Imaginative Storm
Creative Writing Workshops
Online and In Person
Online writing courses, workshops, intensives, & retreats designed to turn you into the writer you always knew you could be.
co-founders
Creative Writing Courses, Workshops, & Retreats for Writers
You already have something to say. What you need are the right conditions to speak your voice onto the page.
Imaginative Storm offers you those conditions, with creative writing workshops and courses, online and in person, for writers at every stage. Our work is based on a simple belief: your imagination never runs dry. Whether you're building a writing practice from scratch, finishing a manuscript years in the making, or finally saying yes to the stories you've carried for decades, you’ll find a home here.
Some writers thrive on the rhythm of a weekly workshop. Others prefer an intensive course focused on a single genre, craft, or creative goal. Whatever path you choose, every program is grounded in the Imaginative Storm method, helping you generate fresh material, discover your authentic voice, and transform inspiration into finished writing.
Online and In-Person Offerings Are Designed to Work Together.
The Weekly Writing Circle helps you build a lasting writing practice. Through the Imaginative Storm method, you'll generate fresh work with guided prompts, timed writing, and a community of writers who keep one another returning to the page.
In-person creative writing retreats immerse you in days of writing, conversation, shared meals, and creative discovery. Retreats are the peak experiences that reward you for your commitment, and build memories that keep you coming back.
Meanwhile, online courses and workshops become your creative home. You’ll experience breakthroughs as your confidence deepens, your imagination stretches, and your craft strengthens. It won’t be long before you discover a voice on the page that feels unmistakably your own.
Audio or Video Self-Paced Course
Some writers flourish when no one is looking over their shoulder. Learn the Imaginative Storm method through ten self-paced sessions for writers who prefer curiosity over deadlines.
Weekly Writing Circle
Come as you are. Just bring a pen and paper, and we’ll guide the rest. The perfect introduction to the Imaginative Storm method: all that’s required is an hour of your time. You’ll amaze yourself at the ease you’ll feel when you let your writing flow.
Online Workshops
Our online workshops for writers offer dedicated, intensive bursts: whether in a single 3-hour session or an ongoing weekly course. Develop your craft, generate fresh writing, and share discoveries in a small, focused group that builds your identity as a writer.
Multi-day Retreats
Spend a few unforgettable days in the Imaginative Storm vibe: writing, sharing meals, exploring remarkable places, and discovering how fresh surroundings, easy thoughtful conversations, and a generous community deepen both your work and your life.
Not sure where to start? Every Saturday, writers from around the world gather on Zoom for a one-hour session guided by Imaginative Storm co-founders Allegra Huston and James Navé using the Imaginative Storm method, followed by an open conversation about craft, practice, culture, and whatever we end up talking about.
No experience necessary. No commitment required. Discover what happens when you stop waiting for the right moment and gift that moment to yourself.
This is the easiest door into our supportive, welcoming writing community, and for many writers it is where everything starts.
Join the Weekly Writing Circle & Salon
The Imaginative Storm Method
The Imaginative Storm Method isn't designed to teach you how to write. It was created to help you get out of the way of what's already there. Through timed prompts, craft instruction, and a community that takes your work seriously, something shifts. Writers who come in blocked and uncertain leave with pages of prose, confidence in their vision, and a practice they can sustain.
That combination, disciplined free-writing and real craft development, is what sets Imaginative Storm apart. It's not a lecture. It's not therapy. It's a creative practice for life. More than a workshop, it becomes a room you return to, a place where being read aloud and taken seriously chisels the self-doubt away, week after week.
Books About Writing by Allegra Huston & James Navé
Writing Retreats in Taos, New Mexico, and other beautiful places in the world
Some writing breakthroughs require a change of location. Imaginative Storm writing retreats take you to creative havens: legendary art colony Taos, New Mexico, and the rolling green hills near Glastonbury, UK. Our retreats combines immersive writing sessions and one-on-one editorial time in settings that inspire.
Bring the project you’ve been circling for years. Leave with new inspiration, a forever toolkit that will keep your writing enjoyable and surprising, and a clear sense of what comes next.
What Writers Say about Imaginative Storm
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“It’s life-changing. Even if I’m not writing, I’m thinking about writing.”
— Deborah Williams, writer
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“Writing what I don't know has given me more confidence and freedom and flow to write what I do know. It's like having a base camp to set out on writing adventures."
— Alice W. Meadows, writer
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"After Imaginative Storm, writer's block is a myth."
– Abdullah H. Erakat, journalist and filmmaker
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“All the other offerings out there are focusing on the leaves and the branches: how to do it this way or that way. Imaginative Storm is the roots, a stabilizing, nourishing connection so we can each grow our own way.”
— Sandi Dittmer, writer
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“It’s like meeting a part of yourself you didn’t know existed. What a gift!”
— Wendy Shaw, artist
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“With each continued immersion in this process I am brought ever closer to something Carl Jung said many years ago: ‘Until we make the unconscious conscious, we will live our life and we will call it fate.’ I feel the Imaginative Storm process is ever getting me closer and closer to a more conscious understanding of my life.”
— Dan Stenabaugh, writer
Meet Your Facilitators, Allegra Huston and James Navé
Imaginative Storm was founded by two writers who have spent their careers immersed in the craft of writing and the community that surrounds it. Together, they've guided thousands of writers across six continents toward work they didn't know they had in them.
Allegra Huston
Is the bestselling author of Love Child: A Memoir of Family Lost and Found, a novel, and many screenplays. With James Navé she is the co-author of Creative Writing: The Imaginative Storm Method, Write What You Don't Know: Imaginative Storm Writer Training, and the originator of the concept of Imaginative Intelligence—the subject of a TEDx talk she gave in March 2026. She is a renowned editor and former Editorial Director of esteemed London publisher Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
Allegra holds a Double First in English from Oxford University, She has taught writing workshops for the University of Oklahoma, the National University of Ireland, Galway, the Taos Writers Conference, and the UK’s prestigious Arvon Foundation, and a guest seminar at the nonfiction department of Iowa Writers' Workshop.
James Navé
Holds an MFA in Poetry from Vermont College of Fine Arts and brings over two decades of experience as a poet, manuscript coach, and facilitator to every session he leads.
Navé is the co-author of Write What You Don’t Know (with Allegra Huston), 100 Days Poems After Cancer, and How to Read for an Audience (with Allegra Huston).
For six years, Navé worked with Julia Cameron, bestselling author of The Artist’s Way, developing and teaching Artist’s Way Creativity Camps across the US.
What is the Imaginative Storm Method?
In this three-minute video, James Navé and Allegra Huston explain how they developed the Imaginative Storm method and what makes it so special.
Frequently Asked Questions
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No. The Imaginative Storm method is designed to work for writers at every level, including those who have never written creatively before. Many of our most committed long-term participants came to their first session convinced they weren't writers.
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Workshops are live, ongoing sessions focused on building a consistent practice. Courses are structured programs tied to specific genres or goals, with a defined curriculum and arc. Retreats are immersive multi-day experiences in dedicated locations, designed for writers who want to go deeper and make substantial progress on a project.
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All online workshops and courses are held live on Zoom in small cohorts. Sessions are not pre-recorded. You write in real time, share your work, and receive feedback from facilitators and peers during the session itself.
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It depends on where you're at with your craft. The free weekly Writing Circle is open to newcomers every Saturday. Structured courses have defined enrollment windows; check the individual course page for upcoming start dates.
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The Writing Circle is a free, one-hour writing session on Zoom that meets every Saturday. It's the simplest way to experience the Imaginative Storm method and meet the community. Many participants start with the Writing Circle before enrolling in a course or retreat.
WHAT IS IMAGINATIVE INTELLIGENCE, AND HOW DOES IT WORK?
The intelligence you may not realize you have is the key to your creativity.
THE SPARK OF LIFE GOES THROUGH THE HANDS
Why writing by hand is the engine of spark and originality.
MIRROR NEURONS ARE THE WRITER’S SECRET WEAPON
How do you make your reader care about your story? Write with your body , not just your mind, and the results will amaze you.