Writing the Heroine’s Journey with Kate Farrell

Explore the exceptional and unique challenges of the heroine’s journey as depicted in ancient, feminine myths and fairy tales. Learn how to use the heroine’s quest in your journaling or creative writing for any genre: fiction, nonfiction, memoir, and more!

We will discuss basic benchmarks of the feminine journey found in myths and fairy tales that date back millennia to matriarchal cultures. Tapping into the primal Slavic tale, “Baba Yaga & Vasilissa the Brave,” we’ll translate its archaic challenges into those facing modern women and in your own life. With prompts and writing exercises, we’ll discover how to use both the narrative arc of the heroine’s journey and its basic motifs, story beats, and tropes in our journaling and creative writing. This workshop and its source material is a counterpoint to The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell—its concept of the monomyth that dismisses a heroine’s quest.

About the Instructor

, storyteller, author, librarian, founded the Word Weaving Project: Learning through Storytelling, published numerous educational materials on storytelling, and contributed to and edited award-winning anthologies of personal narrative. Farrell’s award-winning recent book is a how-to guide on the art of storytelling, . Kate is currently the founder of based on her work with storytelling as an educator-librarian; she finds profound meaning in the archetypes of the feminine fairy tales and shares her process in workshops and on Substack.

Cancellation policy:

For our writing workshops, we reserve the right to cancel at any time and issue a full refund. If you are unable to attend this gathering, please email [email protected] or call 415-393-0103 by Friday, March 7, 2025, to receive a full refund less any non-refundable ticketing fees which may be applicable. All fees must be paid at the time of registration. After Friday, March 7, 2025 no refunds will be issued.

Host or Publisher Mechanics' Institute