Compton to Connecticut. My spirituality studies in Eastern, Western, African, Native American, and Asian systems also add a distinctive flavor to the classes. So, when people attend my workshops I believe they can taste the love, the world view, the spirituality, and my years of experience. 

What techniques do you employ to help shy writers open up?
I’ve got a wicked sense of humor and we laugh a lot in my workshops. Laughter eases tension, relaxes the soul, and frees the imagination. Shy writers may lack confidence in their work, fear making a mistake, or feel intimidated in front of others. That’s why I create a safe, non-judgmental space in which writing is validated, not judged. I never ask people how long they’ve been writing or how much they’ve published. I often pair students so they can read to each other. A technique I developed over 18 years ago called “seeds” is also very helpful. Now many other writing teachers have found it useful to employ this nonjudgmental way of giving feedback that encourages and inspires.

Everything around us is inspiration for the creative spirit within everyone. I love finding different ways of stimulating that spirit—music, guided meditation, movement, visualizations, provocative exercises, inanimate objects, colors, artifacts found in an abandoned house, even a Scrabble board.

What’s been your most rewarding experience as a teacher?
I believe living on purpose is its own reward. I can hardly think of any teaching experience that hasn’t been rewarding. Over the years I’ve worked with postgraduate students, HIV positive men, battered wives, gay and lesbian populations, cancer survivors, mental health professionals, and writers from Iceland, India, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, and Trinidad. One recent experience almost moved me to tears. After weeks of teaching my writing class of 15-year-old boys at a juvenile detention center I walked in one day and they broke into a round of applause.

What affect has this work had on your life and art?
This work inspires me to seek as many opportunities to teach as I can find, and to write as much as I encourage my students to write. The joy that this purpose-filled life gives helps me navigate the challenging passages of my own writing life. It encourages me to push past rejection letters, ungranted grants, and bills that seem to multiply like gremlins fed after midnight.

Poets & Writers has been a consistent and invaluable supporter of my writing life. Its Readings/Workshops program enabled Urban Possibilities to offer my workshops to a homeless shelter on Los Angeles’ skid row. P&W has also lent its support to Women Writers and Artists Matrix in upstate New York. In addition, its Southern California Workshop Leaders Retreats provide excellent opportunities for writing teachers to exchange ideas.

What are the benefits of writing workshops for special groups?
I am moved to create new exercises and teaching methods. It keeps the teaching fresh and vibrant, and moves it toward the excitement of the creative unknown. This is particularly true of my work with incarcerated youth for Theatre of Hearts/YouthFirst.

What is the most memorable thing that’s happened as a result of one of your workshops?
One woman felt so empowered after one of my workshops that she stood up in the middle of a conference audience and announced, “I’m getting a divorce. Anyone know a good lawyer?” Another who hadn’t spoken to her mother in five years used my class exercises to write about the rift. At the end of the workshop series she called her mother and handed her those writings. They’ve been talking ever since.

Photo: Dorothy Randall Gray (center/foreground) with participants in a writing workshop sponsored by Urban Possibilities, which serves homeless men and women in downtown Los Angeles. Credit: Craig Johnson Photography.
Major support for Readings/Workshops in California is provided by The James Irvine Foundation. For Readings/Workshops in New York support is provided, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, with additional support from the Louis & Anne Abrons Foundation, the Axe-Houghton Foundation, The Cowles Charitable Trust, and the Abbey K. Starr Charitable Trust. Additional support comes from the Friends of Poets & Writers.