Allegra Huston & James Navé
Creative Writing Workshops Online and in Person
Online writing courses, workshops, intensives, retreats designed to turn you into the writer you always knew you could be.
Creative Writing Courses, Workshops & Retreats for Writers
You already have something to say. What you need are the conditions to say it: the structure, the community, and the method that gets your writing out of your head and onto the page.
Imaginative Storm offers creative writing workshops online and in person for writers at every stage. Whether you're building a practice from scratch, finishing a manuscript you've carried for years, or looking for a writing community that takes your work seriously, there's a place for you here.
Some writers want the steady rhythm of a weekly group. Others want a creative writing course built around one genre and one goal. You will find both here, and our online creative writing courses carry the same method that anchors every session we lead.
Online and In-Person Offerings Are Designed to Work Together.
Weekly online sessions help you build a disciplined writing habit. You’ll generate new work through structured prompts and timed exercises to steadily develop your craft.
In-person retreats and weekend intensives immerse you in days of focused writing, shared meals, and deep conversation. In person is often where identity shifts, breakthroughs, and lasting creative confidence happen.
Online becomes your ongoing home. Retreats are the peak experiences you work toward and the memories that keep you coming back.
Audio Or Video Self-Paced Course
Learn the Imaginative Storm method plus craft instruction through video or audio 10 sessions—you choose. You get self-paced learning wherever, whenever works for you.
In-Person Workshops
Live gatherings that combine timed prompts with focused craft instruction and community feedback. Whether you want to finish a project or build daily writing momentum, our workshops meet you where you are.
Online Intensives
These can be virtual or in person but all include writing in the session through short timed prompts, real craft instruction, and a small group that thoughtfully reads your work and provides gentle feedback.
Multi-day Retreats
Our retreats have structured days that move between guided writing, instruction, and writing without interruptions. You write alongside a small group, read and hear considerate feedback. A few days like this do more than months of lunch hour writing ever could.
The Imaginative Storm Method
The Imaginative Storm Method isn't designed to teach you how to write. It was created to help you get out of the way of what's already there. Through timed prompts, craft instruction, and a community that takes your work seriously, something shifts. Writers who come in blocked and uncertain leave with pages of prose, confidence in their vision, and a practice they can sustain.
That combination, disciplined free-writing and real craft development, is what sets Imaginative Storm apart. It's not a lecture. It's not therapy. It's a creative practice for life. More than a workshop, it becomes a room you return to, a place where being read aloud and taken seriously chisels the self-doubt away, week after week.
Writing Retreats in Taos, NM and the UK
Some writing breakthroughs require a change of location. Imaginative Storm's writing retreats take the method to two of the most creatively charged landscapes in North America, Taos, New Mexico and the United Kingdom. Each retreat combines immersive writing sessions, craft instruction, and one-on-one editorial time in a setting chosen because the landscape itself is something that inspires.
Bring the project you have been circling for years. Leave with real pages and a clear sense of what comes next.
What Writers Say about Imaginative Storm
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“It’s life-changing. Even if I’m not writing, I’m thinking about writing.”
— Deborah Williams, writer
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“All the other offerings out there are focusing on the leaves and the branches: how to do it this way or that way. Imaginative Storm is the roots, a stabilizing, nourishing connection so we can each grow our own way.”
— Sandi Dittmer, writer
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“Writing what I don't know has given me more confidence and freedom and flow to write what I do know. It's like having a base camp to set out on writing adventures."
— Alice W. Meadows, writer
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“It’s like meeting a part of yourself you didn’t know existed. What a gift!”
— Wendy Shaw, artist
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“With each continued immersion in this process I am brought ever closer to something Carl Jung said many years ago: ‘Until we make the unconscious conscious, we will live our life and we will call it fate.’ I feel the Imaginative Storm process is ever getting me closer and closer to a more conscious understanding of my life.”
— Dan Stenabaugh, writer
Meet Your Facilitators, Allegra Huston and James Navé
Imaginative Storm was founded by two writers who have spent their careers immersed in the craft of writing and the community that surrounds it. Together, they've guided thousands of writers across six continents toward work they didn't know they had in them.
Allegra Huston
Is the originator of Imaginative Intelligence, former Editorial Director at Weidenfeld & Nicolson, and co-author of Write What You Don't Know, the book of the Imaginative Storm method.
Allegra holds a Double First in English from Oxford University, She has taught writing workshops for the University of Oklahoma, the National University of Ireland, Galway, the Taos Writers Conference, and the UK’s prestigious Arvon Foundation, and has taught a guest seminar at the nonfiction department of Iowa Writers' Workshop.
James Navé
Holds an MFA in Poetry from Vermont College of Fine Arts and brings over two decades of experience as a poet, manuscript coach, and facilitator to every session he leads.
Navé is the co-author of Write What You Don’t Know (with Allegra Huston), 100 Days Poems After Cancer, and How to Read for an Audience (with Allegra Huston).
For six years, Navé worked with Julia Cameron, bestselling author of The Artist’s Way, developing and teaching Artist’s Way Creativity Camps across the US.
Join the Weekly Writing Circle on Zoom
Not sure where to start? Every Saturday, writers from around the world gather on Zoom for a one-hour session guided by the Imaginative Storm method. No experience necessary. No commitment required. Just show up and write. Discover what happens when you stop waiting for the right moment and give yourself one. It is the easiest door into the writing community, and for many writers it is where everything starts.
Frequently Asked Questions
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No. The Imaginative Storm method is designed to work for writers at every level, including those who have never written creatively before. Many of our most committed long-term participants came to their first session convinced they weren't writers.
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Workshops are live, ongoing sessions focused on building a consistent practice. Courses are structured programs tied to specific genres or goals, with a defined curriculum and arc. Retreats are immersive multi-day experiences in dedicated locations, designed for writers who want to go deeper and make substantial progress on a project.
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All online workshops and courses are held live on Zoom in small cohorts. Sessions are not pre-recorded. You write in real time, share your work, and receive feedback from facilitators and peers during the session itself.
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It depends on where you're at with your craft. The free weekly Writing Circle is open to newcomers every Saturday. Structured courses have defined enrollment windows; check the individual course page for upcoming start dates.
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The Writing Circle is a free, one-hour writing session on Zoom that meets every Saturday. It's the simplest way to experience the Imaginative Storm method and meet the community. Many participants start with the Writing Circle before enrolling in a course or retreat.
FEATURED BLOG POST
Learn more about this topic here on the blog. Must see tips and tricks for best results.
FEATURED BLOG POST
Learn more about this topic here on the blog. Must see tips and tricks for best results.
FEATURED BLOG POST
Learn more about this topic here on the blog. Must see tips and tricks for best results.