What Matters
Chart your own path to What Matters
Come along for a season of community, spiritual learning, self-reflection, and joy.
2026-2027
WHAT IS WHAT MATTERS?
In 28 weeks of What Matters, you’ll meet weekly with a consistent cohort of 24-30 students. You'll read in community, learn from spiritual leaders and artists, and build clarity and intention around your values.
The program is divided into three units, each focused on a different text. The curriculum is designed to give you the support and resources to discover what matters to you.
“I took this class in part out of boredom with my own life. I had already survived some “apocalypses” and felt pretty calm, but I was trying to figure out “now what.” The faculty and students in this class are so supportive and encouraging while also completely challenging me to live more fully into possibilities instead of staying content in the mundane.”
“This has been a humbling journey of self-discovery and renewal alongside some of my newest favorite humans. ”
THE BASICS
28 classes hosted over Zoom
August 19th, 2026 through March 17th, 2027
Wednesday evenings, 8-10pm ET
Additional 1-on-1 sessions with faculty
A book bundle of all three texts*
*International participants will not receive copies of the text.
TUITION
Full Experience Tuition: $4,200
Class Only Tuition: If you would like to attend What Matters with reduced tuition, we have six Class Only spots available for folks who wish to forfeit the book bundle, one-on-one chaplaincy with Mauricio, and personalized feedback from Micaela. These spots are priced at $3,200 and are offered on a first come, first served basis.
Scholarship Tuition: We are pleased to announce that we will award six partial Scholarship spots to What Matters Cohort participants, priced at $2,950. To apply for a scholarship, simply register for What Matters and select your interest in receiving an application.
Payment plans are available for all levels of tuition! Read more about tuition below.
COURSE OUTLINE
We will begin What Matters with two weeks of orientation followed by three weeks of storytelling with Micaela Blei. Together, we’ll map our identities and find what matters to us in this moment.
We will then dedicate six sessions to each of our books, alternating time with faculty members Mauricio Bruce and Carvell Wallace. This is our opportunity to collectively explore themes that resonate from the texts, while examining the meaning that rises to the surface as we think about our own lives.
We’ll conclude What Matters with a lively four weeks of storytelling in community with Micaela Blei, to reflect on and communicate our values and our lives.
In our final week, participants will graduate from the program and offer presentations to the group, reflecting on the impact of their time with What Matters.
Over the course of 28 weeks, participants of the Full Experience Tuition and Scholarship Tuition are encouraged to sign up for three individual chaplaincy sessions with Mauricio.
WHO IS WHAT MATTERS FOR?
This course is for you if:
You wish you had a guide in your spiritual journey
You’re looking for a sense of caring community
You want to grow in your activism
You are going through a transition
You are a bookworm who misses school
“When I signed up for What Matters, I was excited to explore books with sacred practices and like-minded people. This was so much more. I quickly grew to love the group of people, and even more, the experience of being together with them. The container and structure of What Matters is magical, allowing us all to experience depth, growth, love, healing and transformation. If you are looking for something you can’t quite name, but you have an inkling that it might be here.... trust me—you will find it in What Matters.”
The Classes
With each book we read, we'll examine a different theme or approach to the question "What Matters?" We'll use the novels as lenses through which to examine our own lives. You'll work with Carvell and Mauricio to explore the texts, ultimately concluding your What Matters journey with four sessions with Micaela dedicated to storytelling, using the discoveries you've made.
TYPES OF CLASSES
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You’ll read the novels comprehensively together and choose sparklets to treat as sacred. Within the group, you’ll excavate the books for meaning in order to create a collection of spiritual resources for yourselves. Learn more about Carvell here.
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After reading each novel, you’ll reflect on what it made you think and feel, exploring what that says about your perspectives, your beliefs, and the way you show up in the world. Do I want to stay that way? Do I want to change any of it? How do I want to understand the way the novels are impacting and teaching me? This is the space in the class where you’ll use the novels as mirrors for who you are and the way you view the world. Learn more about Mauricio here.
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After close reading the three texts with Carvell, and exploring personal themes with Mauricio, you'll meet with award-winning storyteller and educator Micaela Blei, PhD, to make meaning through storytelling and memoir. Focusing on storytelling as a reflective and community process, NOT a performance, you'll brainstorm and craft stories from your life. You’ll integrate themes that arise through our reading into new interpretations of personal experience. You'll leave with new skills of communication and expression, and new ways of both telling and listening to the stories in your life. Learn more about Micaela here.
The Texts
Over 28 weeks together, we will dive deep into three modern classics using sacred reading, innovative personal reflective work, and storytelling. Whatever your degree of familiarity with the texts—whether you’re revisiting a favorite for new perspective or it’s been on your “to-be-read” list for a while—you can confidently contribute to discussion and gain new perspective through each session.
Content Warning: The texts selected for What Matters are often heavy reads. Past texts have included instances of domestic violence, suicide, war, ableism, racism, gun violence, sexual assault, and dystopian themes. Our faculty are trained to handle these topics with care, and they do their best to ensure the intensity of the books does not prevent the class from being a joyful experience.
Book One
Written on the Body
Jeanette Winterson
Written on the Body (1992) captured the queer imagination the world over with its gender-invisible dirtbag narrator and its breathless depiction of obsessive love. It questions the line between a love of giving and a love of taking, explores the links between the sexual, the romantic, and the spiritual, and wonders where and how naked love can exist within the social confines of our accepted relationship forms.
We begin with this famously horny pseudo memoir as a way to deal with themes of desire and loneliness and to explore the political implications of romantic love as it is or is not recognized by the state and our institutions.
Book Two
Women Without Men
by Shahrnush Parsipur, translation by Faridoun Farrokh
Women Without Men (1989) is a magical realist book drawing heavily on Persian folklore and mythology to tell a story of five Iranian women during the 1953 CIA-backed coup, which toppled the country’s democratically-elected leader and replaced him with the conservative monarch. Against this political backdrop, the book enters the personal spaces of these women as they navigate the dangers of gender and sex in their communities and family, each seeking her own utopia in her own way.
We use this book to explore topics of personal liberation and collectivism and to examine how the demands of love conflict with or are bolstered by the social prescriptions of gender.
Book Three
Song of Solomon
Toni Morrison
Song of Solomon (1978) tells the story of Milkman Dead, a spoiled and self-absorbed man living in Michigan who is forced by circumstances beyond him to confront family and political legacies far greater than he had ever bargained for. Morrison weaves myth, community folklore, treasure hunts, personal trauma, and secret political societies into an epic novel about how people survive through their limitations, build altars to and tunnels out of their trauma, and grow to match their circumstances.
We use this book to explore topics related to familial love and political responsibility and to examine the responsibility one has toward loving oneself even when it means hurting others.
Join What Matters 2026-2027!
Join What Matters 2026-2027!
The Faculty
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Carvell Wallace
READING & DISCUSSION SEMINAR
Carvell Wallace is a New York Times Bestselling author, memoirist, and award-winning podcaster who covers race, arts, culture, film and music for a wide variety of news outlets. He is a regular long form contributor to the New York Times Magazine where his profile of Riz Ahmed was a cover story in August 2018. He has additionally written cover profiles on Michael B. Jordan for Rolling Stone, Mahershala Ali for GQ and Samuel L. Jackson for Esquire. Other high-profile subjects have included Tarell Alvin McCraney for the New York Times, Viola Davis for Glamour, G-Eazy for MTV and Steph Curry for the New Yorker.
His 2024 memoir Another Word For Love has been hailed by the New York Times as having “great beauty, teeth and vulnerability….funny and heartbreaking, religiously vivid and lovingly open.” James McBride called it “a remarkable book by one of the finest young writers I’ve come across in many years,” and Publisher’s Weekly said the prose was “Stunning…virtuosic—but never indulgent”
Before writing professionally, Carvell spent fifteen years in youth non-profit doing direct case management and program design for youth populations in incarceration, and foster care. He is a graduate of the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts and holds a B.F.A. in Theatre from the Tisch School at New York University. You can learn more about Carvell at carvellwallace.com.
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Micaela Blei
STORYTELLING & MEANING-MAKING
Micaela Blei, PhD, is a storyteller, story editor and educator who lives in Portland, Maine. As a two-time Moth GrandSLAM champion storyteller and the former (founding) Director of Education at The Moth, she has 14 years of experience working with individuals, organizations and communities to shape and share the important stories of their lives. Her acclaimed workshops are invitations to reflection, spaces for discovery, and most of all— fun. Her own stories have appeared on This American Life, The Moth Radio Hour, WGBH’s Stories from the Stage and live on sold-out storytelling stages nationwide. She is the author of the Audible Original memoir, "You Will Not Recognize Your Life.” She has a BA in Literature from Yale University and a PhD in Education from New York University. You can see her stories and learn more about Micaela at micaelablei.com.
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Mauricio Bruce
CHAPLAINCY
Born and raised in San José, Costa Rica, Mauricio Bruce is a transpersonal therapist and coach who believes in personal development and health through spiritual development. After a portentous dream and a long search Mauricio traveled to the Andes where he studied medicine and spirituality with the Q’ero people of Perú. He has directed Umbral de la Montaña, a self-development and spirituality school in San José, Costa Rica, for the last twelve years, and he is an international teacher at Asersentido International, a life coaching school based in Santiago, Chile. He teaches with them in Chile, Perú, and the United States. He graduated with a Masters in Divinity from Harvard Divinity School and a BA in English and Film Studies from Washington University in St. Louis. He also hosts Not Sorry’s podcast, The Real Question. You can learn more about Mauricio at mauriciobruce.com.
Tuition
The intimacy and depth of this program is reflected in the Full Experience cost; however, in an effort to make this program more accessible to our community, we offer payment plans that break the tuition into several parts as well as a reduced Class Only Tuition and Scholarship Tuition.
Read more about our payment options below.
TUITION & PAYMENT PLANS
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Full Experience registration enables you to pay for your tuition all at once or with a deposit and three subsequent payments (payment plan). Within 72 hours, you’ll receive confirmation that your spot has been reserved along with an invitation to make your payment.
*If you reside outside North America, please let us know so we may arrange your e-book or audiobook option.Click here to register for What Matters 2026-2027.
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Class Only Tuition registration enables you to pay for your tuition all at once or with a deposit and two subsequent payments (payment plan). Within 72 hours, you’ll receive confirmation that your spot has been reserved along with an invitation to make your payment. These spots are limited to six participants, first come first served.
Click here to register for What Matters 2026-2027.
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We’re thrilled to offer six scholarship spots that reduce the Full Experience cost of tuition to $2,950.
When you register for the class, you can request to be considered for one of these six spots. You’ll then be sent an application form to fill out from our Programs team at programs@notsorryproductions.com. We will begin offering scholarships in early June.
Please note: Scholarships can be combined with a payment plan.
Click here to register for What Matters 2026-2027.
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Payment Plans are available for all three tuition tiers. They do not cost more money than paying for the class all at once. Just designate your request for a payment plan using this registration form.
Full Experience: $1,200 deposit and three $1,000 payments, auto drafted on August 1, October 1, and December 1.Class Only: $1,200 deposit and two $1,000 payments, auto drafted on August 1 and October 1.
Scholarship: $950 deposit and two $1,000 payments, auto drafted on August 1 and October 1.
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In order to take full advantage of the multi-installment payment plan, please register by July 31st.
Students who register before July 1st can expect their book bundle to arrive by August 1st.* Although registration will remain open after July 1st, the earlier you register, the earlier you will receive your book bundle, providing sufficient time to read the first text before classes begin.
*International students will not receive physical copies of the texts.
“Any book can be treated as a sacred text. This course will teach you that you, yourself, are also a sacred text, as are all the other people in the class with you.”
FAQs
What if I can only make half of the sessions?
Then, unfortunately, this program isn’t for you. We recommend joining if you think you can make 90% or more of the sessions.
I’m not religious, is this program for me?
Yes! Anyone who is interested in living intentionally, developing community, growing in their activism, or deepening their values is welcome in What Matters!
I already paid, but now I cannot attend. Can I get a refund?
Unfortunately, no. Because it’s such a small cohort and a carefully crafted experience, we won’t be able to find new students part way through the program.
Can I do this program more than once?
Absolutely. If you are a returning cohort member, you receive 5% off the Full Experience Tuition and Class Only Tuition.
Is there homework?
Yes, but all assignments are optional. That said, we believe the more you put into this program, the more you get out of it.
Can you ship the book bundle internationally?
If you’re participating outside of the United States and choose the Full Experience Tuition, we will provide either audiobook or ebooks for you. We cannot ship physical copies outside of the United States.
What if I require auditory learning support?
We’re happy to send you audiobooks instead of paperbacks. Just let us know when you register.