This is our core programming. We offer two-day intensive seminars covering the principal elements of creative writing including scene, setting, dialogue, narrative structure, plot, and point of view. Whether you’re a poet, playwright, novelist, memoirist, the core elements of the craft remain the same. We also offer genre specific workshops in creative non-fiction, memoir, poetry, fiction, and playwriting. In all of our workshops participants will have the opportunity to create new work based on prompts. In our genre specific workshops participants are invited to share work (new or existing) among the group and get feedback from peers and professional writers.

Image: Director Ron Capps teaching a workshop in Washington, DC. (Jacqueline Hames for Army Magazine/DoD.)

We also offer songwriting workshops. Our workshops are structured for veterans and family members who have some familiarity with an instrument, but we welcome anyone with an interest in songwriting or learning an instrument (guitar or ukelele) to join. The seminars in the workshop cover music theory, song structures, melody, harmony, and lyrics. These are hands-on workshops where participants will learn strategies and techniques of the craft of songwriting, and then put those into practice to create their own songs. We use our own curriculum but we also partner with Soldier Songs and Voices, a collective of professional songwriters and veterans based out of Austin and Nashville, to bring the best songwriters and teachers possible to our workshops.

Image: VWP songwriting workshop in North Carolina. (Sandra Davidson for NC Arts Council.)

O-Dark-Thirty is our literary journal. We publish fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and short plays by veterans and family members. Our cover art comes from the same community. Learn more at O-Dark-Thirty.org.

Medical research from around the world takes note of the health benefits of being outside. In some countries doctors can actually prescribe a trip to the forest for a patient. But in t U.S., medicine is just catching up to what artists have known pretty much forever. Hiking, paddling, or simply being in nature can help us gain a sense proportion. Among a group of people who once dedicated their lives to something greater than themselves, some of whom came home disillusioned, or with moral injuries, this sense of perspective—of awe—can illuminate new paths to creativity and to peace. We run some of our workshops in natural or wilderness environments. Our outdoor programming is designed and led by a trained recreational therapist who is a Registered Maine Guide.

Image: VWP workshop in the Dragoon Mountains of Arizona. (Kate McKay, The Wilderness Society.)

The Veterans Writing Project mentoring program is a mechanism for writers with finished or nearly-finished book-length projects who want feedback or guidance on completing or finalizing the work. Writers, editors, publishers, and other career professionals volunteer their time to take on individual projects, working with veteran- or family member-writers for a discrete period of time on a single project. In the past we’ve had writers of novels, memoirs, plays, and chapbooks of poetry enrolled in the program.

It works like this: Someone who needs help with a project approaches us with a proposal (simply an explanation of the project and the issues the writer wants help working through). We go through our list of volunteer mentors looking for someone with the correct skill set and experience to take the project on. We connect the two people. Between themselves, they create an informal contract (one full set of edits, two back-and-forths of a manuscript, whatever the two agree on). Once this is complete the two can walk away or continue as they wish.

If this sounds like something you’re interested in, either as a volunteer mentor or to get help on a big project, write to program coordinator Jake Agatucci at jake@VeteransWriting.org. We’re pretty sure there won’t be any knife hands involved.

Image: DoD. If you’re wondering what knife hand means, look at the man in the campaign hat’s gesture. That’s it.

Almost since our inception we have worked alongside medical professionals to develop and present expressive/therapeutic writing programs in research and treatment facilities around the country. We created an expressive writing curriculum for the Department of Defense’s premier research and treatment facility for PTSD and TBI, the National Intrepid Center of Excellence (NICoE). From 2012 to 2019 we facilitated weekly workshops alongside creative arts therapists at NICoE and other facilities for DoD, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Image: VWP workshop at the National Intrepid Center of Execllence (NICoE) Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. (Drew Angerer/The New York Times.)

Our newest initiative. In addition to our other programs, we will produce one big thing per year. Maybe it will be a collection of short stories or a chapbook of poetry, maybe an EP of songs. Image: Creative Commons. Design: Ron Capps.