Carol Lloyd is a writer, performer and entrepreneur. She is the director of The Writing Parlor, a San Francisco literary arts center and theatre that has taught writing, creativity, and artistic self-sufficiency to over 2,000 students in the last two years. She has received grants, awards, and critical acclaim for her theatre productions, plays and educational innovations including an Audrey Skirball-Kenis Fellowship for Playwriting, a San Francisco Foundation Theatre Grant, a San Francisco Education Innovator's Award, and the Marin Headlands Artist-in-Residency. Her fiction, essays, and feature articles have appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times Magazine, The San Francisco Examiner, Salon Magazine, SF Focus and the SF Weekly. She has lectured on creativity and the arts at San Francisco State, Berkeley Theological Union, UC Berkeley, Yale, Wesleyean, Columbia, Barnard and NYU School for the Arts training deans, counselors, theologists and students in the arts. She has written and consulted on creativity, career counseling and curriculum development for numerous institutions and companies including Steelcase Corporation, Honeywell, and Arriba Juntos,a federal employment agency. For the past seven years she has led workshops in the Life Worth Living process, helping hundreds of creatives attain their dreams.

You can also contact Carol by e-mail with comments and career questions, or preview some Life Worth Living exercises and excerpts from the book.

"In the greatest confusion there is still an open channel to the soul. It may be difficult to find because by midlife it is overgrown and some of the wildest thickets that surround it grow out of what we describe as our education. But the channel is always there, and it is our business to keep it open, to have access to the deepest part of ourselves."

-- Saul Bellow

Workshops

These small intensive workshops ranging from four to eight weeks guide participants through the Life Worth Living process, complete with hands-on exercises, discussions, lectures and personal brainstorming on your particular predicament. The workshops meet once a week for a three hour session.

Individual Consulting

I also offer individualized Life Worth Living sessions for an hourly fee. Usually the arrangement is short-term and guides the participant through the 12-week process at various levels of intensity, depending on the individual's needs.

Speaking Engagements and Reading

I offer book signings and mini-workshops at bookstores around the country as well as in-depth lectures and intensives in the following areas:

Jumpstart Your Life Worth Living

(for anyone interested in realizing their creative dreams)

Creativity Demystified

(for companies and organizations)

How to Career Counsel Those Forlorn Art Students

I also offer workshops and talks specifically designed for liberal arts students, theology students, downsized workers, entrepreneurs, and women.

"When I started Carol's workshop, I was an actor on the verge of throwing in the towel. I was stuck in a draining 9-5 office job, was plagued with low self-esteem, and was doubting the validity and sanity of pursuing an artistic career. The "Three Paths" exercise forced me to explore my career options, not through vague daydreams, but in vivid, practical detail. As a result I was able to see that I was indeed pursuing the path that was right for me but that the structure of my daily life was not conducive to achieving my goals. A year later, I had traded my dull day job for a more flexible freelance copy editing business, was making a sizable income from voice overs and commercials, and had the time and energy to pursue more fulfilling work in the theatre. The Life Worth Living process works because it is active. It is not simply musings on the trials and tribulations of the artist's life; rather, it puts theory into practice by helping you recognize the building blocks of your dreams."

     -- Rebecca Wink,
       actress

"I went into A Life Worth Living with some skepticism; I've read and tried a number of "right livelihood" self-help programs, but their rigid methods, ideologies, and narrow definitions of success limited their effectiveness. A Life Worth Living had what I was looking for. The tools Carol uses are driven by the individual's unique qualities, unlike others which try to fit those qualities into a preset pattern. I don't think it would be possible to go through the workshop without coming to terms with what you really want in life. By putting those priorities first, then providing the tools to help create a life that supports them, A Life Worth Living succeeds in doing exactly what its name implies."

     -- Brook Hinton,
       filmmaker / media artist

"Carol Lloyd's Life Worth Living helped me to identify what I want to achieve and the obstacles I had to overcome. Carol's intellectual acuity and emotional maturity made the exercises she devised particularly effective and memorable."

     -- Lisa Wedeen,
       Professor of Political Theory,
       University of Chicago

"A Life Worth Living was the first comprehensive program that helped me connect the thousands of dots between my personal history, my creativity, my values, and that longstanding bugaboo, the need to make a decent living. I wove together my performance skills, my intellectual interests, and political convictions to launch a career as a journalist in public radio. I have an undying gratitude to Carol Lloyd. Finally, finally, finally--there was a program that dealt with the nuts and bolt of getting a profession and a creative life."

     -- Fuf Vollmeyer, Pacifica Radio

"Before A Life Worth Living, I walked around with a gnawing feeling of dissatisfaction and hunger. Out of the workshop, I developed what I thought was an impossibly long wish list: to work on a famous feature movie, have two new shows of my visual art, work as a consultant at the local Museum of Modern Art, produce and perform in a radio drama, get the new art director position at work, and create and finish a trailer for a full-length documentary. Applying Life Worth Living ideas, everything on my wish list has come true within a year. I could never have dreamed all these things could happen so quickly."

     - Hope Windle,
      artist / filmmaker / art director

"A Life Worth Living is designed for today's career struggles. The outdated work ethic and "do-what-you-love-and-the-money-will-follow" theory needs revision. Carol's process incorporates getting serious about our career plans and learning to enjoy our creative process. This is a wonderful guidebook to help us heal and to remind us that loving our work feeds our spirit."

     - Adriana Marchione
       bodyworker / photographer 

"What most impressed me about the Life Worth Living course and Carol Lloyd was the fusion of artistic intuition and practical wherewithal. We were inspired to explore our wildest dreams and then provided with the tools to follow them. Each class awakened insights and challenged that were resolved the following week. By the end of the class, strangers had become friends, and dreams had become achievable goals."

     - Laura Nilson,
      writer / chef

"Life Worth Living served as an incredible catalyst for me. Those visions dancing in my mind were no longer just dreams. Through Carol's process, I learned to manifest these ideas at a pace that was not overwhelming. I took action and things started to happen. No longer feeling obliged to take low-paying odd jobs, I pursued a career of interest. Leaving my nanny position and job at Macy's behind, I entered the world of film and photography. The over-all quality of my life changed, too. I was sad when it was over as if it were a great book that I didn't want to end."

     - Wendy Stephanelli,
       designer / art director