Workshop descriptions, plus a link to the full interview of Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi on The Daily Show.
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Mar 12, 2026
Anya Achtenberg, March 12, 2026
Jafar Panahi: “We only have two types of filmmakers in the world…95% are filmmakers who are after what the audience wants. Meaning, they adapt their taste to the taste of the audience and they give the audience what it wants…another 5% says, this is how I look [at things], and now it’s on the audience to come and find me.” —Panahi’s latest film, It Was Just An Accident, has received 2 Academy Award nominations, and won the Palme d’Or at Cannes.
Two types? Does the same apply to writers?
[Below this post to announcing 3 new writing workshops, please note, a longer excerpt from the powerful interview of Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, and a link to the full interview.]
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Forthcoming single-event workshops with me. Full descriptions further below, in this post.
1) The Wandering Narrator’s Tour of Narration: the thorniest element of story (Say it! Series) Thursday, March 26, 2026, 1-3 pm NYC, 6-8 pm Dublin, 7-9pm Berlin. Register here: https://forms.gle/zdBt6orooG84VyPG8
2) Go Deep! Intensive Critique Workshops (registration caps at 6) Sunday, March 29th or Tuesday, March 31st, TBD. 1-3 pm NYC, 6-8 pm Dublin, 7-9pm Berlin. Register here: https://forms.gle/Ho2YgoZTRJUxAE7dA
3) The Constellations of Your Narrators/Your Narrative Voices (Say it! Series) Thursday, April 9, 2026, 1-3 pm NYC, 6-8 pm Dublin, 7-9pm Berlin. Register here: https://forms.gle/4LQEQXLovyWjxscr5
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Dear Friends, Dear Writers,
For a while, I’m based in Galway, a place I dearly love, very near the Corrib River, a ruined castle, and, best of all, community.
This past January 8th, I inaugurated my new series of workshops—The Say it! Series of Standalone/Write-Together Workshops—with the first one: Reaching Story through Simultaneity: a tool both reality-based and magically-fueled!
I want to announce a few new single-event writing workshops—eye-opening, generative and craft-rich. Playback of the Simultaneity workshop, including its in-class writing exploration, is available to those who register for 2 of the 3 forthcoming workshops.
I meant to announce these earlier. And then another pathological, illegal, death-worshipping, mass-murdering U.S. and Israeli war was started, this time against the Iranian people, and the Lebanese, and has spread throughout the region. It stopped me. Constant war since I am a child, and before. But I am here. Aiming to speak, write, be useful.
First, I ask you—What stops your writing? I have my own answers. What are yours?
Then, I ask you—What brings your writing forth from you into the world? What sparks it, frees it?
The answers to these questions are complex—personal and global; individual and collective; desperate, perhaps, and determined.
What in our writing is specific to the ways that writing can be, and, for many of us, is—resistance?
My understanding of story:
My understanding of story has for a very long time been based in the knowledge that all things are connected, all beings and places and events are connected, and that the hasty trimming away of the realities, whether fictional or “real,” to polish or focus or market, is often a premature act which serves to cover and deform story rather than truly unfold it. Reminds me of ancient Greek mythological figure, Procrustes, who hacked off from travelers what did not fit in his Procrustean bed (and stretched out the limbs and bodies of those too short—like high school students who pad a shit essay to fulfill the required word count)).
This global moment speaks to the relevance of this simple idea that all is connected, an idea that is deeply political, deeply spiritual, deeply creative, and deeply connected to the realities we are suffering, witnessing, and in resistance to.
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Here are the descriptions, dates and other details for my 3 forthcoming single-event creative writing workshops:
From The Say it! Series of Standalone/Write-Together Workshops, 2 workshops on narration—the thorniest, most complex, and super fascinating element of telling a story. (I’ve studied narration since before I had words—I knew that what someone was telling me had a whole other story, a serious agenda, a wielding of power, and at least one lie.)..
These single-event, blow-your-mind workshops will spark new and unexpected writing from you in a couple of hours.
Each workshop in this series will leave you with tools that inform and expand your writing practice and projects in ways that both make deep sense, and reconnect your writing to the kind of richly-nourished flow of language and story that the top of the brain might want to plan for, but cannot accomplish by itself through only cerebral and “logical” means.
Indeed, that conscious thinker might need to step back! as the writing itself streams forth.
You’ll be writing during these workshops, sparked by writing explorations that may feed back into the work you are already doing, or open a whole new terrain in content and form.
And you’ll receive another such writing exploration to take away from the workshop, to use these writing tools at your convenience, writing for as long as you like.
Here’s the schedule and more specific descriptions of the workshops—
The Wandering Narrator’s Tour of Narration: the thorniest element of story— Nothing simply 1st, 2nd, 3rd person about it!—but rather a vast and continually developing array of narrative choices, and kinds of narrators—static or mobile; detached or inside out; single or multiple… The workshop will go deep to make an understanding of narration accessible and generative. Narration is the central element of story in any form that can locate what is not working, and bring depth and coherence to our narratives. Useful in any genre holding point[s]-of-view.
Thursday, March 26, 2026, 1-3 pm NYC, 6-8 pm Dublin, 7-9pm Berlin. (Say it! Series)
Register here: https://forms.gle/zdBt6orooG84VyPG8
The Constellations of Your Narrators/Your Narrative Voices—In–session work to explore and develop the constellation[s] of your narrator[s], which has far-reaching benefits. Each constellation makes for a more unique narrator, whose specific point of view brings more material to your story—at the same time becoming more selective and focused. Such narration works to weave the coherence of your story at a deeper level, which liberates your writing within the world of your story and characters, and gives you language that works harder, and is more infused with the context of the story.
Thursday, April 9, 2026, 1-3 pm NYC, 6-8 pm Dublin, 7-9pm Berlin. (Say it! Series) Register here: https://forms.gle/4LQEQXLovyWjxscr5
And, right in-between these two SAY IT! Workshops:
the 1st workshop in the Intensive Critique Workshop Series—Go Deep!
Go Deep! Intensive Critique Workshops (registration caps at 6)
For writers of fiction; memoir/creative nonfiction; and poetry: single sessions of intensive critique. Here are the specifics:
Sunday, March 29th or Tuesday, March 31st, 2026. TBD.
1-3 pm NYC, 6-8 pm Dublin, 7-9pm Berlin.
Register here: https://forms.gle/Ho2YgoZTRJUxAE7dA
Why take this critique workshop?
§ Are you a writer who is finding these times of upheaval and overwhelm to be a difficult period in which to commit to an 8- or 10-week class, but have work you need deeply read and critiqued in ways that are revealing; that bring up what is lurking and whispering beneath your text?
§ Do you want an informed critique that helps you find the threads, the tendrils calling out to more story; a reading that helps you illuminate those darkened rooms into expression, all the while locating what in yourcraft works with power and precision, as well as what does not?
§ Do you want response to your work that is both cellular, detailed, but also helps you see and fulfill your own larger intentions?
§ Your work will receive feedback and discussion that is surprising, generative, true to your intentions; to help your work both expand and develop toward completion; and to nourish your understanding of your craft.
§ For in-depth and individual attention for your writing —both written and live; brief discussions of craft, custom-made for the workshop’s participants; and camaraderie and community with other writers—sign up—
Register early for the intensive critique workshop—it caps at 6 participants.
You’ll send a 1250-word (1500 absolute max!) piece of writing—whether freestanding or an excerpt of a longer work—a week before our meeting.
Perhaps you’d rather I read 20-30 pages of your work so I’d “get the whole story”? But what I am able to understand in my cellular in-depth reading of 4 or 5 pages will serve you deeply, as will your colleagues’ responses.
See you at the Say it! Standalone/Write Together Workshops, and the Go Deep! Intensive Critique Workshops.
To paraphrase what Jafar Panahi says in the full interview you can link to below—when the burden keeps getting heavier, one puts it down in art—both for oneself and others.
Anya
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Full interview on YouTube:
Anya Achtenberg 