“I explained the dream to myself by saying that I had caught the living room sleeping. I had entered it from the sleep side.  … I found this entrance into strangeness so supremely consoling.” 

—Anne Carson, Decreation








We offer workshops and retreats in creative writing: space for writers to dream and grow.

“…it is our dreams that point the way to freedom. They are made realizable through our poems that give us the strength and courage to see, to feel, to speak, and to dare.”

—Audre Lorde, “Poetry Is Not a Luxury”



Welcome to The Dream Side


We are friends and writers who want to enter the act of creation from the dream side. Our dream is a collaboration that allows us to teach, learn, and grow together. We want to share with you the ideas, strategies, and approaches that have deepened our own writing practices, while providing opportunities to foster artistic friendships of your own. More than a writing course, The Dream Side offers a new entry into your writing practice, and encourages living creative communities. We want to invite you into the wilderness of creation and share with you the resources that will allow you to play fearlessly there. 

We offer retreats and courses, both in-person and online, that create a protected space for you to take risks and generate new work, revitalize, nurture, and deepen your creative life, and help you become the writer you dream of being. 

You may be an experienced writer. You may have only begun to explore this side of yourself. You might be somewhere in between. See you on The Dream Side. 


Beliefs and Principles


We believe that there are as many ways to create a meaningful piece of writing as there are writers themselves. We believe that craft exists to give shape to the wildness of our dreaming. We believe that the act of writing is the act of paying attention: it is not trivial, but joyously essential. We believe that we work best entangled in the world and embedded in community. We prioritize curiosity, openness, and kindness. We practice generosity toward ourselves and others. We believe exercising our imaginations is necessary for societal change. And we are guided by playfulness and pleasure. Dreaming is hard, fun work. 

Our teaching philosophy is inspired by June Jordan's Poetry for the People, Ruth Asawa’s community art engagements, Liz Lerman's “Critical Response Process,” and our own experiences as working artists and perennial students. Our offerings are unique, exploratory events that aim to inspire connection to yourself, one another, and the wider world.

“Every day is a reenactment of the creation story. We emerge from dense unspeakable material, through the shimmering power of dreaming stuff.” 

—Joy Harjo, “A Postcolonial Tale”




The Dream Side is...


Andria Lo
MENG JIN is the author of the novel Little Gods and the short story collection Self-Portrait with Ghost. Her short fiction has been anthologized in the Best American Short Stories and Pushcart Prizes, and her books have been nominated for the PEN/Faulkner, PEN/Open Book Award, NYPL Young Lions Prize, and the LATimes First Fiction Prize. She is currently writing a fake memoir, for which she received a 2021 Creative Capital Award. She has over ten years of creative writing and literature teaching experience, from community classes to MFA programs, and most recently as a Visiting Lecturer in Fiction at Harvard University. 

Meng is drawn to fiction with surprising, elegant shapes and stylish, direct sentences. She is an omnivorous reader, with tastes ranging from the documentary novels of Annie Ernaux to the fantastical worlds of Octavia Butler, an ardent admirer of poetry and a follower of Ursula K Le Guin’s “clear, clean line.” Unfortunately for her writing, she loves writing about writing (metafictions, art criticism and ars poetica, translation theory, etc). However this is fortunate for her teaching; she is often thinking about why and how we write. 

    
Andria Lo
RACHEL KHONG is the author of the novels Real Americans, a New York Times bestseller, and Goodbye, Vitamin, winner of the California Book Award for First Fiction. From 2011 to 2016, she was an editor of Lucky Peach, a quarterly magazine of food and culture. In 2018, Rachel founded The Ruby, a work and event space for writers and artists in San Francisco’s Mission District. Her story collection, My Dear You, will be published by Knopf in April 2026. Rachel has taught undergraduate creative writing at the University of Florida, as well as a variety of online courses for adult students. Since 2020, she has mentored emerging writers with the Periplus Mentorship Collective.

Rachel is interested in the imaginative impulse that brings to being what has never existed before: whether a home-cooked meal or piece of fiction. Imagination isn’t reserved for fiction: it shapes our realities, and ultimately our world. She believes it’s imperative to practice it—ideally together. She brings her experience in space- and community-building to The Dream Side. She’s fascinated by the often contradictory foundations of art: surrender and discipline, pleasure and devotion, the mystical and practical, solitude and community. She hopes to assist students in finding and practicing their unique gifts, and fulfilling their creative potential. 


Andria Lo
SUSANNA KWAN is the author of the novel Awake in the Floating City. Her work has been supported by Storyknife, Kundiman, Oak Spring Garden Foundation, and the Center for Cultural Innovation. She has taught at Vanderbilt University and the Tennessee Department of Correction Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center (formerly the Tennessee Prison for Women). She lives in San Francisco. 

Susanna is drawn to the connections between forms: words in a sentence, people in a city, water and land. Relationships are sites teeming with history, tension, possibility, and shape—all of which she sees as essential and thrilling elements of a written work. She’s also interested in creativity as a shifting practice of engaging with the shifting world. In her teaching, she hopes to help students cultivate their attention to that unstable world, explore interconnectedness, and move toward mystery. 

Abe Bingham
SHRUTI SWAMY is the author of the story collection A House Is a Body, and a novel, The Archer. She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Elizabeth George Foundation, the San Francisco Arts Council, and Vassar College, and is a 2024 Rome Prize Fellow in Literature. Shruti’s work has appeared in The Paris Review, McSweeney's, The Believer, and the New York Times, and twice won the O. Henry. Her introduction to Ursula K Le Guin’s masterpiece Always Coming Home appears in the novel’s 2023 reissue. Shruti has taught creative writing at San Francisco State and California College for the Arts, as well as with Tin House, conferences, and community spaces like the Ruby. 

As a writer and a teacher, Shruti is interested in exploring the edge between dream and reality—the world of the unconscious brought into the conscious world of language. In her own work, that’s led her to thinking about non-linear forms of storytelling. She is currently years into exploring the possibilities of the spiral as a literary form. Shruti’s background in yoga and meditation has also sparked an interest in writing as both a physical and a spiritual practice, explored through workshops that draw from the lived experience of the body.  

“Everything dreams. The play of form, of being, is the dreaming of substance. Rocks have their dreams, and the earth changes.”

—Ursula K Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven




Our Offerings


August 9–10, 2025 in San Francisco
Rewilding Craft: A Generative Writing Retreat 

Coming 2026
Yes, Molecule: A Year-Long Novel Generator [Virtual]
(Sign up for our newsletter to be notified when registration opens.) 






Rewilding Craft: A Generative Writing Retreat

August 9 & August 10, 2025 in San Francisco


What are the essential elements of the craft of fiction? What makes a story come to life in a writer’s imagination, then enter the world as a living, breathing thing? In this intensive weekend writing retreat designed for writers of all levels, we reframe these questions to explore the elemental forces driving our need to tell and consume stories. Instead of traditional craft topics such as character, plot, structure, or point of view, we examine DESIRE, IMAGINATION, WILDERNESS, and WEATHER as your basic survival kit for rewilding craft, and telling stories that are urgent and alive. 

We’ll gather from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturday, August 9 and Sunday, August 10 at The Ruby, a work and event space located in San Francisco’s Mission district. This is an offering from The Dream Side, co-led and co-taught by Meng Jin, Rachel Khong, Susanna Kwan, and Shruti Swamy. 

The retreat includes:

Four Craft Talks 
Generative writing prompts
Community lunch and dinner from local Bay Area restaurants
Bonding activities
Focused writing time 
Optional nature and art field trips
Group Readings / Open Mic
Happy Hours
Snacks & Coffee & Tea

By attending this retreat, you will:

  • Learn unconventional approaches to fiction writing inspired by our own creative practices
  • Generate pages of new writing with specific guided prompts
  • Connect with curious and thoughtful community
  • Jumpstart a new project, revitalize a stalling project
  • Share new work in a supportive, celebratory space
  • Play, step out of your comfort zone, and take creative risks 
  • Come away with lasting tools to sustain a creative life

PLEASE NOTE: This retreat was designed with Bay Area writers in mind, with daily sessions running from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Transportation and lodging are NOT included in the fee. We’re excited to share that retreats with accommodations, as well as online courses, are coming soon! If you'd like to stay in touch about future offerings, please sign up for our newsletter.

Retreat fee: $700 


Join us for Rewilding Craft 

Scholarships


We’re offering a limited number of need-based scholarships to help make this workshop accessible. If the full price would be a financial barrier for you, please feel free to select this option—no questions asked. We trust you to choose what feels right based on your circumstances.

Rewilding Craft (Scholarship)


Refund Policy


We understand that plans can change. If you need to cancel, full refunds are available through July 25, 2025. After that date, we won’t be able to offer refunds, as we’ll have committed resources based on enrollment.

Questions? 


Send us an email: hello AT thedreamside.com