Signum University — Blackberry

Encourager of Stories

Sparrow encourages seedling stories to grow and flourish through the Creative Writing modules of SPACE. As a precepting professor in the Graduate School, she loves to facilitate students' exploration of the world's finest tales. She enjoys creating her own works as well, from high fantasy and paranormal novellas to the ongoing romantic comedy of life. [see full bio...]

Current and Upcoming Modules

August 2025

Creative Writing & Worldbuilding Tutorials [ST]

November 2025

Language Learning & Philology Tutorials [ST] Support Preceptor

December 2025

Creative Writing & Worldbuilding Tutorials [ST]

January 2026

Academic Writing, Research & Scholarly Publishing Tutorials [ST] Support Preceptor

Creative Writing: Workshop

Creative Writing & Worldbuilding Tutorials [ST]

Language Learning & Philology Tutorials [ST] Support Preceptor

March 2026

Creative Writing: Workshop

April 2026

Creative Writing: Weekend Intensive Intensive

June 2026

A Snapshot with Poetry: Writing Haiku

Highlighted Modules

Creative Writing

All Modules

A Snapshot with Poetry: Writing Haiku

Mixed Lecture/Discussion Low intensity

Unlock profound imagery and meaning in just a few words. This module explores the timeless art of haiku, blending theory with live practice. Each week, dive into the essence of the shortest form of poetry, from its core principles and spiritual roots with a special guest scholar, to its classic and ...

Creative Writing: Oral Storytelling

Discussion-based Medium intensity

Storytelling might just be our oldest art, crossing time, cultures, and continents. Crafting a story suitable for telling demands a heightened awareness of audience, medium, and meaning. Telling a story requires fluidity in a register both intimate and stylized. We'll create, practice, and tell our ...

Creative Writing: Weekend Intensive

Discussion-based High intensity

A Feast of Writing! In one weekend, we're going to celebrate creativity by attempting a complete short story, novelette, or novella! Our format will include SPACE class sessions, WriterSpace focused writing time in excellent company, Bandersnatch Breakout room for talking about our craft and peer feedback, and an enthusiastic celebration of Story. So sharpen your quills, line up the inkpots, make a BIG casserole to last the weekend. Here's the plan: ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• Friday from 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM Eastern ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• Saturday from 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM Eastern ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• Saturday from 3:00 PM to 9:00 PM Eastern: ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• Sunday from 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM Eastern ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• Our goal is to create a completed first draft in one weekend! Prompts, planning, focus methods, peer encouragement, machete editing, character crucibles — we’ll do it all. Writers will write between sessions as well as during. You are going to end this amazing experience with a complete first draft of your story! Note: For more information about the Collaborative Feedback Method in SPACE, please check out our video here.

Creative Writing: Weekend Retreat

Discussion-based High intensity

Write Our Hearts Come for gentle writing. Introspection. Self expression in a circle of caring and community. Come gather virtually in the Cottage in the Woods with Sparrow: she literally wants us to prep food ahead and get away from the family and the dishes for forty eight hours to write our stories. It's so hard to find time for ourselves, so let's intentionally make that time. From Friday evening through Sunday afternoon there will be writing to prompts, conversation, ideas, blocks of free writing time. Does your heart ache to express a private grief on the page? Is your subconscious telling you to rewrite a story? Do you need to rewrite your story? Here's the plan: ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• Friday from 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM Eastern Escape session with community building and prompted writing time ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• Saturday from 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM Eastern Recovery session with prompted writing, free writing, and discussion ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• Saturday from 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM Eastern: Nap time. ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• Saturday from 3:00 PM to 9:00 PM Eastern: Recovery session continues with optional sharing, prompted writing, and free writing 6p - supper time discussion More Recovery session sharing and writing 9p - Sweet dreams until tomorrow ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• Sunday from 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM Eastern Consolation session discussion, prompted writing, and free writing Wrap up at 4p. ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• Our goal is to write our hearts. Is that memoir? Is that a new story just for yourself? Is that a long, long prayer in the form of a poem? Writers might write between sessions as well as during. You are going to end this amazing experience with something that is uniquely yours. Whether this turns out to be a narrative, creative nonfiction, or a huge list of Be-Happy-Attitudes, this deserves to be on your page, just for you. Note: For more information about the Collaborative Feedback Method in SPACE, please check out our video here.

Creative Writing: Writing for Children

Discussion-based Medium intensity

What makes a good children’s story? We’re going to address chapter books, cultural stories, and learning tales all through a lens of moral, cultural, and spiritual human development. Trying our hands at these forms should lead us to a nice folder full of works-in-progress at the end of the month. Th...

Creative Writing: Long Project Preparation

Mixed Lecture/Discussion High intensity

Well-prepared writers enjoy more completion success! We will build worlds, plan character arcs, and try to define the bones of our stories during a month of glorious sub-creation! When you declare your intentions to the group, that act of bravery alone adds momentum to your writing efforts after the...

Creative Writing: One Month Story

Mixed Lecture/Discussion High intensity

We will walk through a complete project from pre-writing through writing, revising, editing, (revising, revising, revising), proofreading, and talking about publication options. Are you interested in finally getting down that memoir of your childhood? making a storybook for your grands? turning that...

Creative Writing: Slow Workshop

Discussion-based Medium intensity

This Collaborative Feedback-based peer workshop experience extends over two months, allowing the luxury of more time to read and comment on one another’s work. The cost is one token, the eight hours of class time are simply spread out. We will meet to blend learning, discussion, and playing ...

Creative Writing: Workshop

Discussion-based High intensity

We will meet to blend learning, discussion, and playing games with reading, appreciating, and commenting on one another’s work as it is submitted for peer review. Writers are encouraged—but never required—to submit new pieces in any state of draftiness or readiness up to 2,000 words each week for pe...

January 2026 February 2026 March 2026

Fairy Tales: An Adventure from the Writer's Perspective

Mixed Lecture/Discussion Medium intensity

Come explore Fairy Tales from the inside! In the first meeting each week Pilar Barrera will lift up a Fairy Tale technique, character archetype, or trope. We'll discuss the story at hand and how that story technique makes meaning. Then, students try their own hands at that technique! What do we l...

The Andre Norton Nebula Award

Mixed Lecture/Discussion Medium intensity

Join Dr. Sara Brown and Sparrow Alden as they read their way through the winners and nominees of the Andre Norton Nebula Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction. How do these books speak to their special audience? What do they reflect about changing society? How do they build or break down th...

Writers' Workshop: Storycrafting with the “Mutinous Crew” of Ursula K. Le Guin

Discussion-based Medium intensity

What are the tools of the writer’s craft, and how can we sharpen them? In this module, we will learn about the writer’s toolkit through guided writing exercises and group discussion. We will use exercises from Ursula K Le Guin’s book Steering the Craft: A 21st-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story to explore tools like pacing, narration, point of view, syntax, and diction. Practice your writing technique, hone your craft, and embark on a journey with us through the “Sea of Story.” Note: For more information about the Collaborative Feedback Method in SPACE, please check out our video here.

Writing Your Memoir
Discussion-based Medium intensity

Your story is unique. Do you want to set it down on paper for yourself? For your family? No other person has accumulated your experiences; no other person has had your potential, learning, drive, disappointments, challenges, triumphs, and quiet joys. We'll explore a variety of media and forms for me...

Your story is unique. Do you want to set it down on paper for yourself? For your family? No other person has accumulated your experiences; no other person has had your potential, learning, drive, disappointments, challenges, triumphs, and quiet joys. We'll explore a variety of media and forms for memoir writing, from picture books to blogs. We'll interview one another with kindness and encouragement and draw amazing stories out of each other—and ourselves. Note: For more information about the Collaborative Feedback Method in SPACE, please check out our video here.

Year of the Novel: Creative Writing Series Non-Sequential Series
Discussion-based High intensity

Are you ready for an adventure in writing? The Year of the Novel provides support, in depth practice of the writing craft, and encouraging feedback for your story (even if it's not a novel). One cluster of modules is for Seedling Stories, just in their beginning stages; one is for Sapling Stories ...

Are you ready for an adventure in writing? The Year of the Novel provides support, in depth practice of the writing craft, and encouraging feedback for your story (even if it's not a novel). One cluster of modules is for Seedling Stories, just in their beginning stages; one is for Sapling Stories which have a draft and are ready for shaping and curious readers; one is for Tree Stories which might need deep revision or editing to reach finished. Each module in the clusters are coordinated by your team of preceptors to draw upon lessons from the others. In addition, we will build a community of writers who go through the experience together, encouraging each other and being sounding boards for each other. Note: Anyone is welcome to join our Year of the Novel modules at any time. Each module is designed to stand alone without prerequisites. For the richest experience, we suggest taking a whole cluster at a time. In a writing journal, you will track your progress and moments of unexpected, joyful discovery as you continue your novel. Whether you are looking to publish commercially or simply writing for yourself, our program is designed to nurture your individual writing journey. Our workshops place kindness first, lifting up excellence and encouraging you to tell your story in your own voice. For more information about our model for giving and receiving feedback please check out our Collaborative Feedback model.

Creative Writing: Character & Voice (Year of the Novel)

Creative Writing: Plot & Structure (Year of the Novel)

Creative Writing: Setting & Worldbuilding (Year of the Novel)

Creative Writing: Workshop (Year of the Novel)

Creative Writing: Anatomy of a Scene (Year of the Novel)

Creative Writing: Emotional Stakes (Year of the Novel)

Creative Writing: Discovering Novel Revision (Year of the Novel)

Creative Writing: Workshop (Year of the Novel)

Creative Writing: The Different Body Problem (Year of the Novel)

Creative Writing: Late-Stage Revisions (Year of the Novel)

Creative Writing: Tree Workshop (Year of the Novel)

Creative Writing: Author Career Thinking and Publishing Paths (Year of the Novel)