This writing workshop we’ll take the heart of the elegy—a traditional literary form expressing emotions around loss—and combine it with more contemporary play on obituaries and eulogies. We will frame, reframe, and place ourselves in the current context of loss in which we find ourselves (from an obituary for the loss of a job or relationship, a formal-toned eulogy for the death of a concept, or a traditional elegy mourning the loss of a loved one), while hopefully building greater capacity for healing and joy.
Cost: $75
One Session
Sunday, November 1, 2026
10:30am-1:00pm
While loss and change potentially initiate painful grieving, allowing ourselves to write, remember, and contextualize can bring forward the goodness that preceded and/or is to come. Western culture has historically encouraged a forgetting or rewriting of the past in an attempt to create a distorted and narrow future, but as ancestral and community-focused wisdom shares, looking at the past (even recent past) provides us the opportunity to celebrate life and grow in more balanced relationship with the surrounding environment.
With these concepts in mind, together in this writing workshop we’ll take the heart of the elegy—a traditional literary form expressing emotions around loss—and combine it with more contemporary play on obituaries and eulogies. In mirroring the variety of losses the world has experienced, our writing can range from an obituary for the loss of a job or relationship, a formal-toned eulogy for the death of a concept, or a traditional elegy mourning the loss of a loved one. Through this writing, we will frame, reframe, and place ourselves in the current context of loss in which we find ourselves, while hopefully building greater capacity for healing and joy.
This writing workshop will be generative. Participants will receive a packet of sample writing from some of the most diverse and dynamic contemporary writers using the elegy/obituary/eulogy genre and be invited to take part in writing exercises that will result in (or build the foundation for) newly drafted poem(s) and/or prose.
Class Maximum: 15 students
This class must meet a minimum registration of 7 in order to be held. Register early to ensure the class you want is held!
A scholarship may be available for this class.
Please contact us for more information.
Instructor: Sarah Chavez
Photo Credit: Ike & Tash Photography
Sarah A. Chavez, PhD. (she/ella/they) is a proud mestiza writer, educator, and literary community advocate born and raised in the California Central Valley, making their way in the Pacific Northwest. They are the author of the full-length poetry collection, Hands That Break & Scar, as well as three chapbooks, like everything else we loved, All Day, Talking, and Halfbreed Helene Navigates the Whole. Chavez teaches Creative Writing and Latinx Studies at the University of Washington Tacoma, serves as the Associate Dean of Faculty & Equity/Inclusion, and is the co-coordinator of the annual UWT Poetry Festival: Between the Lines. Their current project, In the Face of Mourning— a creative nonfiction meditation on grief as cultural performance—has received residency support from the Macondo Writers Workshop, The Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow, and Dorland Mountain Arts, and was awarded a 2025/26 Tacoma Artists Initiative Project grant. Learn more about Dr. Chavez.
This class takes place upstairs in OlyPages Studio. Learn how to find us.