Resilience is about adaptability, buoyancy, hardiness, and strength. We’ll read about resilience as a concept that applies to both personal and community life, and identify and articulate our own experiences and observations of bouncing back.

This is a writing program, which means it’s also a reading program; careful attention to published creative nonfiction about experiences of resilience will be one of two central foci of the program. The other focus will be the writing and polishing of several short creative nonfiction pieces based in observation and personal experience.

In all program efforts, we will be especially attentive to the following lines of inquiry and their implications: effective communication of event and emotion, empathy as a mode of response, and the creation on the page of a robust and multi-dimensioned narrator.

Bouncing Back is designed for anyone interested in exploring ideas and experience in order to learn and write about human resilience. Prospective professionals in the human services, education and health-related fields, and people who want to acquire or sharpen skills applicable to producing vivid and interesting nonfiction writing, may find program content particularly relevant to their interests. Previous creative writing experience is not required.

Reading, writing and responding to published and unpublished work of others will make up bulk of our work together. Program participants must be willing to share their writing with all program members for their response, in person and in a program-only space online. Please note that this is not a psychology program, although our focus on resilience certainly relates to working with people; we will draw on tools and methods of analysis from the fields of creative writing, journalism and  literature as we do our work.