Our workshop participants and instructors have been doing some excellent work and this is your chance to hear from new and emerging writers in Madison as well as the accomplished and award-winning instructors who have been guiding them. Come hear some work, get a chance to meet the students and instructors, and learn more about writing workshops at ALL.
Owner of Posturally, LLC, Anne Asher is a movement therapist and body worker specializing in helping people get out of pain. She delights in performing her health "edutainment" monologues to audiences of all ages.
After spending more than a decade working in copywriting and marketing, Amie Bressers left her job to write her first novel, an effort that is still in progress. When she's not writing, she's working with elementary youth in the Goodman Community Center after-school program, teaching creative writing and literacy.
Araceli Esparza is a published, award-winning bilingual Chicana poeta. Her work has appeared in multiple anthologies and journals, and her voice can be heard in the Wisconsin Life archives. She is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee and a graduate of the MFA program at Hamline University.
Born and raised in Madison, Wisconsin, Araceli is the daughter of migrant farmworkers from Guanajuato, Mexico. A lineage that continues to ground her work in resilience, labor, and story.
Today, she is planting seeds as a social justice speaker, survivor, and founder of Midwest Mujeres, a Latina mentoring and storytelling collective where women transform their lived experiences into voice, healing, and power.
In her words: “To me, being a Chicana poeta means to catch fire—to bring forth something from labor and sweat, to have enough when there’s not a lot.”
Sam Garcia is a writer and theater-maker living in Madison, WI. She has completed workshops with The Madison Writers Studio and Primary Stages Einhorn School of Performing Arts in New York City. Recent theatrical work includes, PTSD The Play (Scenic and Costume Design, Touring), Hedda Gabler (Assistant Scenic Design, Capitol Stage), boom (Scenic Design, Vassar College) and STEIN-DRAG (Dramaturg, Target Margin Theater Lab). She received her B.A. from Vassar College.
Jen leads storytelling workshops around Madison, co-produces the Moth StorySlam in Madison, teaches the occasional social policy class at the University of Wisconsin School of Social Work, and also works at the Wisconsin Historical Society Press. She recently published her first book, We Are Staying: Eighty Years in the Life of a Family, a Store, and a Neighborhood.
Michelle Wildgen has nearly two decades of experience in the publishing world, including 18 years with the literary journal Tin House Magazine, most recently as executive editor. She is a cofounder and teacher of creative writing at the Madison Writers’ Studio, and the author of three novels: Bread and Butter, But Not for Long, and You’re Not You, which has been adapted for a film starring Hilary Swank and Emmy Rossum.
Arts + Literature Laboratory is located at 111 S. Livingston Street #100, Madison, Wisconsin, 53703.
Our galleries are open Tuesday through Friday 10am-5pm and Saturday noon to 5pm, and other programs take place throughout the week. Please check the events calendar and education section for details.