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 us sinners

You don’t need to be good. 

A writing salon series

"pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. amen."

 

I used to be triggered by the word "sin" or "sinner"— but then I really heard the line of this prayer. Pray for us sinners.

And it hit me. We are just a bunch of beautiful sinners that our Mother still loves. We just make a lot of poor decisions. We act like assholes (even the best of us). We are just trying to live our best lives while having some bad days. Lusting. Lying. Loving. Obsessing. We don't need to repent. We don't need to change or be saved. To be human is to be messy, sexy, dirty,  to covet, to hide things, to indulge, to obsess. I mean, we can try "better" or we can just make hot art from our transgressions and realize "us sinners" is just US. And we are getting acknowledged in this prayer. So now we can just be free. And to be real: to sin means to misstep. But it also means to break rules. In this writing salon, I am going to ask you to really unravel your “idea” of what sin is, and instead, we are going to go into the marrow of bad and drink it up like the good art it is. 

JOIN US

US SINNERS is a four-part writing gathering for anyone who wants to make art, to write anything at all,  and feels ready to push against "good" / "right" or performative purity. 

We will explore different ways to write as rule breakers, sexy assholes, dark feminine, transgressive, possessed, brave; us sinners.
Us sinners is a container for us to push against “sin” as something to stay away from, and see it as part of our lives that make us wise, interesting, real, trustworthy.

 We are deeply programmed in a purity culture— so much that we cannot even understand the deeper meaning of that line (pray for us sinners) — it's just "pray for us humans" because us humans are wildly imperfect, we are strange fruits on the earth, we are beautiful creatures always resisting our feral form, and we break the rules to find our truth. Let me repeat that: we break rules to find truth.  

Who are we as writers, people, when we stop trying to swallow our imperfections or we feel we need to “make pretty” or make people like us or want people think we are smarter, more evolved, less transgressed beings? 
Who are we when we up as Us Sinners?

Who are we when we write the honest to god truth of our needs, desires, rages? And the parts of us that fell pray to rages, desires, needs? When did we break the rules. What happens in our bodies when we tell the stories we have held clamped down because we don't want to appear "bad" or "wrong"?

Us Sinners explores how we can create metaphors for ourselves and then we get to have fun and write our way into the sinning, the past, present, and future ways we have slipped, craved, caved, been powerful, been sensual, and thought it was bad, but really it's all just glorious life-work / art-work / creative-work to be moved moved through. 

WHAT TO EXPECT

We gather for 4 weeks.

Each salon/writing session meeting is approx. 1.5 hours. They will be recorded.

You’ll receive:

  • Stories to support the theme
  • Writing prompts 
  • Somatic & oracular practices to open the channel 
  • Time to write, share, and write again — in community
  • Deep joy from creating. Deep love of writing. 
  • Community 
  • Inspiration to continue to make art.

    *There will also be two open writing spaces/office hours during these 4 weeks where we just co-write together. And I will be around to support however I can. 

You’ll leave with pages that matter, words that burn, spells you didn’t know you carried.  Feel free to write lists, letters, incantations, poems, prose, weird wild things that will bring beauty and truth to your world. 

JOIN US

This is not just a writing class.

It’s a community salon. We get to twist narratives as we wish, together.

A devotional place for writing.

A turning in, but also a witnessing.

 

Come as you are.

this is for all levels writers, and for writers of any kind, and for those of you who have never written before. 

WHEN + WHERE

We meet on video — so you can be anywhere. Calls are held on  Wednesday evenings from 7-9 PM Eastern. 

  • Session 1 | February 4
  • Session 2 | February 11
  • Session 3 | February  18
  • Session 4 | February 25

All writing circle videos will be recorded if you are unable to attend (though please try!) and you will have access to the videos and classroom until April 1, 2026.

SESSION THEMES

Click below to expand on each session theme.

Registration is closed.

About.

 

A writer since she’s picked up a pen, MaryBeth has her Masters in Fine Arts from Antioch University in creative nonfiction with a certificate in pedagogy. She’s learned the most though from sitting in writing circles with others and has held  generative writing workshops all over the country and online since 2014. She’s published a book of prose called Dear Earth, was co-publisher for the print publication Amulet Magazine: a field guide for seasonal living, and is currently the founder and caretaker of Radici Siciliane, an organization that holds creative and ancestral immersions in Sicily. You can read MaryBeth’s work on her substack: Notes From Wherever We Are.Â