What we’re about
Writers collaborating to improve their skills through workshops and learning events...
• WORKSHOPS:
Join with other writers from around the blue planet on Zoom as we discuss and work to perfect our writing every Friday morning, open to any genre: fiction, fantasy, sci-fi, nonfiction, memoir, flash, poetry, or screenplay. Stephen Kastner encourages emerging writers to join the Friday Open Genre Workshop for engaging MFA style discussions with a small, private and select tribe of writers willing to read and review each other's work in a creative test bed. We host the Poetry and Performance workshop with Darlene Witte on the 1st and 3rd Tuesdays of each month
• PUBLICATIONS:
The Green Mountain Writers Group (GMWG) publishes a website TO facilitate our workshop events, and an online journal featuring works developed by our workshop participants. In 2023, we released our first print publication, a compilation of GMWB Members' poems, Poetry & Performance – Volume 1.
NOW TWO FLAVORS OF GMWG:
I just acquired the former Burlington Writers Workshop Meetup Group after Peter Bielo recently abandoned it. After more than two years of no activity, I have the chance to rebuild and restore our group. There are 2,734 existing members. I plan to restore live meetings in person, in the city, that we sadly lost when COVID struck three years ago. I changed our Meetup name to Green Mountain Writers Group | LIVE (https://www.meetup.com/burlington-writers).
I also lead the Green Mountain Writers Group | ZOOM that I founded on Meetup in 2021 at https://www.meetup.com/green-mountain-writers/ to host our 760 members from all across the USA and internationally with meetings on Zoom.
About the founder: Stephen Kastner:
Since 1997, I have been an independent consultant at DesignWise Studios. I began a visual artist in painting and photography. In the 80s I worked as a professional photo-journalist for the NYT papers in Florida. In 2006, I lived in Yunnan, China and spent 6 months as a filmmaker while designing the curriculum for what was to became the top-rated Chinese Culture Spa on TripAdvisor, the Linden Centre. Now, I employ writing, digital photography, videography, graphic design, and networked media to create all varieties of digital storytelling and I coach authors on self-publishing.
Upcoming events (4+)
See all- Achieving Flow State for Optimal WritingLink visible for attendees
All writers strive for those magical moments when the words seems to flow effortlessly from mind to page, when one loses track of time and enters a trance-like state of creative focus.
In his seminal book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi outlined the conditions and characteristics associated with flow. He described flow as “an almost automatic, effortless, yet highly focused state of consciousness” where people become absorbed in activity, narrowing their focus to the present moment.
Each Thursday at 6pm over Zoom, this 2-hour workshop will guide writers into a focused flow mindset to boost creativity, productivity, and joy. After a brief discussion of flow techniques, we spend 10 minutes in silent meditation to transport writers into that non-judgmental state where words flow freely from mind to page. The bulk of each workshop then consists of a 40-minute stretch of uninterrupted writing time in flow. Participants are encouraged, but not required to share their work afterwards.
LEARN MORE: Achieving Flow State for Optimal Writing
- Poetry & Performance with Darlene WitteLink visible for attendees
THIS SESSION:
Poet Tom Carroll has worked as a self-employed folklorist and oral historian, conducting cultural fieldwork and oral history research in the northeastern states and throughout the country for local, state, and federal agencies, including the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution, the National Park Service, and the U.S. Maritime Administration, and for various state and regional arts organizations and historical commissions.Throughout the years doing fieldwork, he continued to write poetry and prose alongside his field reports, amassing a sizeable portfolio of unpublished work. Having settled in Burlington, Vermont, Tom continues to do fieldwork, while devoting time to writing, editing his portfolio, and exploring opportunities for publication.
Learn more at: www.tdcarroll.comThe Poetry & Performance workshop, led by Darlene L. Witte, works to bridge the gap between poetic words on a page and poetry read aloud. On the first and third Tuesdays of each month, we focus on the work of a feature poet presented live in a Zoom session. The group is invited to respond to the poetry and discuss the work. Sessions then progress to an Open Mic where anyone can share a poem of their own or one they have just taken a liking to.
Darlene Witte
Moving to Vermont in 1993 to become a professor of Education at Northern Vermont University brought her to a landscape far more physically, emotionally, and socially embracing than she knew. Vermont has become her new spiritual home. She blends this new, gentle, land-and-people-scape into her life-long internal vision, and she hopes you enjoy her poetry and workshop.
