Hi! My name is Sarah Kokernot.
I’m a teacher, writer, and creative facilitator.
I offer practical and intuitive support and guidance to anyone seeking to refresh or deepen their writing, creativity, or spirituality.
Drawing on twenty years of experience as a teacher and working writer,
I teach writing workshops on fiction, essays, poetry, and hybrid forms.
Learn practical craft skills along with embodied meditative writing techniques that facilitate a sense wonder, enjoyment, and flow.
When you tap into a sense of openess and curiosity, you can create with more ease, less angst.
My teaching and guidance are influenced by:
Connecting mind/heart/body practices with creative states.
The Critical Response Process by Liz Lerman, which centers the artist in workshop settings and uses inquiry, listening, collaboration, and humility.
Looking to the natural world to understand the creative process as a cycle of growth, harvest, rest, and renewal.
Struggling in traditional learning environments as someone with neurodivergence.
Teaching in a diversity of settings: as a bilingual (English/Spanish) elementary school teacher, as a professor of creative writing at Northwestern University, and as a instructor teaching adults at StoryStudio, a creative writing center.
Growing up in a queer family in Kentucky during the ‘80’s and ‘90’s, and experiencing outsidership as a position of both immense difficulty and immense creative power.
Over 20 years of Buddhist practice that is also down-to-earth, open-minded, and in conversation with other belief systems.
Updates & Recent Substack Posts
Selected Interviews & Works
“How Does The Erotic Impact Your Spiritual Practice?” an interview on Redesigning The Dharma with Adrian Baker
"Devotion Changes Your Perception,” an interview in Be Here Now with Emily Mohn-Slate
“Failure Is Liberation,” an essay in Tricycle: The Buddhist Review
“Rare And Precious Antiques” a short story in EPOCH Magazine
