The Quiet and the Chaos
I walked for an hour with no destination in mind. I stood atop the grassy dam that holds the sea back from flooding the small town of Den Helder, Holland. I was nearing the end of a two-month solo backpacking trip around Europe in 2010. I decided to go as far north as I could on the train and the train brought me to Den Helder.
It was me alone up there, battling it out with the wind for my place on top of the ridge. I was at the wind’s mercy. If it blew too hard to the left, I would fall into the sea; too much to the right, I would tumble down the hill into the cow pastures. The wind was biting cold, slicing through my clothes like an icy knife, making my eyes go dry and my nose run wet. My long hair became hostile, whipping around my eyes, knotting itself a million times over and stinging every bit of bare skin on my face and neck.
Through all of this I couldn’t stop smiling because, to me, this is the thrill and the feeling of freedom. I was hundreds of miles from anyone who knew my name and I was conquering my fears. The sun finally came out and that welcomed warmth held me fast. I was anchored between sea and sky by rays of sunlight.
I tumbled back to my tiny bed-and-breakfast and clamored through the door. I’m sure I horrified the elderly woman who ran the inn. I could tell by the disapproving tone of her Dutch mumbling that she could not understand why I would travel alone, much less show up again at her door with wind-crazed hair and an incessantly dripping nose.
On a clear late summer afternoon along North Carolina’s Outer Banks, Sandbar slid off its foundation and washed into the Atlantic Ocean, the footage so dramatic, it went viral on social media and made the national news. The house was now called Dolphin’s Point, but for my friends and me, it would always be Sandbar. I thought about how the owners must have felt watching something they loved drift away from them, as they stood helpless, knowing they would never see it again.
I asked myself, how do I get into these things? How did I find myself in the middle of a desert, with nothing but a gas station for over a hundred miles, in the searing heat toting a backpack that magically gained weight the further I went?
Is it possible to feel the loss of something if you never had it to begin with? I don’t mean desire, because to desire something doesn’t necessarily mean a palpable sense of missing it. I mean, rather, to feel a defined and tangible absence, like that of a phantom limb, but for one never possessed in the first place.
The sun set an hour ago, which means it’s finally below forty degrees Celsius. Normally I embrace the dry heat in Erbil in exchange for the humidity back home in Toronto, but today it leaves my throat dry and hoarse. I shuffle my feet on the dusty tiles outside my house and peer over the metal gate until Emmita’s black SUV pulls up.
I moved to Albuquerque in August. In the middle of, at the end of, during a pandemic that plausibly does not have an end. I got a job here, and in late-stage American capitalism that’s about all it takes to rationalize moving across the country.
When we tell Clarence that I need to drive my car from New York to Los Angeles, the first thing he says is, you can have the time off. She can’t. He is, of course, pointing at S, not knowing we’ve stayed up the night before planning a 12-day, 10-city cross country road trip. We’ve planned this trip down to a T, but what we haven’t factored in is our boss not being on board.
Two years into teaching English in Barcelona I have this feeling of doom. It’s a hollowness in my stomach, a black hole sucking everything in. It's too late to leave but too late to stay. Time grinds to a halt. I no longer understand anything; at the event horizon, the rules no longer apply. We fly back from a short summer vacation in Prague and the plane circles the city, round and round, waiting to land, and I look down and I recognize every landmark, and I see all of my neighborhoods, and can only think, why? Why come back? I don't belong here.
The airplane skims over a monotonously beautiful carpet of lakes, clouds, forest, and fields. The Land of Midnight Sun (well, actually, one out of five possible Lands of Midnight Sun; each Nordic nation with its twenty-four hours of summer daylight technically qualified to claim the title) reveals itself to you in puffs of white, geometries of emerald, bowls of aqua. It’s only a matter of minutes before you land and have to start apologizing.
The road unfolds in front of us, a black ribbon of tarmac glittering in the summer heat. It is one of many roads I have taken. The rearview mirror reflects the same view, a yellow dotted line that connects us to the next destination, and the previous. Were we ever there? Over a hill, the road disappears, and I wonder if we too will disappear as we follow it.
I made tea while the wind still howled outside, slowly allowing my oversized sweater and down blanket to swallow me, remaining perfectly motionless while the chaos exploded right outside my window. It didn’t conquer me.
The lopsided attic window was like a moving picture frame; massive white clouds sailing by like old ships, heaving and lurching on the sea-blue sky. I watched the birds as they struggled to fly from the right pane of my window to the left, but the wind was too strong. They fought and flapped, then finally gave in to the airstream and rocketed upwards on some hidden air flow.
Everything was moving and I was swaddled and still. Chaos was right outside my window but amid in all, it could not conquer me, and now I was safe and warm. I felt my heart beat below my chapped and shivering hands and watched my chest rise and fall as my lungs filled with air. I was miraculously alive.
My journey across Europe was such a whirlwind around me but, yet again, I felt as if I was anchored by a great Light that kept me safe and intact. This is something I can never forget no matter where I am in life. It is a wonder to find peace in the storm, to be still while everything explodes around you. Sometimes I feel that it is the storm that keeps me alive, yet it’s really only a reminder, a byproduct of life. It’s the Light that keeps me alive. I’m still here and I’m still breathing.
-Kate Gazaway
Some of the most compelling creative nonfiction begins with the feelings we are tempted to avoid: anger, resentment, shame, fear, or the sense that we have an axe to grind. In this six-week workshop, writers will explore how to follow that emotional heat toward deeper, more honest work—without sacrificing compassion, complexity, or craft. Through close readings, writing exercises, discussion, and constructive feedback, we’ll consider how to transform strong feelings into writing that reaches beyond catharsis and connects with readers.
LET’S WRITE!
From conception to submission. Let’s make summer sizzle with stories.
Writing a short story doesn’t happen in one session. It takes multiple drafts to get it exactly right, to create characters that come to life for the reader and a world they can’t stop thinking about. In this seven week course we will work on a single short story from conception to submission ready. The seven week session will include generative brainstorming sessions, short story craft talks, multiple workshops for feedback from fellow writers, and detailed line by line feedback and edits from your instructor. Plus, we’ll talk about submission venues, cover letters, and when to know if your story is ‘finished.’
October 7, 14, 21, 28, November 4 and 11 CT
WRITING THE SEX SCENE.
Writing a sex scene can be delirious fun, a harrowing challenge, a literary milestone—possibly the most important part of building your short story or book. In our six weeks together, you’ll experience just about every possible emotion as you explore the erotic in different modes: comic, tender, harrowing, soul-shattering … because it really is all about the characters’ feelings, not just the mechanics. So we’ll talk about tone. Vocabulary. Metaphor. Sensory detail. How to get big emotions on the page … and when to pull back and let the reader’s imagination go to work.
This is a course for writers who want to explore the intersection between the novel and short stories, and would like to weave their short stories into a story cycle (or collection of "linked stories" or "composite novel"). This is also a class about the interaction of form and content, and how one influences the other. We will read works of interlinked stories by writers from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds, focusing on modern classics and contemporary practitioners of these hybrid forms. Weekly discussions will center on elements of craft, such as the expansion and compression of time, setting as an organizing and connecting principle, character development within and between stories, structure and plot for interconnected stories, and responding to literary influences in the same genre.
This six-week course guides writers through the literary submission process, offering insider insight and practical tools to help you get your work into the world. We’ll demystify everything from reading submission calls to writing cover letters and choosing the right journals. Along the way, we’ll workshop short bios, develop submission trackers, and build personalized plans that align with your voice and goals.
By the end of the course, you’ll walk away with a polished piece ready to send, a tailored submission list, and the confidence to navigate the lit mag world with clarity and purpose.
Ideal for writers of literary fiction, poetry, personal essay, memoir, and hybrid forms.
Tension feels tangible to a reader, an active experience. But from a craft perspective, tension is often a function of restraint, palpable from what is withheld, delayed or left unresolved. Why do some stories feel urgent even in stillness while others fall flat despite dramatic events? Our impulse to resolve tension often comes from a deeply human instinct to seek coherence and moral clarity, but resisting that instinct creates compelling narratives. When we let characters misbehave or allow ambiguity in their actions, we pull readers closer to them.
This course examines tension as a narrative force. We’ll consider how writers can counter the impulse to resolve too quickly, to justify wrongful acts or to redeem a character’s behavior. By looking at ways to sustain tension without escalation into spectacle, we’ll experiment with evoking it in the ordinary and the unspoken. The class will combine close reading, craft reflection and writing prompts to practice distinct approaches to writing tension. This course is designed for writers working in fiction, nonfiction, and hybrid forms who are interested in deepening the psychological and structural complexity of their work. Ultimately, tension is what compels the reader to turn the page.
In this generative writing workshop, ecologist and poet Anne Marie Wells will introduce participants to some of today's eco-poets and essayists and guide participants through a series of writing prompts that will use the outdoors and personal experience as inspiration for creative expression. No writing experience is necessary to participate.
When Weezie came to pick me up for our road trip to the mountains, six months after her husband Emmanuel was diagnosed, she looked excited. But it felt forced, like a child who no longer believes in Santa but pretends to believe so they may feel the old tingle of anticipation. What I saw was grief.