I’m TJ Beitelman. I grew up right outside the nation’s capital, thought I was parachuting into the American South for graduate school at the tail end of the last millennium, and never quite left.
Everything on this site grows out of a single vocational conviction I’ve developed over the course of these past thirtysomething years: that creative work belongs to the person making it. Not to the market, not to the workshop, not to the algorithm. My shorthand term for this is “personal sovereignty,” and it’s the thread that connects my teaching, my editing, my own writing/making, and the Write Mindfulness Project — a free, self-guided course for writers who want to build a more sustainable and sustaining relationship with their work.
I’ve invested a lot of time, effort, and energy in teaching creative writing to artists of all ages and backgrounds. I’ve published five books of poetry and prose. I work with writers one-on-one as a developmental editor and manuscript consultant — through Black Lawrence Press and independently. And I’m always reading, always thinking about what makes creative work necessary.
If you’re looking for more of the nitty-gritty details regarding my bio, my published work, and my teaching philosophy, you’ll find those under the dropdown links to this page. If you want to see what I’m thinking about right now, The Stream is where that lives. And if you’re a writer looking for a thoughtful reader of your work, Work With Me is the place to start.