Sutterwriters
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Sutterwriters, an expressive writing program intended to help people use writing as a means to heal, was created by Lawrence Spann, Ph.D., and launched at the Sutter Medical Center Library in 2002. It attracted hundreds of local writers over the next five years, many of whom wrote in weekly groups for some time, as well as others who dropped in. Dr. Spann used the Amherst Writers and Artists method created by Pat Schneider, which has as its core philosophy that everyone is a writer and that all first-draft work written in the writing groups is treated gently. The hospital discontinued Sutterwriters as a formal program in 2007, but the writing groups have continued throughout the Sacramento area. One group continues to meet in the original Sutter Medical Center Library, and more than a dozen groups and workshops continue to thrive in the region, led by trained Amherst Writers and Artists facilitators. A coalition of those facilitators is transitioning the former Sutterwriters to AWA Sacramento, a chapter of Amherst Writers and Artists, an international organization that serves thousands of writers around the world. The Sutterwriters philosophy of writing as healing endures, along with Pat Schneider's belief that "a writer is someone who writes." |
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