Fireside Community For Writers launches *right now*. 🥳
The front window of our old studio. You can see a blue glass tealight holder, a little mouse holding the word “joy,” some felt daisies, and the blurry city street in the background.
Whaaaaaa!
Right now, as I hit send, and this email drops like magic into inboxes far and wide, the doors to our new membership program “Fireside Community For Writers” are… open. 🥳🥳🥳
We haven’t had a launch that feels like this since we opened our studio.
Truth is, I haven’t let anything feel like this. I’ve been in denial that Firefly has become a mostly-online business — unwilling or unable to let my imagination spread out into this digital world and ask, “What’s the most beautiful thing we could make here?”
I’m so glad that changed.
We started to feel the tug of this in the last few years. Notes started to pile up about this nameless “new thing.” We shuttled around hundreds emails and lists. We surveyed the community. I sampled membership programs and took copious notes. We couldn’t see it yet, but we could feel it — a rumbling under the surface of something new and big and good.
Then Sydney arrived, and over the past year, she alchemized all these messy notes into a thing. A real-life beautiful thing. I’m in awe.
Here are some of the parts we’re excited about:
Monthly “writing reset” sessions to reconnect to our voices on a regular basis.
A community space where we can all ask for and offer creative support to each other.
A chance to run with our own tiny passion projects, like author evenings, one-off sessions on themes we can’t put down, and writing marathon days.
Being able to give advance notice and a discount in all our small group workshops to people who are invested in what we do.
Building community in ways we can’t even see yet.
It’s always been my biggest dream to create places that don’t function in the same way as the rest of the world.
I thought we needed walls for that. Wood. Candles. Books. But as Fireside has come into focus, a place has started to appear. An online environment with substance, heart, possibility, and personality.
I’ve been shocked at how real it feels, how generous and how “us.” This is not separate from what we do, but deeply inside of it. And somehow, it’s right here…. on the Internet.
I know this will keep growing in ways we can’t even see.
Since it’s online, it’s endlessly adaptable, so we’ll be asking for lots of feedback so we can sculpt the space from your voices and wishes. We want to make this with you, not just for you.
Registration is open today until January 15th, then we’ll have a big welcome session and hunker down for a winter of connection and creativity. Our next registration period start be in May.
In a weird way, we are launching a studio today.
It doesn’t have a solid wood table or wall-to-wall bookshelves, but it is a place. And — to me at least — it glows.
I can’t wait to see what you all make of this.
Yes, you can still take a workshop this winter. :)
If you’re looking for a small group experience with lots of personalized attention — we still have spots in winter workshops, including Begin Here with Sophia, Lift Off with Mari, and Keep Your Pen Moving with Asifa.
Help us fund creative expression grants for Indigenous youths.
For this first Fireside launch, $7 from monthly and $25 from annual memberships will go to our passion project this year — raising $10,000 to fund creative expression grants for Indigenous Youth.
If you want to support this project, but don’t want to become a Fireside member, you can contribute here.
A poem for you.
We’re starting the year with the wide open heart of the late Andrea Gibson today.
Of course — this may not be the thing for you.
I’m not here to convince you, just to share my joy and vision for us. If this isn’t it, keep looking. Find the people and resources that fit your life’s puzzle.
What’s for sure is that we all need places we can feel at home, and people who have our backs. We all need structures we can relax into and come alive in. The world needs a lot of new ideas, voices, and well-supported creatives.
Whatever your path today, I’m wishing you the glow of new possibilities as this big year starts to roll out it’s map for us all.
In it with you,
P.S. No audio today! I’m writing this while the rest of the team is on vacation so things are pared down. If there are typos, consider them an invitation to lower the bar. :)