Video Interview: Teaching Artist Roxanne Sadovsky
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Roxanne Sadovsky, MA, MFA, is a Twin Cities freelance writer, teacher, and therapist. At 19, she fled her hometown in LA to study writing and psychology at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. She later earned her master's in counseling psychology from Antioch University Seattle and an MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of Minnesota.
Roxanne frequently teaches Intuitive Writing and The Healing Memoir at the Loft. Her private healing practice (Writing with Rox) offers integrative workshops, healing groups, Wild Woman writing retreats/groups, classes in creative expression (memoir/intuitive writing/therapy, drama therapy, adult play therapy), and more, all in a safe, supportive, and playful community. Through the creative process, individuals connect to their inner truth and discover what's needed to live a more fully alive, present, meaningful, and spontaneous life.
The video below references a class Roxanne taught in summer 2021. To view her current class list, visit her artist bio page.
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When did you start teaching? What path—career or otherwise—brought you here?
I have my happy, "dysfunctional" childhood to thank for ultimately finding the path of here, now, which is of course a long story and why writing feels so much like home. I also have countless teachers, writers, mentors, etc, to thank for showing me the path of true happiness, which, for me, is writing with others.
I started teaching at The Loft just after completing my MFA in creative nonfiction at the University of Minnesota in 2004, I think. Prior to that, I had been working in Seattle as a mental health therapist using modalities in self-expression and creativity, mostly writing, though the path to here began a long time before all that. Therapeutic/healing writing was part of my life from a very early age, writing myself out of stressful situations in fictional stories, writing myself into characters that were brave enough to say the things I couldn't say for whatever reason. I discovered the deep healing, joy, and magic of writing with others in grad school facilitating healing writing groups during practicum and my internships. Once I had been doing that for a while, I wanted to share it with everyone I knew and then some, which led to teaching. I guess I started teaching so I could do these things I enjoy so much with others and say, "See? Isn't that awesome?!"
I learned the sharing/circular model from attending an open school growing up in Los Angeles and attending small colleges with intimate classes, also based on the open model. I was shocked when I got the U of MN to get my MFA because classes were so big and impersonal. I have some funny botched teaching memories about being a TA when I first got here in 2001. Nonetheless, I soon discovered there, too, despite my initial judgments, that writing together in community, no matter the class subject or size, was a profound way of getting people together, to be seen and heard and connect. Even if it was a group of students or people who would ordinarily never talk to one another or ever consider a connection, based on social circles, appearances, majors, political beliefs, religion, etc. None of the things that normally define us—those typical "roles" we take on that structure our daily narrative, our lives—matter when we write together.
How would you describe your teaching style?
That might be best answered by my students. I love teaching, and I love every single student I work with. Not "love" in a cliche or superficial way, but in a way that only writing together over time came bring. I grow to love them not only for their raw, honest, writing and unique stories and the courage to share them, but mostly for the little, teeny tiny details of who they truly are that emerge from unexpected corners, the most endearing qualities about them, which ironically are often the qualities they most struggle to embrace in themselves. These are not the striving or perfect qualities, but the more subtle ones that make you exactly who you are. There is nothing they have to write or do to "earn" that love or approval (like being a good writer or being good at dialogue or having a million publications or credentials, etc); it's about showing up on the page exactly as you are in the moment and writing about what you had for breakfast and realizing you just shared your heart and, incidentally, you also just wrote an exquisite poem. Eventually, over time, my students begin to recognize this in themselves and slowly embrace their truest selves a little bit more, their truest, less-than-perfect writing selves, especially the parts they considered unlovable.
I am grateful every day that I get to spend my life writing with people almost every day. I've been teaching a long time, and I work very spontaneously within a structured lesson plan; every class is different, and most of the time, I make it up as I go in order to fit the energy of the class. We don't always get to the lesson plan as planned, but we get there nonetheless. At first, people who love traditional classes or structure struggle in my classes; I have had several say at first they didn't like me, and then they grew to love the class. We may end up playing catch and do some profound writing about that, which you wouldn't expect in a typical lesson plan—nor would I. Sometimes we start drumming on the desks, or we might lie down on the floor; I try to get everyone in their bodies as much as possible because we write with our bodies. It's not for everybody, understandably. I invite vulnerability and empathy and truth right away, and sometimes that is not comfortable for everyone. Of course I make safe space for everyone and all that before we drop in and throughout class.
When it comes to imagining and creating classes, where do your ideas come from? What in particular inspires you?
Great question! Most of my ideas just come to me out of nowhere, like while singing, writing, doing yoga, teaching, talking to a friend, during therapy. They just show up, sort of like a melody to a new song that drifts into my body, waiting to be sung. No matter what I teach, it's always inspired by my life teachers who have opened my eyes to the rhythms of life, the give and take, the reciprocity between all living beings, the gifts of being here and trusting in the moment and how perfectly that applies to the page. I am passionate about bringing people together who don't know each other and showing them how mind blowing and heart opening writing with others is, how much they have in common with folks they wouldn't think they would, and how infinite the possibilities and paths are for writing. Often I'll combine other interests or things I'm dealing with, something I want to learn more about and support people in and for sure want to write more about. My upcoming workshop, Writing with Chronic Pain, is an example of this.
What's the ideal environment for your classroom? What atmosphere are you hoping to establish?
Safe, supportive, alive, no right or wrong, totally slowed down space to take the time to see and be seen, hear and be heard, a solid foundation. Intimate and expansive, a place to try things you never thought you would try and get to know more fully who you and your classmates are beyond the confines of your judgments, while also being a safe place to accept those judgements, maybe laugh about them. Plan to laugh hard. Plan to cry. Maybe at the same time. Safe space to meet yourself on the page exactly as you are and to meet whatever shows up with compassion. A place to practice the reciprocity of gift giving—offering and receiving stories written in the moment.
Everything written and shared in my classes is treated as an offering, a gift. We're not looking at what's wrong or what needs changing or editing or comparing, but learning to receive them as the gifts they are, exactly as they are. Even and especially during workshop, this is the model I work with at the core, that is receiving and relating to the work being shared and, if requested, offering our stories in return. I guess I like to make everyone feel welcome; I always invite them to take off their shoes and be comfy.
Regardless of what your class is specifically focusing on, what's the main goal you have for your students?
Above all, write your truth. Ultimately, you got to learn to love writing, which you find by writing your truth. That's the whole deal. You have to learn to love it. Not by being good or famous or fancy or writing like someone else, but by showing up for yourself on the page exactly as you are and writing your truth. If not, you will be bored, dread writing, struggle, and feel really disconnected from the process and outcome. The page is a flawless mirror, and my hope is that students can create a safe, alive, reliable, engaging, writing practice, a place to return to and show up to fully as yourself, even when it's hard. It's corny, but writing is the always-here-for-you-friend that reminds you of the friend within. It takes a while, and it's not always fun, but I really mean it. It's process like anything else.
You also have to learn to stand behind your writing. You worked hard on this, you wrote something raw and beautiful and a million other things, so you need to stop telling yourself you aren't a writer or aren't good enough or any of that writing trauma you learned somewhere. This is where, for me, writing becomes a political act, even it's writing about something as simple or "insignificant" as a poem about your shoes that you wrote with 100% of your truth.
What are goals you have for yourself? These could be teaching goals, writing goals, career goals, community goals, etc.
To keep writing with others in community, with as many people as I can and to inspire others to do the same. It's one of the greatest gifts there is and for sure among the "best" writing there is. I truly believe writing with others is a path to peace, which always starts within, and I've seen some tremendous peace making over the years. This day and age, to be able to gather and slow down, read and be read to, is truly quite magical.
There are tons of projects I'd love to get to. I really want to start an anthology of found writing—there's amazing stuff all over the place out there where you wouldn't think to find it. That's something I love assigning my students for homework.
What have been some of your own favorite educational experiences?
This is tough because I am going to get way too in my head about it and say everything is an educational experience. However, learning to Lindy Hop, singing, and practicing yoga have done amazing things for my creativity and faith in the creative process, without much concern of outcome. Doing things that scared me that I never thought I could do were great teachers, like interning for Seattle Magazine and then writing for many of the local magazines here and having to research and/or interview people I didn't want to talk to or feel worthy of talking to and attend events or go places I would ordinarily never go.
I was lucky from a young age to be taught that wonder was all around, and I think writing brings us intimately into a state of wonder. We can time travel on the page, go back and forth to finish conversations, we can fly, we can imagine and inhabit all those miraculous places that we imagine and live there as long as we'd like. Wherever and whoever showed me how to do that have been my favorite educational experiences.
Going to the U of M for my MFA in CNF was like summer camp, and I was blown away by what I learned there and got to do. I think being there was when I first realized I could live a happy life, a writing life, even if it meant I wouldn't make much money and that I didn't have to in order to have this life. That was a huge shift for me, extraordinarily liberating. It wasn't about being a "writer" but about living a writer's life. Everyone and everything at the U of M—the teachers, writers, my classmates, my students, the books we read, the hard times we had, the awful teaching assignments, the reverie, the hard lessons and the hurt feelings, particularly integral to the MFA experience—eventually revealed to me that truth and taught me so much and in so many ways, seen and unseen. While there, I was fortunate to meet and work with and know some amazing individuals who I will remember and write about the rest of my life. Ditto working at The Loft, I would add.
Oh, I have to add that while at the U of M, somehow I came across Brenda Ueland's book If You Want to Write, which really turned things on for me in a positive direction.
To you personally, what is the most important part of the literary arts?
This will get me in trouble, but I think we need to do away with that notion. The term literary arts makes writing sounds intimidating and exclusive. Writing and reading is for everyone. I struggle with how self-expression and creativity, integral to survival, get turned into a huge "thing." I know we need books and great poets and we need to honor all that as much as we need incredible places like The Loft, and we need to make it less fanfare and shiny than it is. We need to listen to the "mediocre" writers and unsung books and "non-writers" and found writing (the internet is swimming in extraordinary, profound writing, usually hidden in product reviews and wellness forums and random blogs that will likely never see the light of the "literary" day because people aren't looking there because they haven't been "taught" to find "great literature" on the fringes) as much as we do the bestsellers and famous authors in the literary spotlight. The literary caste system is an old model, an old narrative that needs a revolution. I think this is happening slowly, thanks to places like The Loft, and we have a long way to go. I can say a lot more about this, but I get kind of worked up about it.
Is there anything else you'd like to share?
Thank you for these questions and giving me time to write and explore these things more deeply. My endless gratitude to The Loft over the years for making such an incredible home for so many people to gather and write together. And to every single student I've written with and will write with: thank you for sharing your heart, your truth, your gifts. Please keep writing, even if you think no one wants to hear. Trust me: they do. We're listening.