Chad Prevost

Offerings — Speaking · Commissions · A Life, Written

Ways to bring the work where you are.

A talk that opens a room. A poem written for one occasion and no other. And, rarely, a life set down in words. Everything else — the publishing of serious books — happens at Crossroads.

§ 01 · Speaking

Three talks I give with my whole chest.

Keynote · Workshop

The Enneagram as a tool for spiritual work

Not a personality quiz — an instrument of attention. What your type reaches for under pressure, what it protects, and how the map becomes a practice of prayer, discernment, and honest self-knowledge. For retreats, congregations, and leadership teams ready to go below the surface.

Keynote · From the TEDx Talk

Writing with intent and courage in the face of the unknown

We live in language; we speak our reality into existence. On declarations, the conversational nature of a life, and saying yes to yourself before the evidence is in — the territory of his TEDxChattanooga talk, Breath, Surrender, and Your Courageous Conversation, taken further.

Readings · Hosted Evenings

Poetry readings & curated conversational events

A reading from Mirage and Tar and the earlier collections — or a hosted evening built around real conversation, in the spirit of The Difficulty: one room, honest questions, and the kind of listening that changes what gets said.

Chad Prevost leading a session
Leading a session — the west of Ireland, 2024

To bring Chad to your event, stage, series, or retreat: chad@crossroadspublishing.group — say where, when, and who's in the room.

§ 02 · Commission a Poem

A poem that exists because of you.

Some occasions deserve better than a toast. A wedding, a retirement, a farewell, an arrival, an anniversary, a blessing on a new house or a new venture, an elegy for someone the room still loves — these are moments language was made for, and a poem written for the occasion belongs to it forever.

It begins with five questions that are a pleasure to answer:

  1. Who is this poem for — and what do you call them when you love them?
  2. What's the occasion, and when does the poem need to arrive?
  3. Tell me one story about them you find yourself retelling.
  4. What's true about them that nobody else quite sees?
  5. What do you want them to feel when they hear it?

It ends with a brand-new poem, fourteen to fifty-six lines, written for this one occasion and no other — delivered in as little as a week, or on the deadline we agree to. One round of refinement included: the poem isn't done until it lands. Read it yourself, have me read it, or ask about the letterpress broadside — a printed, frameable edition of the poem, priced by the piece.

$500 flat · one poem · yours forever

Commission a poem →
Occasional poetry is one of the oldest jobs a poet has — laureates still write for inaugurations, and the best of these poems outlive the day they were written for.

§ 03 · A Life, Written

Some lives ask to be witnessed in words.

The rarest thing I do: a season of conversations and presence with one person — an artist, a founder, a family's keeper of stories — and out of it, a written work about that life. A portrait, a chronicle, in some cases a book. Written by someone standing close enough to see truly, with the craft to say what he sees.

These engagements are shaped one at a time, by conversation, and I take very few. If there is a life you believe should be written — including your own — begin with a few lines about the person.

Start the conversation →
"He knows exactly how and when to intervene in order to bring a piece of writing to its fullest effect." — Peter Anderson, author of The Unspeakable

§ 04 · Everything Else

Looking for something else?

For publishing a serious book, begin at Crossroads Publishing Group. For sustained one-on-one work, The Sounding Line. For time apart, the retreats.