Katy's Doctorate Creative Writing 2

I successfully funded year 1 of Creative Writing (2020-2021)! Thanks to Continue Ed money, scholarships, and crowdfunding through my writing. I typically write liturgies for narrative lectionary, particularly for Lent and Advent. This is in addition to timely prayers about current events. This with some paid writing works help me to gather the funds I need for tuition, books, etc. Last year I wrote a really amazing one based on The Art of Gathering complete series with lots of resources and ideas (which is still available) on my website www.katyandtheword.com. The way it works is I publish all my prayers and resources that I've written and ask for donations if you as a pastor or church use the prayer resources.

Basically there is tuition, and then travel to the site, and then books. The total cost is about $7,000. Typically my church can kick in around $2,000 for continuing ed, we (my family) are planning to shoulder about $2,500, and I am fundraising/earning through writing $2,500 (plus $$ for the Gofundme fees).

Year one has been great. I have had an intro class to writing in general, a memoir class with some truly stimulating exercises helping me dig deep into life forming events and helping me to catogorize (and even remember) parts of my life and think about what makes me, me, and why my theology is the way it is. What is really cool about all of the courses at Pittsburgh Seminary is that its a Working Theologian program, they expect you to be out in the world doing the work while you do all of this. The people, as you can imagine, that you meet are super amazing. Some are published or podcasters or deep theologians that you would normally never be able to engage with on a regular basis.

In January we are studying C. S. Lewis, I basically had all of the Narnia books memorized growing up--and saw an AMAZING Screwtape Letters Play and did a Screwtape letters Bible study with my church so I'm beyond excited for that one. Fantasy is my thing, hence the cover photo this round.

If you appreciate my work, I would love for you to donate, every donation from $10 to $500 has been truly life-giving for me, and allows me to write and go to school even as I support and maintain my responsibilities to my amazing congregation and my three growing boys who are now 13, 11, and 9, which as you can imagine is even trickier during a pandemic.

I am grateful for the opportunity. It is something I only dreamed I would be able to do after my kids got out of high school, and I am hoping that I will soon be able to start on the penultimate project which is a publishable manuscript--which you start ASAP.

Thanks for your support and prayers! I wouldn't be here without the community that is behind me!