The Disobedient Writer

I’m an award-winning author of fiction and poetry, and a long-time teacher of fiction, memoir and poetry. This website is certainly where you might see what I’ve been up to; but, just as much, it is a place to support you in taking steps in your own work, and to know that there is community of others doing the same. With the jolting changes we are experiencing, this is a place to think together, a place to re-examine our writing, our focus, our writing’s responsiveness to the world. 

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Self-study courses

These writing courses will help you expand your creativity and strengthen your writer’s voice. Get writing and keep writing! Contact me if you have any questions. Break the rules and free your story A guide to taking your fiction writing and memoir writing beyond the same old formula and telling unforgettable stories Claiming Our Stories,… Continue reading Self-study courses

Workshop Descriptions

Whether you are a member of a writing group or connected with a literary or educational institution, contact me to arrange a writing workshop in your area or online.

Writers’ services

I offer consultations, manuscript critiques, and craft study for individuals and groups.

I have attended many writing workshops throughout my life, and Anya’s have been the most exciting, unique, and productive I have ever experienced. I have also had the privilege to have Anya do editing work for me, and she gave my work the kind of deep, loving, and careful attention that each of us wishes that an editor will give to our “beloved creations!” If that’s not enough, Anya is a beautiful, powerful woman and human being, who believes that we can “change the world” with our writing, and she shows us how to have the courage to do so. There is really nothing more I can say, except “take Anya’s workshops!!”

Judi Behrendt

Somehow, your Big Apple teaching let me into the room of myself with all the lights turned on. What feels most remarkable is that now, months afterward, I feel certain I won’t let my light go out again. The illumination has lasted-thus, not a workshop high, but a new way of being. You unlocked the armor and flung open the portals to honoring my fullness, and gave me handles and toeholds to access and develop it in new ways.

Marilise Tronto