Tell Me Everything
A Six-Week Personal Essay Workshop

Date: October 11 – November 22, 2026
Workshop Leader: Leigh Hopkins

This six-week workshop is for writers at any stage who are hungry to write and release a personal essay into the world. Each week we meet live on Zoom to read and discuss essays, dig into the choices that shape voice, style, and narrative arc, and then write together in real time. Instead of traditional workshop critique, I’ll show you a different way—generative feedback, given in intimate, rotating cohorts, drawing on the same process I use as a developmental editor.

We’ll draft and experiment with different ways of telling a story, and read essays together as examples of what’s possible. We’ll spend real time examining voice: what it is, how to identify when yours is really shining, and how to trust it even when the material is difficult. We’ll talk about structure and narrative arc, the glory of generative feedback, and how revision can be a tool for discovery.

Between sessions, you’ll have suggested readings across a range of essay styles and weekly assignments to keep your story moving.

You’ll leave with a complete draft and a community of writers who believe your story matters. If you know your life has something worth saying, let’s get it on the page.

Questions? Email info@vivainstitute.com.

Leigh Hopkins is a writer, editor, and Director of Viva Institute, an educational platform advancing creativity, consciousness, and collective repair. As curator and editor of KHÔRA Magazine, Leigh has selected and edited hundreds of works by writers and artists whose work pushes creative boundaries. For ten years, Leigh was the lead workshop leader for Corporeal Writing’s flagship body-centered writing courses. Following the publication of her essay “The Brazilian Healer and the Patron Saint of Impossible Causes” in Longreads, she was featured in a Brazilian documentary by the investigative film crew that first exposed the crimes of John of God. Leigh’s writing has appeared in BOMB Magazine, Longreads, McSweeney’s, and The Rumpus, among others, spanning memoir, essays, political commentary, fiction, and arts and culture interviews.