Category: In The Media

Video – Writing Circle Wednesdays

If you are going through cancer treatment, or have completed treatment within the last two years, why would you want to be part of a weekly writing circle? What if you don’t think of yourself as a writer?

Writing Circle attendees can answer those questions better than we can! In this video, attendees explain how their weekly group is more than the sum of its parts, how it helps, and how much it means to them.

Our Cancer Writing Circle, held in partnership with the William R. Bliss Cancer Resource Center, offers those receiving treatment for cancer or those who have completed treatment within the last two years a safe space to connect, express themselves, and to feel heard. During sessions, participants write together from writing prompts, which inspire stories from their lives. Writers are gently invited to read their “fresh” writing, and each writer receives positive feedback from the group.

On the air, Mary Richards and Ana discuss how Ana became a writer, her hybrid-memoir classes at OLLI-ISU, the launch of the Ames Writers Collective and its outreach programs—Writing Circle Wednesdays offering cancer support, Open Write Tuesdays, and the Swift Youth Writers Workshop.

Founder of the Ames Writers Collective, Ana McCracken receives a Rotary Club of Ames Community Grant for the Swift Youth Writers Workshops from outgoing Rotary Club of Ames President, Kelsey Carper. The Rotary Club awarded $20,000 in Community Grants to nine Ames-area organizations. The Ames Writers Collective will use the money to offer honorariums to Iowa State University MFA in Creative Writing and Environment candidates to facilitate writing sessions, youth writer lunches, notebooks and pens. The first of the Swift Youth Writers workshops will launch on July 18th at the Ames Public Library.

Author Ana McCracken saw a need in the Ames community for a support network for writers — a group where writers and storytellers can study outside of academic settings. She decided to fill that need by founding the Ames Writers Collective.