Pat on the front porch
 Pat Schneider, author of nine books, poet, playwright, librettist
Workshop and Retreat Leader
Speaker and Teacher
Founder and Director Emerita of
Amherst Writers & Artists

"The wisest teacher of writing I know."
--Peter Elbow, from the Foreword of
Writing Alone and with others by Pat Schneider

Pat Schneider's eighth book, Writing Alone and with Others, was published by Oxford University Press in 2003, with an introduction by Peter Elbow.

A companion DVD to the book was produced by Florentine Film/Hott Productions. It contains an award winning film about Pat's work with low-income women, and also 12 writing exercises for various kinds of workshops and interveiws with Pat and other workshop leaders.

This long awaited book and DVD are filled with Pat's experiences from her 25 years of leading writing workshops. Writers who have worked with Pat in her workshops, trainings, and retreats, know that she has an extraordinary gift for structuring an experience in which writers come into their own power.

People who have never thought of themselves as writers find they are able to produce poems, stories, plays and books that reflect their imaginings and their experience of the world with vividness and emotional accuracy. Beginning writers in her groups grow in confidence and start to feel ready to offer their writing to the world. Experienced writers find after working with her that they can more readily catch the cadence of their creativity, producing more, trying new forms, taking risks as they move deeper into the territory.

Writing Alone and with Others is 400 pages of guidance for the writer working alone, for teachers and leaders of workshops and writing groups, and for other readers who enjoy stories about the writing life. There are more than 100 writing exercises, with a wide range of examples of responses from writers who have participated in Pat's workshops throughout the U.S. and abroad.

"Honesty is creative oxygen. Generosity is creative fire. Pat Schneider is a fuse lighter. Her work is gentle, playful, brilliant, and revolutionary. She is the real animal."
--Julia Cameron, author of The Right to Write and The Artist's Way

Click here for more quotes from the back of the hard-cover edition of the book.

A Brief Biography . . .
Poet and author of nine books including Writing Alone & With Others (Oxford University Press), Wake Up Laughing: A Spiritual Autobiography, and five volumes of poems, Pat Schneider's libretti have been performed and recorded at Tanglewood and in Carnegie Hall by Robert Shaw & the Atlanta Symphony. Her work has been featured on NPR, on National Public Television, and three times on Garrison Keillor's "Writers Almanac". Pat is founder of Amherst Writers & Artists in Massachusetts and an adjunct faculty member of the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. Her new book is Another River: New and Selected Poems, Amherst Writers & Artists Press.

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Tell Me Something I Can't Forget
- a documentary film about Pat Schneider's work, featured on the DVD that accompanies her book, Writing Alone and with Others.

Pat Schneider has led a remarkable Amherst Writers & Artists Institute workshop for women in low-income housing projects in Chicopee, Massachusetts since 1985. Diane Garey and Larry Hott of Florentine Films/Hott Productions documented this workshop in an award-winning 1993 film, Tell Me Something I Can't Forget. It has received the highest awards from CINE International Film Festival and the National Educational Film Festival and has been aired on National Educational Television.

Pat Schneider, to the Workshop group: "I want you to let me see something. I want you to let me hear something, taste something; because the world comes to us that way. Tell me a story. Tess Gallagher has a wonderful poem in which she says, '... tell me something I can't forget.'" - From Tell Me Something I Can't Forget

Click here to order!

This film is included on A Companion DVD for Writing Alone and with Others, by Pat Schneider, $30.00

Download an article (224k) from Social Work Today
about Pat's work with under-served populations.

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Barry Moser & Pat Schneider

To support the work of Amherst Writers & Artists' outreach to low-income and other special populations, Barry Moser has illustrated one of Pat Schneider's most loved poems on a broadside suitable for framing. It is an exquisite drawing of two children within the framework of an antique watch and chain. The broadsides are signed by both Barry Moser and Pat Schneider.

Click here to purchase.

Barry Moser

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Pat's Poems read by Garrison Keillor

Click on the poem titles to hear special audio recordings of Pat's poems, "Welcoming Angels," from Long Way Home, "Personal Address," from Olive Street Transfer, and "Middle Age," from The Patience of Ordinary Things (all read by Garrison Keillor) from Garrison Keillor's The Writers' Almanac.

Pat Schneider - 413-253-6353
P.O. Box 1076 Amherst, MA 01004