Your cart is currently empty!
About
Why Writing with Heart and Mind?
Hi. I’m BK Loren (she/her), and I identify as a peeler, not a teacher. I do teach writing techniques. But they mean nothing unless you can peel away to what’s already there—in you as a writer and person, and in your story/essay/poem (which itself becomes a living entity). That peeling away is hard work, and my job is to be a catalyst to the clarity and rigor demanded by that process. I’ve been working with writers for over 4 decades, first at the college level, and later, as a visiting artist at conferences & MFA programs internationally. I’m grateful to say that in those 4 decades, I’ve helped numerous writers bring award winning books, stories, and essays into the world.
This testimonial (one of hundreds across the decades) written by award winning novelist KT Sparks, sums it up clearly: “A friend of mine asked how it was taking a writing class from BK. I told him it was like being taught to hunt by a hungry mountain lion. Intense, productive, a little scary, life changing.”
How about my own writing? Well, way back in 1988, I was one of many eager writers filling a seat in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop MFA program. Three semesters in, I was smacked down by a decade-long illness. I moved from Iowa to California to be coddled by my former home. I’d been there only a month when everything I owned slid down a hillside in the Loma Prieta earthquake. Damn, what a much-needed knock to my ego.
It was a decade before I cast some words into the slush pile again (no help from the monstrous machine of the Iowa Writers Workshop). I landed an essay in ORION magazine; an editor read that piece, and commissioned me to write The Way of the River. Luck. It’s the silent step-child of every writer’s “success” story. Theft: a novel , and Animal, Mineral, Radical: A Flock of Essays followed.
Losing first my health and then all my belongings redefined “success” for me. Turns out, I value working with other writers more than writing and publishing my own work. I’m sure this sounds like bullshit to some. So be it. My ego tumbled down a California hillside decades ago. I like life a lot better now.
I despise any person or writing program who hangs publishing promises out there like a kewpie doll: “step right up; make your book a best seller.” Oh, what glorious bullshit. Here at Writing With Heart and Mind, we do one thing: We write. Here, stories, essays, memoirs, novels become living breathing entities. What happens to them after they’ve been shaped by us is unpredictable. We can’t control everything. All we can do is write. That’s it; that’s everything; that’s all.
Upcoming Project
Here is a trailer by Lauren maya Davis, inspired by BK Loren’s novel Theft. BK and Lauren are currently collaborating on the script for the adaption of Theft on screen.
Want to work with BK?
Website designed by Rebecca Kirk