In addition to 1:1 coaching and feedback, I am putting all the info about the workshops and specialized trainings I do in one place!
At university and institutional levels, I offer workshops on a range of topics, including writing an artist statement; community-embedded artistic practice; craft of writing fiction, nonfiction, plays, and screenplays (getting started, revision, running workshops, and more); and craft and professional considerations when crossing mediums (for example, from theater to film).
As the Artist-in-Residence for the Los Angeles County Homeless Initiative, I was commissioned to write a toolkit of healing-centered arts practices to aid in collective change surrounding issues of homelessness. I now lead trainings on this toolkit for government officials, people experiencing homelessness, frontline & outreach workers, and impacted communities!
I’ll also soon be offering craft workshops, through writing orgs and independently - keep an eye on this space for announcements, and if there’s a topic you’d particularly like to see from me, let me know!
Head over to /socialpractice and /engagement for more info!
#writingworkshop #healingarts #facilitator
✨🚨 Announcement time! 🚨✨ I am officially opening my books for 1:1 coaching, consultation, and thorough feedback on works-in-progress across genre.
I will deliver detailed written notes on plays, screenplays, pilots, manuscripts, or rough cuts, providing analysis of the major elements of your piece, how they are currently working, which craft choices are most and least effective, and how you might strengthen the piece.
My passions for coaching sessions include how to get unstuck on a project, starting or strengthening community engagement, ethics in nonfiction narratives, creating a schedule that is both achievable and ambitious for your creative work, getting started in a new medium, whether an MFA program is right for you, navigating artmaking within institutions such as prisons and treatment centers, finding your creative voice, and telling queer and trans stories.
Head to lanemichaelstanley.com/engagement for more information on offerings, pricing, and free 15-minute intro sessions!
#playwright #writer #filmmaker #writerlife #coaching #writingcoach #queer #trans
QUENTIN BLUE IS NOW STREAMING!! This sharing is the culmination of many years of work on this incredible story - and the start of the next chapter toward our mission, which is to expand into a feature documentary that can do more educating and modeling around restorative justice.
I’d be delighted if you gave the film a watch. I am incredibly proud of the filmmaking in this piece, and so grateful to these guys (who are now my brothers) who have been so vulnerable, insightful, and open at every step of this process. I do not take your trust for granted and I am honored to steward your stories and learn from you.
Grateful too for @babyblackbrrd , whose gorgeous cinematography shapes this film and who walked into a prison with us; and @lblank7 who believed in this story from the start.
Link in story to watch the film.
#restorativejustice #documentary #nowstreaming #film #filmmaker #filmpremiere #premiere #sanquentin
I tend to be bitter about grief writing. I am highly allergic to anything that makes it sound like grief can get better - because ultimately, living alongside the reality of death, and keeping on after a loved one has been ripped away, is just a new reality altogether.
Discovering polyamory was meaningful for me for a number of reasons, but the biggest was that it gave me a framework to bring the uncertainty of life and my grieving heart into relationships. Dating after losing a partner isn’t an either/or: it’s not the case that I either still love Nick and never date again, or that he goes into my rearview mirror as I choose to love again. In polyamory, I can have space for multiple loves, and to carry Nick with me as I try to live a full life.
I’m very grateful for this essay to come out with #queerloveproject, for the lovely collaboration with @jerryportwood and @mikenark , for my friends who read early drafts of this piece, and for the constant support from @day_old_donuts_got_to_go and the community that still exists around Nick and celebrating who he was.
The link to read the essay is in my stories and on my website - become a free subscriber to Queer Love Project and you can read the full piece.
Love, always. ❤️🩹
#grief #writer #polyamory
A delight to return to Winston-Salem for the North Carolina premiere of @t_the_movie with @riverrunfilm ! We saw so many phenomenal films, shared our trans movie with new audiences, and had great conversations with filmmakers about how to gather audiences around truly independent film. Plus I got many runs in on the Long Branch Trail, and saw turtles.
#film #queerfilm #transfilm #premiere #winstonsalem
Today I have a decade sober. When I first got to rehab, I had no intentions of going to 12-step meetings, and had never heard the phrase “long-term sobriety.” All knew was that my hands had started shaking in the mornings from how aggressively I’d been drinking since my fiancé’s death, and that if I tried to quit on my own, I could die.
It took several months for me to understand that the problem with my relationship to alcohol was not brand new, that it had been a lifelong crutch, waiting and ready to take over in the face of immense crisis. It was only through friends and the community of my recovery house that I got through the worst days then, and lasted long enough in sobriety to see clearly that I wanted to redefine my relationship to myself.
I am so grateful to have a sustainable life in recovery, and to have a life that is not defined by a need to escape every moment I am in.
There are so many people I want to honor today, but most of all I want to mention Gale, who was my sponsor from years 3-8 and who we lost unexpectedly in 2024. Gale redefined what it meant to be sober in my life, and gave me a model for the type of friend I want to be.
Here’s to the next ten years. ❤️🩹
#recoverylife #sober #soberlife
@t_the_movie screens this Tuesday, April 21 with @riverrunfilm ! Writer/Director @lanemichaelstanley and Actor/Executive Producer @finkfeld have landed in Winston-Salem to connect with audiences for this “intimate, funny, heartbreaking, and achingly real film about one person finally inhabiting the body they feel they should be in” (@killermoviereviews ).
Filmed over lead actor Mel Glickman’s real-life first year taking testosterone, T is a fictionalized, never-before-seen journey of transmasculine discovery, authentically portraying the moving struggles and joys encountered in friendships, family, and romantic relationships.
Join us Tuesday, April 21 at 7pm the Marketplace Cinema.
Tickets, trailer, reviews, interviews, and more at .
Thanks to @poppyjasperiff for a lovely screening of @t_the_movie ! One patron told us his grandson was trans, and he loved the film. I don’t think my grandfather has ever seen a trans movie, but that’s not true for someone out there, and that means a lot to me. ❤️🏳️⚧️🥰🎥✨ We leave tonight for @riverrunfilm !
#film #trans #transfilm #ftm #premiere
✨TUESDAY, APRIL 14 at the Morgan Hill Community Playhouse✨
Come see T, the "rare opportunity to witness a transition story not framed by tragedy or triumph, but by lived reality - unfiltered, messy, and deeply human" (Overly Honest Reviews).
Writer/Director Lane Michael Stanley and Executive Producer/Actor Deb Fink will be in attendance. Presented by the Poppy Jasper International Film Festival.
Tickets, press, and more at .
🥳🏳️⚧️🎥✨
@t_the_movie screens this Tuesday, April 14 with the lovely @poppyjasperiff ! Writer/Director @lanemichaelstanley and Actor/Executive Producer @finkfeld are heading up to Morgan Hill to connect with audiences for this “intimate, funny, heartbreaking, and achingly real film about one person finally inhabiting the body they feel they should be in” (@killermoviereviews ).
Filmed over lead actor Mel Glickman’s real-life first year taking testosterone, T is a fictionalized, never-before-seen journey of transmasculine discovery, authentically portraying the moving struggles and joys encountered in friendships, family, and romantic relationships.
Join us Tuesday, April 14 at 6pm the Morgan Hill Playhouse, where we will be the featured screening of the LGBTQ Showcase.
Tickets, trailer, reviews, interviews, and more at .
On this #tdov, there is so much to reckon with in the politics of visibility. It’s a year when our rights, protections, and lives feel under deeper and deeper attack - and it’s a year when I personally have run my trans body through the sunshine at nude beaches, when I have deepened community with other trans people, when my romantic relationships have continued to flourish and grow. It’s the year when I learned to take a picture with my chubby belly out, when I continued that lifelong process of casting off shame.
Visibility is one aspect of the complex reality of how a type of life outside the “norm” gets to experience freedom in our society. The more visible we are, in our nuances and our differences and our many shades of gray, the more we get to dismantle that concept of “norm” in the first place.
This year, while there is so much to be said about the wretched state of the world, not just for trans people but for our immigrant neighbors being stolen, for the people of Gaza under continued genocide, I took the morning to pull out some of my favorite trans quotes from my work. I am grateful, at least, to get to make art, to share it, to live in queer and trans joy as much and as long as we can.
Read or watch any of these pieces at the link in my bio. And, of course, if you scroll all the way to the end, you’ll find a shirtless photo, bc what is #tdov without showing off our scars?
#trans #ftm #transdayofvisibility
