Welcome! I’m Deborah Bayer, writer and workshop facilitator.
When I facilitate my online writing workshops, I draw on my experience as a writer. In August, 2017 I was certified by Amherst Writers & Artists (AWA) to facilitate groups using their method. In 2021-23, I did coursework online at Columbia University in their Narrative Medicine Certificate Program. In March, 2023, I published a chapbook, Rope Made of Bandages (Finishing Line Press), with poems about being both a doctor and a patient.
In my writing workshops, I draw on my thirty-five years of experience as a physician. I know how to listen deeply, and I know how to hold a safe space to write in.
And I sneak in some teaching about craft. Teaching is in my blood. Both of my parents and one of my sisters were teachers in public school districts in New Jersey, all teachers of creative arts.
Visit my Shop to see the upcoming workshops.
A Rope Made of Bandages
Poems by Deborah Bayer
AWA Workshops
The supportive approach of the AWA method lends itself to healing from all kinds of trauma, including the trauma of medical training.
Praise for Deborah’s Online Writing Workshops
I’m here because I love Deborah’s facilitation: her thoughtful prompts, her open discussion, her kindness, empathy, listening skills and for her compassion for the human condition that shows up in our writing. I’m here because I want to be facilitated this way, to be surprised by the products of my own mind. I’m here and I’m grateful every week for the way I’m surprised by my colleagues’ words, by this ongoing introduction into other lives as strained through this sieve of thoughtful writing practice.
Stay Connected
My Substack newsletter, Healers Write, Writers Heal is published biweekly.
Blog Archive
Writing a Memoir Is Iterative
Last week, I began working my way through Jennie Nash’s new book, Blueprint for a Memoir. I have long been a fan of Jennie’s, and I read her first two books in this series, Blueprint for a Book (for fiction) and Blueprint for a Nonfiction Book. Since I am revising a...
To Be Astonished
Yesterday on our walk, my husband pointed out a large bush with shiny green leaves, growing by the side of the road. “This plant used to grow out in the swamp near the lake,” he said. He meant his family vacation cottage on Webster Lake in Massachusetts. “I saw it a...
Writing Sorrow and Solace
In September 2021, just three weeks before I stopped seeing patients in the clinic, I wrote in response to a poem titled “Things That Can Be Lost.” I wasn’t consciously thinking about the imminent loss of relationships with my patients. At first, I wrote about my...