Events, Classes, and Seminars

This class will provide practical insights and techniques to craft short stories that captivate and create an emotional resonance with readers. We will explore the practice of writing fiction as an experience that not only includes putting words to page, but also as an act of listening, observing, and paying attention.

In these quarterly gatherings we’ll meet to be inspired by the turn of the world. From autumn leaves to springtime flowers, rain and snow and sun, we’ll consider nature’s shifts and how we can incorporate them into our writing practice.

What about any story makes you want to keep reading? In this class, we’ll look at the openings of several short stories and creative nonfiction pieces with a special focus on the craft: how was the story written in a way that makes it successful?

The spiral holds great meaning for cultures all over the world and has captivated our attention throughout ancient and modern time. In this 3-part generative writing workshop, we’ll expand our writing across multiple genres including poetry, essay, and narrative with prompts inspired by multicultural authors.

Throughout this six week course, students will look at the many ways in which humans are connected to our natural surroundings, both urban and remote. By delving into the inherent close relationship humans have with the natural world, each student’s path to writing their own stories using the natural world as scaffolding will emerge.

In this course, we’ll study writing that engages with folklore in a wide variety of ways: speculative memoir that tangles with witch tales, poems that draw on botanical lore, short story fairy tale retellings, mythic poetry and fiction, and more.

As part of their training, journalists learn how to distill a story down to its core components, make it legible to a wide audience, and structure information to maximize impact. These are skills and practices that all writers can benefit from. Whether there’s a journalist character in your novel, a historical component to your memoir, a narrative aspect to your academic work, or a poem that provides a glimpse into an unknown world, this class will provide a basic understanding of journalism that any writer can apply to any project.

This six-week intensive is for the writer who has lived their subject matter. The expert, the advocate, the practitioner, the person who has earned their perspective and is ready to shape it into something that lasts. Each session combines direct instruction with hands-on writing practice, guided research, breakout group work, and mastermind-style coaching — so students leave every class with something made, not just something learned. A craft thread runs through every session: every workshop produces actual writing, not just planning documents.

Every poem is in conversation with the writing that came before it. This conversation crosses generations and cultures, erasing distances of time, space, and mortality. In this four-part class, we'll make that conversation intentional. We'll consider the what, why, and how of writing in dialogue with other writers: what it means to write "after" someone, why we might quote, echo, erase, or respond to another text, and how we might do so with care, integrity, and proper credit.