Lisa Freedman is a writer, creative writing teacher, and coach who celebrates complex stories that push beyond neat forms and get to deeper truths. She graduated from Georgetown University with a major in English Literature. She got her MFA in creative writing from the New School where she has been inventing and teaching her own courses for more than 15 years, including “Starts in Silence: A Meditation and Writing Workshop.” She has been studying and practicing Tibetan Buddhism since 2014.
Lisa teaches meditation and writing workshops with the International Women’s Writing Guild, the Poetry Barn, and the New York Zen Center and more. Lisa’s poems and prose have appeared in Satya Magazine and the anthology Resist Much Obey Little: Inaugural Poems to the Resistance among others. She’s the proud compiler of ROOTS/TRUNK/SKY, a collection of writings from the Imagination & Justice Meditation & Free-Writing Circles, published by the International Women’s Writing Guild.
Lisa started BRW on November 10, 2016. The results of the presidential election stunned her, and she wanted to process her shock, fear, anger, and grief with like-minded people. And she wanted a format for coming together that could guide writers into a deeper conversation than quoting headlines and wringing hands.
As a creative writing professor, Lisa had always depended on moments of silence and relevant free-write prompts to help students settle and focus at the beginning of class. When a friend visited one of Lisa’s classes, she noticed that Lisa told the students it was time to “breathe, read, write.” During one of their frantic post-election conversations, that friend encouraged Lisa to go ahead and create BRW and see what happens.
We’re about five years out now from those first urgent circles when everyone who showed up was helping each other find their bearings. BRW’s first stable home was the NY Zen Center where we met monthly and where a sense of community started to bloom.
When Covid came, BRW turned to Zoom and again helped people process all the feelings and challenges of pandemic. Over the winter holidays in 2021, BRW offered a secular “23-day Advent of Morning Meditation and Free-Writing,” and scores of people came when they could to breathe, write, share, listen, and connect.
Now people come from Ireland, Kenya, Australia, Hawaii, Greece, England, Spain and more to join the open-hearted BRW circles.