Darling, You’re Making a Scene

Whether we're writing long-form or short fiction or memoir, we need to engage our readers via lively, memorable scenes that draw the reader in, make them care about our story and turn to the next page. This workshop will give you the skills to write, arrange and edit really memorable scenes in your nonfiction and fiction writing.

Writing Through Grief

Led by Christy Wopat, author of Almost a Mother: Love, Loss, and Finding Your People When Your Baby Dies, this workshop will walk you through several different techniques to use writing as a therapeutic tool for grief expression.

(un)Masking

Every day, different personas come out of us depending on many factors, including who we are interacting with and where we are. We should bring many versions of ourselves to the page too.

Tiny True Stories

We think our lives are interesting, but do readers? How do you make your true story resonate with an audience in 1,000 words or less? In this workshop led by memoirist and personal essayist Nadine Kenney Johnstone, you will learn why it’s crucial for writers to write their truth and make readers care right away. Whether you are working on a full-length memoir or short essays, the techniques you’ll learn in this class will help elevate your personal essays or short memoir scenes.

Playing with Poetry

In this workshop, we will go over examples of what is canonically understood to constitute a poem, and subsequently apply that logic to less traditional or “non-poetic” forms. Investigating the liminal space between what does and doesn’t count as a poem will breed rich conversations, and will inform the work generated in the free-write and workshopping parts of the session.

If you want to traditionally publish a nonfiction book, a completed manuscript usually isn't enough to land you a book deal. You'll also need a book proposal. A book proposal is essentially a business plan for your book; it convincingly argues why your book is a salable product in today's market.

Pssst, your characters have sex….

But is their sex germane to your story? Writing Sex, a one-night workshop will help you discover the answer to that question and more.

Queer is a huge spectrum and with changing language around gender identity and orientation, there are so many avenues to explore when it comes to writing queer characters. In this workshop, queer trans author Finnian Burnett will explore the divide between own voices and inclusive writing.

Find Your Creativity

SoulCollage® is a highly accessible expressive arts activity for exploring and enhancing our creative gifts and the innate wisdom that exists within us. Through the use of images, SoulCollage® helps fire up our creative juices and offers us a uniquely right-brained way to excavate knowledge and ideas that can benefit our writing practice and projects. In this interactive, generative session, you’ll learn the basics of the SoulCollage® method, then jump right in to create cards that we’ll engage with via imaginative writing prompts.

As the late Irish poet Eavan Boland used to advise her students, "The only way out is through." And yet, when we are bogged down in a work of several hundred pages, it can be difficult to see a way through to the end. In this 90 minute session, we will discuss several methods of puzzling our way to the end of our novels-in-progress.

Write an Ending that Sticks

How do you write an ending that sticks with your reader for days to come? One they will think about while brushing their teeth, doing the dishes, driving to work. Ending are—notoriously—one of the hardest parts of the essay and often they get neglected.

Flash fiction is hot right now and getting hotter!

What does it take to write a killer story that evokes an emotional response and draws readers into your world? In this workshop, Finnian Burnett will use generative exercises, story analysis, and guided questions to help each participant hone their flash fiction skills. We'll talk about subverting point of view, deep character dives, and revision techniques. Come prepared to write. Sharing your work is encouraged, but not required.

This workshop will focus on practical craft approaches to writing about trauma,

including alternative forms, slanted metaphors, and utilizing different points of view. These strategies are geared toward staying vulnerable and authentic to your experience, but also creating distance when needed.

In this one-day, 90 minute workshop with writer Brittany Ackerman (The Brittanys Vintage), writers will tap into their own well of experiences in order to mine inspiration for their creative work. Whether writers are working toward a novel, a second draft, or are embarking on a journey to find passion in storytelling, this generative class will be a supportive and encouraging space to hold close the truths that occur in our own lives and how we might translate those experiences into art. In Fiction, we are able to pinpoint real life drama and excavate ideas for story in order to create pieces that feel true to existence, stories that we embrace and share in an attempt to connect with each other.

Find More Ease in Your Writing Process

The Enneagram is a system of personality typing that describes patterns in how people interpret the world and manage their emotions. The Enneagram describes nine personality types and maps each of these types on a nine-pointed diagram which helps to illustrate how the types relate to one another.

What makes a gripping personal essay?

A hint, you don’t need to have lived a dramatic or wild life to have something to write about. A good personal essay is all about telling a good story, no matter what the subject matter.