Atma Frans’ poetry has won first prizes in the North Shore Writers Association Annual Writing Contest, the Kingfisher Poetry Prize and the Quagmire Magazine, Poetry Contest. Her poems were nominated for Best of the Net 2026 and for The National Magazine Award 2022. Her writing has been published in Arc Poetry Magazine, Contemporary Verse 2, The New Quarterly, FreeFall, Prairie Fire Magazine, The Ampersand Review, Obsessed With Pipework, and Lighthouse Literary Journal and elsewhere. In her writing, Atma searches for the voice beneath her personas: woman, mother, trauma survivor, immigrant, queer, architect, poet. Her debut collection of poetry is forthcoming with Guernica Editions in 2028.
Healing Psyche, a Writing Journey: We will explore parts of ourselves that we have rejected, lost or abandoned. Through a process of mindfulness, creative writing and play we will welcome renewal into our lives. We will use writing as a means to develop an inner witness, to cultivate within oneself the capacity for compassion, understanding, and deep listening. In this workshop we will halt our busy lives to create a stillness where writing becomes a dialogue with one self: while our hand writes another part within us listens. We can release words from our depths, and give a voice to aspects of our identity that do not fit within the expectations we previously held about ourselves, as well as to qualities or passions that we’ve lost over time.
