Perhaps you’ve been told at some point or another: “Writing is revising.” Well, it’s true. Writing is revising—but what exactly does this mean? Revising can be intimidating territory for all of us, but in this workshop we will take a different approach from that of the cruel taskmaster that lives in most of our brains. Instead, we will focus on re-imagining our poems from a place of possibility and cultivation, instead of punishment, fertile soil for possible regenerations of an original impulse or feeling.

One of the central struggles in storytelling is that human beings are, in essence, time travelers. We live in the past of our memories and the future of our hopes. Thus, when we tell stories, we often shuttle around in time. This can be exciting, but more often it winds up confusing the reader, and (in my case) the writer. In this seminar, we’ll unravel the mysteries of chronology and help writers figure out how to tell their story in a way that thrills their readers.

You, dear memoirist, are the hero of your own story. No matter what the specific content may be, writing memoir is about taking the messiness of your lived experience and finding larger, universal truths. And because you are the lens for this truth, you must deeply implicate yourself. You are the character in which readers must recognize their own humanity. Through conversation, writing exercises, and looking at published examples, this class will deal with questions— How do I write about things I didn’t witness? Where does my story begin, and where does it end? What am I afraid to admit? —about writing yourself into memoir.

What is it about sex that allows it to be—if one so chooses—an ecstatic experience, fully embodied and beyond the physical body all at once? How can one even manage to articulate it on the page, or in song? It's a mystery older than poetry itself, and in this workshop the poets we'll be reading from reckon with eros and the sacred in a surprising variety of ways.

Many a short story, essay, novel, and memoir have gone unpublished because the author fails to create a strong narrator, one who can act as a wise and entertaining guide to the reader. In this class, we’ll examine the work of Sylvia Plath, Joan Didion, Alicia Erian and others in an effort to make sure your next narrator isn’t just strong, but irresistible. We’ll also try an in-class exercise to bring the lesson home.

Ever read (or write) a story where the hero or heroine just doesn’t seem to pop? I have. Like a thousand times. This intensive (but fun-filled!) seminar will investigate why some characters leap off the page, while others just sit there. We’ll look at the work of Toni Morrison, Jane Austen, Lorrie Moore, Alicia Erian,  and others in an effort to examine all the untapped ways that authors can create layered, multi-dimensional characters. Then we’ll do an in-class exercise to bring the lesson home.

Writing’s all fun and games until the rejections start piling up. In this intensive (though informal) workshop, we’ll aim to make sure your stories or essays draw the reader in, rather than leaving them in the dark. We’ll take a second look at your opening pages, as well as the opening pages of works by Cheryl Strayed, Natasha Trethewey, Meg Wolitzer and others, in an effort to understand how they hook readers from word one.

Do you have an idea for a memoir, gift book, or essay collection, but you've been fearing the daunting prospect of putting together a book proposal? In this one-day seminar, writers will throw their worry to the wind, learn the nuts and bolts of a professional proposal, and finally defeat the blank page. In this viral age, you never know when a shorter piece can take off – and all of a sudden opportunities are coming your way that you need to act on! We’ll cover the sections of a standard book proposal, talk about creating/maintaining a platform, brainstorm your existing affiliations, find comparable titles to compare them to your own work, and create and refine the shorter pieces you will need for any proposal, such as author bios and an awareness of how to situate your writing and voice in the larger marketplace.

This competitive, semester-long class is your opportunity to finally finish your book-length collection of short stories! Whether you’re working on your first short story, or you’ve already drafted a dozen and are hoping to shape them into a collection, this class is for you. During this 4-month intensive, we will focus on all aspects of writing a collection, from drafting to revision, and finally publication.

I love great, sprawling New Yorker stuff and literary magnum opuses, but often I crave something shorter, something that hits my heart but doesn’t take itself too preciously, something fun. I seek similar when writing: to enter a state of childlike wonder and discovery, to resist accepted rules, to make mistakes, to say what I’ve never said before or even known I needed to say, to play. In this five week generative class we’ll make space for play in our writing process, and we’ll examine short-ish creative nonfiction that embraces the unconventional. Our focus will be on trying new styles and techniques, and writing with excitement, verve, and a sense of adventure.

It’s the New Year, and that hits us all differently! Whether it’s a spirited season for you or a gloomy one, the tumult of January can still be a space for you to turn inward, renew your writing goals, or start them over altogether—if you choose it. This open-genre workshop will offer you the opportunity to honor your own work with a group of like-minded writers. We’ll discuss why we write, what mentally and logistically keeps us from the page, and how we can work to abolish the judge in our heads.

A generative writing class for women (or anyone who identifies as female / nonbinary / gender-nonconforming) who feel like they miiiiiight be losing it. Instead of running away from home... try this class first? Whether you're overwhelmed or stretched thin; wound up or worn out; blocked, stuck, or just feel like making some time to write each week, this class is a way to reconnect with your creative core. You can write in any genre you like—nonfiction, fiction, poetry, stream-of-consciousness, journaling, fragments, rants, letters, lists—whatever feels right each day. This class is about process, creativity, and making some space for your own voice. It's just an hour, and there's no homework. Sneak it in on your lunch break (or while the kids are watching a movie; they'll live). It'll be encouraging, regenerative, nourishing, and fun.

Does your taste as a reader and writer skew toward the dark, disturbing, or morally complex? If so, we are of like minds. The goal of this workshop is to write about distress, fear, and violence—both emotional and physical—in prose that is neither gratuitous nor melodramatic but rather, resonant and true to life. We’ll read and discuss works by selected authors depicting unsettling scenes involving people, nature, the subconscious, and the supernatural. Students will also be given writing assignments based on these discussions. This generative workshop will be particularly valuable for those seeking to articulate disturbing events or scenes—but writers at all levels of experience, both fiction and non-fiction, are welcome.

Now more than ever we need you to write and share the story of your body, history, identity, family, and experiences. We need you to put yourself on the page. In this five week course we will read and discuss published personal essays, drawing out specific techniques and approaches to writing as well as inspiration for the bravery it requires to get real with a reader. Each week, students will receive prompts to spark their own work and have the opportunity to write and share a short essay with their peers, which we’ll discuss during class.

Writing is solitary, and it can be all too easy to feel dismayed or even despondent about giving yourself time and permission to let what is inside of you come out on the page. Hold my beer – I’m here to help. As part of this accountability class, you’ll start each weekday with a few hundred words of inspiration, encouragement, and commiseration delivered to your inbox. Then on Saturday we’ll gather on zoom to discuss our progress, talk about the writing and publishing process, and share some of our work aloud.

Study the greats, become the GREATEST! For 5 weeks, SCREENPLAYS BY BADASS WOMEN offers a supportive, uproariously fun and explorative kaleidoscope of screenwriting study AND practice. This course is designed specifically for newbies wanting to explore the film/TV realm and try their hand at screenwriting, AND more mid-level screenwriters looking for a steady stream of inspiration and fresh takes on the craft. Crucially, the course connects the dots between our lived experiences on Planet Patriarchy, the historically neglected “female gaze,” and our vast creative reach as women writers. Weekly, we’ll deep-dive several of the most groundbreaking screenplays by women, engaging in conversation about what exactly these cinematic worlds offer that’s brilliantly off-kilter and essential, as well as WRITE diligently into our own fresh (first ever?!) screenplay idea.

Journals are one of the most helpful tools a writer can have, and yet many writers feel that journals are too tedious, difficult, or dangerous to employ. A journal can help you make sense of the formless stuff of life. It can be a low-stakes place to play with ideas, a format for experimenting with voice, a way to clear out the mind (a la Julia Cameron’s famous “morning pages”). The latter is maybe the most important — for me, anyway, if there’s something that’s happened to me that I want to write about, first I have to journal about it in the most unfiltered, unedited, artless, raw way possible, before I can even get close to making something like art from it.

It’s been called the “holy grail” of personal essay publications: the Modern Love column in the New York Times. Your best story. 1500 words. A potentially career-changing publication. We’ll talk about what it takes and how to get noticed.

Join writer Tommy Dean for a two-hour generative writing session focused on creating one full flash draft from opening to ending to everything in-between. We’ll look at model texts and use prompts for each element of a successful flash including openings, escalation, backstory, metaphor, middles, endings, and titles. Instead of 5-6 separate starts, we’ll concentrate on crafting one full story with inspiring prompts for each craft element. Come create a complete and urgent story with me and your fellow writers!

Moving from point A to point B isn’t always the best way to tell a story. Sometimes we find ourselves beginning at the end, hopping back and forth in time, or circling around events until our understanding of them changes. Non-linear narratives can make for fascinating reading, but writing them poses particular challenges. How do we maintain continuity, clarity, and suspense when our stories don't follow a straight line? How do we decide which episodes of a timeline to visit? How do we make forays into the past that illuminate, rather than bog down, the present? How do we keep the reader oriented in where and when they are in the story? In this class, we’ll discuss how authors time-hop successfully and why a non-linear structure serves the stories they tell. We’ll also dive into how we can craft our own “disorderly” narratives, and do writing exercises to support this.

In this class, writers will come in with nothing, and leave with five short essays ready to show the world. The discipline of writing every week will strengthen your writerly muscles, while the energy in the class will be supportive and enthusiastic. You can and will write better, sharper essays than you did before, and while that work won’t always be easy, it will be rewarding. You don’t want to waste your reader’s time, and this class won’t waste yours!

Ever wonder if your numerous short stories are a collection, and what to do with them if you think they could be with a little (or a lot of) effort? In this two-hour seminar, I’ll walk you through the experience of conceptualizing and completing a short story collection that’s ready for agents and editors. We’ll discuss basics like how many stories make a collection, if you really need to publish in literary magazines before you get an agent, and not-so-basics like discovering and strengthening thematic connections between stories, and the uncomfortable question of whether or not story collections sell.

Recently, in a workshop of his own, author Peter Orner said, "We should all read more paragraphs out loud to each other." That -- combined with anecdotes from other established writers whose own personal writing groups involve reading pages as the ink dries -- is the inspiration behind this casual, intimate non-class class. Perhaps you're not up for lengthy comprehensive feedback on your work-in-progress, but you would like a quick temperature check from others who are also in the deep, generative stage. Students will gather weekly to read out loud short excerpts from their WIP to glean spontaneous and encouraging gut reactions, and to funnel that fresh energy back into their work. No weekly prep is required, only your openness and attention.

This craft talk will look at numerous ways that writers can authentically talk about and market their work online; whether it be finding the right beats to pitch to editors for essay and article ideas, applying to residencies with more ease, creating content for newsletters or videos about the writing life, and how to be attractive to literary agents. By the time writers leave this talk, they will have a set number of resources to effectively market themselves authentically.

Diary Comics (a.k.a. comics-form diary entries) are a whole lot of fun to put together and share. But how do you fit a bit of your day into just four panels? This 1.5 hour hands-on writing/drawing session will start with a discussion of some other artists' diary comics, and then we'll get to work making our own.

The genre of speculative nonfiction provides space to investigate truths through fabulism, folklore, imagined lives, hauntedness, and other slanted lenses. By speculating, we can bend time and space to get at a truth closer to our own subjective experience. In this generative class, we’ll discuss the expansive possibilities and definitions of the genre, learn specific craft techniques, and play with the freedom it offers (particularly for those of us from marginalized communities) to challenge and renegotiate society’s definitions of reality.

What drives a great work of fiction? How do you create a story strong enough to sustain a novel? And how do you write 70, 80, or 90,000 words? This two-hour intensive class tackles the fundamentals of character and conflict; the elements of a satisfying narrative arc; and practical strategies for completing that first draft and beginning your second. You’ll leave with fresh ideas and concrete plans for your novel, as well as three worksheets to apply to this and future writing projects.