“Hey, if you get a chance to spend even a few minutes with Andrea, take it!  You won’t be sorry.”

- Sandra R.  playwright

“… my note book became my psychiatrist”

- Karen Gibbs, singer, songwriter, teacher.

Jaime is a warm, compassionate individual with a tremendous commitment to positive change… She combines empathy with creativity and she is very effective at strategizing new approaches to address institutionalized racism and oppression.  She possesses the ability to see interconnectedness so that alliances can be made to promote change.  She is steadfast in her support of those who need an ally who are confronting personal difficulties as well as social injustice.

- Lyn Rugg, PhD

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About Ashlar

With over twenty five years of experience in helping participants discover their stories, we are able to facilitate this process more quickly and more compellingly for you, the writer -- while at the same time strengthening and refining your contact with memory and imagination.

Through our many transitions and transformations Ashlar has gone with us and has been our touchstone -- hopefully it will be yours.

Stones are saints
unless you happen to have one in your shoe
In which case you should attend to this
With reverence
A stone in the shoe
May be a question of the highest order

Ashlar writing programs have evolved over the years because of you. You have indicated what you want from Ashlar by your attendance, and through requests for groups in your area. This is Ashlar in its current evolution: Sometimes we initiate the workshops ourselves, and at other times they come about because you have invited Ashlar facilitators to your community. The workshops we present allow life stories to be explored together with a group of like-minded individuals.

Andrea Steffens, Ph.D., CTS Click here for Resume

Some call it Divine Discontent. I call it a stone in my shoe and that stone makes for a life that does not fit well into small paragraphs -- but here goes.

In addition to variety and change, what I have always loved, above all else, are stories. I love autobiographies, memoirs, one person plays, stories I hear standing in lines for whatever reason. I love my story, your story, and their stories. Like you, like all people, really, I love being a story catcher, being resource for change, being a grandmother, mother --of middle aged children. I love writing, traveling with Art and making art -- what I look forward to is spending more time with my grandchildren, finishing two lingering manuscripts, kayaking, getting a couple of goats, becoming a better artist and, of course, a better person. And I continue to be present to people’s stories. Most recently, my life has been about aging which I am pleased to report I am still doing.

I grew up wild on horseback, planning to raise horses and be a poet. Then, bam, my mother died when I was fourteen. My life changed and it would take many years before I contacted the trauma that I carried with me from that time forward. I would only recognize how much it had informed my life when I worksd with Vietnam vets suffering from PTSD and realized that their symptoms were mine as well. At eighteen, I became a young wife and mother – this was the 1950’s and what else was there to do? - and set about raising my four children, spending hours in the library and writing. At that point I was very afraid of life -- part of PTSD. Then in the early California 1970’s, I became a single woman, a student and after graduate work, began my second calling as a psychotherapist at 35. I still wrote constantly and performed.Geographic change came in my mid-forties when my now husband and I began to travel and live in different parts of the country - one of my favorite lives was on a small farm in eastern Washington state - or was it living in New York City with its vitality and rich culture or was my favorite life in the wilderness of Alaska with its Native American culture and art or was it now, in rural Central New York?

Jennifer Nolan, M.A. Click here for Resume

Jaime Nolan is the Director, Office of Undergraduate Studies at Colgate University.  Ms. Nolan has been working in the areas of diversity and intercultural advancement for 20 years and is very passionate about what she calls “the work” of our time.  

I’ve been with Ashlar since it began, nearly 25 years ago, and have been using the writing techniques with diverse groups (that lead into performance using methods of the Ashlar Writers Word Jazz Theater) for about as long as I can remember. I can’t say enough about the powerful work produced from these workshops and the impact on writers and listeners alike.  I love doing it as much as the writers. Before I began my academic life, I was an artist in Berkeley, California: dancer, actor, singer and of course, I wrote.  My continued passion is working multi-culturally. I use writing and performing personal stories to create that sense of community that only occurs when people get a sense of others as they live their day to day lives. 

In my personal life: I spend much of my life in my car, driving my two sons between their various activities: hockey, soccer, and a myriad of other sports. My oldest son also a writer and theater person who records for books on tape.  My youngest is an avid musician. When I’m not in the car, the office or the garden, I do yoga, kick boxing and other athletic challenges like cleaning house and gardening.  

I’m currently working on a blustery weather oriented romance novel.  This focus of my creativity helps balance the academic writing I do.  

To contact Ashlar click info@ashlar.org