SATURDAY CLUB: READ THE ROOM

Storytelling, the Sybille + the magical art of “seeing”

A five month Venusian immersion
in sensorial + intuitive story craft
for the page AND for life.

Online
Start date: Saturday 14th Nov 2026 (The day Venus goes DIRECT)
5pm GMT UK time

“…The shops that belonged to the afternoon are now pulling down their shutters while other doors - doors that you’d have barely noticed an hour ago - are now starting to open. Outside one of those doors, a woman in a cinched-at-the-waist red coat with fur collar + cuffs puts out her half-smoked cigarette with the sole of her black patent leather boot. She re-applies a new coat of radiant red lipstick in the reflection of a gold-tone compact mirror + when her practiced ritual is complete, she pouts, gives herself a wink of approval + snaps the mirror shut between her fingers, before going inside.

Other women start to arrive at the same locale.
One is wearing a coat the colour of a very good Bordeaux + has a battered paperback sticking out the top of her leopard print tote bag. Two women arrive arm-in-arm, while another, with a ladder in her right stocking, brushes away the crumbs of something just-eaten as she steps inside ….”

Where are we?

Who ARE these women? (+ which one has just had a glorious make out session with at least ONE of her many lovers?!!!!)
You don’t know these women, yet you’ve already READ them. You've placed them in a locale of YOUR choosing, a point in history + because of what they’re wearing there’s a chance that you’ve made a decision about the time of year + the season too, except I’ve told you NONE of those things, so…

**Somewhere between what I revealed + what YOU imagined, we’ve created a story.**

“…There’s a small brass plaque beside the door, + although its lettering has been rubbed smooth by years of women’s hands touching it as they enter, you can still make out a distinctive symbol + some of the letters, you touch it too as you step inside.

The entrance is grand, but not imposing + a woman - who, for a half second, you're certain that you've met before (you have) – smiles, welcomes you in + gestures towards the room to your left.
You're expected.

The lighting is…flattering, the walls are lined with books, the heavy red velvet curtains at the windows are pulled shut, conversation is weaved with the sounds of a woman singing in French + the heady scent of floral perfume + unmaterialised-as-yet intentions fills the air. At a table in the corner, the two women who arrived together are now talking with their heads close in conspiratorial conversation, they’ve forgotten there’s anybody else in the room, while another is reading alone + sipping a cocktail, her lipstick leaving a mark on the glass.

There’s a table, it has your name, handwritten in red fancy lettering on a place setting + wrapped in a red, pink + gold silk scarf are tarot cards.
Take a seat, unwrap the cards…it’s time to READ THE ROOM.”

READ THE ROOM is a five month immersion where we are going to practice sensorial + intuitive story craft. [pull quote]
Together, we will notice what it is that we see, read beneath the obvious, shift + shape perspective, trust what we sense + become deliciously discerning about what a story reveals, what it conceals + what it wants to leave to the imagination. (FYI: Our imagination is a powerful tool + we’ll actively be using it, developing it + protecting it in every salon.)

We'll write, we’ll pull tarot + oracle cards, we’ll look to art + film, women across lifetimes + timelines, clothes, objects, photographs + overheard conversations.

So across five months we'll practice observation, sensory detail, point of view, character, framing, suspense, omission, symbolism + narrative possibility - developing both your intuitive instinct to notice something interesting + the discernment to shape it into a story.

Our intuition gives us something to investigate; story + craft teaches us what to do with it.

On the page, that means richer scenes, sharper characters, more sensual detail, stronger point of view + knowing when to tell the reader something + when to get them to lean closer.

In life, the same practice makes us more attentive to the stories already being told around us - what we're seeing, what we're assuming, what has been framed for us, what's missing + what other interpretations might be possible.

…Because before you can create any kind of suspense, you have to know what NOT to tell us…well, at least not right away, + before you can imagine a different outcome, you have to realise that the current story you’re writing/reading/experiencing is one of MANY possible interpretations.

Yes, this is story craft for the page, AND it’s story craft for your life + self-creation.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “READ THE ROOM”?
Women have been reading rooms forever.
Who’s angry? Who needs soothing? Who has power? Who mustn't be contradicted? How much of myself can I be here? What version of me will be easiest for everybody else to digest?

We’ve become WILDLY accomplished at attuning ourselves to everybody else’s needs so that we can shape-shift accordingly + while that IS a skill, that's NOT the art that we're going to be practising, in fact, READ THE ROOM is quite the mother-loving opposite.

Enter The Sybille.

Traditionally, the Sibylle was the oracular woman: a prophetess, seer + interpreter sought for her ability to see + perceive what others could not. Over time, it’s became a name associated with a card reader, the one who’s consulted before a decision was made or a next move chosen.

Now, the Sybille that WE are remembering WE are, is a woman who knows how to read.
Yes, she reads cards AND…she notices patterns, gestures + contradictions; who's speaking, who isn't; what's visible + what's been omitted; what everybody seems to have agreed is true + what changes when she looks again.

She KNOWS more, because she SEES more + that’s why, in a world where people are asking computers to write + read + think + imagine FOR them, we’re going to remember that WE ARE THE MOTHER-LOVING SYBILLES.

FYI: We are NOT spending five months learning how to become Sybilles, in READ THE ROOM we will develop our all-seeing “Sybille eye” so that we become more capable of remembering, noticing, interpreting, imagining, telling, respelling + participating in the stories we tell + are told to us.

NOTE: It would be SO easy for me to head this up with “women were all oracles once + patriarchy stole our psychic powers”, I mean it’s true, I wrote about it in my book, WITCH [link to book] , AND….it’s WAY MORE INTERESTING to remember that women have long practised the arts of observation, interpretation, storytelling, divination, counsel, conversation + reading social worlds + here in READ THE ROOM, the Sybille with her all-seeing eye, is our who-we-need-to-remember-right now archetype.
Why?
Because loves, EVERY. SINGLE. DAY, on a second-by-second basis, we're told stories about what matters, what happened, who somebody is, what a woman should look like, what success means, what we should desire, what kind of life is enviable + what futures are possible.

Story craft is ALWAYS at work, so…

Remembering ourselves as the Sybille, she who:

notices ALL the things
senses when the “official” story doesn't quite add up
can hold more than one possible interpretation + possibility without rushing to certainty
makes us MUCH more discerning when it’s being used on us + much more imaginative, ethical + intentional about the stories we create ourselves.

Once you understand framing, you pay attention to what’s been left out.
Once you understand character, you become more suspicious of reducing a complicated + nuanced human being to a single role or label.
Once you understand reveal + conceal, you notice what you've been shown + what you haven't.
Once you understand narrative, you notice when one possible interpretation is being presented as the inevitable story.

This is why I believe story + craft belongs to the Sybille + her all-seeing eye because she KNOWS how stories work + it’s BECAUSE she knows how they work, she can read them with more discernment, create them more consciously + remain curious about what else might be true.

NOTE: THESE TIMES are not suffering from a lack of stories. Far bloody from it.
We’re positively drowning in them – feeds, headlines, images, personal brands, algorithms + hot takes – these narratives arrive fully interpreted + it means we’re becoming less + less fluent in our goddess-given skill, art + capacity to imagine, telly good stories + READ THE ROOM.

Which is exactly why READ THE ROOM is beginning at the start of a new Scorpio-themed Venus cycle.

As someone with a Venus in Scorpio placement, I can testify that I trust no one, have MAJOR commitment issues (the Viking’s lucky he’s hot) + throw a strong side-eye to…well, EVERYTHING. Ha! But in terms of the next Venus cycle, it means that we’ll have NO interest in staying surface-level. For sure, we may DIG a woman applying a red lip AND…we will want to know the type of lipstick, why she loves it + ALL about the person wearing it - we will want the WHOLE MOTHER-LOVING STORY.

AND…because Venus in Scorpio is one of the most contrary of all placements – hi, yes, I’m the problem, it’s me! – it’s also the QUEEN of what I lovingly call, Reveal + Conceal. Surprisingly, this is NOT a how-to-appear-more-mysterious strategy, it’s story craft as a burlesque dancer - sensual AND creatively intelligent – because NOT everything needs to be revealed all at once, if at all, - on the page or in. life. (+ deffo NOT on bloody social media.)

Which is why, for five months as Venus is a Morning Star, through writing, through tarot, through our senses, through historical women, through images, film, art, clothes, rooms, conversation, observation, glamour + the stories that we encounter every day, we're going to practice story + craft.

It’s a Venusian technology – it’s choosing what matters, making meaning from what we notice, + knowing that what we reveal can change the story (+ so can what we choose to leave out.) The novelist knows this; the burlesque dancer knows this + the Sybille with her all-seeing-eye most DEFINITELY knows this.

READ THE ROOM is NOT an “escape” from These Times, it’s a way of becoming more awake to them.

It’s a way to notice more, to ask different questions, to become harder to fool + to resist having every image, woman, event + experience pre-interpreted for us.
It’s a way to recover our capacity for ambiguity + to know when we don't know yet + it’s a way to become more discerning about the stories we consume, the stories we repeat + the stories we participate in creating.

AND…MOST deliciously, it’s a way to become women whose imaginations have not been colonised by the idea that what already exists is all that’s possible.

THE FIVE SALONS

We will meet online, for FIVE live salons (yes, they’re recorded + you have access to them for 6 months after this season of SATURDAY CLUB ends.) to READ THE ROOM, + in each one, we will explore the art of story craft through writing, cards, art, history + the senses.

Each salon we’ll meet an extraordinary Wild Rose, a woman from across lifetimes + timelines, who will offer up her unique methods to “read the room” + as we do in EVERY season of SATURDAY CLUB, we will read them. Their own accounts, the stories other people told about them, their images, their choices, their contradictions, what we know, what we assume + what we may never know at all + we will activate a Sybille Skill to develop our all-seeing Sybille eye.

SALON ONE

DATE: SATURDAY NOVEMBER 14th 2026
TIME: 5pm UK TIME

There’s the thing that happened + then there’s the story we tell about the thing that happened.

Our first Salon is about point of view + interpretation: how stories change depending on who’s telling them, what they remember, what they want us to know + what they leave out + where we're standing when we look.

We'll explore tarot as a storytelling instrument - one image, multiple interpretations - + experiment on the page with perspective, memory, unreliable narration + the delicious gap between what happened + what somebody says happened.

Our woman in the room is Wild Rose, Céleste Mogador: dancer, courtesan, performer, countess, novelist + memoirist - a woman who refused to leave the telling of her life entirely to everybody else.

STORY + CRAFT: Point of View
SYBILLE SKILL: Interpretation

SALON TWO

DATE: SATURDAY DECEMBER 12th 2026
TIME: 5pm UK TIME

Now we look up from the page + become story hunters -Rooms, cafés, hotel bars, galleries, people on trains, objects left on tables, perfume, snippets of conversation. We’ll use sensory observation + the tarot/oracle cards to explore the difference between noticing + knowing, to practise reading a visual field + to take our story craft out into the world.

+ we'll meet Wild Rose, Ada ‘Bricktop’ Smith/Deconge - performer, nightclub owner + legendary hostess – who will show us what happens when a woman doesn't just know how to enter a room (which Bricktop absolutely did), but also has the audacious capacity to create it. Atmosphere, setting, who gets through the door? Who's sitting where? What music’s playing + who’s watching? She made the ROOM a PART OF THE whole STORY.

STORY + CRAFT: Setting + Sensory Detail
SYBILLE SKILL: Creative discernment

SALON THREE

DATE: SATURDAY JANUARY 9th 2027
TIME: 5pm UK TIME

This is Salon is ALL about the gaze - character, image, projection + perception.

We'll explore the distance between how a character understands herself + how everybody around her reads her. How clothes, bodies, photographs, names, cultural assumptions + reputations ALL become story crafting material.

What happens when we write the same woman from opposite sides of the room + explore what she believes she is revealing + what somebody else believes they're seeing + the vast, fascinating space between the two. (That’s my most favourite space of ALL!)

Our Wild Rose in the room is Anna May Wong - actress + style icon who consciously fashioned an extraordinary public image while working within an industry determined to project its own limiting stories onto her.

She gives us a necessary complication, because we cannot simply decide how other people will perceive us. The stories attached to gender, race, class, age, bodies, beauty, respectability + desire entered the room long before we did. Which means glamour (+ specifically the way that I share it) is NOT about “controlling” perception, it makes something much more interesting possible: conscious participation IN how you’re perceived.

STORY + CRAFT: Gaze, character + Perspective
SYBILLE SKILL: Perception

SALON FOUR

DATE: SATURDAY FEB 13th 2026
TIME: 5pm UK TIME

This is where we pay homage to Dita Von Teese, Mae West + Gypsy Rose Lee + perform THE NARRATIVE TEASE.

We'll explore reveal + conceal as story craft. Suspense, omission, anticipation, secrecy, pacing + subtext. The detail you give us + the detail you deliberately don't + who better to teach us than, our only Wild Rose to ever return for TWO seasons of Saturday Club, Gypsy Rose Lee. Yes, I have favourites, curator’s prerogative, + Gypsy is one of them. Burlesque performer, wit + writer; a woman who KNEW that letting an audience's imagination do the work can be every bit as interesting as what happens onstage.

The burlesque artist + the storyteller practice the same delicious choreography:
How much do I reveal?
When do I reveal it?
And what do I allow you to imagine?

We'll experiment with writing about the thing without naming it, with creating tension through the senses, with withholding just enough + my personal favourite…with the power of the “almost”.

+ we’ll discover how much work a reader's imagination will happily do for us, on the page + perhaps, a little, in life too, because mystery, despite being confused with vagueness, is very much a way to determine how much access people ACTUALLY deserve to both you, + your story.

STORY + CRAFT: Suspense + Omission
SYBILLE SKILL: Reveal/Conceal

SALON FIVE

DATE: SATURDAY MARCH 13th 2026
TIME: 5pm UK TIME

+ finally, our final Salon explores story, symbolism, imagination + possibility.

We'll use the tarot cards as a story-generating instrument: images capable of changing the angle, introducing the unexpected, revealing an association + opening a door in a story we thought we'd already understood.

And we'll meet the ULTIMATE Sybille, one of my all-time favourite women + I cannot wait to share her with you, Marie Anne Lenormand - celebrated Parisian cartomancer, writer + bookseller - as we explore the figure who has ACTUALLY been accompanying us through all five months:

THE SYBILLE.

The Sybille I'm interested in is a reader, active vision-er, creator + teller of stories. She SEES things + is able to read BETWEEN the lines of what’s said + what’s not. She sees the thing that everybody has mistaken for inevitable, she asks better questions, she introduces a new possibility, because she trusts her expansive (+ her peripheral) vision.

As writers + creatrixes + Wild Roses, after five READ THE ROOM salons, she’ll support us to ask: What if the next chapter doesn't have to follow the last?

STORY + CRAFT: Symbol + Narrative Possibility
SYBILLE SKILL: Possibility

WHAT’S INCLUDED:
Five monthly live online salons, two hours, the 2nd Saturday of every month, at 5pm GMT
Recordings within 48 hours, accessible through to September 2027

Weekly co-working session in THE WRITER’S ROOM where we tune in, say hi + then start working + writing together in a zoom room for 50-ish minutes - you’ll be AMAZED at what can happen when women come together this way.

Monthly digi-love ‘zine based on the salon each month with Venusian intel, personal riffs, profiles of women, voice notes, imaginal journeys, resources, “watch, read + listen” resources for those who love to go down the rabbit hole + my infamous playlists. (Playlists are my love language!)

A private circle of women writing/creating alongside you for the full five months

A Whatsapp community. An un-monitored (because guess what? We’re all grown ups) optional space for sharing between salons + writer rooms.

READ THE ROOM: THE EXPERIENCE
This is a five-month Saturday Club immersion, unfolding through five live Saturday Salons, our between-Salon practices + correspondence + the weekly optional Writers' Room.

Each Salon will last approximately 2 hours + will be recorded, so if you can't join us live - or you're halfway across the world /at a wedding/inexplicably detained in a Paris hotel bar - you can watch in your own time.
You won't fall behind because you miss a Saturday.

Between Salons, I'll send you things to read, watch, notice, investigate + try: story craft experiments, cards, images, films, historical rabbit holes, sensory assignments + invitations to go out into your actual life + collect material.

READ THE ROOM is NOT designed to become another enormous thing you must keep up with + you do NOT need previous writing experience, tarot experience or ANY specialist knowledge. READ THE ROOM is for fiction writers, memoirists, essayists, poets, artists, the tarot + oracle-curious + women who want to develop their storytelling craft.

But you absolutely do not need to call yourself a “writer”, because story craft is for anyone fascinated by how we make meaning from what we notice. How we understand other people, how perception works, how we use intuition, how we decide what to share, how stories shape what we imagine is possible (+ make possible what it is that we imagine. Wink.)

MEET LISA LISTER (That’s ME!) YOUR SATURDAY CLUB SALONIERRE

I’m Lisa Lister, author, artist, storyteller, editor, creatrix, mistress of magic + mystical minx.

My role (at least this lifetime, + on this timeline) is to be YOUR Saturday Club Salonierre – fancy French term for host + curator - who creates, curates + conjures spaces + places, books + stories, online + in-person salons + workshops, events + retreats that invite us ALL to remember OUR power + OUR magic through the Venusian mysteries of the Women of the Wild Rose…TOGETHER.

I’ve been in publishing as a journalist, editor + author for over two decades.
I was a journalist for teen + women’s magazines in the 2000s + agony aunt for Mizz magazine for 6+ years. I’ve had bestselling books of my own including: Witch, Code Red, Self-Source-ery, Love Your Lady Landscape + Venus.

I’ve ghost-written books as a writer-for-hire that have been on the NYT bestseller list for over 10 weeks AND…I’ve also written annuals + a Justine Bieber yearbook back in the day!

I’m also from a lineage of women who all had what’s called “the sight”. This isn’t something that only women in traveller communities have: I believe we ALL have access to it + I’ll share how honing your all-seeing capacity will sharpens your story craft so that you’re able to actively vision your/our future.

“Five months is such an intense and pressurized container and I love it. I wish I could live in the WhatsApp chat and attend every single Zoom/Call but I’m a busy momma!
I felt the right amount of pressure to show up in this time in life. Thank you for all the magic, it gave me permission to simply write and view myself as a writer!
The structure of the program (so much more than a program) from “feral writing” to teasing out the truth through the editorial eye, this experience has its own lexicon, has been a magical container to help me frame my writing process and creativity.”

- Morgan Newsoroff Zapata

“If I hosted a salon, you would be a woman that I would introduce the group to - you are a vibe Lisa!
In the best way.
You remind us to break the rules, stir the pot, get juicy and raw, and you do it with us. I actually like hearing you click around, and tinker during our writing sessions on Wednesday. It’s like being in the soothing sounds of a witch’s hut in real time. AND somehow you manage to keep things clear, organized and formulative (I think I just made up that word, which I know you’d be down for!) All to say, I’m in the right place. Thank you for sharing your gifts! It’s been eye/ heart opening!”

- Erin Newcomb

“…it wasn’t the topic or the through line, it was the energy of the architecture you build merging with the energetics of everyone taking part.
To be honest, I had no idea who the Wild Roses were and it has been interesting to learn about them through the lens of your passionate hands-on love for them. A big heartfelt thank you for creating this container for clarity to come through.
I also think you scheduled it for the perfect time…the astro has really played along with it. it gave me the structure, inspiration, and confidence to start my Substack (@becominglana). I’m sharing my art and my poetry and I’m amazed how they line up so perfectly from week to week. it has been a welcome creative outlet for me…”

- Lana O’Connor

To join me for READ THE ROOM, choose either a “1 payment” or a “five payment plan” below + follow the instructions.

£498

Your ticket for read the Room

Five live 2 hour salons, weekly Writing Rooms, a monthly ‘zine, an optional Whatsapp community

LOOK CLOSER: 1-2-1 Upgrade for Read The Room

£2,000.00

LOOK CLOSER

Five 1:1 50 minute sessions with Lisa Lister

Because sometimes you need another pair of eyes.

Lisa is a professional author + editor + also comes from a lineage of seers + storytellers, so if you'd like to take the work of READ THE ROOM into your own writing, creative practice, business, body of work or particular question, I'm opening FIVE places for private 1:1 work with me across the season.

We'll meet once a month for 50 minutes + this is where we turn the sybille’s eye ALL THE WAY ON. Bring me the manuscript, the idea, the question, the thing you're making + curating, the story you're trying to tell.

We'll use everything we're exploring inside READ THE ROOM - story, perception, point of view, intuition, the gaze, reveal + conceal - to look closely at what you are making, noticing, questioning +/or becoming.

You don't need to arrive with a perfectly articulated goal AND…I want our sessions together to be purposeful: somewhere we can follow the particular thread that READ THE ROOM opens for you.

Sometimes the story doesn't need more effort, it needs another angle, so together we’ll LOOK CLOSER.

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