Susan M. Tiberghien

Thanks for visiting.

There were many wonderful happenings during my recent spring tour of workshops in the States. The tour started with the Big Apple Conference for the International Women's Writing Guild, where I taught a workshop "Memoir, Writing and Publishing Your Life Stories." I continued with readings and workshops in Princeton, Philadelphia, and Washington DC, where I was happy to return to the CG Jung Society and work with "Writing and Metaphor", sharing some thoughts about The Red Book. I again appreciated the welcome at The Writers Center in Bethesda. Back to NYC I returned to the Hudson Valley Writers Center in Sleepy Hollow, right close to where I grew up. Then up to Boston, for the The Muse and Marketplace, organized by Grub Street Writers Center. And another workshop at the CG Jung Institute in Newton. The last event on the tour was a short lecture on Writing and Metaphor at the CG Jung Foundation in NYC. It's a gift for me to return to the States each spring for these workshops, at IWWG, at the different writers' centers, and at the CG Jung Centers.

My next workshop here in Geneva is June 12, Marketing and Publishing, followed by our end-of-the-year readings in the evening. Please see the dates for 2010-2011 noted to the left, and check our site www.genevawritersgroup to register.

From July 30 to August 6, I will be teaching at the International Women's Writing Guild Summer Conference at Brown University. For more information please check www.iwwg.com. I hope to see many old friends there and to meet new ones.

Please take a look at my last book, ONE YEAR TO A WRITING LIFE, published by DaCapo Press (Perseus Books). It continues to do well, bringing lots of appreciative mail, and finding its way to writers' groups, writing centers, and colleges.

The book includes twelve of my workshops, starting with Journal Writing, and ending with Writing the Way Home. "The book leads you through examples, guided exercises and advice from both Tiberghien and familiar authors about how to begin, continue and complete your work. It's like having someone with you every step of the way...Tiberghien nudges you toward looking at the page, investigating your life and experiences..." (from The Writer). It's available in bookstores, also on line; click on the cover to the left.

"Fifteen years of teaching lie behind Susan Tiberghien's carefully considered and companionable words...the book is, first to last, a total delight to read." (Harvard Coop Bookstore, Cambridge, MA)

More good news includes the third edition of my first book, LOOKING FOR GOLD, and the Italian version, CERCANDO L'ORO, published by Moretti & Vitali. I dreamed this book at a writers' conference and signed the contract with Daimon Verlag on my sixtieth birthday. It's a memoir about one year in Jungian analysis, letting dreams open the door to deeper creativity in the way we live and the way we write.

Our Geneva Writers' Group continues to flourish. Founded in 1993 to promote all forms of creative writing, there are now 150 members, men and women, a vibrant network of supportive writers. We publish a biennial literary review, "Offshoots, Writing from Geneva". In February we held our 7th Geneva Writers' Conference, welcoming 205 writers from 42 countries.

And we are set for another excellent summer at the International Writers' Residency at the Château de Lavigny (between Geneva and Lausanne), the home of the late German publisher Heinrich Ledig-Rowohlt. Since 1996, we have offered three week sessions during the summer months to twenty-five writers from around the world. Our website is, www.chateaudelavigny.ch


To close this home page, I include a few excerpts from the introduction to ONE YEAR TO A WRITING LIFE.

"Ask writers to define the writing life and you will get many answers. Annie Dillard says that it is "life at its most free." For Stephen King, it's a "brighter, more pleasant place." From Brenda Ueland to John Gardner, writers have been offering counsel to encourage people to write. And all the words come back to one fundamental truth: a writing life is a creative life....

For me it has become a life that awakens to birdsong in early morning, that lingers with sunlight in late afternoon. It is a life that slows down to touch each moment, a life that deepens from an inner source. I was fifty years old when I started along the way. I had been writing letters, various papers, journal entries, but not thinking of myself as a writer. My life was full yet I longed for something more. Once I acknowledged that I wanted to be a writer, the well within me filled with fresh creativity...

One Year to a Writing Life presents twelve workshops drawn from over fifteen years of teaching. The lessons dovetail inspiration and instruction. The first component, inspiration, comes from my trust in writing as a way of life. A trust nourished by practice.... The second component, instruction, comes from my appreciation of writing as a process. We sharpen our writing skills, clarify our thinking, and deepen our awareness of ourselves and of the world around us...

There is a light within each of us, the light that we bring into the world. ONE YEAR TO A WRITING LIFE will lead you to this light. With your words, you become a light bearer in the world."