24 PEARL STREET PAST WORKSHOPS
Marcie Hershman
WRITING IN INTERESTING TIMES - LIVE
August 16 to August 20, 2021
TUITION: $550
As a much-quoted curse of debatable origins has it: “May you live in interesting times!” For the past year the coronavirus pandemic has demanded all our attention. It has changed everything, challenging us to determine what we can trust, where we can go, and if life as we once understood it might one day “return.”... more
WRITING IN INTERESTING TIMES - LIVE
August 16 to August 20, 2021
TUITION: $550
As a much-quoted curse of debatable origins has it: “May you live in interesting times!” For the past year the coronavirus pandemic has demanded all our attention. It has changed everything, challenging us to determine what we can trust, where we can go, and if life as we once understood it might one day “return.”... more
Gail Mazur
WRITING POEMS: VISION & REVISION - LIVE
August 9 to August 13, 2021
TUITION: $550
Often the best, most surprising inspirations for revision comes from close readings of poems new to us. Together we’ll look at poems and write new poems. Every day! All of us! We’ll give ourselves and our writing a figurative shake or two, talk constructively and in new ways about each others’ works, and we’ll keep... more
WRITING POEMS: VISION & REVISION - LIVE
August 9 to August 13, 2021
TUITION: $550
Often the best, most surprising inspirations for revision comes from close readings of poems new to us. Together we’ll look at poems and write new poems. Every day! All of us! We’ll give ourselves and our writing a figurative shake or two, talk constructively and in new ways about each others’ works, and we’ll keep... more
Paul Lisicky
ON URGENCY: MEMOIR/CREATIVE NONFICTION THROUGH A QUEER LENS - LIVE
August 9 to August 13, 2021
TUITION: $550
What does it mean to write memoir and creative nonfiction as a queer person in 2021? What silences do we sense in the archive and in ourselves? How do we tap into our personal urgency to fill up those spaces with imagination? And what does it feel like to be alive right now? We’ll think... more
ON URGENCY: MEMOIR/CREATIVE NONFICTION THROUGH A QUEER LENS - LIVE
August 9 to August 13, 2021
TUITION: $550
What does it mean to write memoir and creative nonfiction as a queer person in 2021? What silences do we sense in the archive and in ourselves? How do we tap into our personal urgency to fill up those spaces with imagination? And what does it feel like to be alive right now? We’ll think... more
Sabrina Orah Mark
WRITING YOUR OBSESSION
August 2 to August 27, 2021
TUITION: $550
ASYNCHRONOUS In this four-week workshop you will write the living daylights out of that thing that writes the living daylights out of you. What, like a fixed star, is at the center of your heart? What is your hobbyhorse, your idee fixe, your charge? What hangs you up and infatuates? What haunts you? As a... more
WRITING YOUR OBSESSION
August 2 to August 27, 2021
TUITION: $550
ASYNCHRONOUS In this four-week workshop you will write the living daylights out of that thing that writes the living daylights out of you. What, like a fixed star, is at the center of your heart? What is your hobbyhorse, your idee fixe, your charge? What hangs you up and infatuates? What haunts you? As a... more
Nicole Sealey
SEEING IS BELIEVING: DRAFTING THE LASTING IMAGE - LIVE
August 2 to August 6, 2021
TUITION: $550
In The Poet’s Companion, Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux argue that images should “produce a bit of magic, a reality so real it is ‘like being alive twice.’” As we know, images are closely linked to memory. As poets, after mining our respective memories, how do we deepen a reader’s experience with the poem via... more
SEEING IS BELIEVING: DRAFTING THE LASTING IMAGE - LIVE
August 2 to August 6, 2021
TUITION: $550
In The Poet’s Companion, Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux argue that images should “produce a bit of magic, a reality so real it is ‘like being alive twice.’” As we know, images are closely linked to memory. As poets, after mining our respective memories, how do we deepen a reader’s experience with the poem via... more
Matthew Olzmann
LOVE POEMS - LIVE
August 2 to August 6, 2021
TUITION: $550
Why do these things feel impossible to write? How can a poem risk vulnerability without crushing us under the weight of sentimentality? Why are so many love poems so very sad? How can the abstract experience of a specific emotion be made tangible? How can you write a poem that will make someone fall in... more
LOVE POEMS - LIVE
August 2 to August 6, 2021
TUITION: $550
Why do these things feel impossible to write? How can a poem risk vulnerability without crushing us under the weight of sentimentality? Why are so many love poems so very sad? How can the abstract experience of a specific emotion be made tangible? How can you write a poem that will make someone fall in... more
John Murillo
CUT, SCRATCH & BLEND: REVISION AS REMIX - LIVE
August 2 to August 6, 2021
TUITION: $550
“Poetry,” writes Yusef Komunyakaa in his essay collection Blue Notes, “is an act of meditation and improvisation. And need is the motor that propels the words down the silent white space.” In this workshop, participants will consider various perspectives on the revision process and explore strategies for re-drafting poems-in-progress. While this class is open to... more
CUT, SCRATCH & BLEND: REVISION AS REMIX - LIVE
August 2 to August 6, 2021
TUITION: $550
“Poetry,” writes Yusef Komunyakaa in his essay collection Blue Notes, “is an act of meditation and improvisation. And need is the motor that propels the words down the silent white space.” In this workshop, participants will consider various perspectives on the revision process and explore strategies for re-drafting poems-in-progress. While this class is open to... more
Andre Dubus III
Do Not Think, Dream: Fiction & Creative Nonfiction Workshop - Live
July 26 to July 30, 2021
TUITION: $550
If I teach nothing in my writing classes, I teach this: do not outline your novel or novella or short story or essay. Do not think out the plot, the narrative arc, the protagonist’s journey, whatever you want to call it. Instead, try to find the story through an honest excavation of the characters’ total... more
Do Not Think, Dream: Fiction & Creative Nonfiction Workshop - Live
July 26 to July 30, 2021
TUITION: $550
If I teach nothing in my writing classes, I teach this: do not outline your novel or novella or short story or essay. Do not think out the plot, the narrative arc, the protagonist’s journey, whatever you want to call it. Instead, try to find the story through an honest excavation of the characters’ total... more
Mark Conway
WHAT YOU’RE WILLING TO DISCOVER - LIVE
July 26 to July 30, 2021
TUITION: $550
Yusef Komunkyakaa said, “Don’t write what you know. Write what you are willing to discover.” In this poetry workshop we’ll concentrate on writing toward the deep, difficult-to-reach poem, writing that relies on intuition, half-glimpsed inner visions—our truest, most essential take on the world. To get there we’ll go by hunch, by faith and duende, using... more
WHAT YOU’RE WILLING TO DISCOVER - LIVE
July 26 to July 30, 2021
TUITION: $550
Yusef Komunkyakaa said, “Don’t write what you know. Write what you are willing to discover.” In this poetry workshop we’ll concentrate on writing toward the deep, difficult-to-reach poem, writing that relies on intuition, half-glimpsed inner visions—our truest, most essential take on the world. To get there we’ll go by hunch, by faith and duende, using... more
Michael Collier
TRANSLATION & REVISION: A GENERATIVE POETRY WORKSHOP - LIVE
July 26 to July 30, 2021
TUITION: $550
Translation as (re)vision is a generative workshop in which cribs will be used to produce versions of poems by Constantine Cavafy, Rainer Maria Rilke, Gabriela Mistral, Félix Morisseau-Leroy, and others. The workshop is designed to provide a practical understanding of translation as well as, and perhaps more importantly, to foster skills that transfer easily to... more
TRANSLATION & REVISION: A GENERATIVE POETRY WORKSHOP - LIVE
July 26 to July 30, 2021
TUITION: $550
Translation as (re)vision is a generative workshop in which cribs will be used to produce versions of poems by Constantine Cavafy, Rainer Maria Rilke, Gabriela Mistral, Félix Morisseau-Leroy, and others. The workshop is designed to provide a practical understanding of translation as well as, and perhaps more importantly, to foster skills that transfer easily to... more
Marion Winik
MEMOIR BOOT CAMP - LIVE
July 19 to July 23, 2021
TUITION: $550
Are you ready for “a short, intensive, and rigorous course of training”? That’s what boot camp is all about. Our week together will be devoted to creating and workshopping new material using approaches that may be a bit different than what you may have tried before. Class discussions will touch on persona, self-implication, ethics, formal... more
MEMOIR BOOT CAMP - LIVE
July 19 to July 23, 2021
TUITION: $550
Are you ready for “a short, intensive, and rigorous course of training”? That’s what boot camp is all about. Our week together will be devoted to creating and workshopping new material using approaches that may be a bit different than what you may have tried before. Class discussions will touch on persona, self-implication, ethics, formal... more
REVISING & GENERATING, CREATING NEW FROM THE OLD: A POETRY WORKSHOP - LIVE
July 19 to July 23, 2021
TUITION: $550
Our workshop will focus on participants’ poems with an eye to revision, primarily. We’ll discuss strategies that can be employed to both bring the poem to fuller realization, as well as ways that we can discover alternative possibilities for the poem. So, we will explore both “conventional” and more radical approaches to revision. There will... more
Fred Marchant
ENERGIES OF THE DREAM: A POETRY WORKSHOP - LIVE
July 19 to July 23, 2021
TUITION: $550
Just think of how many dreams you have during any given week! Think of the imaginative energy that pours into, and emanates from those images and stories. Think too of how such imaginative energy might be brought to bear on your poetry and on your writing processes in general. In our one-week intensive workshop we... more
ENERGIES OF THE DREAM: A POETRY WORKSHOP - LIVE
July 19 to July 23, 2021
TUITION: $550
Just think of how many dreams you have during any given week! Think of the imaginative energy that pours into, and emanates from those images and stories. Think too of how such imaginative energy might be brought to bear on your poetry and on your writing processes in general. In our one-week intensive workshop we... more
Erin Belieu
VISION & REVISION: A POETRY WORKSHOP - LIVE
July 19 to July 23, 2021
TUITION: $550
In this workshop, you will decide if you’re more interested in generating new work or in sharing previously drafted work with the group (or some combination of both). I will bring in poems every day as models of various craft elements for our consideration, and I will conclude each class by offering you a generative... more
VISION & REVISION: A POETRY WORKSHOP - LIVE
July 19 to July 23, 2021
TUITION: $550
In this workshop, you will decide if you’re more interested in generating new work or in sharing previously drafted work with the group (or some combination of both). I will bring in poems every day as models of various craft elements for our consideration, and I will conclude each class by offering you a generative... more
Sandra Beasley
Taming the Beast: Assembling Your Poetry Collection
July 12 to August 6, 2021
TUITION: $550
ASYNCHRONOUS Are you proud of individual poems, but daunted by putting together a whole manuscript? This class, which can be used for chapbook or full-length collections, takes an approach that balances craft and pragmatics. In Week One, we will help you distill a sense of your book’s working “meta-text”—meaning, all the various cues you are... more
Taming the Beast: Assembling Your Poetry Collection
July 12 to August 6, 2021
TUITION: $550
ASYNCHRONOUS Are you proud of individual poems, but daunted by putting together a whole manuscript? This class, which can be used for chapbook or full-length collections, takes an approach that balances craft and pragmatics. In Week One, we will help you distill a sense of your book’s working “meta-text”—meaning, all the various cues you are... more
Sarah Schulman
FICTION & NONFICTION WORKSHOP - LIVE
July 12 to July 16, 2021
TUITION: $550
A craft-based workshop for fiction and non-fiction writers on ALL levels: from true beginner to the multiply published, working on witnessing our extraordinary time, expressing the experience of living now in the context of others, and representing these experiences through the eyes of people who are often ignored or distorted in mainstream media. All are... more
FICTION & NONFICTION WORKSHOP - LIVE
July 12 to July 16, 2021
TUITION: $550
A craft-based workshop for fiction and non-fiction writers on ALL levels: from true beginner to the multiply published, working on witnessing our extraordinary time, expressing the experience of living now in the context of others, and representing these experiences through the eyes of people who are often ignored or distorted in mainstream media. All are... more
Porsha Olayiwola
DISMANTLING THE TRADITION: ON FORM & POWER - LIVE
July 12 to July 16, 2021
TUITION: $550
Infrastructures hold tradition in place. Tradition creates social norms that last centuries. Infrastructure, both tangible and unseen, establish a system by which the norms never alter. This is true in history, social hierarchy, and literature. Classical form, in poetry, can operate as an oppressive infrastructure dictating how and what we write. This course will focus... more
DISMANTLING THE TRADITION: ON FORM & POWER - LIVE
July 12 to July 16, 2021
TUITION: $550
Infrastructures hold tradition in place. Tradition creates social norms that last centuries. Infrastructure, both tangible and unseen, establish a system by which the norms never alter. This is true in history, social hierarchy, and literature. Classical form, in poetry, can operate as an oppressive infrastructure dictating how and what we write. This course will focus... more
Eileen Myles
THE FUTURE: A POETRY WORKSHOP IN 2021 - LIVE
July 12 to July 16, 2021
TUITION: $550
I’ve always liked poetry workshops. You meet a weird and interesting new group of people, you’ll write a poem you never imagined and you are turned on to work by poets you’ve never read before. I feel certain that will happen in July of 2021. At the moment I still don’t know where we are... more
THE FUTURE: A POETRY WORKSHOP IN 2021 - LIVE
July 12 to July 16, 2021
TUITION: $550
I’ve always liked poetry workshops. You meet a weird and interesting new group of people, you’ll write a poem you never imagined and you are turned on to work by poets you’ve never read before. I feel certain that will happen in July of 2021. At the moment I still don’t know where we are... more
Nancy Pearson
15 WORKS: A POETRY WORKSHOP
July 5 to July 30, 2021
TUITION: $550
ASYNCHRONOUS This four-week poetry workshop is based on a class taught at the former Corcoran School of Art. In “15 Works,” you’ll write 3 to 4 poems a week in response to assignments and prompts, with weekly themes. Comments on one another’s poems will be limited to one poem per week unless you’d like to... more
15 WORKS: A POETRY WORKSHOP
July 5 to July 30, 2021
TUITION: $550
ASYNCHRONOUS This four-week poetry workshop is based on a class taught at the former Corcoran School of Art. In “15 Works,” you’ll write 3 to 4 poems a week in response to assignments and prompts, with weekly themes. Comments on one another’s poems will be limited to one poem per week unless you’d like to... more
Ada Limón
THE ART OF CONJURING: MAKING SOMETHING OUT OF NOTHING - LIVE
July 5 to July 9, 2021
TUITION: $550
Where does a poem come from? How is a poem even made? Some of the world’s best poets sit down and ask themselves this daily. The blank page, the sound of nothing. How does one begin? In this workshop we’ll talk about how to call the poem to you, how to find what has been... more
THE ART OF CONJURING: MAKING SOMETHING OUT OF NOTHING - LIVE
July 5 to July 9, 2021
TUITION: $550
Where does a poem come from? How is a poem even made? Some of the world’s best poets sit down and ask themselves this daily. The blank page, the sound of nothing. How does one begin? In this workshop we’ll talk about how to call the poem to you, how to find what has been... more
Pam Houston
COMING BACK OUT OF THE DARK, BUT DIFFERENTLY: A GENERATIVE PROSE WORKSHOP - LIVE
July 5 to July 9, 2021
TUITION: $550
The year 2020 has changed us all in ways we are only beginning to understand, but one thing that is true about it, is we know so much more than we did a year ago, including how much we don’t know. In all of this learning, all of this seeing, in all of the reevaluation... more
COMING BACK OUT OF THE DARK, BUT DIFFERENTLY: A GENERATIVE PROSE WORKSHOP - LIVE
July 5 to July 9, 2021
TUITION: $550
The year 2020 has changed us all in ways we are only beginning to understand, but one thing that is true about it, is we know so much more than we did a year ago, including how much we don’t know. In all of this learning, all of this seeing, in all of the reevaluation... more
Peter Campion
GOING TO THE SOURCE: A POETRY WORKSHOP - LIVE
June 28 to July 2, 2021
TUITION: $550
Improve your poems by considering the art more fully, from the inside out. Our goal will be to find new sources for our poems. What inspires us to write? How can we cultivate those energies while discovering new opportunities for our poems? Explore the formal elements of poetry—action, voice, sentence, phrase, line, sound, and metaphor—that... more
GOING TO THE SOURCE: A POETRY WORKSHOP - LIVE
June 28 to July 2, 2021
TUITION: $550
Improve your poems by considering the art more fully, from the inside out. Our goal will be to find new sources for our poems. What inspires us to write? How can we cultivate those energies while discovering new opportunities for our poems? Explore the formal elements of poetry—action, voice, sentence, phrase, line, sound, and metaphor—that... more
Jonatha Brooke
SECRETS, LIES, AND THE ESSENTIAL TRUTHS: FINDING YOUR VOICE AS A PLAYWRIGHT - LIVE
June 28 to July 2, 2021
TUITION: $550
Develop your play or solo show. In this generative workshop, we will discuss character and story, timeline, arc. We’ll dig and deepen, explore new ways into your narrative through various exercises, including dialoguing. Gain practice in writing scenes through prompts and “quick and dirty” writing assignments. Receive feedback through workshop discussion. Hone the skills to... more
SECRETS, LIES, AND THE ESSENTIAL TRUTHS: FINDING YOUR VOICE AS A PLAYWRIGHT - LIVE
June 28 to July 2, 2021
TUITION: $550
Develop your play or solo show. In this generative workshop, we will discuss character and story, timeline, arc. We’ll dig and deepen, explore new ways into your narrative through various exercises, including dialoguing. Gain practice in writing scenes through prompts and “quick and dirty” writing assignments. Receive feedback through workshop discussion. Hone the skills to... more
Elissa Altman
TELLING YOUR STORY: PERMISSION & THE NEW MEMOIRIST - LIVE
June 28 to July 2, 2021
TUITION: $550
The human compulsion to tell our stories makes us who we are; the act of crafting them into engaging personal narrative elevates them beyond the abstract. But the writing of memoir often begins with the daunting questions of permission, story ownership, and intimacy, which together can keep the new memoirist from moving into a place... more
TELLING YOUR STORY: PERMISSION & THE NEW MEMOIRIST - LIVE
June 28 to July 2, 2021
TUITION: $550
The human compulsion to tell our stories makes us who we are; the act of crafting them into engaging personal narrative elevates them beyond the abstract. But the writing of memoir often begins with the daunting questions of permission, story ownership, and intimacy, which together can keep the new memoirist from moving into a place... more
Major Jackson
WRITING TO IMAGINE OURSELVES: A POETRY WORKSHOP - LIVE
June 21 to June 25, 2021
TUITION: $550
“I rhyme / to see myself, to set the darkness echoing.” –Seamus Heaney, “Personal Helicon” So much of writing poetry is a discovery and honoring of the self. When we are attentive and when we courageously listen to the spirit of our moment, we find the language that reveals who we are, how we imaginatively... more
WRITING TO IMAGINE OURSELVES: A POETRY WORKSHOP - LIVE
June 21 to June 25, 2021
TUITION: $550
“I rhyme / to see myself, to set the darkness echoing.” –Seamus Heaney, “Personal Helicon” So much of writing poetry is a discovery and honoring of the self. When we are attentive and when we courageously listen to the spirit of our moment, we find the language that reveals who we are, how we imaginatively... more
Kimiko Hahn
THE HYBRID POEM - LIVE
June 21 to June 25, 2021
TUITION: $550
The hybrid text is not new but the word and our regard for the multi-genre approach is relatively new. So, our opening questions are: how to begin and how to make meaningful choices without succumbing to a slap-dash, trendy-looking text? Other questions: What kinds of choices are there? How to even make choices? We will... more
THE HYBRID POEM - LIVE
June 21 to June 25, 2021
TUITION: $550
The hybrid text is not new but the word and our regard for the multi-genre approach is relatively new. So, our opening questions are: how to begin and how to make meaningful choices without succumbing to a slap-dash, trendy-looking text? Other questions: What kinds of choices are there? How to even make choices? We will... more
Reif Larsen
VOICE MATTERS: A FICTION WRITING WORKSHOP - LIVE
June 14 to June 18, 2021
TUITION: $550
We all know that feeling of encountering a strong narrative voice on the page. We are infected by its singularity, by its seduction, by its ruts and inconsistencies. But what, exactly, are the mechanics of a voice’s authority? As writers, how do we sweep up our readers inside the inexplicable, honeycombed mind of a character?... more
VOICE MATTERS: A FICTION WRITING WORKSHOP - LIVE
June 14 to June 18, 2021
TUITION: $550
We all know that feeling of encountering a strong narrative voice on the page. We are infected by its singularity, by its seduction, by its ruts and inconsistencies. But what, exactly, are the mechanics of a voice’s authority? As writers, how do we sweep up our readers inside the inexplicable, honeycombed mind of a character?... more
Tina Chang
HYBRID BEAST - LIVE
June 14 to June 18, 2021
TUITION: $550
The word hybrid comes from the Latin hybrida which means mongrel, a creature of mixed breed. The tradition of poetry is widening, drawing from many art forms, blending and fusing to create contemporary cross-pollinated forms. In this class we will explore the many ways in which poetry is increasingly a hybrid beast, as innovative and... more
HYBRID BEAST - LIVE
June 14 to June 18, 2021
TUITION: $550
The word hybrid comes from the Latin hybrida which means mongrel, a creature of mixed breed. The tradition of poetry is widening, drawing from many art forms, blending and fusing to create contemporary cross-pollinated forms. In this class we will explore the many ways in which poetry is increasingly a hybrid beast, as innovative and... more
Gabrielle Calvocoressi
WE’VE GOT YOU: A GENERATIVE WEEK OF POETIC POSSIBILITY AND COLLABORATION - LIVE
June 14 to June 18, 2021
TUITION: $550
When we are deeply on our own what are the ways we can reach out, open to, and create new connections and possibilities in our poems and our acts of making? And how might that help us to be more present in the larger world? In this entirely generative workshop we will work together in... more
WE’VE GOT YOU: A GENERATIVE WEEK OF POETIC POSSIBILITY AND COLLABORATION - LIVE
June 14 to June 18, 2021
TUITION: $550
When we are deeply on our own what are the ways we can reach out, open to, and create new connections and possibilities in our poems and our acts of making? And how might that help us to be more present in the larger world? In this entirely generative workshop we will work together in... more
Yi Shun Lai
Mirror Works, Window Works: Inclusivity in Writing and Reading
June 7 to July 2, 2021
TUITION: $550
ASYNCHRONOUS In this four-week course, writers will learn the value of reading inclusively. We’ll then put what we’ve learned by reading inclusive works to work by trying our hand at writing characters and narratives from cultures different from ours–sensitively, respectfully, and effectively. Using exercises drawn from Yi Shun’s life as a diversity, equity, and inclusion... more
Mirror Works, Window Works: Inclusivity in Writing and Reading
June 7 to July 2, 2021
TUITION: $550
ASYNCHRONOUS In this four-week course, writers will learn the value of reading inclusively. We’ll then put what we’ve learned by reading inclusive works to work by trying our hand at writing characters and narratives from cultures different from ours–sensitively, respectfully, and effectively. Using exercises drawn from Yi Shun’s life as a diversity, equity, and inclusion... more
Kristina Marie Darling
Perfecting the Book: A Workshop for Full-Length Poetry Manuscripts
June 7 to July 30, 2021
TUITION: $650
ASYNCHRONOUS This workshop will provide detailed feedback on individual poems, as well as offering students a variety of strategies for sequencing, structuring, sectioning, and titling a full-length poetry manuscript. We will glean insights about these elements of craft from a wide range of published collections, which include Julianna Baggott’s Lizzie Borden in Love, Lucie Brock... more
Perfecting the Book: A Workshop for Full-Length Poetry Manuscripts
June 7 to July 30, 2021
TUITION: $650
ASYNCHRONOUS This workshop will provide detailed feedback on individual poems, as well as offering students a variety of strategies for sequencing, structuring, sectioning, and titling a full-length poetry manuscript. We will glean insights about these elements of craft from a wide range of published collections, which include Julianna Baggott’s Lizzie Borden in Love, Lucie Brock... more
Campbell McGrath
POETRY & THE WORLD - LIVE
June 7 to June 11, 2021
TUITION: $550
Dynamic poems are grounded in the real world: language is rooted in the tongue, emotions stab at the heart, memories flash across a movie screen in the mind. Before we can mirror the world we need to see it clearly, and to capture it on the page entails the creation of concrete imagery, well-engineered syntax,... more
POETRY & THE WORLD - LIVE
June 7 to June 11, 2021
TUITION: $550
Dynamic poems are grounded in the real world: language is rooted in the tongue, emotions stab at the heart, memories flash across a movie screen in the mind. Before we can mirror the world we need to see it clearly, and to capture it on the page entails the creation of concrete imagery, well-engineered syntax,... more
Brian Turner
ALL THE WORLD IN 750 WORDS (OR LESS)! - LIVE
May 31 to June 4, 2021
TUITION: $550
In this week-long intensive, we’ll try our hand at a variety of approaches to creative nonfiction: from one sentence memoirs to what some might term ‘micro-nonfiction’ to essays spanning as far out as 750 words. Then we’ll look at ways to link short pieces together in order to form larger, cohesive, book-length meditations in language.... more
ALL THE WORLD IN 750 WORDS (OR LESS)! - LIVE
May 31 to June 4, 2021
TUITION: $550
In this week-long intensive, we’ll try our hand at a variety of approaches to creative nonfiction: from one sentence memoirs to what some might term ‘micro-nonfiction’ to essays spanning as far out as 750 words. Then we’ll look at ways to link short pieces together in order to form larger, cohesive, book-length meditations in language.... more
Susanna Sonnenberg
ENGAGING THE EXPERIENCE: MAKING MEANING IN MEMOIR - LIVE
May 31 to June 4, 2021
TUITION: $550
How do we turn “what happened” into a story? How do we shift through the sheer wealth of anecdote in a lived life and give it narrative purpose? Is “the truth” enough? In a confidential environment, we will examine what makes a story. This is a vigorous memoir workshop in which we will devote laser... more
ENGAGING THE EXPERIENCE: MAKING MEANING IN MEMOIR - LIVE
May 31 to June 4, 2021
TUITION: $550
How do we turn “what happened” into a story? How do we shift through the sheer wealth of anecdote in a lived life and give it narrative purpose? Is “the truth” enough? In a confidential environment, we will examine what makes a story. This is a vigorous memoir workshop in which we will devote laser... more
Alysia Abbott
WRITING THE FAMILY: A MEMOIR WORKSHOP - LIVE
May 24 to May 28, 2021
TUITION: $550
Leo Tolstoy famously said, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” In this week long workshop, we will explore the sticky particularities of our family stories and how best to convey them on the page. Each day will be devoted to a different craft topic that will improve... more
WRITING THE FAMILY: A MEMOIR WORKSHOP - LIVE
May 24 to May 28, 2021
TUITION: $550
Leo Tolstoy famously said, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” In this week long workshop, we will explore the sticky particularities of our family stories and how best to convey them on the page. Each day will be devoted to a different craft topic that will improve... more
Irina Reyn
Open That Drawer! Reviving the Stalled Novel
May 24 to May 28, 2021
TUITION: $500
ASYNCHRONOUS Many of us begin work on a novel in a frenzy of inspiration but there are many reasons for why an unfinished novel goes into a drawer: life gets in the way, the initial motivation peters out, we plot ourselves into a dead end or we simply lose confidence in the work. This intensive... more
Open That Drawer! Reviving the Stalled Novel
May 24 to May 28, 2021
TUITION: $500
ASYNCHRONOUS Many of us begin work on a novel in a frenzy of inspiration but there are many reasons for why an unfinished novel goes into a drawer: life gets in the way, the initial motivation peters out, we plot ourselves into a dead end or we simply lose confidence in the work. This intensive... more
Gabrielle Calvocoressi
We’ve Got You: A Generative Week Of Poetic Possibility and Collaboration - LIVE
May 24 to May 28, 2021
TUITION: $550
LIVE – SYNCHRONOUS When we are deeply on our own what are the ways we can reach out, open to, and create new connections and possibilities in our poems and our acts of making? And how might that help us to be more present in the larger world? In this entirely generative workshop we will... more
We’ve Got You: A Generative Week Of Poetic Possibility and Collaboration - LIVE
May 24 to May 28, 2021
TUITION: $550
LIVE – SYNCHRONOUS When we are deeply on our own what are the ways we can reach out, open to, and create new connections and possibilities in our poems and our acts of making? And how might that help us to be more present in the larger world? In this entirely generative workshop we will... more
Joan Wickersham
JUMP STARTS FOR COLD MORNINGS - LIVE
May 17 to May 21, 2021
TUITION: $550
Whether we’re writing memoir or fiction, we are always aiming for a story that feels true. How do we convey characters and situations in a way that is believable, fresh, and compelling? How do we free ourselves from what we think we’re supposed to be writing, and head for the sometimes scary – and always... more
JUMP STARTS FOR COLD MORNINGS - LIVE
May 17 to May 21, 2021
TUITION: $550
Whether we’re writing memoir or fiction, we are always aiming for a story that feels true. How do we convey characters and situations in a way that is believable, fresh, and compelling? How do we free ourselves from what we think we’re supposed to be writing, and head for the sometimes scary – and always... more
Rowan Ricardo Phillips
AFTER GREAT PAIN A FORMAL FEELING COMES: EXPLORING EXPERIENCE THROUGH POETIC FORM - LIVE
May 10 to May 14, 2021
TUITION: $550
This workshop will focus primarily on poetic form. We will explore not merely what these particular forms are but why, how and the often underdeveloped sense of when you may think to use them. This will involve our studying, in brief, the history of these forms, their strict and loose interpretations, and how your formal... more
AFTER GREAT PAIN A FORMAL FEELING COMES: EXPLORING EXPERIENCE THROUGH POETIC FORM - LIVE
May 10 to May 14, 2021
TUITION: $550
This workshop will focus primarily on poetic form. We will explore not merely what these particular forms are but why, how and the often underdeveloped sense of when you may think to use them. This will involve our studying, in brief, the history of these forms, their strict and loose interpretations, and how your formal... more
Ann Hood
FINDING THE STORY IN YOUR STORY: A MEMOIR WORKSHOP - LIVE
May 10 to May 14, 2021
TUITION: $550
Tara Westover said: “I think that when memoir goes wrong, it goes wrong from too much memory, too much detail. It’s about clearing all that away and just getting to the story.” This workshop will focus on clearing away what doesn’t belong and finding and writing the story you want to tell within the larger... more
FINDING THE STORY IN YOUR STORY: A MEMOIR WORKSHOP - LIVE
May 10 to May 14, 2021
TUITION: $550
Tara Westover said: “I think that when memoir goes wrong, it goes wrong from too much memory, too much detail. It’s about clearing all that away and just getting to the story.” This workshop will focus on clearing away what doesn’t belong and finding and writing the story you want to tell within the larger... more
Olivia Kate Cerrone
Designing Compelling Plots in Fiction
May 10 to June 4, 2021
TUITION: $550
ASYNCHRONOUS Like constructing the design of a house, great novels and short stories alike need strong, well-thought-out plot structures as the basis for establishing rich, compelling tales. How do writers design plots that are effective, absorbing and even entertaining without sacrificing character? That feel inevitable and surprising without becoming predictable or contrived? In this four-week... more
Designing Compelling Plots in Fiction
May 10 to June 4, 2021
TUITION: $550
ASYNCHRONOUS Like constructing the design of a house, great novels and short stories alike need strong, well-thought-out plot structures as the basis for establishing rich, compelling tales. How do writers design plots that are effective, absorbing and even entertaining without sacrificing character? That feel inevitable and surprising without becoming predictable or contrived? In this four-week... more
Amber Flora Thomas
The Poetry of Place: Erasures, Journeys, and Transformations on the Way to Home
May 10 to May 14, 2021
TUITION: $500
ASYNCHRONOUS This course will offer participants an opportunity to explore nature writing and environmental poetry through experimental forms and generate new work. Challenge what it means to be at home in a world experiencing intense climate change. Our journey in this course will be to work on poems where the personal intersects the universal. We... more
The Poetry of Place: Erasures, Journeys, and Transformations on the Way to Home
May 10 to May 14, 2021
TUITION: $500
ASYNCHRONOUS This course will offer participants an opportunity to explore nature writing and environmental poetry through experimental forms and generate new work. Challenge what it means to be at home in a world experiencing intense climate change. Our journey in this course will be to work on poems where the personal intersects the universal. We... more
Elissa Altman
Intimacy, Permission, and the Heart of the Story
May 10 to June 4, 2021
TUITION: $550
ASYNCHRONOUS with OPTIONAL LIVE ELEMENTS Annie Dillard once said You have to take pains not to hang on the reader’s arms, like a drunk, and say ‘And then I did this and it was so interesting.’ What is it, exactly, that makes personal narrative truly engaging? How do we navigate the mine-field of story ownership... more
Intimacy, Permission, and the Heart of the Story
May 10 to June 4, 2021
TUITION: $550
ASYNCHRONOUS with OPTIONAL LIVE ELEMENTS Annie Dillard once said You have to take pains not to hang on the reader’s arms, like a drunk, and say ‘And then I did this and it was so interesting.’ What is it, exactly, that makes personal narrative truly engaging? How do we navigate the mine-field of story ownership... more
Seema Reza
Breaking Open the World: Writing Fearless Memoir
May 10 to May 14, 2021
TUITION: $500
ASYNCHRONOUS CLASS with OPTIONAL LIVE ELEMENTS In this class we will write daily, building on a single topic that embodies a part of our memoir. We will experiment with form, timeline, point of view, and pacing to write lyrical memoir that is fresh, honest, and innovative. Each day students will be given writing prompts designed... more
Breaking Open the World: Writing Fearless Memoir
May 10 to May 14, 2021
TUITION: $500
ASYNCHRONOUS CLASS with OPTIONAL LIVE ELEMENTS In this class we will write daily, building on a single topic that embodies a part of our memoir. We will experiment with form, timeline, point of view, and pacing to write lyrical memoir that is fresh, honest, and innovative. Each day students will be given writing prompts designed... more
Traci Brimhall
BETWEEN WILDERNESS & CLARITY: TURNING YOUR TENSION - LIVE
May 3 to May 7, 2021
TUITION: $550
Every writer has their strengths, but we often tend to over-rely on what we already know we do well. In this workshop, we will focus more on how to create a balance of tension between clarity and wilderness, narrative and music, emotion and intellect. We will then use exercises to generate new work that tries... more
BETWEEN WILDERNESS & CLARITY: TURNING YOUR TENSION - LIVE
May 3 to May 7, 2021
TUITION: $550
Every writer has their strengths, but we often tend to over-rely on what we already know we do well. In this workshop, we will focus more on how to create a balance of tension between clarity and wilderness, narrative and music, emotion and intellect. We will then use exercises to generate new work that tries... more
Sophie Cabot Black
PAYING ATTENTION & REMEMBERING TO OPEN THE TOOLBOX: A POETRY WORKSHOP - LIVE
May 3 to May 7, 2021
TUITION: $550
In this class we will deepen our individual voices by listening to poems written during our time together and from other sources. By using exercises, deconstruction, and other strategies, you will come away better understanding what you do best, while at the same time having pushed your work into a broader reach. Meets: 12-2pm EST more
PAYING ATTENTION & REMEMBERING TO OPEN THE TOOLBOX: A POETRY WORKSHOP - LIVE
May 3 to May 7, 2021
TUITION: $550
In this class we will deepen our individual voices by listening to poems written during our time together and from other sources. By using exercises, deconstruction, and other strategies, you will come away better understanding what you do best, while at the same time having pushed your work into a broader reach. Meets: 12-2pm EST more
Grace Talusan
Outside In: Writing Inspired by Documents, Photographs, and Archives
May 3 to May 7, 2021
TUITION: $500
ASYNCHRONOUS with OPTIONAL LIVE ELEMENTS Spend a week on your writing by mining your photographs, documents, letters, or other papers as inspiration for daily writing exercises described in writing and posted on short videos. Using techniques the author used to write her award-winning memoir, The Body Papers, in this generative workshop, writers will use research... more
Outside In: Writing Inspired by Documents, Photographs, and Archives
May 3 to May 7, 2021
TUITION: $500
ASYNCHRONOUS with OPTIONAL LIVE ELEMENTS Spend a week on your writing by mining your photographs, documents, letters, or other papers as inspiration for daily writing exercises described in writing and posted on short videos. Using techniques the author used to write her award-winning memoir, The Body Papers, in this generative workshop, writers will use research... more
Tyler Mills
Radical Revision: Preparing Poems for Publication
May 3 to May 28, 2021
TUITION: $550
ASYNCHRONOUS with OPTIONAL LIVE ELEMENTS So you have a draft. What now? This class is geared to helping you rip open the seams of your poems and re-enter them with fresh eyes so that you can prepare them for publication this year. We will look at the revision process of poets like Allen Ginsberg, Elizabeth... more
Radical Revision: Preparing Poems for Publication
May 3 to May 28, 2021
TUITION: $550
ASYNCHRONOUS with OPTIONAL LIVE ELEMENTS So you have a draft. What now? This class is geared to helping you rip open the seams of your poems and re-enter them with fresh eyes so that you can prepare them for publication this year. We will look at the revision process of poets like Allen Ginsberg, Elizabeth... more
Peter Campion
Form From Feeling, Feeling From Form
May 3 to May 28, 2021
TUITION: $550
ASYNCHRONOUS with OPTIONAL LIVE ELEMENTS This class is for people who want to improve their poems, by understanding the art more fully, from the inside out. During our four weeks, we’ll explore seven formal elements—action, voice, sentence, phrase, line, sound, and metaphor—while generating our own new poems. I hope to give each student a better... more
Form From Feeling, Feeling From Form
May 3 to May 28, 2021
TUITION: $550
ASYNCHRONOUS with OPTIONAL LIVE ELEMENTS This class is for people who want to improve their poems, by understanding the art more fully, from the inside out. During our four weeks, we’ll explore seven formal elements—action, voice, sentence, phrase, line, sound, and metaphor—while generating our own new poems. I hope to give each student a better... more
Anne Sanow
Liftoff: Getting That Story Draft Moving
May 3 to May 28, 2021
TUITION: $550
ASYNCHRONOUS with OPTIONAL LIVE ELEMENTS Does the pandemic have you fiddling around with unfinished story fragments? Lacking some focus with your writing? This course is for you! “Liftoff” is a 4-week intensive writing workshop geared toward helping you make something happen. This spring, commit to getting that story idea out of your head and onto... more
Liftoff: Getting That Story Draft Moving
May 3 to May 28, 2021
TUITION: $550
ASYNCHRONOUS with OPTIONAL LIVE ELEMENTS Does the pandemic have you fiddling around with unfinished story fragments? Lacking some focus with your writing? This course is for you! “Liftoff” is a 4-week intensive writing workshop geared toward helping you make something happen. This spring, commit to getting that story idea out of your head and onto... more
Joanne Dugan
Writing Pictures: an Exploration of Text & Image
April 26 to May 21, 2021
TUITION: $550
ASYNCHRONOUS with OPTIONAL LIVE ELEMENTS It’s been said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Yet the addition of photographs to text yields surprising results that can greatly deepen the impact of poetry, narrative and other written forms. The text/image form, as described by artist Duane Michals exists “not to tell you what you... more
Writing Pictures: an Exploration of Text & Image
April 26 to May 21, 2021
TUITION: $550
ASYNCHRONOUS with OPTIONAL LIVE ELEMENTS It’s been said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Yet the addition of photographs to text yields surprising results that can greatly deepen the impact of poetry, narrative and other written forms. The text/image form, as described by artist Duane Michals exists “not to tell you what you... more
Fred Marchant
Water, Fire, Earth, and Air
April 26 to May 21, 2021
TUITION: $550
ASYNCHRONOUS with OPTIONAL LIVE ELEMENTS In many ancient cultures, all matter was said to consist of four elements: water, fire, earth, and air. In our four-week, generative workshop, we’ll read, discuss, and write poetry related to these four elements. Focusing on one of these elements each week, there will be craft-lectures on how and why... more
Water, Fire, Earth, and Air
April 26 to May 21, 2021
TUITION: $550
ASYNCHRONOUS with OPTIONAL LIVE ELEMENTS In many ancient cultures, all matter was said to consist of four elements: water, fire, earth, and air. In our four-week, generative workshop, we’ll read, discuss, and write poetry related to these four elements. Focusing on one of these elements each week, there will be craft-lectures on how and why... more
Daisy Fried
You Can Translate Too! No Experience Required!
April 19 to May 14, 2021
TUITION: $550
ASYNCHRONOUS with LIVE ELEMENTS Has it been hard for you to write in the past year or so? Me too—the blank page has gotten even more daunting than before. Let’s get to new poems another way. Many of us read translations or, ourselves, translate, because we love the original, and want to spread the word... more
You Can Translate Too! No Experience Required!
April 19 to May 14, 2021
TUITION: $550
ASYNCHRONOUS with LIVE ELEMENTS Has it been hard for you to write in the past year or so? Me too—the blank page has gotten even more daunting than before. Let’s get to new poems another way. Many of us read translations or, ourselves, translate, because we love the original, and want to spread the word... more
Sandra Beasley
Mapping Your Memoir from Start to Finish
April 19 to June 11, 2021
TUITION: $650
ASYNCHRONOUS with OPTIONAL LIVE ELEMENTS What begins with “I have a story to tell” can soon feel unwieldy in terms of structuring a narrative, creating scenes, and adding factual depth. This class helps you create an action plan for getting your memoir or memoir-in-essays written, resulting in an annotated outline that can be used both... more
Mapping Your Memoir from Start to Finish
April 19 to June 11, 2021
TUITION: $650
ASYNCHRONOUS with OPTIONAL LIVE ELEMENTS What begins with “I have a story to tell” can soon feel unwieldy in terms of structuring a narrative, creating scenes, and adding factual depth. This class helps you create an action plan for getting your memoir or memoir-in-essays written, resulting in an annotated outline that can be used both... more
Kim Addonizio
Introduction to the Sonnet - LIVE
April 19 to April 23, 2021
TUITION: $550
LIVE – SYNCHRONOUS As a free verse poet, do you feel a bit…insecure…when it comes to meter, rhyme schemes, and that ubiquitous form known as the sonnet? This your chance to learn—or relearn—the rules, essence, and possibilities of this versatile and ever-evolving form. We’ll be starting from square one, exploring a bit of the history... more
Introduction to the Sonnet - LIVE
April 19 to April 23, 2021
TUITION: $550
LIVE – SYNCHRONOUS As a free verse poet, do you feel a bit…insecure…when it comes to meter, rhyme schemes, and that ubiquitous form known as the sonnet? This your chance to learn—or relearn—the rules, essence, and possibilities of this versatile and ever-evolving form. We’ll be starting from square one, exploring a bit of the history... more
Nickole Brown
Ostranenie: Poetry as a Practice of Awareness - LIVE
April 19 to April 23, 2021
TUITION: $550
LIVE – SYNCHRONOUS If we are all telling the same stories of love and sex and death, how can we write something new? And with so much of our lives spent online, how can we keep from writing disembodied, flat lines? The answer might not lie in writing about something completely different (if that’s even... more
Ostranenie: Poetry as a Practice of Awareness - LIVE
April 19 to April 23, 2021
TUITION: $550
LIVE – SYNCHRONOUS If we are all telling the same stories of love and sex and death, how can we write something new? And with so much of our lives spent online, how can we keep from writing disembodied, flat lines? The answer might not lie in writing about something completely different (if that’s even... more
Curtis Bauer
Writing the Event: A Generative Poetry Workshop
April 19 to April 23, 2021
TUITION: $500
ASYNCHRONOUS with OPTIONAL LIVE ELEMENTS “Everything is an event for those who know how to tremble…” wrote the French poet and judge Jean Follain (translated here by Heather McHugh). Too often we are at a loss for what to write about, thinking that our subjects must be grand or address some supreme truth. However, the... more
Writing the Event: A Generative Poetry Workshop
April 19 to April 23, 2021
TUITION: $500
ASYNCHRONOUS with OPTIONAL LIVE ELEMENTS “Everything is an event for those who know how to tremble…” wrote the French poet and judge Jean Follain (translated here by Heather McHugh). Too often we are at a loss for what to write about, thinking that our subjects must be grand or address some supreme truth. However, the... more
Susanna Sonnenberg
Time to Tell: A Memoir Workshop
April 12 to May 7, 2021
TUITION: $550
ASYNCHRONOUS with OPTIONAL LIVE ELEMENTS In “Time to Tell” we will focus on the personal history that has, for whatever reason, been subdued or suppressed. We will work with generative prompts to find a starting point or to expand the stories you have already begun to write. We will discuss the natural obstacles for the... more
Time to Tell: A Memoir Workshop
April 12 to May 7, 2021
TUITION: $550
ASYNCHRONOUS with OPTIONAL LIVE ELEMENTS In “Time to Tell” we will focus on the personal history that has, for whatever reason, been subdued or suppressed. We will work with generative prompts to find a starting point or to expand the stories you have already begun to write. We will discuss the natural obstacles for the... more
Ann Hood
Writing the Personal Essay
April 12 to May 7, 2021
TUITION: $550
ASYNCHRONOUS Each week will begin with my introduction of a topic for that week’s memoir assignment. Topics will include Food, Place, Love, and Loss. I will email you examples from writers I admire such as Jonathan Lethem, JoAnn Beard, Cheryl Strayed, and Tony Early and discuss how they have accomplished writing these strong essays. How... more
Writing the Personal Essay
April 12 to May 7, 2021
TUITION: $550
ASYNCHRONOUS Each week will begin with my introduction of a topic for that week’s memoir assignment. Topics will include Food, Place, Love, and Loss. I will email you examples from writers I admire such as Jonathan Lethem, JoAnn Beard, Cheryl Strayed, and Tony Early and discuss how they have accomplished writing these strong essays. How... more
Jessica Jacobs
Turn It and Turn It: Exploring Questions of Spirituality & Religion Through Poetry
April 12 to May 7, 2021
TUITION: $550
ASYNCHRONOUS with OPTIONAL LIVE ELEMENTS “Turn it and turn it for all is within it,” said rabbinic sage Ben Bag-Bag about the Torah. Yet these words can speak to all religious texts and practices. For whether or not we believe in a religious tradition of our own, there we find the stories and rituals, commandments... more
Turn It and Turn It: Exploring Questions of Spirituality & Religion Through Poetry
April 12 to May 7, 2021
TUITION: $550
ASYNCHRONOUS with OPTIONAL LIVE ELEMENTS “Turn it and turn it for all is within it,” said rabbinic sage Ben Bag-Bag about the Torah. Yet these words can speak to all religious texts and practices. For whether or not we believe in a religious tradition of our own, there we find the stories and rituals, commandments... more
Workshop for Admin Use
February 8 to February 12, 2021
TUITION: $400
This workshop is for administrative use. Thank you! more
Nick Flynn
Memoir as Bewilderment (24PearlStreet LIVE)
August 24 to August 28, 2020
TUITION: $500
In The Unnamable, Beckett offers this: “Dear incomprehension, it’s thanks to you I’ll be myself in the end.” In our week together, I would like to examine this idea by thinking about the concept of “bewilderment” and how it gets acted out in our writing—either through syntax, our accessing the duende, leaps into the unconscious,... more
Memoir as Bewilderment (24PearlStreet LIVE)
August 24 to August 28, 2020
TUITION: $500
In The Unnamable, Beckett offers this: “Dear incomprehension, it’s thanks to you I’ll be myself in the end.” In our week together, I would like to examine this idea by thinking about the concept of “bewilderment” and how it gets acted out in our writing—either through syntax, our accessing the duende, leaps into the unconscious,... more
Victoria Redel
Possibilities & Necessities: A Fiction Workshop (24PearlStreet LIVE)
August 10 to August 14, 2020
TUITION: $500
This workshop focuses on possibilities within a work of fiction—what are the possibilities and limitations found in choices of narrative point of view, syntax, time, memory, story structure, sentences, omission, openings, closure, objects, dialogue, and a narrative’s leaps and speed. How do we clear away obvious ways of sounding on the page in order to... more
Possibilities & Necessities: A Fiction Workshop (24PearlStreet LIVE)
August 10 to August 14, 2020
TUITION: $500
This workshop focuses on possibilities within a work of fiction—what are the possibilities and limitations found in choices of narrative point of view, syntax, time, memory, story structure, sentences, omission, openings, closure, objects, dialogue, and a narrative’s leaps and speed. How do we clear away obvious ways of sounding on the page in order to... more
Paul Lisicky
On Urgency: A Memoir and Creative Nonfiction Workshop
August 10 to August 14, 2020
TUITION: $400
What does it mean to write memoir and creative nonfiction in 2020? How to write out of our personal urgency while also asking questions about community, survival, isolation, and power—all that is wrong with the world and all we’d like to make better? How does it feel to be alive right now? We’ll think about... more
On Urgency: A Memoir and Creative Nonfiction Workshop
August 10 to August 14, 2020
TUITION: $400
What does it mean to write memoir and creative nonfiction in 2020? How to write out of our personal urgency while also asking questions about community, survival, isolation, and power—all that is wrong with the world and all we’d like to make better? How does it feel to be alive right now? We’ll think about... more
Tyler Mills
Poems that Travel – A Writing Residency at Home
August 10 to August 14, 2020
TUITION: $400
Have you ever thought, “I’d love to do a writing residency, but I don’t have time, or am not able to travel right now?” Or maybe you’ve thought, “I want to get a lot done, but don’t want to write in isolation!” This is a friendly, but rigorous, community-based, one-week summer course you can take... more
Poems that Travel – A Writing Residency at Home
August 10 to August 14, 2020
TUITION: $400
Have you ever thought, “I’d love to do a writing residency, but I don’t have time, or am not able to travel right now?” Or maybe you’ve thought, “I want to get a lot done, but don’t want to write in isolation!” This is a friendly, but rigorous, community-based, one-week summer course you can take... more
Traci Brimhall
The Body Electric: Pleasure & Pain in Poetry
August 3 to August 28, 2020
TUITION: $500
Whitman celebrated and sang the body and all its atoms. Woolf asked why, if illness is so common and the spirit so changed, it didn’t take its place among the major themes of literature. In this class we will look at poems about the body and its changes, its aging, its pleasures, and its struggles.... more
The Body Electric: Pleasure & Pain in Poetry
August 3 to August 28, 2020
TUITION: $500
Whitman celebrated and sang the body and all its atoms. Woolf asked why, if illness is so common and the spirit so changed, it didn’t take its place among the major themes of literature. In this class we will look at poems about the body and its changes, its aging, its pleasures, and its struggles.... more
T Kira Madden
The Self, The Selves: A Memoir Workshop
August 3 to August 7, 2020
TUITION: $500
How do we take the sprawl of our lives and distill the right moments to deliver that umph of the most effective stories? How do we magnify the electricity in the mundane? This generative workshop will focus on isolation and compression, on finding narrative “heat” in our memories, our selves, and all the selves we’ve... more
The Self, The Selves: A Memoir Workshop
August 3 to August 7, 2020
TUITION: $500
How do we take the sprawl of our lives and distill the right moments to deliver that umph of the most effective stories? How do we magnify the electricity in the mundane? This generative workshop will focus on isolation and compression, on finding narrative “heat” in our memories, our selves, and all the selves we’ve... more
Sabrina Orah Mark
Writing into the Silences: A Multi-Genre Workshop
August 3 to August 28, 2020
TUITION: $500
“It is true that each self keeps a secret self that cannot speak when spoken to.” – Lucie Brock-Broido In this workshop we will write into those places where we have always gone mute, or muffled, or still. We will find language for those feral places, those places that have only known howl or holler... more
Writing into the Silences: A Multi-Genre Workshop
August 3 to August 28, 2020
TUITION: $500
“It is true that each self keeps a secret self that cannot speak when spoken to.” – Lucie Brock-Broido In this workshop we will write into those places where we have always gone mute, or muffled, or still. We will find language for those feral places, those places that have only known howl or holler... more
Peter Campion
Form from Feeling and Feeling from Form
August 3 to August 28, 2020
TUITION: $500
This class is for people who want to improve their poems, by understanding the art more fully, from the inside out. During our four weeks, we’ll explore seven formal elements—action, voice, sentence, phrase, line, sound, and metaphor—while generating our own new poems. I hope to give each student a better feeling for how formal elements... more
Form from Feeling and Feeling from Form
August 3 to August 28, 2020
TUITION: $500
This class is for people who want to improve their poems, by understanding the art more fully, from the inside out. During our four weeks, we’ll explore seven formal elements—action, voice, sentence, phrase, line, sound, and metaphor—while generating our own new poems. I hope to give each student a better feeling for how formal elements... more
Kim Addonizio
The Art of the Short Poem
August 3 to August 28, 2020
TUITION: $500
Why write short poems? They’re fun.They’re challenging. They help you to be concise and get to the heart of what you want to say, and to dive deep. They enable a more detailed critique of their language. We’re going to look at and discuss the structure and language of short pieces, from haiku-inspired American Sentences... more
The Art of the Short Poem
August 3 to August 28, 2020
TUITION: $500
Why write short poems? They’re fun.They’re challenging. They help you to be concise and get to the heart of what you want to say, and to dive deep. They enable a more detailed critique of their language. We’re going to look at and discuss the structure and language of short pieces, from haiku-inspired American Sentences... more
Anne Sanow
Liftoff: Beginning That Story Draft
July 27 to August 21, 2020
TUITION: $500
Good stories start from vague ideas, character sketches, images, seemingly random thoughts, odd bits of language and rhythm. But how to put these into motion to get a story started—and moving forward? This summer, commit to getting that story idea out of your head and onto the page. “Liftoff” is a 4-week intensive writing workshop... more
Liftoff: Beginning That Story Draft
July 27 to August 21, 2020
TUITION: $500
Good stories start from vague ideas, character sketches, images, seemingly random thoughts, odd bits of language and rhythm. But how to put these into motion to get a story started—and moving forward? This summer, commit to getting that story idea out of your head and onto the page. “Liftoff” is a 4-week intensive writing workshop... more
Marion Winik
Memoir Boot Camp
July 20 to July 24, 2020
TUITION: $400
The week is devoted to generating new memoir material using approaches that may be a little different than what you may have tried before. Through a series of focused prompts and exercises, you will practice writing vividly detailed creative nonfiction that relies on both memory and imagination, and delivers both situation and story (if possible,... more
Memoir Boot Camp
July 20 to July 24, 2020
TUITION: $400
The week is devoted to generating new memoir material using approaches that may be a little different than what you may have tried before. Through a series of focused prompts and exercises, you will practice writing vividly detailed creative nonfiction that relies on both memory and imagination, and delivers both situation and story (if possible,... more
Sarah Schulman
Fiction & Nonfiction Workshop (24PearlStreet Live)
July 13 to July 17, 2020
TUITION: $500
A craft-based workshop for fiction and non-fiction writers on ALL levels: from true beginner to the multiply published, working on witnessing our extraordinary time, expressing the experience of living now in the context of others, and representing these experiences through the eyes of people who are often ignored or distorted in mainstream media. All are... more
Fiction & Nonfiction Workshop (24PearlStreet Live)
July 13 to July 17, 2020
TUITION: $500
A craft-based workshop for fiction and non-fiction writers on ALL levels: from true beginner to the multiply published, working on witnessing our extraordinary time, expressing the experience of living now in the context of others, and representing these experiences through the eyes of people who are often ignored or distorted in mainstream media. All are... more
Elissa Altman
Intimacy, Permission, & the Heart of the Story
July 13 to August 7, 2020
TUITION: $500
Annie Dillard once said You have to take pains not to hang on the reader’s arms, like a drunk, and say ‘And then I did this and it was so interesting.’ What is it, exactly, that makes personal narrative truly engaging? How do we navigate the mine-field of story ownership and permission-to-write when crafting a... more
Intimacy, Permission, & the Heart of the Story
July 13 to August 7, 2020
TUITION: $500
Annie Dillard once said You have to take pains not to hang on the reader’s arms, like a drunk, and say ‘And then I did this and it was so interesting.’ What is it, exactly, that makes personal narrative truly engaging? How do we navigate the mine-field of story ownership and permission-to-write when crafting a... more
Susanna Sonnenberg
Engaging the Experience: Making Meaning in Memoir
July 6 to July 31, 2020
TUITION: $500
How do we turn “what happened” into a story? How do we shift through the sheer wealth of anecdote in a lived life and give it narrative purpose? Is “the truth” enough? This is a vigorous memoir workshop in which we devote laser focus to the tools and techniques of good writing in the service... more
Engaging the Experience: Making Meaning in Memoir
July 6 to July 31, 2020
TUITION: $500
How do we turn “what happened” into a story? How do we shift through the sheer wealth of anecdote in a lived life and give it narrative purpose? Is “the truth” enough? This is a vigorous memoir workshop in which we devote laser focus to the tools and techniques of good writing in the service... more
Pam Houston
Writing Your Best Short Story/Short Autofiction/Personal Essay in One Month
July 6 to July 31, 2020
TUITION: $500
Write your single best short story or personal essay (or short auto fiction, if you, like me, often shoot the gap between) in one month’s time. In this class we will begin with collecting glimmers. The concrete physical details, the resonant bits of dialogue, the scenes that feel a little like a bruise when you... more
Writing Your Best Short Story/Short Autofiction/Personal Essay in One Month
July 6 to July 31, 2020
TUITION: $500
Write your single best short story or personal essay (or short auto fiction, if you, like me, often shoot the gap between) in one month’s time. In this class we will begin with collecting glimmers. The concrete physical details, the resonant bits of dialogue, the scenes that feel a little like a bruise when you... more
Laura van den Berg
The Blazing Thing: A Fiction Workshop
July 6 to July 10, 2020
TUITION: $400
In an interview, Stephen Millhauser once spoke of “the blazing thing that deserves the name of reality.” In this workshop, each of you will be encouraged to go in search of your own “blazing thing.” In addition to workshop critique, the class will offer craft lectures/lessons; discussions about process and practice; and generative exercises, so... more
The Blazing Thing: A Fiction Workshop
July 6 to July 10, 2020
TUITION: $400
In an interview, Stephen Millhauser once spoke of “the blazing thing that deserves the name of reality.” In this workshop, each of you will be encouraged to go in search of your own “blazing thing.” In addition to workshop critique, the class will offer craft lectures/lessons; discussions about process and practice; and generative exercises, so... more
Brian Turner
Connecting the Personal to the Political: A Memoir Workshop
July 6 to July 31, 2020
TUITION: $500
In this workshop, we’ll be in conversation with journalists and global thinkers struggling to make sense of the events of our time. As we work on our own personal memoirs, we’ll explore ways to connect the large-scale and public experiences with our own life journeys. This is an interactive course—and I will arrange for us... more
Connecting the Personal to the Political: A Memoir Workshop
July 6 to July 31, 2020
TUITION: $500
In this workshop, we’ll be in conversation with journalists and global thinkers struggling to make sense of the events of our time. As we work on our own personal memoirs, we’ll explore ways to connect the large-scale and public experiences with our own life journeys. This is an interactive course—and I will arrange for us... more
Jill Talbot
The Form of the Flash: An Essay Workshop
July 6 to July 31, 2020
TUITION: $500
Compression, concision, complexity—the flash essay, like standing on a train platform in the moment of the last car’s passing. Or maybe it’s more quiet, like the last chime of a clock’s hour strike. In this class, you’ll study essays by established writers (Jaquira Díaz, Paul Lisicky, Lee Martin, Brenda Miller, Ira Sukrungruang) as well as... more
The Form of the Flash: An Essay Workshop
July 6 to July 31, 2020
TUITION: $500
Compression, concision, complexity—the flash essay, like standing on a train platform in the moment of the last car’s passing. Or maybe it’s more quiet, like the last chime of a clock’s hour strike. In this class, you’ll study essays by established writers (Jaquira Díaz, Paul Lisicky, Lee Martin, Brenda Miller, Ira Sukrungruang) as well as... more
Fred Marchant
Water Flowing All Around: The Poetry of Oceans, Tides, Currents, Rivers, Creeks, and Streams
July 6 to July 10, 2020
TUITION: $400
During the Covid-19 health crisis, I spent many an afternoon going for walks, staying 6 feet apart from others who were doing the same thing. I often found myself drawn to walking beside the Charles River near where I live. Somehow the water flowing downstream seemed a reassuring counterbalance to the dangers and fears we’d... more
Water Flowing All Around: The Poetry of Oceans, Tides, Currents, Rivers, Creeks, and Streams
July 6 to July 10, 2020
TUITION: $400
During the Covid-19 health crisis, I spent many an afternoon going for walks, staying 6 feet apart from others who were doing the same thing. I often found myself drawn to walking beside the Charles River near where I live. Somehow the water flowing downstream seemed a reassuring counterbalance to the dangers and fears we’d... more
Kristina Marie Darling
Perfecting the Book: A Workshop for Full-Length Poetry Manuscripts
July 6 to August 28, 2020
TUITION: $600
This workshop will provide detailed feedback on individual poems, as well as offering students a variety of strategies for sequencing, structuring, sectioning, and titling a full-length poetry manuscript. We will glean insights about these elements of craft from a wide range of published collections, which include Julianna Baggott’s Lizzie Borden in Love, Lucie Brock Broido’s... more
Perfecting the Book: A Workshop for Full-Length Poetry Manuscripts
July 6 to August 28, 2020
TUITION: $600
This workshop will provide detailed feedback on individual poems, as well as offering students a variety of strategies for sequencing, structuring, sectioning, and titling a full-length poetry manuscript. We will glean insights about these elements of craft from a wide range of published collections, which include Julianna Baggott’s Lizzie Borden in Love, Lucie Brock Broido’s... more
Sarah Rose Nordgren
What's the Big Idea? Writing Ambitious Poems in Times of Uncertainty
June 29 to July 24, 2020
TUITION: $500
How can poetry help us to process and respond to uncertainty? How might it teach us to grieve as well as heal? To counter isolation with connection? To generate energy and urgency around the crucial problems of our time? Poised, as so many of us are, between information-overload and a feeling of powerlessness in the... more
What's the Big Idea? Writing Ambitious Poems in Times of Uncertainty
June 29 to July 24, 2020
TUITION: $500
How can poetry help us to process and respond to uncertainty? How might it teach us to grieve as well as heal? To counter isolation with connection? To generate energy and urgency around the crucial problems of our time? Poised, as so many of us are, between information-overload and a feeling of powerlessness in the... more
Reif Larsen
Voice Matters: A Fiction Writing Workshop
June 22 to July 17, 2020
TUITION: $500
We all know that feeling of encountering a strong narrative voice on the page. We are infected by its singularity, by its seduction, by its ruts and inconsistencies. But what, exactly, are the mechanics of a voice’s authority? As writers, how do we sweep up our readers inside the inexplicable, honeycombed mind of a character?... more
Voice Matters: A Fiction Writing Workshop
June 22 to July 17, 2020
TUITION: $500
We all know that feeling of encountering a strong narrative voice on the page. We are infected by its singularity, by its seduction, by its ruts and inconsistencies. But what, exactly, are the mechanics of a voice’s authority? As writers, how do we sweep up our readers inside the inexplicable, honeycombed mind of a character?... more
Mark Wunderlich
Neighboring Solitudes: The Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke as Generative Sources for Poems
June 22 to July 17, 2020
TUITION: $500
In this workshop, we will write poems based on some of the major themes present in the poems of the great German-language Modernist poet Rainer Maria Rilke. As a poet and thinker Rilke returned to a handful of ideas which he incorporated into his poems over many years. During our time together, we will look... more
Neighboring Solitudes: The Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke as Generative Sources for Poems
June 22 to July 17, 2020
TUITION: $500
In this workshop, we will write poems based on some of the major themes present in the poems of the great German-language Modernist poet Rainer Maria Rilke. As a poet and thinker Rilke returned to a handful of ideas which he incorporated into his poems over many years. During our time together, we will look... more
Leila Chatti
Praise in Hard Times: A Poetry Workshop
June 15 to July 10, 2020
TUITION: $500
“Come, seereal flowersof this painful world.”– Basho It can be difficult, in these trying times, to make space for praise, or to notice the occasion for it. It is easy to believe it, even, selfish. (“Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home,” writes Szymborska.) But to find in dark times things to praise is... more
Praise in Hard Times: A Poetry Workshop
June 15 to July 10, 2020
TUITION: $500
“Come, seereal flowersof this painful world.”– Basho It can be difficult, in these trying times, to make space for praise, or to notice the occasion for it. It is easy to believe it, even, selfish. (“Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home,” writes Szymborska.) But to find in dark times things to praise is... more
Ann Hood
Writing the Personal Essay
June 15 to July 10, 2020
TUITION: $500
Each week will begin with my introduction of a topic for that week’s memoir assignment. Topics will include Food, Place, Love, and Loss. I will email you examples from writers I admire such as Jonathan Lethem, JoAnn Beard, Cheryl Strayed, and Tony Early and discuss how they have accomplished writing these strong essays. How did... more
Writing the Personal Essay
June 15 to July 10, 2020
TUITION: $500
Each week will begin with my introduction of a topic for that week’s memoir assignment. Topics will include Food, Place, Love, and Loss. I will email you examples from writers I admire such as Jonathan Lethem, JoAnn Beard, Cheryl Strayed, and Tony Early and discuss how they have accomplished writing these strong essays. How did... more
Ada Limón
The Art of Nothing: A Generative Poetry Workshop
June 8 to July 3, 2020
TUITION: $500
Everyone is terrified of the blank page. Perhaps we are even more scared of it now during the pandemic. What is there left to say? What is even worthy of a poem or my time or my focus? The idea of writing is often harder than the writing itself. In this 4-week course, we’ll focus... more
The Art of Nothing: A Generative Poetry Workshop
June 8 to July 3, 2020
TUITION: $500
Everyone is terrified of the blank page. Perhaps we are even more scared of it now during the pandemic. What is there left to say? What is even worthy of a poem or my time or my focus? The idea of writing is often harder than the writing itself. In this 4-week course, we’ll focus... more
Nancy Pearson
15 Works
June 8 to July 3, 2020
TUITION: $500
This four week poetry workshop is based on a class taught at the former Corcoran School of Art. In “15 Works,” you’ll write 3 to 4 poems a week in response to assignments and prompts, with weekly themes. Comments on one another’s poems will be limited to one poem per week unless you’d like to... more
15 Works
June 8 to July 3, 2020
TUITION: $500
This four week poetry workshop is based on a class taught at the former Corcoran School of Art. In “15 Works,” you’ll write 3 to 4 poems a week in response to assignments and prompts, with weekly themes. Comments on one another’s poems will be limited to one poem per week unless you’d like to... more
Rowan Ricardo Phillips
After Great Pain A Formal Feeling Comes: Exploring Experience Through Poetic Form
June 8 to June 12, 2020
TUITION: $400
This workshop will focus primarily on poetic form. We will explore not merely what these particular forms are but why, how and the often underdeveloped sense of when you may think to use them. This will involve our studying, in brief, the history of these forms, their strict and loose interpretations, and how your formal... more
After Great Pain A Formal Feeling Comes: Exploring Experience Through Poetic Form
June 8 to June 12, 2020
TUITION: $400
This workshop will focus primarily on poetic form. We will explore not merely what these particular forms are but why, how and the often underdeveloped sense of when you may think to use them. This will involve our studying, in brief, the history of these forms, their strict and loose interpretations, and how your formal... more
Joanne Dugan
Writing Pictures: Embracing Uncertainty through Text & Photography
June 8 to July 3, 2020
TUITION: $500
It’s been said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Yet the addition of photographs to text yields surprising juxtapositions that can greatly deepen the impact of poetry, narrative and other written forms. Or, as Theodor Geisel said, “Words and pictures are yin and yang. Married, they produce a progeny more interesting than either... more
Writing Pictures: Embracing Uncertainty through Text & Photography
June 8 to July 3, 2020
TUITION: $500
It’s been said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Yet the addition of photographs to text yields surprising juxtapositions that can greatly deepen the impact of poetry, narrative and other written forms. Or, as Theodor Geisel said, “Words and pictures are yin and yang. Married, they produce a progeny more interesting than either... more
Traci Brimhall
The Body Electric: Pleasure & Pain in Poetry
June 8 to July 3, 2020
TUITION: $500
Whitman celebrated and sang the body and all its atoms. Woolf asked why, if illness is so common and the spirit so changed, it didn’t take its place among the major themes of literature. In this class we will look at poems about the body and its changes, its aging, its pleasures, and its struggles.... more
The Body Electric: Pleasure & Pain in Poetry
June 8 to July 3, 2020
TUITION: $500
Whitman celebrated and sang the body and all its atoms. Woolf asked why, if illness is so common and the spirit so changed, it didn’t take its place among the major themes of literature. In this class we will look at poems about the body and its changes, its aging, its pleasures, and its struggles.... more
Erin Adair-Hodges
Fail Up--: A Poetry Workshop
June 8 to July 3, 2020
TUITION: $500
What often keeps our competent poems from becoming captivating ones is a fear of failure, an instinctual aversion to risk. In this class, we’ll work at unlearning this impulse, priming ourselves to jump headlong into what we’ve previously side-stepped. We’ll look at poems that risk embarrassment, shame, and censure and create our own pieces that... more
Fail Up--: A Poetry Workshop
June 8 to July 3, 2020
TUITION: $500
What often keeps our competent poems from becoming captivating ones is a fear of failure, an instinctual aversion to risk. In this class, we’ll work at unlearning this impulse, priming ourselves to jump headlong into what we’ve previously side-stepped. We’ll look at poems that risk embarrassment, shame, and censure and create our own pieces that... more
Kristina Marie Darling
The Fine Art of Application Writing: How to Successfully Apply for Residencies, Fellowships, and Grants
June 8 to July 3, 2020
TUITION: $500
This workshop will walk students through the basics of writing convincing and persuasive applications to fellowships, residencies, grants, and other opportunities. We will address such topics as crafting personal statements, writing compelling project proposals, choosing the writing sample, and compiling your dossier as a whole. Students will leave the workshop with a packet of resources... more
The Fine Art of Application Writing: How to Successfully Apply for Residencies, Fellowships, and Grants
June 8 to July 3, 2020
TUITION: $500
This workshop will walk students through the basics of writing convincing and persuasive applications to fellowships, residencies, grants, and other opportunities. We will address such topics as crafting personal statements, writing compelling project proposals, choosing the writing sample, and compiling your dossier as a whole. Students will leave the workshop with a packet of resources... more
Sandra Beasley
Mapping Your Memoir from Start to Finish
June 8 to July 31, 2020
TUITION: $600
What begins with “I have a story to tell” can soon feel unwieldy in terms of structuring a narrative, creating scenes, and adding factual depth. This class helps you create an action plan for getting your memoir written. Week by week, we’ll discuss the key elements: where to begin and end, identifying core conflicts, developing... more
Mapping Your Memoir from Start to Finish
June 8 to July 31, 2020
TUITION: $600
What begins with “I have a story to tell” can soon feel unwieldy in terms of structuring a narrative, creating scenes, and adding factual depth. This class helps you create an action plan for getting your memoir written. Week by week, we’ll discuss the key elements: where to begin and end, identifying core conflicts, developing... more
Tyler Mills
Community and Compassion: Finding Ourselves Through Us, You, and We
June 8 to July 31, 2020
TUITION: $600
Social isolation is so hard. Period. In these times, loving others means staying away. This is a compassionate workshop that is focused on community, care, and light where you will write new poems based off of prompts while we look at the ways poets like Mary Oliver, Stanley Plumly, Gwendolyn Brooks, Joy Harjo, Walt Whitman,... more
Community and Compassion: Finding Ourselves Through Us, You, and We
June 8 to July 31, 2020
TUITION: $600
Social isolation is so hard. Period. In these times, loving others means staying away. This is a compassionate workshop that is focused on community, care, and light where you will write new poems based off of prompts while we look at the ways poets like Mary Oliver, Stanley Plumly, Gwendolyn Brooks, Joy Harjo, Walt Whitman,... more
Kim Addonizio
The Art of the Short Poem
February 3 to February 28, 2020
TUITION: $500
Why write short poems? They’re fun.They’re challenging. They help you to be concise and get to the heart of what you want to say, and to dive deep. They enable a more detailed critique of their language. We’re going to look at and discuss the structure and language of short pieces, from haiku-inspired American Sentences... more
The Art of the Short Poem
February 3 to February 28, 2020
TUITION: $500
Why write short poems? They’re fun.They’re challenging. They help you to be concise and get to the heart of what you want to say, and to dive deep. They enable a more detailed critique of their language. We’re going to look at and discuss the structure and language of short pieces, from haiku-inspired American Sentences... more
Jessica Jacobs
"In the beginning:" Exploring Questions of Spirituality & Religion Through Poetry
February 3 to February 28, 2020
TUITION: $500
We live in a time of always more, always faster, where what’s new insists on itself as what’s most important. But outside this frenzy are questions that demand slow pondering, queries old as human consciousness: Why are we here? Is there a God? How do we live knowing our lives have a definite deadline? What... more
"In the beginning:" Exploring Questions of Spirituality & Religion Through Poetry
February 3 to February 28, 2020
TUITION: $500
We live in a time of always more, always faster, where what’s new insists on itself as what’s most important. But outside this frenzy are questions that demand slow pondering, queries old as human consciousness: Why are we here? Is there a God? How do we live knowing our lives have a definite deadline? What... more
Nickole Brown
Writing in the Age of Loneliness: Eco-Literature & The Writer's Task
February 3 to February 28, 2020
TUITION: $500
We are now in the throes of a sixth mass extinction of plants and animals. Some call it the Anthropocene, but biologist E.O. Wilson said it may be called by scientists and poets alike the Eremozoic, meaning “The Age of Loneliness.” If we take the worries of climate change and habitat destruction seriously—and in this... more
Writing in the Age of Loneliness: Eco-Literature & The Writer's Task
February 3 to February 28, 2020
TUITION: $500
We are now in the throes of a sixth mass extinction of plants and animals. Some call it the Anthropocene, but biologist E.O. Wilson said it may be called by scientists and poets alike the Eremozoic, meaning “The Age of Loneliness.” If we take the worries of climate change and habitat destruction seriously—and in this... more
Leila Chatti
Sweetbitter: Poems of Love, Longing, and the Exquisite Pain
January 27 to February 21, 2020
TUITION: $500
Eros the melter of limbs (now again) stirs me—sweetbitter unmanageable creature who steals in — Sappho (trans. Anne Carson) Desire: the unmanageable creature. How do we begin to write about this unwieldy feeling, this oft-overwhelming experience? How do we look clearly and closely at our deepest loves and sharpest pains? In this workshop, we will... more
Sweetbitter: Poems of Love, Longing, and the Exquisite Pain
January 27 to February 21, 2020
TUITION: $500
Eros the melter of limbs (now again) stirs me—sweetbitter unmanageable creature who steals in — Sappho (trans. Anne Carson) Desire: the unmanageable creature. How do we begin to write about this unwieldy feeling, this oft-overwhelming experience? How do we look clearly and closely at our deepest loves and sharpest pains? In this workshop, we will... more
Elissa Altman
Intimacy, Permission, and the Heart of the Story: Winter
January 27 to February 21, 2020
TUITION: $500
Annie Dillard once said You have to take pains not to hang on the reader’s arms, like a drunk, and say ‘And then I did this and it was so interesting.’ What is it, exactly, that makes personal narrative truly engaging? How do we navigate the mine-field of story ownership and permission-to-write when crafting a... more
Intimacy, Permission, and the Heart of the Story: Winter
January 27 to February 21, 2020
TUITION: $500
Annie Dillard once said You have to take pains not to hang on the reader’s arms, like a drunk, and say ‘And then I did this and it was so interesting.’ What is it, exactly, that makes personal narrative truly engaging? How do we navigate the mine-field of story ownership and permission-to-write when crafting a... more
Kristina Marie Darling
Collaboration Across Genres and Disciplines
January 27 to February 21, 2020
TUITION: $500
Collaborations inevitably lead creative practitioners to reflect on their own voice, aesthetic choices, and their subject position, expanding one’s sense of what is possible in one’s own projects, even when working alone. With that in mind, this workshop will place a particular emphasis on collaborating with those whose work differs significantly from one’s own in... more
Collaboration Across Genres and Disciplines
January 27 to February 21, 2020
TUITION: $500
Collaborations inevitably lead creative practitioners to reflect on their own voice, aesthetic choices, and their subject position, expanding one’s sense of what is possible in one’s own projects, even when working alone. With that in mind, this workshop will place a particular emphasis on collaborating with those whose work differs significantly from one’s own in... more
Ann Hood
Writing the Personal Essay: Winter
January 27 to February 21, 2020
TUITION: $500
Each week will begin with my introduction of a topic for that week’s memoir assignment. Topics will include Food, Place, Love, and Loss. I will email you examples from writers I admire such as Jonathan Lethem, JoAnn Beard, Cheryl Strayed, and Tony Early and discuss how they have accomplished writing these strong essays. How did... more
Writing the Personal Essay: Winter
January 27 to February 21, 2020
TUITION: $500
Each week will begin with my introduction of a topic for that week’s memoir assignment. Topics will include Food, Place, Love, and Loss. I will email you examples from writers I admire such as Jonathan Lethem, JoAnn Beard, Cheryl Strayed, and Tony Early and discuss how they have accomplished writing these strong essays. How did... more
Peter Campion
Form from Feeling and Feeling from Form: Winter
January 27 to February 21, 2020
TUITION: $500
This class is for people who want to improve their poems, by understanding the art more fully, from the inside out. During our four weeks, we’ll explore seven formal elements—action, voice, sentence, phrase, line, sound, and metaphor—while generating our own new poems. I hope to give each student a better feeling for how formal elements... more
Form from Feeling and Feeling from Form: Winter
January 27 to February 21, 2020
TUITION: $500
This class is for people who want to improve their poems, by understanding the art more fully, from the inside out. During our four weeks, we’ll explore seven formal elements—action, voice, sentence, phrase, line, sound, and metaphor—while generating our own new poems. I hope to give each student a better feeling for how formal elements... more
Brian Turner
The Big Wide World: A Poetry Workshop
January 27 to February 21, 2020
TUITION: $500
Part of our work as global literary citizens involves forming friendships and affinities with writers across the globe—even if (and oftentimes because) our nation as a whole often struggles to do the same. In this workshop, we’ll attend to what troubles and shines within us and around us by, in part, listening to voices from... more
The Big Wide World: A Poetry Workshop
January 27 to February 21, 2020
TUITION: $500
Part of our work as global literary citizens involves forming friendships and affinities with writers across the globe—even if (and oftentimes because) our nation as a whole often struggles to do the same. In this workshop, we’ll attend to what troubles and shines within us and around us by, in part, listening to voices from... more
Rebecca Seiferle
The Poem's Intention
January 27 to February 21, 2020
TUITION: $500
Often, a poem has its own intentions that are at odds with the intentions of the poet. The poet will begin the poem with a certain aim, feeling, perspective, or subject, only to find that the poem veers into unknown territory. Often the preferred method of revision is to ‘correct’ the poem by deleting or... more
The Poem's Intention
January 27 to February 21, 2020
TUITION: $500
Often, a poem has its own intentions that are at odds with the intentions of the poet. The poet will begin the poem with a certain aim, feeling, perspective, or subject, only to find that the poem veers into unknown territory. Often the preferred method of revision is to ‘correct’ the poem by deleting or... more
Erin Adair-Hodges
Fail Up--: A Poetry Workshop
January 20 to February 14, 2020
TUITION: $500
What often keeps our competent poems from becoming captivating ones is a fear of failure, an instinctual aversion to risk. In this class, we’ll work at unlearning this impulse, priming ourselves to jump headlong into what we’ve previously side-stepped. We’ll look at poems that risk embarrassment, shame, and censure and create our own pieces that... more
Fail Up--: A Poetry Workshop
January 20 to February 14, 2020
TUITION: $500
What often keeps our competent poems from becoming captivating ones is a fear of failure, an instinctual aversion to risk. In this class, we’ll work at unlearning this impulse, priming ourselves to jump headlong into what we’ve previously side-stepped. We’ll look at poems that risk embarrassment, shame, and censure and create our own pieces that... more
Sarah Green
This is the Year: A New Writing Habit Starter
January 20 to February 14, 2020
TUITION: $500
Do you keep meaning to write but find yourself waylaid by parenting, work crises, news headlines, Netflix, or other fill-in-the-blank interlopers? Do you periodically sit down and create a draft but never seem to get back to revising it? We’ve all been there. But this year can be different. Let the gold-sequins-and champagne-feeling of early... more
This is the Year: A New Writing Habit Starter
January 20 to February 14, 2020
TUITION: $500
Do you keep meaning to write but find yourself waylaid by parenting, work crises, news headlines, Netflix, or other fill-in-the-blank interlopers? Do you periodically sit down and create a draft but never seem to get back to revising it? We’ve all been there. But this year can be different. Let the gold-sequins-and champagne-feeling of early... more
Aja Gabel
Writing Love Stories
January 20 to February 14, 2020
TUITION: $500
Writing love stories can feel fraught for many reasons. It can feel gendered, cliche, too personal, or not personal enough. It can feel driftless to write about “relationships” and fruitless to try to say something new about the world’s oldest topic. But through prompts, readings, and discussions, we will re-define what a love story is,... more
Writing Love Stories
January 20 to February 14, 2020
TUITION: $500
Writing love stories can feel fraught for many reasons. It can feel gendered, cliche, too personal, or not personal enough. It can feel driftless to write about “relationships” and fruitless to try to say something new about the world’s oldest topic. But through prompts, readings, and discussions, we will re-define what a love story is,... more
Michael Klein
Writing Social Justice in Poetry and Essays
January 20 to February 14, 2020
TUITION: $500
At one point in my writing mostly autobiographical poetry and essays/memoir, I got some sage advice from my mentor, Adrienne Rich, who told me that it was time to extend my reach outward, beyond the self, with writing that let in more of the world. In this way, she was advocating for finding the language... more
Writing Social Justice in Poetry and Essays
January 20 to February 14, 2020
TUITION: $500
At one point in my writing mostly autobiographical poetry and essays/memoir, I got some sage advice from my mentor, Adrienne Rich, who told me that it was time to extend my reach outward, beyond the self, with writing that let in more of the world. In this way, she was advocating for finding the language... more
Anne Sanow
Liftoff: Beginning That Story Draft
January 13 to February 7, 2020
TUITION: $500
Good stories start from vague ideas, character sketches, images, seemingly random thoughts, odd bits of language and rhythm. But how to put these into motion to get a story started—and moving forward? This new year, commit to getting that story idea out of your head and onto the page. “Liftoff” is a 4-week intensive writing... more
Liftoff: Beginning That Story Draft
January 13 to February 7, 2020
TUITION: $500
Good stories start from vague ideas, character sketches, images, seemingly random thoughts, odd bits of language and rhythm. But how to put these into motion to get a story started—and moving forward? This new year, commit to getting that story idea out of your head and onto the page. “Liftoff” is a 4-week intensive writing... more
Sandra Beasley
Mapping Your Memoir from Start to Finish
January 13 to March 6, 2020
TUITION: $600
What begins with “I have a story to tell” can soon feel unwieldy in terms of structuring a narrative, creating scenes, and adding factual depth. This class helps you create an action plan for getting your memoir written. Week by week, we’ll discuss the key elements: where to begin and end, identifying core conflicts, developing... more
Mapping Your Memoir from Start to Finish
January 13 to March 6, 2020
TUITION: $600
What begins with “I have a story to tell” can soon feel unwieldy in terms of structuring a narrative, creating scenes, and adding factual depth. This class helps you create an action plan for getting your memoir written. Week by week, we’ll discuss the key elements: where to begin and end, identifying core conflicts, developing... more
Sabrina Orah Mark
Hybrid Forms
January 13 to February 7, 2020
TUITION: $500
‘“Who are you?’ said the Caterpillar. This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, ‘I—I hardly know, sir, just at present—at least I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have changed several times since then.’” —Lewis Carroll (from Alice’s Adventures in... more
Hybrid Forms
January 13 to February 7, 2020
TUITION: $500
‘“Who are you?’ said the Caterpillar. This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, ‘I—I hardly know, sir, just at present—at least I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have changed several times since then.’” —Lewis Carroll (from Alice’s Adventures in... more
Joanne Dugan
Writing Pictures: An Exploration of Text and Image: Winter
January 13 to February 7, 2020
TUITION: $500
It’s been said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Yet the addition of photographs to text yields surprising results that can greatly deepen the impact of poetry, narrative and other written forms. Or, as Theodor Geisel said, “Words and pictures are yin and yang. Married, they produce a progeny more interesting than either... more
Writing Pictures: An Exploration of Text and Image: Winter
January 13 to February 7, 2020
TUITION: $500
It’s been said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Yet the addition of photographs to text yields surprising results that can greatly deepen the impact of poetry, narrative and other written forms. Or, as Theodor Geisel said, “Words and pictures are yin and yang. Married, they produce a progeny more interesting than either... more
Tyler Mills
Radical Revision: Preparing Poems for Publication
January 13 to February 7, 2020
TUITION: $500
So you have a draft. What now? This class is geared to helping you rip open the seams of your poems and re-enter them with fresh eyes so that you can prepare them for publication this year. We will look at the revision process of poets like Allen Ginsberg, Elizabeth Bishop, Carl Phillips, Gary Soto,... more
Radical Revision: Preparing Poems for Publication
January 13 to February 7, 2020
TUITION: $500
So you have a draft. What now? This class is geared to helping you rip open the seams of your poems and re-enter them with fresh eyes so that you can prepare them for publication this year. We will look at the revision process of poets like Allen Ginsberg, Elizabeth Bishop, Carl Phillips, Gary Soto,... more
Indira Ganesan
Narrative Magic: A Fiction Workshop
January 13 to February 7, 2020
TUITION: $500
Imagine taking your pencil and throwing it against a window. Now imagine that same pencil growing wings made of feathers, shattering the window, and flying off. What in the world will happen next? Instilling a bit of magical or fabulist realism into fiction gives a writer a wide canvas to create a telling reality in... more
Narrative Magic: A Fiction Workshop
January 13 to February 7, 2020
TUITION: $500
Imagine taking your pencil and throwing it against a window. Now imagine that same pencil growing wings made of feathers, shattering the window, and flying off. What in the world will happen next? Instilling a bit of magical or fabulist realism into fiction gives a writer a wide canvas to create a telling reality in... more
Elissa Altman
Intimacy, Permission, and the Heart of The Story
November 18 to December 13, 2019
TUITION: $500
Annie Dillard once said You have to take pains not to hang on the reader’s arms, like a drunk, and say ‘And then I did this and it was so interesting.’ What is it, exactly, that makes personal narrative truly engaging? How do we navigate the mine-field of story ownership and permission-to-write when crafting a... more
Intimacy, Permission, and the Heart of The Story
November 18 to December 13, 2019
TUITION: $500
Annie Dillard once said You have to take pains not to hang on the reader’s arms, like a drunk, and say ‘And then I did this and it was so interesting.’ What is it, exactly, that makes personal narrative truly engaging? How do we navigate the mine-field of story ownership and permission-to-write when crafting a... more
Kim Addonizio
The Art of the Short Poem
November 18 to December 13, 2019
TUITION: $500
This class is full, but we will hold another session in February. To register for the February workshop, click here. Why write short poems? They’re fun.They’re challenging. They help you to be concise and get to the heart of what you want to say, and to dive deep. They enable a more detailed critique of... more
The Art of the Short Poem
November 18 to December 13, 2019
TUITION: $500
This class is full, but we will hold another session in February. To register for the February workshop, click here. Why write short poems? They’re fun.They’re challenging. They help you to be concise and get to the heart of what you want to say, and to dive deep. They enable a more detailed critique of... more
Leila Chatti
Praise: Poems of Celebration, Ecstasy, and Survival
November 11 to December 6, 2019
TUITION: $500
“Come, seereal flowersof this painful world.” – Basho It can be difficult, in these trying times, to make space for praise, or to notice the occasion for it. It is easy to believe it, even, selfish. (“Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home,” writes Szymborska.) But to find in dark times things to praise... more
Praise: Poems of Celebration, Ecstasy, and Survival
November 11 to December 6, 2019
TUITION: $500
“Come, seereal flowersof this painful world.” – Basho It can be difficult, in these trying times, to make space for praise, or to notice the occasion for it. It is easy to believe it, even, selfish. (“Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home,” writes Szymborska.) But to find in dark times things to praise... more
Daisy Fried
Poetry Revision Boot Camp
November 4 to November 8, 2019
TUITION: $400
Get ready, get set…You’ll either come into workshop with a poem draft you’re interested in but dissatisfied with, or, at the workshop’s beginning, you’ll generate a brand new first draft following a prompt designed to give you something substantial to work with. Each day, you’ll overhaul the poem in a different way according to a... more
Poetry Revision Boot Camp
November 4 to November 8, 2019
TUITION: $400
Get ready, get set…You’ll either come into workshop with a poem draft you’re interested in but dissatisfied with, or, at the workshop’s beginning, you’ll generate a brand new first draft following a prompt designed to give you something substantial to work with. Each day, you’ll overhaul the poem in a different way according to a... more
Erin Adair-Hodges
Fail Up—: A Poetry Workshop
October 28 to November 22, 2019
TUITION: $500
What often keeps our competent poems from becoming captivating ones is a fear of failure, an instinctual aversion to risk. In this class, we’ll work at unlearning this impulse, priming ourselves to jump headlong into what we’ve previously side-stepped. We’ll look at poems that risk embarrassment, shame, and censure and create our own pieces that... more
Fail Up—: A Poetry Workshop
October 28 to November 22, 2019
TUITION: $500
What often keeps our competent poems from becoming captivating ones is a fear of failure, an instinctual aversion to risk. In this class, we’ll work at unlearning this impulse, priming ourselves to jump headlong into what we’ve previously side-stepped. We’ll look at poems that risk embarrassment, shame, and censure and create our own pieces that... more
Seema Reza
Breaking Open the World: Writing Fearless Lyrical Memoir
October 28 to November 22, 2019
TUITION: $500
In this class we will experiment with form, timeline, point of view, and pacing to write lyrical memoir that is fresh, honest, and innovative. Each week students will be given short reading assignments and writing prompts designed to get words on the page and generate new points of entry into story. In addition to form... more
Breaking Open the World: Writing Fearless Lyrical Memoir
October 28 to November 22, 2019
TUITION: $500
In this class we will experiment with form, timeline, point of view, and pacing to write lyrical memoir that is fresh, honest, and innovative. Each week students will be given short reading assignments and writing prompts designed to get words on the page and generate new points of entry into story. In addition to form... more
Susanna Sonnenberg
Engaging the Experience: How to Make Sense in Memoir of What Happened in Life
October 28 to November 22, 2019
TUITION: $500
Vivian Gornick says, “Truth in a memoir is achieved not through a recital of actual events; it is achieved when the reader comes to believe that the writer is working hard to engage with the experience at hand.” How do we organize the events of a life to tell a story? How does the story... more
Engaging the Experience: How to Make Sense in Memoir of What Happened in Life
October 28 to November 22, 2019
TUITION: $500
Vivian Gornick says, “Truth in a memoir is achieved not through a recital of actual events; it is achieved when the reader comes to believe that the writer is working hard to engage with the experience at hand.” How do we organize the events of a life to tell a story? How does the story... more
Joanne Dugan
Writing Pictures: An Exploration of Text and Image
October 21 to November 15, 2019
TUITION: $500
It’s been said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Yet the addition of photographs to text yields surprising results that can greatly deepen the impact of poetry, narrative and other written forms. Or, as Theodor Geisel said, “Words and pictures are yin and yang. Married, they produce a progeny more interesting than either... more
Writing Pictures: An Exploration of Text and Image
October 21 to November 15, 2019
TUITION: $500
It’s been said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Yet the addition of photographs to text yields surprising results that can greatly deepen the impact of poetry, narrative and other written forms. Or, as Theodor Geisel said, “Words and pictures are yin and yang. Married, they produce a progeny more interesting than either... more
Sandra Beasley
Essaying in Unconventional Forms
October 21 to November 15, 2019
TUITION: $500
Do you have a story to tell, but struggle in knowing where to begin? Are there gaps in memory, or lulls in action, that make a traditional narrative arc unwieldy? Are you ready to try something new in your nonfiction writing? This class is about setting aside the demands of chronology by embracing lyric structures.... more
Essaying in Unconventional Forms
October 21 to November 15, 2019
TUITION: $500
Do you have a story to tell, but struggle in knowing where to begin? Are there gaps in memory, or lulls in action, that make a traditional narrative arc unwieldy? Are you ready to try something new in your nonfiction writing? This class is about setting aside the demands of chronology by embracing lyric structures.... more
Fred Marchant
Out There, In Here: Mysteries of the Ekphrastic Poem
October 21 to October 25, 2019
TUITION: $400
As a response to a work of visual art, the ekphrastic poem inevitably goes far beyond description and often leads poet and reader into all sorts of associations, insights, memories, feelings, revelations. In our week-long intensive course we will probe the nature of the ekphrastic. We will work on new poems that respond to what... more
Out There, In Here: Mysteries of the Ekphrastic Poem
October 21 to October 25, 2019
TUITION: $400
As a response to a work of visual art, the ekphrastic poem inevitably goes far beyond description and often leads poet and reader into all sorts of associations, insights, memories, feelings, revelations. In our week-long intensive course we will probe the nature of the ekphrastic. We will work on new poems that respond to what... more
Joseph Cassara
The Art of Dialogue
October 21 to November 15, 2019
TUITION: $500
According to Elizabeth Bowen, dialogue is the most vigorous interaction that characters can have with each other in fiction—short of fighting, murder, and love-making. “Speech is what the characters do to each other,” she wrote. In this workshop, we will look at the many ways that dialogue operates. Over the course of four weeks, we... more
The Art of Dialogue
October 21 to November 15, 2019
TUITION: $500
According to Elizabeth Bowen, dialogue is the most vigorous interaction that characters can have with each other in fiction—short of fighting, murder, and love-making. “Speech is what the characters do to each other,” she wrote. In this workshop, we will look at the many ways that dialogue operates. Over the course of four weeks, we... more
Peter Campion
Form from Feeling and Feeling from Form: Fall
October 14 to November 8, 2019
TUITION: $500
This class is for people who want to improve their poems, by understanding the art more fully, from the inside out. During our four weeks, we’ll explore seven formal elements—action, voice, sentence, phrase, line, sound, and metaphor—while generating our own new poems. I hope to give each student a better feeling for how formal elements... more
Form from Feeling and Feeling from Form: Fall
October 14 to November 8, 2019
TUITION: $500
This class is for people who want to improve their poems, by understanding the art more fully, from the inside out. During our four weeks, we’ll explore seven formal elements—action, voice, sentence, phrase, line, sound, and metaphor—while generating our own new poems. I hope to give each student a better feeling for how formal elements... more
Anne Sanow
Revision is the Writing: Prose Workshop
October 14 to November 8, 2019
TUITION: $500
It’s easy to resist revision as the “work” part of creating—but when you embrace it fully as part of the creative process, your writing will start to go to new levels. Real revision is bold and daring. It demands that you get into the guts of your writing and reconceive anything from point of view... more
Revision is the Writing: Prose Workshop
October 14 to November 8, 2019
TUITION: $500
It’s easy to resist revision as the “work” part of creating—but when you embrace it fully as part of the creative process, your writing will start to go to new levels. Real revision is bold and daring. It demands that you get into the guts of your writing and reconceive anything from point of view... more
Ann Hood
Writing the Personal Essay: Fall
October 14 to November 8, 2019
TUITION: $500
Each week will begin with my introduction of a topic for that week’s memoir assignment. Topics will include Food, Place, Love, and Loss. I will email you examples from writers I admire such as Jonathan Lethem, JoAnn Beard, Cheryl Strayed, and Tony Early and discuss how they have accomplished writing these strong essays. How did... more
Writing the Personal Essay: Fall
October 14 to November 8, 2019
TUITION: $500
Each week will begin with my introduction of a topic for that week’s memoir assignment. Topics will include Food, Place, Love, and Loss. I will email you examples from writers I admire such as Jonathan Lethem, JoAnn Beard, Cheryl Strayed, and Tony Early and discuss how they have accomplished writing these strong essays. How did... more
Paul Guest
Poetry and Apocalypse
October 7 to November 1, 2019
TUITION: $500
How do we write poems about this moment, about right now, about global warming and walls and guns and oceans filled with plastic? How do we balance the historic with the lyric, the personal with the political? How can we make art from witness? In this workshop we will read poems by Ada Limón, Terrance... more
Poetry and Apocalypse
October 7 to November 1, 2019
TUITION: $500
How do we write poems about this moment, about right now, about global warming and walls and guns and oceans filled with plastic? How do we balance the historic with the lyric, the personal with the political? How can we make art from witness? In this workshop we will read poems by Ada Limón, Terrance... more
Emilia Phillips
Writing About Trauma in Poetry and Nonfiction
October 7 to November 1, 2019
TUITION: $500
How do we write about trauma even as it writes and rewrites us? In this cross-genre course, we’ll investigate our responsibilities as writers of trauma and discuss the ways in which we can ethically contextualize our content to readers. Class members will be encouraged to participate in writing exercises related to image, narrative, and rhetoric,... more
Writing About Trauma in Poetry and Nonfiction
October 7 to November 1, 2019
TUITION: $500
How do we write about trauma even as it writes and rewrites us? In this cross-genre course, we’ll investigate our responsibilities as writers of trauma and discuss the ways in which we can ethically contextualize our content to readers. Class members will be encouraged to participate in writing exercises related to image, narrative, and rhetoric,... more
Michelle Tea
MEMOIR THAT READS LIKE FICTION: Summer
August 5 to August 9, 2019
TUITION: $400
In this intensive memoir workshop, you will learn techniques to create a memoir with a cinematic feel and the singular voice of an immersive novel. In addition to discussing style and craft, you will also touch on the personal concerns that inevitably arise when a writer takes on the telling of their own story. You... more
MEMOIR THAT READS LIKE FICTION: Summer
August 5 to August 9, 2019
TUITION: $400
In this intensive memoir workshop, you will learn techniques to create a memoir with a cinematic feel and the singular voice of an immersive novel. In addition to discussing style and craft, you will also touch on the personal concerns that inevitably arise when a writer takes on the telling of their own story. You... more
Ed Skoog
HAVE YOU TRIED THE SIDE DOOR? FINDING A WAY IN TO YOUR NEXT POEMS: Summer
August 5 to September 27, 2019
TUITION: $600
Sometimes, starting a poem, I feel paralyzed by the task. Each time I need to find the way around my expectations, over the seemingly unsurmountable traditions and the already-trod reactions against tradition, under the deep sea of …whatever—you get my drift: starting a poem is difficult because of the barriers we ourselves have built. Often,... more
HAVE YOU TRIED THE SIDE DOOR? FINDING A WAY IN TO YOUR NEXT POEMS: Summer
August 5 to September 27, 2019
TUITION: $600
Sometimes, starting a poem, I feel paralyzed by the task. Each time I need to find the way around my expectations, over the seemingly unsurmountable traditions and the already-trod reactions against tradition, under the deep sea of …whatever—you get my drift: starting a poem is difficult because of the barriers we ourselves have built. Often,... more
Traci Brimhall
Hybrids and Hermit Crabs: Lyric Forms in Creative Nonfiction
July 29 to August 23, 2019
TUITION: $500
In this class we will examine essays that take their forms from other sources in order to write our own. We will look at pieces that borrow form from documents like quizzes, medical charts, and rejection letters, and try and find inspiration in our own everyday documents. We will also look at the braided essay,... more
Hybrids and Hermit Crabs: Lyric Forms in Creative Nonfiction
July 29 to August 23, 2019
TUITION: $500
In this class we will examine essays that take their forms from other sources in order to write our own. We will look at pieces that borrow form from documents like quizzes, medical charts, and rejection letters, and try and find inspiration in our own everyday documents. We will also look at the braided essay,... more
Ruben Quesada
Prose Poetry Workshop
July 22 to August 16, 2019
TUITION: $500
Write at the intersection of prose and poetry in this workshop devoted to the imaginative and innovative possibilities in writing poetry without line breaks. We will look at a historical range of prose and poetry that model elements of story, structure, music, and imagination. Discover the differences between a prose poem and flash prose. We... more
Prose Poetry Workshop
July 22 to August 16, 2019
TUITION: $500
Write at the intersection of prose and poetry in this workshop devoted to the imaginative and innovative possibilities in writing poetry without line breaks. We will look at a historical range of prose and poetry that model elements of story, structure, music, and imagination. Discover the differences between a prose poem and flash prose. We... more
Alix Ohlin
MAKING BEAUTIFUL SENTENCES
July 15 to August 9, 2019
TUITION: $500
What makes a sentence so powerful and enduring that it will stick in your mind forever? In this four-week class, we’ll take a look at some beautiful sentences and try to figure out exactly what makes them work, what distinguishes a writer’s style at the syntax level, and where the music of prose resides. We’ll... more
MAKING BEAUTIFUL SENTENCES
July 15 to August 9, 2019
TUITION: $500
What makes a sentence so powerful and enduring that it will stick in your mind forever? In this four-week class, we’ll take a look at some beautiful sentences and try to figure out exactly what makes them work, what distinguishes a writer’s style at the syntax level, and where the music of prose resides. We’ll... more
Peter Campion
FORM FROM FEELING AND FEELING FROM FORM: Summer
July 15 to August 9, 2019
TUITION: $500
This class is for people who want to improve their poems, by understanding the art more fully, from the inside out. During our four weeks, we’ll explore seven formal elements—action, voice, sentence, phrase, line, sound, and metaphor—while generating our own new poems. I hope to give each student a better feeling for how formal elements... more
FORM FROM FEELING AND FEELING FROM FORM: Summer
July 15 to August 9, 2019
TUITION: $500
This class is for people who want to improve their poems, by understanding the art more fully, from the inside out. During our four weeks, we’ll explore seven formal elements—action, voice, sentence, phrase, line, sound, and metaphor—while generating our own new poems. I hope to give each student a better feeling for how formal elements... more
Rebecca Seiferle
The Poetic Sequence
July 8 to August 30, 2019
TUITION: $600
A sequence is a long poem that combines shorter pieces by relying on association, juxtaposition, and connection rather than theme or narrative to create an organic poetic whole. Overwhelmed by events, feelings, and thoughts, poets have turned to the sequence, as a way to express what otherwise could not be borne in language or within... more
The Poetic Sequence
July 8 to August 30, 2019
TUITION: $600
A sequence is a long poem that combines shorter pieces by relying on association, juxtaposition, and connection rather than theme or narrative to create an organic poetic whole. Overwhelmed by events, feelings, and thoughts, poets have turned to the sequence, as a way to express what otherwise could not be borne in language or within... more
Elissa Altman
The Heart of the Story: Creating Intimacy in Memoir
July 8 to August 2, 2019
TUITION: $500
Annie Dillard once said You have to take pains not to hang on the reader’s arms, like a drunk, and say ‘And then I did this and it was so interesting.’ What is it, exactly, that makes personal narrative truly engaging? What makes great memoir what it is versus simply a recollection of experience or... more
The Heart of the Story: Creating Intimacy in Memoir
July 8 to August 2, 2019
TUITION: $500
Annie Dillard once said You have to take pains not to hang on the reader’s arms, like a drunk, and say ‘And then I did this and it was so interesting.’ What is it, exactly, that makes personal narrative truly engaging? What makes great memoir what it is versus simply a recollection of experience or... more
Dawn Potter
Vision and Re-Vision: An 8-Week Master Class on Generating and Revising Poems
July 8 to August 30, 2019
TUITION: $600
In this 8-week master class in poetry, we will focus on ways in which the work of both canonical and contemporary poets can help us generate new work and hone revision strategies. By approaching William Shakespeare, Elizabeth Bishop, Yusef Komunyakaa, and others as colleagues, we not only learn from their discoveries but also become more... more
Vision and Re-Vision: An 8-Week Master Class on Generating and Revising Poems
July 8 to August 30, 2019
TUITION: $600
In this 8-week master class in poetry, we will focus on ways in which the work of both canonical and contemporary poets can help us generate new work and hone revision strategies. By approaching William Shakespeare, Elizabeth Bishop, Yusef Komunyakaa, and others as colleagues, we not only learn from their discoveries but also become more... more
Nancy Pearson
15 WORKS: SUMMER
June 24 to July 19, 2019
TUITION: $500
This four week poetry workshop is based on a class taught at the former Corcoran School of Art. In “15 Works,” you’ll write 3 to 4 poems a week in response to assignments and prompts, with weekly themes. Comments on one another’s poems will be limited to one poem per week unless you’d like to... more
15 WORKS: SUMMER
June 24 to July 19, 2019
TUITION: $500
This four week poetry workshop is based on a class taught at the former Corcoran School of Art. In “15 Works,” you’ll write 3 to 4 poems a week in response to assignments and prompts, with weekly themes. Comments on one another’s poems will be limited to one poem per week unless you’d like to... more
Meghan O'Gieblyn
PLACE IN MEMOIR
June 24 to August 16, 2019
TUITION: $600
Too often, location is regarded as the backdrop of a memoir—the fixed stage-set on which the action unfolds. But there is a long tradition of memoir that privileges place, and the writer’s experience with that place. In such works, location takes center stage and becomes a dynamic “character” in the story. Travel memoir is the... more
PLACE IN MEMOIR
June 24 to August 16, 2019
TUITION: $600
Too often, location is regarded as the backdrop of a memoir—the fixed stage-set on which the action unfolds. But there is a long tradition of memoir that privileges place, and the writer’s experience with that place. In such works, location takes center stage and becomes a dynamic “character” in the story. Travel memoir is the... more
Sara Eliza Johnson
LANGUAGE AND THE LUCID DREAM: SUMMER
June 24 to August 16, 2019
TUITION: $600
Many sleepers have experienced the pleasure of the lucid dream: the phenomenon of “waking” inside our dream and realizing that we are in fact dreaming, that we are still in the process of imagining it and therefore able to transform its substance or alter its direction as we move through it. Writing a poem—that is,... more
LANGUAGE AND THE LUCID DREAM: SUMMER
June 24 to August 16, 2019
TUITION: $600
Many sleepers have experienced the pleasure of the lucid dream: the phenomenon of “waking” inside our dream and realizing that we are in fact dreaming, that we are still in the process of imagining it and therefore able to transform its substance or alter its direction as we move through it. Writing a poem—that is,... more
Rebecca Lindenberg
WHAT I SHOULD HAVE SAID: WRITING FUNNY POEMS in Summer
June 18 to July 13, 2019
TUITION: $500
It is really hard to write funny. It’s even harder to write funny with substance and pathos. But in this class, we’ll look at several poems that succeed at being funny in different ways – some by unlikely juxtapositions, some by satire, some by the ways they create, fulfill, and subvert reader’s expectations, some by... more
WHAT I SHOULD HAVE SAID: WRITING FUNNY POEMS in Summer
June 18 to July 13, 2019
TUITION: $500
It is really hard to write funny. It’s even harder to write funny with substance and pathos. But in this class, we’ll look at several poems that succeed at being funny in different ways – some by unlikely juxtapositions, some by satire, some by the ways they create, fulfill, and subvert reader’s expectations, some by... more
Writers' Work Group: The Big Project (Nonfiction)
June 10 to August 30, 2019
TUITION: $175
“The Big Project” accountability Work Group is meant for writers who want to make headway on their nonfiction manuscript. Whether you are working towards a first draft of a collection of essays, or are beginning the process of revising your manuscript, this 12-week group can provide support, resources, and writerly camaraderie. This is an accountability... more
Writers' Work Group: The Big Project (Fiction)
June 10 to August 30, 2019
TUITION: $175
“The Big Project” accountability Work Group is meant for writers who want to make headway on their fiction manuscript. Whether you are working towards a first draft of a novel or novella, or are beginning the process of revising your manuscript, this 12-week group can provide support, resources, and writerly camaraderie. This is an accountability... more
Writers' Work Group: The Big Project (Poetry)
June 10 to August 30, 2019
TUITION: $175
“The Big Project” accountability Work Group is meant for writers who want to make headway on their poetry manuscript. Whether you are working towards a first draft of a chapbook or full-length collection, or are beginning the process of revising your manuscript, this 12-week group can provide support, resources, and writerly camaraderie. This is an... more
Writers' Work Group: Submit Your Work
June 10 to August 30, 2019
TUITION: $175
The “Submit Your Work” accountability Work Group is meant for writers who want to submit to more literary journals in 2019. Whether you’re aiming for 100 rejections or you want to submit work for the first time, this 12-week group can provide support, resources, and camaraderie. It is open to writers of all genres. This... more
Writers' Work Group: Workshop Your Fiction
June 10 to August 30, 2019
TUITION: $175
This Work Group is a workshop-style group. It is meant for writers who want regular feedback on their drafts, and who are committed to providing critiques for their fellow writers. Whether you are in generative or revision mode, the primary goal of this 12-week group is to provide feedback on your fiction. You’ll alternate submitting... more
Writers' Work Group: Workshop Your Nonfiction
June 10 to August 30, 2019
TUITION: $175
This Work Group is a workshop-style group. It is meant for writers who want regular feedback on their drafts, and who are committed to providing critiques for their fellow writers. Whether you are in generative or revision mode, the primary goal of this 12-week group is to provide feedback on your creative nonfiction. You’ll alternate... more
Sarah Rose Nordgren
The Sources of Poetry
June 10 to August 2, 2019
TUITION: $600
You mention Immortality. That is the Flood subject.” – Emily Dickinson in a letter to T. W. Higginson Writing a poem is not a logical act, and it behooves us now and again to ask ourselves: Why are we writing poems in the first place? Many of us might identify it as a need, or... more
The Sources of Poetry
June 10 to August 2, 2019
TUITION: $600
You mention Immortality. That is the Flood subject.” – Emily Dickinson in a letter to T. W. Higginson Writing a poem is not a logical act, and it behooves us now and again to ask ourselves: Why are we writing poems in the first place? Many of us might identify it as a need, or... more
Amber Flora Thomas
The Poetry of Place: Erasures, Journeys, and Transformations on the Way to Home
June 3 to June 28, 2019
TUITION: $500
This four-week course will offer participants an opportunity to explore nature writing and environmental poetry through experimental forms and generate new work. Challenge what it means to be at home in a world experiencing intense climate change. Our journey in this course will be to work on poems where the personal intersects the universal. We... more
The Poetry of Place: Erasures, Journeys, and Transformations on the Way to Home
June 3 to June 28, 2019
TUITION: $500
This four-week course will offer participants an opportunity to explore nature writing and environmental poetry through experimental forms and generate new work. Challenge what it means to be at home in a world experiencing intense climate change. Our journey in this course will be to work on poems where the personal intersects the universal. We... more
Erin Adair-Hodges
Fail Up—
June 3 to June 28, 2019
TUITION: $500
What often keeps our competent poems from becoming captivating ones is a fear of failure, an instinctual aversion to risk. In this class, we’ll work at unlearning this impulse, priming ourselves to jump headlong into what we’ve previously side-stepped. We’ll look at poems that risk embarrassment, shame, and censure and create our own pieces that... more
Fail Up—
June 3 to June 28, 2019
TUITION: $500
What often keeps our competent poems from becoming captivating ones is a fear of failure, an instinctual aversion to risk. In this class, we’ll work at unlearning this impulse, priming ourselves to jump headlong into what we’ve previously side-stepped. We’ll look at poems that risk embarrassment, shame, and censure and create our own pieces that... more
Ann Hood
JUMPSTART YOUR MEMOIR: SUMMER
June 3 to June 7, 2019
TUITION: $400
A writing sample is required for admittance to this class. Before registering, please email a writing sample to gleghorn@fawc.org. In his book on the craft of writing, Stephen King says: the scariest moment is just before you start. This workshop takes that moment and makes it less scary by asking you the right questions about... more
JUMPSTART YOUR MEMOIR: SUMMER
June 3 to June 7, 2019
TUITION: $400
A writing sample is required for admittance to this class. Before registering, please email a writing sample to gleghorn@fawc.org. In his book on the craft of writing, Stephen King says: the scariest moment is just before you start. This workshop takes that moment and makes it less scary by asking you the right questions about... more
David Kutz-Marks
Beauty in Clouds
May 6 to May 31, 2019
TUITION: $500
In this course we will assess the stranger aesthetic virtues of poems we—and the rest of the world—are writing now. Without disavowing the values of form, clarity, logical coherence, and so many other key terms of the workshop that represent the straightforward, we will find and discuss the occasions of confusion, misdirection, indefinite pronoun reference,... more
Beauty in Clouds
May 6 to May 31, 2019
TUITION: $500
In this course we will assess the stranger aesthetic virtues of poems we—and the rest of the world—are writing now. Without disavowing the values of form, clarity, logical coherence, and so many other key terms of the workshop that represent the straightforward, we will find and discuss the occasions of confusion, misdirection, indefinite pronoun reference,... more
Ann Hood
JUMPSTART YOUR MEMOIR: Spring
May 6 to May 10, 2019
TUITION: $400
A writing sample is required for admittance to this class. Before registering, please email a writing sample to gleghorn@fawc.org. Often, that moment when you first begin to write is the scariest. This one-week intensive workshop will help you get started by asking the right questions. Whether you’re stuck in a draft that isn’t working, having... more
JUMPSTART YOUR MEMOIR: Spring
May 6 to May 10, 2019
TUITION: $400
A writing sample is required for admittance to this class. Before registering, please email a writing sample to gleghorn@fawc.org. Often, that moment when you first begin to write is the scariest. This one-week intensive workshop will help you get started by asking the right questions. Whether you’re stuck in a draft that isn’t working, having... more
John Murillo
Cut, Scratch, and Blend - Revision as Remix: A Poetry Workshop
April 29 to May 24, 2019
TUITION: $500
“Poetry,” writes Yusef Komunyakaa in his essay collection Blue Notes, “is an act of meditation and improvisation. And need is the motor that propels the words down the silent white space.” In this workshop, participants will consider various perspectives on the revision process and explore strategies for re-drafting poems-in-progress. While this class is open to... more
Cut, Scratch, and Blend - Revision as Remix: A Poetry Workshop
April 29 to May 24, 2019
TUITION: $500
“Poetry,” writes Yusef Komunyakaa in his essay collection Blue Notes, “is an act of meditation and improvisation. And need is the motor that propels the words down the silent white space.” In this workshop, participants will consider various perspectives on the revision process and explore strategies for re-drafting poems-in-progress. While this class is open to... more
Tessa Fontaine
Writing Your Way to the Spark: A Generative Memoir Workshop
April 29 to May 24, 2019
TUITION: $500
In this generative workshop, we’ll focus on translating personal experience and research into effective memoir or personal essay. Through prompts, we’ll invigorate both right and left brain memories and ideas, incorporate outside materials, understand when to use invention, juxtaposition, patterns, and more. We’ll read and discuss short outside examples. We’ll jump into unexpected threads in... more
Writing Your Way to the Spark: A Generative Memoir Workshop
April 29 to May 24, 2019
TUITION: $500
In this generative workshop, we’ll focus on translating personal experience and research into effective memoir or personal essay. Through prompts, we’ll invigorate both right and left brain memories and ideas, incorporate outside materials, understand when to use invention, juxtaposition, patterns, and more. We’ll read and discuss short outside examples. We’ll jump into unexpected threads in... more
Traci Brimhall
Between Clarity and Wilderness: Tuning Your Tension
April 29 to May 24, 2019
TUITION: $500
Every writer has their strengths, but we often tend to over-rely on what we already know we do well. In this workshop we will focus more on how to create a balance of tension in poems. We will look at poems that model a balance of tension between clarity and wilderness, narrative and music, emotion... more
Between Clarity and Wilderness: Tuning Your Tension
April 29 to May 24, 2019
TUITION: $500
Every writer has their strengths, but we often tend to over-rely on what we already know we do well. In this workshop we will focus more on how to create a balance of tension in poems. We will look at poems that model a balance of tension between clarity and wilderness, narrative and music, emotion... more
Ivy Pochoda
Jumping Into Your Novel
April 29 to May 24, 2019
TUITION: $500
So, you want to write a novel but you’re terrified of the blank page. Or you’ve started your novel and are unsure about how to proceed. This is the class for you. In this four week intensive course we will examine how to dive into a novel. We will look at the openings of a... more
Jumping Into Your Novel
April 29 to May 24, 2019
TUITION: $500
So, you want to write a novel but you’re terrified of the blank page. Or you’ve started your novel and are unsure about how to proceed. This is the class for you. In this four week intensive course we will examine how to dive into a novel. We will look at the openings of a... more
Wendy C. Ortiz
Writing on the Edge: A Multi-Genre Workshop
April 22 to May 17, 2019
TUITION: $500
Edgework, as defined by one online dictionary, is “behavior at the edge of what is normally allowed or accepted; risky or radical behavior.” Our four weeks together will be spent looking at how the definitive and formative experiences of our lives are often experienced “at the edge” and how we might evoke and translate the... more
Writing on the Edge: A Multi-Genre Workshop
April 22 to May 17, 2019
TUITION: $500
Edgework, as defined by one online dictionary, is “behavior at the edge of what is normally allowed or accepted; risky or radical behavior.” Our four weeks together will be spent looking at how the definitive and formative experiences of our lives are often experienced “at the edge” and how we might evoke and translate the... more
Mark Wunderlich
NEIGHBORING SOLITUDES: THE POETRY OF RAINER MARIA RILKE AS GENERATIVE SOURCES FOR POEMS
April 8 to May 3, 2019
TUITION: $500
In this workshop course, we will write poems based on some of the major themes present in the poems of the great German-language Modernist poet Rainer Maria Rilke. As a poet and thinker Rilke returned to a handful of ideas which he incorporated into his poems over the course of many years. During our time... more
NEIGHBORING SOLITUDES: THE POETRY OF RAINER MARIA RILKE AS GENERATIVE SOURCES FOR POEMS
April 8 to May 3, 2019
TUITION: $500
In this workshop course, we will write poems based on some of the major themes present in the poems of the great German-language Modernist poet Rainer Maria Rilke. As a poet and thinker Rilke returned to a handful of ideas which he incorporated into his poems over the course of many years. During our time... more
Fred Marchant
STAYING WITH IT: A FIVE-DAY MEDITATION IN POETRY FOR Spring
April 8 to April 12, 2019
TUITION: $400
In this one-week intensive online course we will begin a new poem and stay with it for the whole five days, the goal being to nurture and expand that poem into an extended meditation. We will consider what a meditative poem is and does, and why one might want to write one. We will study... more
STAYING WITH IT: A FIVE-DAY MEDITATION IN POETRY FOR Spring
April 8 to April 12, 2019
TUITION: $400
In this one-week intensive online course we will begin a new poem and stay with it for the whole five days, the goal being to nurture and expand that poem into an extended meditation. We will consider what a meditative poem is and does, and why one might want to write one. We will study... more
Erin Adair-Hodges
Fail Up—
April 1 to April 26, 2019
TUITION: $500
What often keeps our competent poems from becoming captivating ones is a fear of failure, an instinctual aversion to risk. In this class, we’ll work at unlearning this impulse, priming ourselves to jump headlong into what we’ve previously side-stepped. We’ll look at poems that risk embarrassment, shame, and censure and create our own pieces that... more
Fail Up—
April 1 to April 26, 2019
TUITION: $500
What often keeps our competent poems from becoming captivating ones is a fear of failure, an instinctual aversion to risk. In this class, we’ll work at unlearning this impulse, priming ourselves to jump headlong into what we’ve previously side-stepped. We’ll look at poems that risk embarrassment, shame, and censure and create our own pieces that... more
Rebecca Seiferle
Form as the Body of the Poem
April 1 to April 26, 2019
TUITION: $500
In this workshop, we’ll look at how each poem takes an organic form, and how discovery of that form can lead us more fully into the poem. At one point I had a sequence of mostly short poems that refused to come together as a whole. One afternoon, while, not wearing my glasses and so... more
Form as the Body of the Poem
April 1 to April 26, 2019
TUITION: $500
In this workshop, we’ll look at how each poem takes an organic form, and how discovery of that form can lead us more fully into the poem. At one point I had a sequence of mostly short poems that refused to come together as a whole. One afternoon, while, not wearing my glasses and so... more
Meghan O'Gieblyn
THE ‘I’ IN MEMOIR
April 1 to April 5, 2019
TUITION: $400
In a lecture titled “Why I Write,” Joan Didion remarked that all she could hear in those three words was “I, I, I.” She was alluding to a common criticism of memoir—that it encourages navel-gazing. But the primacy of first-person narrative—the “I”—is also what makes memoir such a compelling form. Memoirists draw us into their... more
THE ‘I’ IN MEMOIR
April 1 to April 5, 2019
TUITION: $400
In a lecture titled “Why I Write,” Joan Didion remarked that all she could hear in those three words was “I, I, I.” She was alluding to a common criticism of memoir—that it encourages navel-gazing. But the primacy of first-person narrative—the “I”—is also what makes memoir such a compelling form. Memoirists draw us into their... more
Dawn Potter
The Quest of Poetry: An 8-Week Master Class on Reading, Writing, and Revising Poems
March 25 to May 17, 2019
TUITION: $600
In this 8-week master class in poetry, we will focus on ways in which the work of both canonical and contemporary poets can feed our creativity and help us hone revision strategies. By approaching William Shakespeare, Amy Lowell, Tim Seibles, A. E. Stallings, and others as colleagues, we not only learn from their discoveries but... more
The Quest of Poetry: An 8-Week Master Class on Reading, Writing, and Revising Poems
March 25 to May 17, 2019
TUITION: $600
In this 8-week master class in poetry, we will focus on ways in which the work of both canonical and contemporary poets can feed our creativity and help us hone revision strategies. By approaching William Shakespeare, Amy Lowell, Tim Seibles, A. E. Stallings, and others as colleagues, we not only learn from their discoveries but... more
Ed Skoog
HAVE YOU TRIED THE SIDE DOOR? FINDING A WAY IN TO YOUR NEXT POEMS: Spring
March 18 to May 3, 2019
TUITION: $600
Sometimes, starting a poem, I feel paralyzed by the task. Each time I need to find the way around my expectations, over the seemingly unsurmountable traditions and the already-trod reactions against tradition, under the deep sea of …whatever—you get my drift: starting a poem is difficult because of the barriers we ourselves have built. Often,... more
HAVE YOU TRIED THE SIDE DOOR? FINDING A WAY IN TO YOUR NEXT POEMS: Spring
March 18 to May 3, 2019
TUITION: $600
Sometimes, starting a poem, I feel paralyzed by the task. Each time I need to find the way around my expectations, over the seemingly unsurmountable traditions and the already-trod reactions against tradition, under the deep sea of …whatever—you get my drift: starting a poem is difficult because of the barriers we ourselves have built. Often,... more
Elizabeth Bradfield
REWILDING YOUR POEMS: A MONTH OF PRODS, PROMPTS, AND PLAY: Spring
March 11 to April 5, 2019
TUITION: $500
It can be easy to fall into a poetic rut. To feel stuck in routine or less than terrified (don’t we all want to be a little terrified by our poems?) by what we put on the page. This four-week course will focus on exercises that will open new ideas, techniques, and associations in your... more
REWILDING YOUR POEMS: A MONTH OF PRODS, PROMPTS, AND PLAY: Spring
March 11 to April 5, 2019
TUITION: $500
It can be easy to fall into a poetic rut. To feel stuck in routine or less than terrified (don’t we all want to be a little terrified by our poems?) by what we put on the page. This four-week course will focus on exercises that will open new ideas, techniques, and associations in your... more
Peter Campion
FORM FROM FEELING AND FEELING FROM FORM: Spring
March 11 to April 5, 2019
TUITION: $500
This class is for people who want to improve their poems, by understanding the art more fully, from the inside out. During our four weeks, we’ll explore seven formal elements—action, voice, sentence, phrase, line, sound, and metaphor—while generating our own new poems. I hope to give each student a better feeling for how formal elements... more
FORM FROM FEELING AND FEELING FROM FORM: Spring
March 11 to April 5, 2019
TUITION: $500
This class is for people who want to improve their poems, by understanding the art more fully, from the inside out. During our four weeks, we’ll explore seven formal elements—action, voice, sentence, phrase, line, sound, and metaphor—while generating our own new poems. I hope to give each student a better feeling for how formal elements... more
Jennifer Tseng
Writing the Forbidden
March 4 to March 8, 2019
TUITION: $400
In this one-week class we will work to produce forbidden writing. What’s forbidden to one writer may not be forbidden to another. Some feel forbidden to write about emotions (i.e. anger, happiness etc.) or circumstances (i.e. trauma, ecstasy, poverty, wealth, sexuality, aging, mental illness, family secrets etc.); some feel forbidden to write about people different... more
Writing the Forbidden
March 4 to March 8, 2019
TUITION: $400
In this one-week class we will work to produce forbidden writing. What’s forbidden to one writer may not be forbidden to another. Some feel forbidden to write about emotions (i.e. anger, happiness etc.) or circumstances (i.e. trauma, ecstasy, poverty, wealth, sexuality, aging, mental illness, family secrets etc.); some feel forbidden to write about people different... more
Anne Sanow
REVISION IS THE WRITING: PROSE WORKSHOP for Spring
March 4 to March 29, 2019
TUITION: $500
It’s easy to resist revision as the “work” part of creating—but when you embrace it fully as part of the creative process, your writing will start to go to new levels. Real revision is bold and daring. It demands that you get into the guts of your writing and reconceive anything from point of view... more
REVISION IS THE WRITING: PROSE WORKSHOP for Spring
March 4 to March 29, 2019
TUITION: $500
It’s easy to resist revision as the “work” part of creating—but when you embrace it fully as part of the creative process, your writing will start to go to new levels. Real revision is bold and daring. It demands that you get into the guts of your writing and reconceive anything from point of view... more
Rebecca Seiferle
THE POEM'S INTENTION
March 4 to March 29, 2019
TUITION: $500
Often, a poem has its own intentions that are at odds with the intentions of the poet. The poet will begin the poem with a certain aim, feeling, perspective, or subject, only to find that the poem veers into unknown territory. Often the preferred method of revision is to ‘correct’ the poem by deleting or... more
THE POEM'S INTENTION
March 4 to March 29, 2019
TUITION: $500
Often, a poem has its own intentions that are at odds with the intentions of the poet. The poet will begin the poem with a certain aim, feeling, perspective, or subject, only to find that the poem veers into unknown territory. Often the preferred method of revision is to ‘correct’ the poem by deleting or... more
Ed Skoog
CALLED TO SPEECH: A ONE-WEEK WORKSHOP
February 18 to February 22, 2019
TUITION: $400
What is happening when you begin to write a poem? What does it mean to be called to speech, to break into song? Why this, why now? How does the occasion of a poem lead you to write a poem in a certain way, and what avenues do you take to pursue or avoid this... more
CALLED TO SPEECH: A ONE-WEEK WORKSHOP
February 18 to February 22, 2019
TUITION: $400
What is happening when you begin to write a poem? What does it mean to be called to speech, to break into song? Why this, why now? How does the occasion of a poem lead you to write a poem in a certain way, and what avenues do you take to pursue or avoid this... more
Ann Hood
JUMPSTART YOUR MEMOIR: Winter
February 11 to February 15, 2019
TUITION: $400
A writing sample is required for admittance to this class. Before registering, please email a writing sample to gleghorn@fawc.org. In his book on the craft of writing, Stephen King says: the scariest moment is just before you start. This workshop takes that moment and makes it less scary by asking you the right questions about... more
JUMPSTART YOUR MEMOIR: Winter
February 11 to February 15, 2019
TUITION: $400
A writing sample is required for admittance to this class. Before registering, please email a writing sample to gleghorn@fawc.org. In his book on the craft of writing, Stephen King says: the scariest moment is just before you start. This workshop takes that moment and makes it less scary by asking you the right questions about... more
Writers' Work Group: Workshop Your Fiction
February 4 to May 31, 2019
TUITION: $175
This Work Group is a workshop-style group. It is meant for writers who want regular feedback on their drafts, and who are committed to providing critiques for their fellow writers. Whether you are in generative or revision mode, the primary goal of this 16-week group is to provide feedback on your fiction. This group is... more
Writers' Work Group: Workshop Your Nonfiction
February 4 to May 31, 2019
TUITION: $175
This Work Group is a workshop-style group. It is meant for writers who want regular feedback on their drafts, and who are committed to providing critiques for their fellow writers. Whether you are in generative or revision mode, the primary goal of this 16-week group is to provide feedback on your nonfiction. This group is... more
Writers' Work Group: Workshop Your Poems
February 4 to May 31, 2019
TUITION: $175
This Work Group is a workshop-style group. It is meant for writers who want regular feedback on their drafts, and who are committed to providing critiques for their fellow writers. Whether you are in generative or revision mode, the primary goal of this 16-week group is to provide feedback on your poetry. You’ll post a... more
Writers' Work Group: The Big Project (Nonfiction)
February 4 to May 31, 2019
TUITION: $175
“The Big Project” accountability Work Group is meant for writers who want to make headway on their nonfiction manuscript. Whether you are working towards a first draft of a collection of essays, or are beginning the process of revising your manuscript, this 16-week group can provide support, resources, and writerly camaraderie. This is an accountability... more
Writers' Work Group: The Big Project (Fiction)
February 4 to May 31, 2019
TUITION: $175
“The Big Project” accountability Work Group is meant for writers who want to make headway on their fiction manuscript. Whether you are working towards a first draft of a novel or novella, or are beginning the process of revising your manuscript, this 16-week group can provide support, resources, and writerly camaraderie. This is an accountability... more
Writers' Work Group: The Big Project (Poetry)
February 4 to May 31, 2019
TUITION: $175
“The Big Project” accountability Work Group is meant for writers who want to make headway on their poetry manuscript. Whether you are working towards a first draft of a chapbook or full-length collection, or are beginning the process of revising your manuscript, this 16-week group can provide support, resources, and writerly camaraderie. This is an... more
Writers' Work Group: Submit Your Work
February 4 to May 31, 2019
TUITION: $175
The “Submit Your Work” accountability Work Group is meant for writers who want to submit to more literary journals in 2019. Whether you’re aiming for 100 rejections or you want to submit work for the first time, this 16-week group can provide support, resources, and camaraderie. It is open to writers of all genres. This... more
Elizabeth Bradfield
THE PROJECT BOOK: Winter
February 4 to March 1, 2019
TUITION: $500
Finishing a book of poems focused on a topic, rather than a loose aggregation, is a particular art. Some poets unify books by form or voice as well as subject (such as Ellen Bryant Voigt’s Kyrie, Frank X Walker’s Buffalo Dance: The Journey of York, Martha Collins’ White Papers, or Derek Walcott’s Omeros), others want... more
THE PROJECT BOOK: Winter
February 4 to March 1, 2019
TUITION: $500
Finishing a book of poems focused on a topic, rather than a loose aggregation, is a particular art. Some poets unify books by form or voice as well as subject (such as Ellen Bryant Voigt’s Kyrie, Frank X Walker’s Buffalo Dance: The Journey of York, Martha Collins’ White Papers, or Derek Walcott’s Omeros), others want... more
Michael Klein
The Bright Light of Possibility: Four Essays
January 28 to February 22, 2019
TUITION: $500
In this workshop we will be writing one autobiographical essay each week—and discussing various approaches to looking at and then writing about four essential questions each of us have asked ourselves at one point of our own living: Who am I? Where do I come from? Where am I going? And finally, Why am I... more
The Bright Light of Possibility: Four Essays
January 28 to February 22, 2019
TUITION: $500
In this workshop we will be writing one autobiographical essay each week—and discussing various approaches to looking at and then writing about four essential questions each of us have asked ourselves at one point of our own living: Who am I? Where do I come from? Where am I going? And finally, Why am I... more
Rebecca Lindenberg
WHAT I SHOULD HAVE SAID: WRITING FUNNY POEMS for Winter
January 28 to February 22, 2019
TUITION: $500
It is really hard to write funny. It’s even harder to write funny with substance and pathos. But in this class, we’ll look at several poems that succeed at being funny in different ways – some by unlikely juxtapositions, some by satire, some by the ways they create, fulfill, and subvert reader’s expectations, some by... more
WHAT I SHOULD HAVE SAID: WRITING FUNNY POEMS for Winter
January 28 to February 22, 2019
TUITION: $500
It is really hard to write funny. It’s even harder to write funny with substance and pathos. But in this class, we’ll look at several poems that succeed at being funny in different ways – some by unlikely juxtapositions, some by satire, some by the ways they create, fulfill, and subvert reader’s expectations, some by... more
Anne Sanow
REVISION IS THE WRITING: PROSE WORKSHOP FOR Winter
January 21 to February 15, 2019
TUITION: $500
It’s easy to resist revision as the “work” part of creating—but when you embrace it fully as part of the creative process, your writing will start to go to new levels. Real revision is bold and daring. It demands that you get into the guts of your writing and reconceive anything from point of view... more
REVISION IS THE WRITING: PROSE WORKSHOP FOR Winter
January 21 to February 15, 2019
TUITION: $500
It’s easy to resist revision as the “work” part of creating—but when you embrace it fully as part of the creative process, your writing will start to go to new levels. Real revision is bold and daring. It demands that you get into the guts of your writing and reconceive anything from point of view... more
Peter Campion
FORM FROM FEELING AND FEELING FROM FORM: Winter
January 21 to February 15, 2019
TUITION: $500
This class is for people who want to improve their poems, by understanding the art more fully, from the inside out. During our four weeks, we’ll explore seven formal elements—action, voice, sentence, phrase, line, sound, and metaphor—while generating our own new poems. I hope to give each student a better feeling for how formal elements... more
FORM FROM FEELING AND FEELING FROM FORM: Winter
January 21 to February 15, 2019
TUITION: $500
This class is for people who want to improve their poems, by understanding the art more fully, from the inside out. During our four weeks, we’ll explore seven formal elements—action, voice, sentence, phrase, line, sound, and metaphor—while generating our own new poems. I hope to give each student a better feeling for how formal elements... more
Nancy Pearson
15 WORKS: Winter
January 14 to February 8, 2019
TUITION: $500
This four week poetry workshop is based on a class taught at the former Corcoran School of Art. In “15 Works,” you’ll write 3 to 4 poems a week in response to assignments and prompts, with weekly themes. Comments on one another’s poems will be limited to one poem per week unless you’d like to... more
15 WORKS: Winter
January 14 to February 8, 2019
TUITION: $500
This four week poetry workshop is based on a class taught at the former Corcoran School of Art. In “15 Works,” you’ll write 3 to 4 poems a week in response to assignments and prompts, with weekly themes. Comments on one another’s poems will be limited to one poem per week unless you’d like to... more
Sarah Green
THIS IS THE YEAR: A New Writing Habit Starter
January 7 to January 11, 2019
TUITION: $400
Do you keep meaning to write but find yourself waylaid by parenting, work crises, news headlines, Netflix, or other fill-in-the-blank interlopers? Do you periodically sit down and create a draft but never seem to get back to revising it? We’ve all been there. But this year can be different. Let the gold-sequins-and champagne-feeling of early... more
THIS IS THE YEAR: A New Writing Habit Starter
January 7 to January 11, 2019
TUITION: $400
Do you keep meaning to write but find yourself waylaid by parenting, work crises, news headlines, Netflix, or other fill-in-the-blank interlopers? Do you periodically sit down and create a draft but never seem to get back to revising it? We’ve all been there. But this year can be different. Let the gold-sequins-and champagne-feeling of early... more
Sarah Van Arsdale
Starting the Novel
January 7 to February 1, 2019
TUITION: $500
Starting with “Chapter One” often leads to freezing up in panic long before reaching “Chapter Two.” In this workshop, we’ll will focus on crafting scenes of your story, regardless of where they may fall in the finished novel. We’ll talk about strategies for creating and sustaining tension both in scenes and across the novel, through... more
Starting the Novel
January 7 to February 1, 2019
TUITION: $500
Starting with “Chapter One” often leads to freezing up in panic long before reaching “Chapter Two.” In this workshop, we’ll will focus on crafting scenes of your story, regardless of where they may fall in the finished novel. We’ll talk about strategies for creating and sustaining tension both in scenes and across the novel, through... more
Dawn Potter
Interesting Minds: An 8-Week Revision Workshop for Essayists
January 7 to March 1, 2019
TUITION: $600
The essayist Philip Lopate has said, “The reason I read nonfiction is to follow an interesting mind.” In this 8-week revision workshop, we will tighten our nonfiction drafts by concentrating on the twists and turns of our own interesting minds. We will focus on learning from each other’s observations, questions, and suggestions about details, organization,... more
Interesting Minds: An 8-Week Revision Workshop for Essayists
January 7 to March 1, 2019
TUITION: $600
The essayist Philip Lopate has said, “The reason I read nonfiction is to follow an interesting mind.” In this 8-week revision workshop, we will tighten our nonfiction drafts by concentrating on the twists and turns of our own interesting minds. We will focus on learning from each other’s observations, questions, and suggestions about details, organization,... more
Rebecca Seiferle
THE POETIC SEQUENCE
January 7 to March 1, 2019
TUITION: $600
A sequence is a long poem that combines shorter pieces by relying on association, juxtaposition, and connection rather than theme or narrative to create an organic poetic whole. Overwhelmed by events, feelings, and thoughts, poets have turned to the sequence, as a way to express what otherwise could not be borne in language or within... more
THE POETIC SEQUENCE
January 7 to March 1, 2019
TUITION: $600
A sequence is a long poem that combines shorter pieces by relying on association, juxtaposition, and connection rather than theme or narrative to create an organic poetic whole. Overwhelmed by events, feelings, and thoughts, poets have turned to the sequence, as a way to express what otherwise could not be borne in language or within... more
Jennifer Tseng
START SMALL: WHAT WRITERS CAN LEARN FROM VERY SHORT STORIES
January 7 to February 1, 2019
TUITION: $500
Reading and writing Very Short Stories can teach us several basic lessons of fiction writing, including the art of omission, compression, economy, and urgency. Whether you’re already part of the current Very Short Story renaissance or plan to use your Very Short Story as a springboard for a longer project, this four-week class will help... more
START SMALL: WHAT WRITERS CAN LEARN FROM VERY SHORT STORIES
January 7 to February 1, 2019
TUITION: $500
Reading and writing Very Short Stories can teach us several basic lessons of fiction writing, including the art of omission, compression, economy, and urgency. Whether you’re already part of the current Very Short Story renaissance or plan to use your Very Short Story as a springboard for a longer project, this four-week class will help... more
Gabrielle Calvocoressi
OF KNOWING NOTHING AND EVERYTHING: A WEEK OF POEM, PIGMENT, AND PAINT IN THE LAB
January 7 to January 11, 2019
TUITION: $400
In this class we’ll ask rigorous questions like, “What do I mean when I say the sky is blue?” & “What does ‘green’ mean, really?” This is a class about using multiple mediums and the art of surprise to make our poems and our practice of writing poems more expansive, muscular, and joyfully challenging. We’ll... more
OF KNOWING NOTHING AND EVERYTHING: A WEEK OF POEM, PIGMENT, AND PAINT IN THE LAB
January 7 to January 11, 2019
TUITION: $400
In this class we’ll ask rigorous questions like, “What do I mean when I say the sky is blue?” & “What does ‘green’ mean, really?” This is a class about using multiple mediums and the art of surprise to make our poems and our practice of writing poems more expansive, muscular, and joyfully challenging. We’ll... more
Michelle Tea
MEMOIR THAT READS LIKE FICTION: Winter
January 7 to January 11, 2019
TUITION: $400
In this intensive memoir workshop, you will learn techniques to create a memoir with a cinematic feel and the singular voice of an immersive novel. In addition to discussing style and craft, you will also touch on the personal concerns that inevitably arise when a writer takes on the telling of their own story. You... more
MEMOIR THAT READS LIKE FICTION: Winter
January 7 to January 11, 2019
TUITION: $400
In this intensive memoir workshop, you will learn techniques to create a memoir with a cinematic feel and the singular voice of an immersive novel. In addition to discussing style and craft, you will also touch on the personal concerns that inevitably arise when a writer takes on the telling of their own story. You... more
Heidi Jon Schmidt
TELLING THE STORY: 8 WEEKS IN Winter
January 7 to March 1, 2019
TUITION: $600
John Cheever once stopped himself in the middle of a reading at FAWC and said, “Hell, I can tell it better than this.” Then he looked up and told the story as it had happened, instead of reading what he’d written. Almost all stories begin somewhere in an author’s experience, and are imagined and reimagined... more
TELLING THE STORY: 8 WEEKS IN Winter
January 7 to March 1, 2019
TUITION: $600
John Cheever once stopped himself in the middle of a reading at FAWC and said, “Hell, I can tell it better than this.” Then he looked up and told the story as it had happened, instead of reading what he’d written. Almost all stories begin somewhere in an author’s experience, and are imagined and reimagined... more
Ed Skoog
KEEP YOUR FOOT ON THE SUSTAIN PEDAL: WRITING LONG POEMS
January 7 to March 1, 2019
TUITION: $600
In this workshop, participants will struggle through several drafts of a few poems between 50 and 150 lines in length. Perhaps it seems silly to write those numbers down as meaningful parameters, but in the instructor’s experience that’s where a distinct kind of poem resides, one with a sustained tone and many twists and turns:... more
KEEP YOUR FOOT ON THE SUSTAIN PEDAL: WRITING LONG POEMS
January 7 to March 1, 2019
TUITION: $600
In this workshop, participants will struggle through several drafts of a few poems between 50 and 150 lines in length. Perhaps it seems silly to write those numbers down as meaningful parameters, but in the instructor’s experience that’s where a distinct kind of poem resides, one with a sustained tone and many twists and turns:... more
Sara Eliza Johnson
LANGUAGE AND THE LUCID DREAM: Winter
January 7 to March 1, 2019
TUITION: $600
Writing a poem—that is, inventing and manipulating our language to compose it—can be likened to lucid dreaming. In this course, you will learn to write poems as if dreaming lucidly, which means that you will learn to write with intention and precision without sacrificing intuition, and without allowing desire to control the poem (and its... more
LANGUAGE AND THE LUCID DREAM: Winter
January 7 to March 1, 2019
TUITION: $600
Writing a poem—that is, inventing and manipulating our language to compose it—can be likened to lucid dreaming. In this course, you will learn to write poems as if dreaming lucidly, which means that you will learn to write with intention and precision without sacrificing intuition, and without allowing desire to control the poem (and its... more
Ann Hood
WRITING THE PERSONAL ESSAY: Winter
January 7 to February 1, 2019
TUITION: $500
Each week will begin with my introduction of a topic for that week’s memoir assignment. Topics will include Food, Place, Love, and Loss. I will email you examples from writers I admire such as Jonathan Lethem, JoAnn Beard, Cheryl Strayed, and Tony Early and discuss how they have accomplished writing these strong essays. How did... more
WRITING THE PERSONAL ESSAY: Winter
January 7 to February 1, 2019
TUITION: $500
Each week will begin with my introduction of a topic for that week’s memoir assignment. Topics will include Food, Place, Love, and Loss. I will email you examples from writers I admire such as Jonathan Lethem, JoAnn Beard, Cheryl Strayed, and Tony Early and discuss how they have accomplished writing these strong essays. How did... more
Erin Adair-Hodges
Lyric and the Lives of Others—
January 7 to February 1, 2019
TUITION: $500
Though poetry doesn’t require plot to shape it, as writers we’re naturally drawn to others’ compelling stories. What, then, can we learn from engaging deeply with the lived experiences of others? This class will explore how the particular dynamics and constraints of poetry can be used to provide a lens not only on the life... more
Lyric and the Lives of Others—
January 7 to February 1, 2019
TUITION: $500
Though poetry doesn’t require plot to shape it, as writers we’re naturally drawn to others’ compelling stories. What, then, can we learn from engaging deeply with the lived experiences of others? This class will explore how the particular dynamics and constraints of poetry can be used to provide a lens not only on the life... more
Jennifer Tseng
WRITING THE FORBIDDEN
December 17 to December 21, 2018
TUITION: $400
In this one-week class we will work to produce forbidden writing. What’s forbidden to one writer may not be forbidden to another. Some feel forbidden to write about emotions (i.e. anger, happiness etc.) or circumstances (i.e. trauma, ecstasy, poverty, wealth, sexuality, aging, mental illness, family secrets etc.); some feel forbidden to write about people different... more
WRITING THE FORBIDDEN
December 17 to December 21, 2018
TUITION: $400
In this one-week class we will work to produce forbidden writing. What’s forbidden to one writer may not be forbidden to another. Some feel forbidden to write about emotions (i.e. anger, happiness etc.) or circumstances (i.e. trauma, ecstasy, poverty, wealth, sexuality, aging, mental illness, family secrets etc.); some feel forbidden to write about people different... more
Ann Hood
JUMPSTART YOUR MEMOIR: Fall
December 3 to December 7, 2018
TUITION: $400
A writing sample is required for admittance to this class. Before registering, please email a writing sample to gleghorn@fawc.org. Often, that moment when you first begin to write is the scariest. This one-week intensive workshop will help you get started by asking the right questions. Whether you’re stuck in a draft that isn’t working, having... more
JUMPSTART YOUR MEMOIR: Fall
December 3 to December 7, 2018
TUITION: $400
A writing sample is required for admittance to this class. Before registering, please email a writing sample to gleghorn@fawc.org. Often, that moment when you first begin to write is the scariest. This one-week intensive workshop will help you get started by asking the right questions. Whether you’re stuck in a draft that isn’t working, having... more
Michael Klein
The Intention of the Risk: An Autobiographical Essay Workshop
November 19 to December 14, 2018
TUITION: $500
We will be reading essays and writing short essays which will culminate in a long autobiographical essay by the end of the course. The class will be intended around the making of lyric essays—combining the aspects of poetry, journalism, research and memoir. Or, as I like to think of it—a piece of writing that comes... more
The Intention of the Risk: An Autobiographical Essay Workshop
November 19 to December 14, 2018
TUITION: $500
We will be reading essays and writing short essays which will culminate in a long autobiographical essay by the end of the course. The class will be intended around the making of lyric essays—combining the aspects of poetry, journalism, research and memoir. Or, as I like to think of it—a piece of writing that comes... more
D. Gilson
Cut to the Quick: Flash Nonfiction
November 12 to December 7, 2018
TUITION: $500
Hot takes, op-eds, tweets, statuses, pings: the truth and its opposites are flying around us faster than ever before. This course will focus on the sub-genre of the flash essay. Situated somewhere between prose poem and micro-narrative, flash essays provide us the path to lyrically explore a topic while taking both narrative and syntactical leaps.... more
Cut to the Quick: Flash Nonfiction
November 12 to December 7, 2018
TUITION: $500
Hot takes, op-eds, tweets, statuses, pings: the truth and its opposites are flying around us faster than ever before. This course will focus on the sub-genre of the flash essay. Situated somewhere between prose poem and micro-narrative, flash essays provide us the path to lyrically explore a topic while taking both narrative and syntactical leaps.... more
Rebecca Seiferle
Moving with the Text: A Translation Workshop
November 12 to December 7, 2018
TUITION: $500
In this workshop we will explore poetic translation as a kind of migration, moving with the body of a text from one language into another. To move with the body of the text, we must not only read closely into language but also listen deeply to the voice of a different culture and time. In... more
Moving with the Text: A Translation Workshop
November 12 to December 7, 2018
TUITION: $500
In this workshop we will explore poetic translation as a kind of migration, moving with the body of a text from one language into another. To move with the body of the text, we must not only read closely into language but also listen deeply to the voice of a different culture and time. In... more
Rebecca Lindenberg
WHAT I SHOULD HAVE SAID: WRITING FUNNY POEMS in Fall
November 12 to December 7, 2018
TUITION: $500
It is really hard to write funny. It’s even harder to write funny with substance and pathos. But in this class, we’ll look at several poems that succeed at being funny in different ways – some by unlikely juxtapositions, some by satire, some by the ways they create, fulfill, and subvert reader’s expectations, some by... more
WHAT I SHOULD HAVE SAID: WRITING FUNNY POEMS in Fall
November 12 to December 7, 2018
TUITION: $500
It is really hard to write funny. It’s even harder to write funny with substance and pathos. But in this class, we’ll look at several poems that succeed at being funny in different ways – some by unlikely juxtapositions, some by satire, some by the ways they create, fulfill, and subvert reader’s expectations, some by... more
Daisy Fried
“SOME PEOPLE HAVE BEEN UNKIND”: A WORKSHOP ON LITERARY BOOK REVIEWING
November 12 to November 16, 2018
TUITION: $400
In this workshop, you will look at literary book reviewing from aesthetic, ethical, and practical angles, exploring possible approaches for reviewing and discovering what elements are useful in reviews. By examining and discussing samples of different kinds of reviews as well as writing your own, you will discover how writing reviews can help us in... more
“SOME PEOPLE HAVE BEEN UNKIND”: A WORKSHOP ON LITERARY BOOK REVIEWING
November 12 to November 16, 2018
TUITION: $400
In this workshop, you will look at literary book reviewing from aesthetic, ethical, and practical angles, exploring possible approaches for reviewing and discovering what elements are useful in reviews. By examining and discussing samples of different kinds of reviews as well as writing your own, you will discover how writing reviews can help us in... more
Peter Campion
Next Steps: Fall
November 12 to November 16, 2018
TUITION: $400
This five day course has been designed to take your poems to the next level. Our online discussion will provide tools to help you connect more fully with the sources of your poems, bring new life to old drafts, and write more vivacious lines and sentences. With the help of time-proven prompts, each student will... more
Next Steps: Fall
November 12 to November 16, 2018
TUITION: $400
This five day course has been designed to take your poems to the next level. Our online discussion will provide tools to help you connect more fully with the sources of your poems, bring new life to old drafts, and write more vivacious lines and sentences. With the help of time-proven prompts, each student will... more
David Kutz-Marks
BEAUTY IN CLOUDS: A FOUR-WEEK WORKSHOP
November 12 to December 7, 2018
TUITION: $500
In this course we will assess the stranger aesthetic virtues of poems we—and the rest of the world—are writing now. Without disavowing the values of form, clarity, logical coherence, and so many other key terms of the workshop that represent the straightforward, we will find and discuss the occasions of confusion, misdirection, indefinite pronoun reference,... more
BEAUTY IN CLOUDS: A FOUR-WEEK WORKSHOP
November 12 to December 7, 2018
TUITION: $500
In this course we will assess the stranger aesthetic virtues of poems we—and the rest of the world—are writing now. Without disavowing the values of form, clarity, logical coherence, and so many other key terms of the workshop that represent the straightforward, we will find and discuss the occasions of confusion, misdirection, indefinite pronoun reference,... more
Sarah Van Arsdale
The Fiction of Truth/The Truth of Fiction
November 5 to November 30, 2018
TUITION: $500
Where is the line between memoir and fiction? How much can you fabricate in memoir, and how much can you steal from your own life in fiction? In this workshop, students will submit their work—whether it’s fiction, memoir, or a hybrid—for critique, while participating in a discussion about the question of veracity and imagination, using... more
The Fiction of Truth/The Truth of Fiction
November 5 to November 30, 2018
TUITION: $500
Where is the line between memoir and fiction? How much can you fabricate in memoir, and how much can you steal from your own life in fiction? In this workshop, students will submit their work—whether it’s fiction, memoir, or a hybrid—for critique, while participating in a discussion about the question of veracity and imagination, using... more
Matt Miller
Haunting and the Haunted: Finding and the Honing the Poetry of Place
November 5 to November 30, 2018
TUITION: $500
How do we use image, language, form, and sound to set down our towns, our neighborhoods, and the cities we live in such a way that words capture the truth of a place? How do we resist sentimentality while perhaps welcoming a place’s own particular mythology? Tyler Malone has written, “The city resists being seen... more
Haunting and the Haunted: Finding and the Honing the Poetry of Place
November 5 to November 30, 2018
TUITION: $500
How do we use image, language, form, and sound to set down our towns, our neighborhoods, and the cities we live in such a way that words capture the truth of a place? How do we resist sentimentality while perhaps welcoming a place’s own particular mythology? Tyler Malone has written, “The city resists being seen... more
Rebecca Gayle Howell
WE ALL WRITE SENTENCES: Fall
November 5 to November 30, 2018
TUITION: $500
This four-week class invites both poets and prose writers to remember what made them want to write in the first place: a love for language. For the first three weeks we will focus on a variety of syntax styles, which we will engage through exercises, discussions, and lectures. We will also perform close readings of... more
WE ALL WRITE SENTENCES: Fall
November 5 to November 30, 2018
TUITION: $500
This four-week class invites both poets and prose writers to remember what made them want to write in the first place: a love for language. For the first three weeks we will focus on a variety of syntax styles, which we will engage through exercises, discussions, and lectures. We will also perform close readings of... more
Michelle Tea
MEMOIR THAT READS LIKE FICTION: Fall
November 5 to November 9, 2018
TUITION: $400
Memoirist, novelist and poet Michelle Tea will advise on the creation of a memoir that has the cinematic feel and the singular voice of an immersive novel. Learn techniques to distance yourself from your own experience, face down fears, slaughter sentimentality, engage in ruthless honesty and create a version of yourself that is both truthful... more
MEMOIR THAT READS LIKE FICTION: Fall
November 5 to November 9, 2018
TUITION: $400
Memoirist, novelist and poet Michelle Tea will advise on the creation of a memoir that has the cinematic feel and the singular voice of an immersive novel. Learn techniques to distance yourself from your own experience, face down fears, slaughter sentimentality, engage in ruthless honesty and create a version of yourself that is both truthful... more
Nancy Pearson
15 WORKS: Fall
October 22 to November 16, 2018
TUITION: $500
This four week poetry workshop is based on a class taught at the former Corcoran School of Art. In “15 Works,” you’ll write 3 to 4 poems a week in response to assignments and prompts, with weekly themes. Comments on one another’s poems will be limited to one poem per week unless you’d like to... more
15 WORKS: Fall
October 22 to November 16, 2018
TUITION: $500
This four week poetry workshop is based on a class taught at the former Corcoran School of Art. In “15 Works,” you’ll write 3 to 4 poems a week in response to assignments and prompts, with weekly themes. Comments on one another’s poems will be limited to one poem per week unless you’d like to... more
Sara Eliza Johnson
LANGUAGE AND THE LUCID DREAM: Fall
October 22 to December 14, 2018
TUITION: $600
Writing a poem—that is, inventing and manipulating our language to compose it—can be likened to lucid dreaming. In this course, you will learn to write poems as if dreaming lucidly, which means that you will learn to write with intention and precision without sacrificing intuition, and without allowing desire to control the poem (and its... more
LANGUAGE AND THE LUCID DREAM: Fall
October 22 to December 14, 2018
TUITION: $600
Writing a poem—that is, inventing and manipulating our language to compose it—can be likened to lucid dreaming. In this course, you will learn to write poems as if dreaming lucidly, which means that you will learn to write with intention and precision without sacrificing intuition, and without allowing desire to control the poem (and its... more
Fred Marchant
Living the Dream
October 22 to November 16, 2018
TUITION: $500
Just think of how many dreams you have during any given week or month! Think of the imaginative energy that pours into, and emanates from, those images and stories. Think too of how that imaginative energy might be harnessed or otherwise brought to bear on new poems and in your writing process in general. In... more
Living the Dream
October 22 to November 16, 2018
TUITION: $500
Just think of how many dreams you have during any given week or month! Think of the imaginative energy that pours into, and emanates from, those images and stories. Think too of how that imaginative energy might be harnessed or otherwise brought to bear on new poems and in your writing process in general. In... more
Kimberly Burwick
MYTHOLOGICAL GRAVITY IN POETRY
October 15 to November 9, 2018
TUITION: $500
Interested in mythology and folktales? In this generative workshop we’ll take a close look at how oral legends can make their way into contemporary poems in profound and exciting ways. Drawing on poets such as H.D., Sherwin Bitsui, Linda Gregg, Jack Gilbert, Alicia Ostriker, Lucille Clifton, Ted Hughes and others, we will use multiple writing... more
MYTHOLOGICAL GRAVITY IN POETRY
October 15 to November 9, 2018
TUITION: $500
Interested in mythology and folktales? In this generative workshop we’ll take a close look at how oral legends can make their way into contemporary poems in profound and exciting ways. Drawing on poets such as H.D., Sherwin Bitsui, Linda Gregg, Jack Gilbert, Alicia Ostriker, Lucille Clifton, Ted Hughes and others, we will use multiple writing... more
Peter Campion
FORM FROM FEELING AND FEELING FROM FORM: Fall
October 15 to November 9, 2018
TUITION: $500
This class is for people who want to improve their poems, by understanding the art more fully, from the inside out. During our four weeks, we’ll explore seven formal elements—action, voice, sentence, phrase, line, sound, and metaphor—while generating our own new poems. I hope to give each student a better feeling for how formal elements... more
FORM FROM FEELING AND FEELING FROM FORM: Fall
October 15 to November 9, 2018
TUITION: $500
This class is for people who want to improve their poems, by understanding the art more fully, from the inside out. During our four weeks, we’ll explore seven formal elements—action, voice, sentence, phrase, line, sound, and metaphor—while generating our own new poems. I hope to give each student a better feeling for how formal elements... more
Ada Limón
STAYING TRUE: AUTHENTICITY AND VOICE: Fall
October 8 to November 30, 2018
TUITION: $600
With so many poetic and artistic influences circulating wildly in the modern world, it can be difficult to remain true to your own instinctual style and idiosyncratic voice. Because contemporary writers are continually inundated with exciting new styles and innovative voices, the need to find the quiet strength in your own work has never been... more
STAYING TRUE: AUTHENTICITY AND VOICE: Fall
October 8 to November 30, 2018
TUITION: $600
With so many poetic and artistic influences circulating wildly in the modern world, it can be difficult to remain true to your own instinctual style and idiosyncratic voice. Because contemporary writers are continually inundated with exciting new styles and innovative voices, the need to find the quiet strength in your own work has never been... more
Daisy Fried
Writing the Political Poem
October 8 to November 2, 2018
TUITION: $500
What makes a poem political, and what makes a political poem good? Is it harder or easier, in the current American political climate to write political poetry? Can poems change anything in the world anyway? What are political poems for? This workshop aims to help you find formats and strategies to write good, effective political... more
Writing the Political Poem
October 8 to November 2, 2018
TUITION: $500
What makes a poem political, and what makes a political poem good? Is it harder or easier, in the current American political climate to write political poetry? Can poems change anything in the world anyway? What are political poems for? This workshop aims to help you find formats and strategies to write good, effective political... more
Rachel Lyon
From Form and Function to Microfiction: An 8-Week Micro Craft Intensive
October 8 to November 30, 2018
TUITION: $600
Flash fiction is a sexy, versatile form. It can lead the reader somewhere unexpected and leave her there to ponder the unknown. It can crack open a moment to reveal the magnificent eternal. From a writer’s point of view, flash fiction provides an opportunity to distill the elements of craft and focus on them as... more
From Form and Function to Microfiction: An 8-Week Micro Craft Intensive
October 8 to November 30, 2018
TUITION: $600
Flash fiction is a sexy, versatile form. It can lead the reader somewhere unexpected and leave her there to ponder the unknown. It can crack open a moment to reveal the magnificent eternal. From a writer’s point of view, flash fiction provides an opportunity to distill the elements of craft and focus on them as... more
Kim Addonizio
EXPLORING THE SONNET: Fall
October 1 to October 26, 2018
TUITION: $500
Whether you’ve been writing sonnets for years, or have forgotten what iambic pentameter is, or never knew in the first place—this workshop is for you. The sonnet is a beautiful, flexible form that is as vital now as it was when Petrarch and Dante wrote in the fourteenth century, and when the Elizabethan writers (including... more
EXPLORING THE SONNET: Fall
October 1 to October 26, 2018
TUITION: $500
Whether you’ve been writing sonnets for years, or have forgotten what iambic pentameter is, or never knew in the first place—this workshop is for you. The sonnet is a beautiful, flexible form that is as vital now as it was when Petrarch and Dante wrote in the fourteenth century, and when the Elizabethan writers (including... more
Elizabeth Bradfield
REWILDING YOUR POEMS: A MONTH OF PRODS, PROMPTS, AND PLAY: Fall
October 1 to October 26, 2018
TUITION: $500
It can be easy to fall into a poetic rut. To feel stuck in routine or less than terrified (don’t we all want to be a little terrified by our poems?) by what we put on the page. This four-week course will focus on exercises that will open new ideas, techniques, and associations in your... more
REWILDING YOUR POEMS: A MONTH OF PRODS, PROMPTS, AND PLAY: Fall
October 1 to October 26, 2018
TUITION: $500
It can be easy to fall into a poetic rut. To feel stuck in routine or less than terrified (don’t we all want to be a little terrified by our poems?) by what we put on the page. This four-week course will focus on exercises that will open new ideas, techniques, and associations in your... more
Ann Hood
WRITING THE PERSONAL ESSAY: FALL
October 1 to October 26, 2018
TUITION: $500
Each week will begin with my introduction of a topic for that week’s memoir assignment. Topics will include Food, Place, Love, and Loss. I will email you examples from writers I admire such as Jonathan Lethem, JoAnn Beard, Cheryl Strayed, and Tony Early and discuss how they have accomplished writing these strong essays. How did... more
WRITING THE PERSONAL ESSAY: FALL
October 1 to October 26, 2018
TUITION: $500
Each week will begin with my introduction of a topic for that week’s memoir assignment. Topics will include Food, Place, Love, and Loss. I will email you examples from writers I admire such as Jonathan Lethem, JoAnn Beard, Cheryl Strayed, and Tony Early and discuss how they have accomplished writing these strong essays. How did... more
Ed Skoog
HAVE YOU TRIED THE SIDE DOOR? FINDING A WAY IN TO YOUR NEXT POEMS: Fall
October 1 to November 23, 2018
TUITION: $600
Sometimes, starting a poem, I feel paralyzed by the task. Each time I need to find the way around my expectations, over the seemingly unsurmountable traditions and the already-trod reactions against tradition, under the deep sea of …whatever—you get my drift: starting a poem is difficult because of the barriers we ourselves have built. Often,... more
HAVE YOU TRIED THE SIDE DOOR? FINDING A WAY IN TO YOUR NEXT POEMS: Fall
October 1 to November 23, 2018
TUITION: $600
Sometimes, starting a poem, I feel paralyzed by the task. Each time I need to find the way around my expectations, over the seemingly unsurmountable traditions and the already-trod reactions against tradition, under the deep sea of …whatever—you get my drift: starting a poem is difficult because of the barriers we ourselves have built. Often,... more
Philip Metres
Inviting the Infinite: Poetry and/as Prayer
September 24 to September 28, 2018
TUITION: $400
David, Mohammad, Rumi, Donne, Hopkins, Rilke, Louise Gluck, Kaveh Akbar, Danez Smith: all have written poetry as an invitation to the infinite, to wrestle with God, longing create a refuge in the eternal. In this brief workshop, we will discuss a few approaches to poetry as a sacred practice, employing the rhetoric of devotional prayer.... more
Inviting the Infinite: Poetry and/as Prayer
September 24 to September 28, 2018
TUITION: $400
David, Mohammad, Rumi, Donne, Hopkins, Rilke, Louise Gluck, Kaveh Akbar, Danez Smith: all have written poetry as an invitation to the infinite, to wrestle with God, longing create a refuge in the eternal. In this brief workshop, we will discuss a few approaches to poetry as a sacred practice, employing the rhetoric of devotional prayer.... more
Michelle Tea
MEMOIR THAT READS LIKE FICTION: Summer
September 24 to September 28, 2018
TUITION: $400
In this intensive memoir workshop, you will learn techniques to create a memoir with a cinematic feel and the singular voice of an immersive novel. In addition to discussing style and craft, you will also touch on the personal concerns that inevitably arise when a writer takes on the telling of their own story. You... more
MEMOIR THAT READS LIKE FICTION: Summer
September 24 to September 28, 2018
TUITION: $400
In this intensive memoir workshop, you will learn techniques to create a memoir with a cinematic feel and the singular voice of an immersive novel. In addition to discussing style and craft, you will also touch on the personal concerns that inevitably arise when a writer takes on the telling of their own story. You... more
Matt Miller
Tiny Tales, Prose Poems, and Micro Memoirs
September 17 to September 21, 2018
TUITION: $400
This class will wade into those estuaries where the waters of genre blend and mingle and birth something new. We will try to blend the lyrical intensity of the poem with the narrative movement of the story as well as the wandering discovery of the essay. We will write untethered from the poetic line yet... more
Tiny Tales, Prose Poems, and Micro Memoirs
September 17 to September 21, 2018
TUITION: $400
This class will wade into those estuaries where the waters of genre blend and mingle and birth something new. We will try to blend the lyrical intensity of the poem with the narrative movement of the story as well as the wandering discovery of the essay. We will write untethered from the poetic line yet... more
Daisy Fried
Poetry Revision Boot Camp: Summer
September 17 to September 21, 2018
TUITION: $400
Get ready, get set…You’ll either come into workshop with a poem draft you’re interested in but dissatisfied with, or, at the workshop’s beginning, you’ll generate a brand new first draft following a prompt designed to give you something substantial to work with. Each day, you’ll overhaul the poem in a different way according to a... more
Poetry Revision Boot Camp: Summer
September 17 to September 21, 2018
TUITION: $400
Get ready, get set…You’ll either come into workshop with a poem draft you’re interested in but dissatisfied with, or, at the workshop’s beginning, you’ll generate a brand new first draft following a prompt designed to give you something substantial to work with. Each day, you’ll overhaul the poem in a different way according to a... more
Peter Campion
Next Steps: Summer
September 10 to September 14, 2018
TUITION: $400
This five day course has been designed to take your poems to the next level. Our online discussion will provide tools to help you connect more fully with the sources of your poems, bring new life to old drafts, and write more vivacious lines and sentences. With the help of time-proven prompts, each student will... more
Next Steps: Summer
September 10 to September 14, 2018
TUITION: $400
This five day course has been designed to take your poems to the next level. Our online discussion will provide tools to help you connect more fully with the sources of your poems, bring new life to old drafts, and write more vivacious lines and sentences. With the help of time-proven prompts, each student will... more
Erin Adair-Hodges
Fail Up—
September 3 to September 28, 2018
TUITION: $500
What often keeps our competent poems from becoming captivating ones is a fear of failure, an instinctual aversion to risk. In this class, we’ll work at unlearning this impulse, priming ourselves to jump headlong into what we’ve previously side-stepped. We’ll look at poems that risk embarrassment, shame, and censure and create our own pieces that... more
Fail Up—
September 3 to September 28, 2018
TUITION: $500
What often keeps our competent poems from becoming captivating ones is a fear of failure, an instinctual aversion to risk. In this class, we’ll work at unlearning this impulse, priming ourselves to jump headlong into what we’ve previously side-stepped. We’ll look at poems that risk embarrassment, shame, and censure and create our own pieces that... more
CA Conrad
Occult Poetics & (Soma)tic Poetry Rituals PART 2
August 20 to August 24, 2018
TUITION: $400
We will discuss how occult and paranormal experiences and practices of poets in the past shaped their praxis and changed the world of poetry, and in some cases even saved lives. We will read and discuss the occult poetics of Hoa Nguyen, Ariana Reines, Annie Finch, and others. We will also build (Soma)tic poetry rituals... more
Occult Poetics & (Soma)tic Poetry Rituals PART 2
August 20 to August 24, 2018
TUITION: $400
We will discuss how occult and paranormal experiences and practices of poets in the past shaped their praxis and changed the world of poetry, and in some cases even saved lives. We will read and discuss the occult poetics of Hoa Nguyen, Ariana Reines, Annie Finch, and others. We will also build (Soma)tic poetry rituals... more
CA Conrad
Occult Poetics & (Soma)tic Poetry Rituals PART 1
August 13 to August 17, 2018
TUITION: $400
We will discuss how occult and paranormal experiences and practices of poets in the past shaped their praxis and changed the world of poetry, and in some cases even saved lives. We will read and discuss the occult poetics of Hannah Weiner, Jack Spicer, Robert Desnos, and others. We will also build (Soma)tic poetry rituals... more
Occult Poetics & (Soma)tic Poetry Rituals PART 1
August 13 to August 17, 2018
TUITION: $400
We will discuss how occult and paranormal experiences and practices of poets in the past shaped their praxis and changed the world of poetry, and in some cases even saved lives. We will read and discuss the occult poetics of Hannah Weiner, Jack Spicer, Robert Desnos, and others. We will also build (Soma)tic poetry rituals... more
Gabrielle Calvocoressi
Fantastic Worlds In the Realest Poems: How Fantasy Fiction Might Help Our Hardest Realities Bloom
August 6 to August 31, 2018
TUITION: $500
What does it mean to tell the truth? And why can it often be so hard to do and/or make the poem seem nothing like the vivid, hallucinatory world of joy/sorrow/daily life? In this class we will read Fantasy Fiction by writers such as Zen Cho, Ursula Le Guin, JY Yang and others as a... more
Fantastic Worlds In the Realest Poems: How Fantasy Fiction Might Help Our Hardest Realities Bloom
August 6 to August 31, 2018
TUITION: $500
What does it mean to tell the truth? And why can it often be so hard to do and/or make the poem seem nothing like the vivid, hallucinatory world of joy/sorrow/daily life? In this class we will read Fantasy Fiction by writers such as Zen Cho, Ursula Le Guin, JY Yang and others as a... more
Heidi Jon Schmidt
Character and Fate
August 6 to August 31, 2018
TUITION: $500
Character is the heart of a fiction writer’s work, and we will spend this month with our characters, imagining and re-imagining them and their worlds, breathing life into these unique souls whose actions and reactions drive their destiny–and story– forward. We’ll use characters from your work and and a series of exercises and readings to... more
Character and Fate
August 6 to August 31, 2018
TUITION: $500
Character is the heart of a fiction writer’s work, and we will spend this month with our characters, imagining and re-imagining them and their worlds, breathing life into these unique souls whose actions and reactions drive their destiny–and story– forward. We’ll use characters from your work and and a series of exercises and readings to... more
Kim Addonizio
Diving into Metaphor
August 6 to August 31, 2018
TUITION: $500
This class is FULL, but Kim’s class in the fall still has space. “Juliet is the sun!” Shakespeare famously wrote. And Pound, just as famously, saw the faces at a Metro station as “petals on a wet, black bough.” The magic of metaphor: one thing in terms of another. Metaphor structures our thinking and daily... more
Diving into Metaphor
August 6 to August 31, 2018
TUITION: $500
This class is FULL, but Kim’s class in the fall still has space. “Juliet is the sun!” Shakespeare famously wrote. And Pound, just as famously, saw the faces at a Metro station as “petals on a wet, black bough.” The magic of metaphor: one thing in terms of another. Metaphor structures our thinking and daily... more
Major Jackson
Visionary Poetics
August 6 to August 10, 2018
TUITION: $400
We designate those poets with vision who have successfully developed an identifiable style or addressed a topic in their poetry that becomes almost synonymous with their name. For example, poets such as Lucille Clifton, Yusef Komunyakaa, CK Williams, Sharon Olds, Naomi Shihab Nye, Rita Dove and Frank Bidart are all celebrated for their innovative contributions... more
Visionary Poetics
August 6 to August 10, 2018
TUITION: $400
We designate those poets with vision who have successfully developed an identifiable style or addressed a topic in their poetry that becomes almost synonymous with their name. For example, poets such as Lucille Clifton, Yusef Komunyakaa, CK Williams, Sharon Olds, Naomi Shihab Nye, Rita Dove and Frank Bidart are all celebrated for their innovative contributions... more
Maria Hummel
Novel Writing: Answering the Top Ten Questions
July 23 to July 27, 2018
TUITION: $400
In this course, we’ll explore the top ten questions that writers need to consider when writing a novel. These questions include “Is my novel idea-based or character-based?” “What details and action will make my characters seem real and genuine on the page?” “How can I best create tension and suspense?” Discovering the answers to them... more
Novel Writing: Answering the Top Ten Questions
July 23 to July 27, 2018
TUITION: $400
In this course, we’ll explore the top ten questions that writers need to consider when writing a novel. These questions include “Is my novel idea-based or character-based?” “What details and action will make my characters seem real and genuine on the page?” “How can I best create tension and suspense?” Discovering the answers to them... more
Ann Hood
Writing the Personal Essay: Summer
July 23 to August 17, 2018
TUITION: $500
Each week will begin with my introduction of a topic for that week’s memoir assignment. Topics will include Food, Place, Love, and Loss. I will email you examples from writers I admire such as Jonathan Lethem, JoAnn Beard, Cheryl Strayed, and Tony Early and discuss how they have accomplished writing these strong essays. How did... more
Writing the Personal Essay: Summer
July 23 to August 17, 2018
TUITION: $500
Each week will begin with my introduction of a topic for that week’s memoir assignment. Topics will include Food, Place, Love, and Loss. I will email you examples from writers I admire such as Jonathan Lethem, JoAnn Beard, Cheryl Strayed, and Tony Early and discuss how they have accomplished writing these strong essays. How did... more
Duy Doan
Spontaneity, or Disruption and the Illusion of Spontaneity
July 9 to July 13, 2018
TUITION: $400
The moments that disrupt the natural movement or direction of a poem are sometimes where the poem’s pulse is most perceptible. Often we can create these moments because we’re feeling spontaneous and free to improvise. Other times we might rely on a scrappy resourcefulness, which can be just as fun and wild. In this class,... more
Spontaneity, or Disruption and the Illusion of Spontaneity
July 9 to July 13, 2018
TUITION: $400
The moments that disrupt the natural movement or direction of a poem are sometimes where the poem’s pulse is most perceptible. Often we can create these moments because we’re feeling spontaneous and free to improvise. Other times we might rely on a scrappy resourcefulness, which can be just as fun and wild. In this class,... more
Sarah Green
YOUR BEST BEACH BODY: Seven Prompts to Provoke and Invite
July 9 to July 13, 2018
TUITION: $400
Where in your body do you house longing? Where does surprise live? Tenderness? Humor? This week we’ll prep our summer poem bodies with seven prompts designed to provoke and invite the visceral and somatic, both dark and light. We’ll build muscle with, and move freely around, anaphora, syllabics, direct address, found text, ekphrasis, and erasure.... more
YOUR BEST BEACH BODY: Seven Prompts to Provoke and Invite
July 9 to July 13, 2018
TUITION: $400
Where in your body do you house longing? Where does surprise live? Tenderness? Humor? This week we’ll prep our summer poem bodies with seven prompts designed to provoke and invite the visceral and somatic, both dark and light. We’ll build muscle with, and move freely around, anaphora, syllabics, direct address, found text, ekphrasis, and erasure.... more
Meghan O'Gieblyn
Place in Memoir
July 9 to August 31, 2018
TUITION: $600
Too often, location is regarded as the backdrop of a memoir—the fixed stage-set on which the action unfolds. But there is a long tradition of memoir that privileges place, and the writer’s experience with that place. In such works, location takes center stage and becomes a dynamic “character” in the story. Travel memoir is the... more
Place in Memoir
July 9 to August 31, 2018
TUITION: $600
Too often, location is regarded as the backdrop of a memoir—the fixed stage-set on which the action unfolds. But there is a long tradition of memoir that privileges place, and the writer’s experience with that place. In such works, location takes center stage and becomes a dynamic “character” in the story. Travel memoir is the... more
Alex Marzano-Lesnevich
Narrating Memoir: Who's Telling Your Life Story?
July 9 to July 13, 2018
TUITION: $400
The memoirist is asked to play many roles: simultaneously that of the author, the narrator, and the character. And while those of the author (you, who sits at the keyboard) and the character (younger you, in the scenes you are recollecting) may be easily understood, that of the narrator is both the slipperiest and perhaps... more
Narrating Memoir: Who's Telling Your Life Story?
July 9 to July 13, 2018
TUITION: $400
The memoirist is asked to play many roles: simultaneously that of the author, the narrator, and the character. And while those of the author (you, who sits at the keyboard) and the character (younger you, in the scenes you are recollecting) may be easily understood, that of the narrator is both the slipperiest and perhaps... more
Peter Campion
Form From Feeling and Feeling From Form: Summer
July 9 to August 3, 2018
TUITION: $500
This class is for people who want to improve their poems, by understanding the art more fully, from the inside out. During our four weeks, we’ll explore seven formal elements—action, voice, sentence, phrase, line, sound, and metaphor—while generating our own new poems. I hope to give each student a better feeling for how formal elements... more
Form From Feeling and Feeling From Form: Summer
July 9 to August 3, 2018
TUITION: $500
This class is for people who want to improve their poems, by understanding the art more fully, from the inside out. During our four weeks, we’ll explore seven formal elements—action, voice, sentence, phrase, line, sound, and metaphor—while generating our own new poems. I hope to give each student a better feeling for how formal elements... more
Rebecca Lindenberg
What I Should Have Said: Writing Funny Poems
July 9 to August 3, 2018
TUITION: $500
It is really hard to write funny. It’s even harder to write funny with substance and pathos. But in this class, we’ll look at several poems that succeed at being funny in different ways – some by unlikely juxtapositions, some by satire, some by the ways they create, fulfill, and subvert reader’s expectations, some by... more
What I Should Have Said: Writing Funny Poems
July 9 to August 3, 2018
TUITION: $500
It is really hard to write funny. It’s even harder to write funny with substance and pathos. But in this class, we’ll look at several poems that succeed at being funny in different ways – some by unlikely juxtapositions, some by satire, some by the ways they create, fulfill, and subvert reader’s expectations, some by... more
Ed Skoog
Have You Tried the Side Door? Finding A Way In To Your Next Poems: SUMMER
July 2 to August 24, 2018
TUITION: $600
Sometimes, starting a poem, I feel paralyzed by the task. Each time I need to find the way around my expectations, over the seemingly unsurmountable traditions and the already-trod reactions against tradition, under the deep sea of …whatever—you get my drift: starting a poem is difficult because of the barriers we ourselves have built. Often,... more
Have You Tried the Side Door? Finding A Way In To Your Next Poems: SUMMER
July 2 to August 24, 2018
TUITION: $600
Sometimes, starting a poem, I feel paralyzed by the task. Each time I need to find the way around my expectations, over the seemingly unsurmountable traditions and the already-trod reactions against tradition, under the deep sea of …whatever—you get my drift: starting a poem is difficult because of the barriers we ourselves have built. Often,... more
Sara Eliza Johnson
LANGUAGE AND THE LUCID DREAM: Summer
June 25 to August 17, 2018
TUITION: $600
Writing a poem—that is, inventing and manipulating our language to compose it—can be likened to lucid dreaming. In this course, you will learn to write poems as if dreaming lucidly, which means that you will learn to write with intention and precision without sacrificing intuition, and without allowing desire to control the poem (and its... more
LANGUAGE AND THE LUCID DREAM: Summer
June 25 to August 17, 2018
TUITION: $600
Writing a poem—that is, inventing and manipulating our language to compose it—can be likened to lucid dreaming. In this course, you will learn to write poems as if dreaming lucidly, which means that you will learn to write with intention and precision without sacrificing intuition, and without allowing desire to control the poem (and its... more
Fred Marchant
Letters to the World
June 25 to June 29, 2018
TUITION: $400
Poets from the ancient world to the present time have often found the idea of a “letter in verse” very appealing. Sometimes that letter poem is addressed to a real person in a real time and place: a friend, a lover, a teacher, a relative, a public figure, etc. One could also write to someone... more
Letters to the World
June 25 to June 29, 2018
TUITION: $400
Poets from the ancient world to the present time have often found the idea of a “letter in verse” very appealing. Sometimes that letter poem is addressed to a real person in a real time and place: a friend, a lover, a teacher, a relative, a public figure, etc. One could also write to someone... more
Annie Finch
Working the Beat More; How to Make Poems Sing in Depth
June 18 to July 13, 2018
TUITION: $500
It can be tempting to think of rhythm, meter, or form as a container, something outside and separate from a poem. But the best poems sing with rhythms that move them as innately and mysteriously as waves work the water. Whether or not you’ve written in meter before, these powerful rhythms are there in your... more
Working the Beat More; How to Make Poems Sing in Depth
June 18 to July 13, 2018
TUITION: $500
It can be tempting to think of rhythm, meter, or form as a container, something outside and separate from a poem. But the best poems sing with rhythms that move them as innately and mysteriously as waves work the water. Whether or not you’ve written in meter before, these powerful rhythms are there in your... more
Oliver de la Paz
Lovers, Liars, Monsters, Saints: You and the Persona Poem
June 18 to July 13, 2018
TUITION: $500
Ancient Greeks wore masks to express the emotions of the characters they were playing during dramatic productions. There was a pragmatic reason for this–it was often difficult for those seated far away to see what emotion the character being portrayed was feeling. And so the exaggerated face could be seen from the furthest reaches of... more
Lovers, Liars, Monsters, Saints: You and the Persona Poem
June 18 to July 13, 2018
TUITION: $500
Ancient Greeks wore masks to express the emotions of the characters they were playing during dramatic productions. There was a pragmatic reason for this–it was often difficult for those seated far away to see what emotion the character being portrayed was feeling. And so the exaggerated face could be seen from the furthest reaches of... more
Maria Hummel
Beginning Your Mystery Novel
June 18 to June 22, 2018
TUITION: $400
Tana French, Kate Atkinson, and Gillian Flynn are part of an explosion of new mystery novelists who are stretching the strict conventions of this long-beloved genre to make timely, original books. If you’ve ever daydreamed about joining them, this may be the class for you. In a 1948 issue of Harper’s, the poet W.H. Auden... more
Beginning Your Mystery Novel
June 18 to June 22, 2018
TUITION: $400
Tana French, Kate Atkinson, and Gillian Flynn are part of an explosion of new mystery novelists who are stretching the strict conventions of this long-beloved genre to make timely, original books. If you’ve ever daydreamed about joining them, this may be the class for you. In a 1948 issue of Harper’s, the poet W.H. Auden... more
Gabrielle Calvocoressi
Of Knowing Nothing and Everything: A Week of Poem, Pigment, and Paint in the Lab: Summer
June 18 to June 22, 2018
TUITION: $400
In this class we’ll ask rigorous questions like, “What do I mean when I say the sky is blue?” & “What does ‘green’ mean, really?” This is a class about using multiple mediums and the art of surprise to make our poems and our practice of writing poems more expansive, muscular, and joyfully challenging. We’ll... more
Of Knowing Nothing and Everything: A Week of Poem, Pigment, and Paint in the Lab: Summer
June 18 to June 22, 2018
TUITION: $400
In this class we’ll ask rigorous questions like, “What do I mean when I say the sky is blue?” & “What does ‘green’ mean, really?” This is a class about using multiple mediums and the art of surprise to make our poems and our practice of writing poems more expansive, muscular, and joyfully challenging. We’ll... more
Writers' Work Groups: Pilot Term
June 11 to October 26, 2018
TUITION: $100
***Please note that the cost for the term is $125. Our registration system will calculate the fee based upon the $100 fee listed here, with a $25 registration fee added on.*** ***No discounts can be applied to Writers’ Work Group terms. Please do not check the “Returning Student box” when you register, as it will... more
Emilia Phillips
Every Phantom // A Story: Erasure and Revision
June 11 to August 9, 2018
TUITION: $600
What isn’t said in a poem is just as meaningful–just as much a craft choice–as what is said. As poets, we so often go to the page with the intention of telling our readers something; this approach, however, often positions us between the reader and the text, like a person narrating a movie in front... more
Every Phantom // A Story: Erasure and Revision
June 11 to August 9, 2018
TUITION: $600
What isn’t said in a poem is just as meaningful–just as much a craft choice–as what is said. As poets, we so often go to the page with the intention of telling our readers something; this approach, however, often positions us between the reader and the text, like a person narrating a movie in front... more
Elizabeth Bradfield
Rewilding Your Poems: A Month of Prods, Prompts, and Play
June 11 to July 6, 2018
TUITION: $500
It can be easy to fall into a poetic rut. To feel stuck in routine or less than terrified (don’t we all want to be a little terrified by our poems?) by what we put on the page. This four-week course will focus on exercises that will open new ideas, techniques, and associations in your... more
Rewilding Your Poems: A Month of Prods, Prompts, and Play
June 11 to July 6, 2018
TUITION: $500
It can be easy to fall into a poetic rut. To feel stuck in routine or less than terrified (don’t we all want to be a little terrified by our poems?) by what we put on the page. This four-week course will focus on exercises that will open new ideas, techniques, and associations in your... more
Kimberly Burwick
The Image, Ravenous: Summer
June 11 to June 15, 2018
TUITION: $400
Do you remember how exciting it once was to find a crushed wasp or the first robin in March? In this generative course we will fiercely recollect the early-childhood process of image-making. Focusing on techniques such as synesthesia, anaphora and apostrophe we will play in the mud, so to speak, and rebuild our poems with... more
The Image, Ravenous: Summer
June 11 to June 15, 2018
TUITION: $400
Do you remember how exciting it once was to find a crushed wasp or the first robin in March? In this generative course we will fiercely recollect the early-childhood process of image-making. Focusing on techniques such as synesthesia, anaphora and apostrophe we will play in the mud, so to speak, and rebuild our poems with... more
Meg Day
5 Days, 6 Poems, 7 Ways Back Home: Summer
June 4 to June 8, 2018
TUITION: $400
Movement is a poet’s dialect: we pace the room of each stanza, we shuttle our readers across & down the page, & we reach inside them & rearrange the furniture. Even our metaphors have a vehicle to transport the tenor to & from. Isn’t revision, too, a kind of effort to get somewhere?In establishing her... more
5 Days, 6 Poems, 7 Ways Back Home: Summer
June 4 to June 8, 2018
TUITION: $400
Movement is a poet’s dialect: we pace the room of each stanza, we shuttle our readers across & down the page, & we reach inside them & rearrange the furniture. Even our metaphors have a vehicle to transport the tenor to & from. Isn’t revision, too, a kind of effort to get somewhere?In establishing her... more
Sarah Rose Nordgren
The Sources of Poetry
June 4 to July 26, 2018
TUITION: $600
“You mention Immortality. That is the Flood subject.” – Emily Dickinson in a letter to T. W. Higginson Writing a poem is not a logical act, and it behooves us now and again to ask ourselves: Why are we writing poems in the first place? Many of us might identify it as a need, or... more
The Sources of Poetry
June 4 to July 26, 2018
TUITION: $600
“You mention Immortality. That is the Flood subject.” – Emily Dickinson in a letter to T. W. Higginson Writing a poem is not a logical act, and it behooves us now and again to ask ourselves: Why are we writing poems in the first place? Many of us might identify it as a need, or... more
Ann Hood
Jumpstart Your Memoir: Summer
June 4 to June 8, 2018
TUITION: $400
A writing sample is required for admittance to this class. Before registering, please email a writing sample to gleghorn@fawc.org. In his book on the craft of writing, Stephen King says: the scariest moment is just before you start. This workshop takes that moment and makes it less scary by asking you the right questions about... more
Jumpstart Your Memoir: Summer
June 4 to June 8, 2018
TUITION: $400
A writing sample is required for admittance to this class. Before registering, please email a writing sample to gleghorn@fawc.org. In his book on the craft of writing, Stephen King says: the scariest moment is just before you start. This workshop takes that moment and makes it less scary by asking you the right questions about... more
Alix Ohlin
Making Beautiful Sentences
June 4 to June 29, 2018
TUITION: $500
What makes a sentence so powerful and enduring that it will stick in your mind forever? In this four-week class, we’ll take a look at some beautiful sentences and try to figure out exactly what makes them work, what distinguishes a writer’s style at the syntax level, and where the music of prose resides. We’ll... more
Making Beautiful Sentences
June 4 to June 29, 2018
TUITION: $500
What makes a sentence so powerful and enduring that it will stick in your mind forever? In this four-week class, we’ll take a look at some beautiful sentences and try to figure out exactly what makes them work, what distinguishes a writer’s style at the syntax level, and where the music of prose resides. We’ll... more
Nancy Pearson
15 Works: Summer
June 4 to June 29, 2018
TUITION: $500
This four week poetry workshop is based on a class taught at the former Corcoran School of Art. In “15 Works,” you’ll write 3 to 4 poems a week in response to assignments and prompts, with weekly themes. Comments on one another’s poems will be limited to one poem per week unless you’d like to... more
15 Works: Summer
June 4 to June 29, 2018
TUITION: $500
This four week poetry workshop is based on a class taught at the former Corcoran School of Art. In “15 Works,” you’ll write 3 to 4 poems a week in response to assignments and prompts, with weekly themes. Comments on one another’s poems will be limited to one poem per week unless you’d like to... more
Francesca Lia Block
12 Questions to Help Structure your Novel in Five Days
May 21 to May 25, 2018
TUITION: $400
Over the years, Francesca Lia Block has helped hundreds and hundreds of writers discover and develop their novels using twelve essential, inter-related questions: What is the character gift and flaw? What is the character want and need? What is the character’s arc? Who is the antagonist and how to they contribute to the story problem?... more
12 Questions to Help Structure your Novel in Five Days
May 21 to May 25, 2018
TUITION: $400
Over the years, Francesca Lia Block has helped hundreds and hundreds of writers discover and develop their novels using twelve essential, inter-related questions: What is the character gift and flaw? What is the character want and need? What is the character’s arc? Who is the antagonist and how to they contribute to the story problem?... more
Rebecca Lindenberg
Writing for the Senses: Poetic Imagery, Experience, Emotion, and Evocation
May 14 to May 18, 2018
TUITION: $400
Though this course may be online, it’s a highly experiential one, devoted exclusively to developing the writer’s perceptual path from sensation to language. Richly original attention to the world and our experience of it is the best possible antidote to clichéd or stale writing. It can also be the best inspiration for new work. And... more
Writing for the Senses: Poetic Imagery, Experience, Emotion, and Evocation
May 14 to May 18, 2018
TUITION: $400
Though this course may be online, it’s a highly experiential one, devoted exclusively to developing the writer’s perceptual path from sensation to language. Richly original attention to the world and our experience of it is the best possible antidote to clichéd or stale writing. It can also be the best inspiration for new work. And... more
Kimberly Burwick
Mythological Gravity in Poetry: Spring
May 14 to June 8, 2018
TUITION: $500
Interested in mythology and folktales? In this generative workshop we’ll take a close look at how oral legends can make their way into contemporary poems in profound and exciting ways. Drawing on poets such as H.D., Sherwin Bitsui, Linda Gregg, Jack Gilbert, Alicia Ostriker, Lucille Clifton, Ted Hughes and others, we will use multiple writing... more
Mythological Gravity in Poetry: Spring
May 14 to June 8, 2018
TUITION: $500
Interested in mythology and folktales? In this generative workshop we’ll take a close look at how oral legends can make their way into contemporary poems in profound and exciting ways. Drawing on poets such as H.D., Sherwin Bitsui, Linda Gregg, Jack Gilbert, Alicia Ostriker, Lucille Clifton, Ted Hughes and others, we will use multiple writing... more
Joseph Cassara
Narrative Voice & Setting: Inhabiting The Fictional World
May 7 to June 29, 2018
TUITION: $600
Engaging characters and settings have the potential to be the most memorable aspects in our fiction, staying in our readers’ mind long after they finish reading. In this workshop, we will examine a variety approaches to hone our voice and build believable and captivating worlds. We will look at examples of contemporary literary fiction to... more
Narrative Voice & Setting: Inhabiting The Fictional World
May 7 to June 29, 2018
TUITION: $600
Engaging characters and settings have the potential to be the most memorable aspects in our fiction, staying in our readers’ mind long after they finish reading. In this workshop, we will examine a variety approaches to hone our voice and build believable and captivating worlds. We will look at examples of contemporary literary fiction to... more
Ed Skoog
Have You Tried the Side Door? Finding a Way In to Your Next Poems: Spring
May 7 to June 29, 2018
TUITION: $600
Sometimes, starting a poem, I feel paralyzed by the task. Each time I need to find the way around my expectations, over the seemingly unsurmountable traditions and the already-trod reactions against tradition, under the deep sea of …whatever—you get my drift: starting a poem is difficult because of the barriers we ourselves have built. Often,... more
Have You Tried the Side Door? Finding a Way In to Your Next Poems: Spring
May 7 to June 29, 2018
TUITION: $600
Sometimes, starting a poem, I feel paralyzed by the task. Each time I need to find the way around my expectations, over the seemingly unsurmountable traditions and the already-trod reactions against tradition, under the deep sea of …whatever—you get my drift: starting a poem is difficult because of the barriers we ourselves have built. Often,... more
Nomi Stone
Anthro-Poetics: Living, Seeing, and Wonder
May 7 to May 11, 2018
TUITION: $500
We will “sing the [world] electric” through experiments in anthro-poetics. Our goal: to expand both our seeing and writing practices, by estranging the familiar and deestranging the hitherto unknown. We will adventure together into wonder by bringing brief excerpts of philosophical texts in conversation with ethnographic explorations in the world. Together we will extend your... more
Anthro-Poetics: Living, Seeing, and Wonder
May 7 to May 11, 2018
TUITION: $500
We will “sing the [world] electric” through experiments in anthro-poetics. Our goal: to expand both our seeing and writing practices, by estranging the familiar and deestranging the hitherto unknown. We will adventure together into wonder by bringing brief excerpts of philosophical texts in conversation with ethnographic explorations in the world. Together we will extend your... more
Cam Terwilliger
Flash Fiction: Spring
May 7 to June 1, 2018
TUITION: $500
Regularly appearing in the pages of literary magazines, flash fiction has become one of the most vibrant modes in which to write. A protean form, these extremely short stories come in many different shapes: some realistic, some fantastic, and some relying on the associative power of poetry. Whatever the case, flash fiction is a great... more
Flash Fiction: Spring
May 7 to June 1, 2018
TUITION: $500
Regularly appearing in the pages of literary magazines, flash fiction has become one of the most vibrant modes in which to write. A protean form, these extremely short stories come in many different shapes: some realistic, some fantastic, and some relying on the associative power of poetry. Whatever the case, flash fiction is a great... more
Sarah Rose Nordgren
Griffins, Harpies, and Jackalopes: Hybrid Poetics
May 7 to May 11, 2018
TUITION: $400
“What grows in that place is possessed of a beauty all its own, ramshackle and unexpected.”– Campbell McGrath, “The Prose Poem” Poetry’s history is one of change, of expansion in and out of new forms, purposes, contexts. It wasn’t too long ago that it broke the binds of meter to create vers libre and to... more
Griffins, Harpies, and Jackalopes: Hybrid Poetics
May 7 to May 11, 2018
TUITION: $400
“What grows in that place is possessed of a beauty all its own, ramshackle and unexpected.”– Campbell McGrath, “The Prose Poem” Poetry’s history is one of change, of expansion in and out of new forms, purposes, contexts. It wasn’t too long ago that it broke the binds of meter to create vers libre and to... more
Emilia Phillips
Call (Out): Imitation, Invective, and Conversation
April 9 to May 4, 2018
TUITION: $500
Imitation is the highest form of flattery, right? Right? In this course, we’ll investigate the practices of poetic imitation and invective, and everything in between. We’ll consider the role imitation plays in the development and ongoing practices of poets, and how imitation may be used for other means besides homage. We’ll consider the ways in... more
Call (Out): Imitation, Invective, and Conversation
April 9 to May 4, 2018
TUITION: $500
Imitation is the highest form of flattery, right? Right? In this course, we’ll investigate the practices of poetic imitation and invective, and everything in between. We’ll consider the role imitation plays in the development and ongoing practices of poets, and how imitation may be used for other means besides homage. We’ll consider the ways in... more
Anne Sanow
Revision is the Writing: Prose Workshop
April 9 to May 4, 2018
TUITION: $500
It’s easy to resist revision as the “work” part of creating—but when you embrace it fully as part of the creative process, your writing will start to go to new levels. Real revision is bold and daring. It demands that you get into the guts of your writing and reconceive anything from point of view... more
Revision is the Writing: Prose Workshop
April 9 to May 4, 2018
TUITION: $500
It’s easy to resist revision as the “work” part of creating—but when you embrace it fully as part of the creative process, your writing will start to go to new levels. Real revision is bold and daring. It demands that you get into the guts of your writing and reconceive anything from point of view... more
Michelle Tea
Memoir that Reads Like Fiction: Spring
April 9 to April 13, 2018
TUITION: $400
In this intensive memoir workshop, you will learn techniques to create a memoir with a cinematic feel and the singular voice of an immersive novel. In addition to discussing style and craft, you will also touch on the personal concerns that inevitably arise when a writer takes on the telling of their own story. You... more
Memoir that Reads Like Fiction: Spring
April 9 to April 13, 2018
TUITION: $400
In this intensive memoir workshop, you will learn techniques to create a memoir with a cinematic feel and the singular voice of an immersive novel. In addition to discussing style and craft, you will also touch on the personal concerns that inevitably arise when a writer takes on the telling of their own story. You... more
Alex Marzano-Lesnevich
Your Family Members, Your Characters
April 2 to April 6, 2018
TUITION: $400
When we write memoir or autobiographical fiction, our characters are drawn from the people we love, the people we know the best. So why is it that sometimes those characters appear the blurriest to readers, less vivid because they’re drawn from someone real? Is it possible that how close we are to someone might be... more
Your Family Members, Your Characters
April 2 to April 6, 2018
TUITION: $400
When we write memoir or autobiographical fiction, our characters are drawn from the people we love, the people we know the best. So why is it that sometimes those characters appear the blurriest to readers, less vivid because they’re drawn from someone real? Is it possible that how close we are to someone might be... more
Fred Marchant
Staying With It: A Five-Day Meditation in Poetry
March 26 to March 30, 2018
TUITION: $400
In this one-week intensive online course we will begin a new poem and stay with it for the whole five days, the goal being to nurture and expand that poem into an extended meditation. We will consider what a meditative poem is and does, and why one might want to write one. We will study... more
Staying With It: A Five-Day Meditation in Poetry
March 26 to March 30, 2018
TUITION: $400
In this one-week intensive online course we will begin a new poem and stay with it for the whole five days, the goal being to nurture and expand that poem into an extended meditation. We will consider what a meditative poem is and does, and why one might want to write one. We will study... more
Ann Hood
Writing the Personal Essay: Spring
March 26 to April 20, 2018
TUITION: $500
Each week will begin with my introduction of a topic for that week’s memoir assignment. Topics will include Food, Place, Love, and Loss. I will email you examples from writers I admire such as Jonathan Lethem, JoAnn Beard, Cheryl Strayed, and Tony Early and discuss how they have accomplished writing these strong essays. How did... more
Writing the Personal Essay: Spring
March 26 to April 20, 2018
TUITION: $500
Each week will begin with my introduction of a topic for that week’s memoir assignment. Topics will include Food, Place, Love, and Loss. I will email you examples from writers I admire such as Jonathan Lethem, JoAnn Beard, Cheryl Strayed, and Tony Early and discuss how they have accomplished writing these strong essays. How did... more
Rosie Schaap
Essay is a Verb: The Practice of Personal Narrative: Spring
March 19 to April 13, 2018
TUITION: $500
To essay is to try. Informed and animated by the singular life experience and voice of its author, the personal essay represents an attempt to engage deeply with an idea, a problem, a preoccupation, in the most powerful language possible. Personal essay writing presents a particularly rich opportunity to luxuriate in thought—about whatever troubles you,... more
Essay is a Verb: The Practice of Personal Narrative: Spring
March 19 to April 13, 2018
TUITION: $500
To essay is to try. Informed and animated by the singular life experience and voice of its author, the personal essay represents an attempt to engage deeply with an idea, a problem, a preoccupation, in the most powerful language possible. Personal essay writing presents a particularly rich opportunity to luxuriate in thought—about whatever troubles you,... more
Rebecca Gayle Howell
We All Write Sentences: Spring
March 19 to March 23, 2018
TUITION: $400
This one-week intensive invites both poets and prose writers to consider more closely the power of pushing out the boundaries of the English sentence. Reading, across genres, sentences by masters of the ecstatic–James Agee, Gwendolyn Brooks, Cormac McCarthy, Emily Dickinson, Ross Gay, Halldór Laxness, Melville, Toni Morrison, Nabokov, Gerald Stern, C.K. Williams, Joy Williams–we will... more
We All Write Sentences: Spring
March 19 to March 23, 2018
TUITION: $400
This one-week intensive invites both poets and prose writers to consider more closely the power of pushing out the boundaries of the English sentence. Reading, across genres, sentences by masters of the ecstatic–James Agee, Gwendolyn Brooks, Cormac McCarthy, Emily Dickinson, Ross Gay, Halldór Laxness, Melville, Toni Morrison, Nabokov, Gerald Stern, C.K. Williams, Joy Williams–we will... more
Meg Day
5 Days, 6 Poems, 7 Ways Back Home: Spring
March 12 to March 16, 2018
TUITION: $400
Movement is a poet’s dialect: we pace the room of each stanza, we shuttle our readers across & down the page, & we reach inside them & rearrange the furniture. Even our metaphors have a vehicle to transport the tenor to & from. Isn’t revision, too, a kind of effort to get somewhere?In establishing her... more
5 Days, 6 Poems, 7 Ways Back Home: Spring
March 12 to March 16, 2018
TUITION: $400
Movement is a poet’s dialect: we pace the room of each stanza, we shuttle our readers across & down the page, & we reach inside them & rearrange the furniture. Even our metaphors have a vehicle to transport the tenor to & from. Isn’t revision, too, a kind of effort to get somewhere?In establishing her... more
Lisa Duffy
Elements of Craft: A Fiction Workshop: SPRING
March 12 to April 6, 2018
TUITION: $500
This workshop is for students who are looking for critical feedback on a short story or novel-in-progress (novel excerpt should stand alone). Students will critique each other’s work using a template focused on the essential elements of fiction—plot, structure, character and language. We’ll discuss each of these elements with an eye toward several goals: to... more
Elements of Craft: A Fiction Workshop: SPRING
March 12 to April 6, 2018
TUITION: $500
This workshop is for students who are looking for critical feedback on a short story or novel-in-progress (novel excerpt should stand alone). Students will critique each other’s work using a template focused on the essential elements of fiction—plot, structure, character and language. We’ll discuss each of these elements with an eye toward several goals: to... more
Emilia Phillips
The Upside-Down: Contemporary Pastorals and Necropastorals: Spring
March 12 to April 6, 2018
TUITION: $500
“How many ladders to gather an orchard?” asks Brigit Pegeen Kelly in “The Leaving.” Beyond nature poetry, beyond the arcadian romances, this course drives the definition of the poetic pastoral into contemporary fields, including those of ecopoetics and apocalypse narratives, while honoring the classical form’s tradition and its mortification by modernity. The course will begin... more
The Upside-Down: Contemporary Pastorals and Necropastorals: Spring
March 12 to April 6, 2018
TUITION: $500
“How many ladders to gather an orchard?” asks Brigit Pegeen Kelly in “The Leaving.” Beyond nature poetry, beyond the arcadian romances, this course drives the definition of the poetic pastoral into contemporary fields, including those of ecopoetics and apocalypse narratives, while honoring the classical form’s tradition and its mortification by modernity. The course will begin... more
Kimberly Burwick
Roughness, Ruckus and Rumble: Writing toward Disquietude
March 12 to May 4, 2018
TUITION: $600
Engaging the acuteness of internal and external strife, we will generate poems that do not shy away from distress, but engage this feeling head-on. We look at poets such as Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Tomaž Šalamun, Tomasz Różycki, Rebecca Gayle Howell, Frank Stanford, Kevin Goodan, Mary Jo Bang as well as excerpts from some of... more
Roughness, Ruckus and Rumble: Writing toward Disquietude
March 12 to May 4, 2018
TUITION: $600
Engaging the acuteness of internal and external strife, we will generate poems that do not shy away from distress, but engage this feeling head-on. We look at poets such as Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Tomaž Šalamun, Tomasz Różycki, Rebecca Gayle Howell, Frank Stanford, Kevin Goodan, Mary Jo Bang as well as excerpts from some of... more
Peter Campion
Form From Feeling and Feeling From Form: Spring
March 12 to April 6, 2018
TUITION: $500
This class is for people who want to improve their poems, by understanding the art more fully, from the inside out. During our four weeks, we’ll explore seven formal elements—action, voice, sentence, phrase, line, sound, and metaphor—while generating our own new poems. I hope to give each student a better feeling for how formal elements... more
Form From Feeling and Feeling From Form: Spring
March 12 to April 6, 2018
TUITION: $500
This class is for people who want to improve their poems, by understanding the art more fully, from the inside out. During our four weeks, we’ll explore seven formal elements—action, voice, sentence, phrase, line, sound, and metaphor—while generating our own new poems. I hope to give each student a better feeling for how formal elements... more
Chloe Garcia Roberts
Crossing Borders and Subverting Genre: The Lyric Essay: SPRING
March 12 to April 6, 2018
TUITION: $500
Have your poems ever felt jealous of scientific essays, investigative journalism, instruction manuals, business correspondence, or religious texts to name a few? Or conversely does your prose feel like it’s missing certain flourishes, freedoms, or gestures that you see over the wall in poetry-land? Are you drawn to authors whose work exists somewhere at the... more
Crossing Borders and Subverting Genre: The Lyric Essay: SPRING
March 12 to April 6, 2018
TUITION: $500
Have your poems ever felt jealous of scientific essays, investigative journalism, instruction manuals, business correspondence, or religious texts to name a few? Or conversely does your prose feel like it’s missing certain flourishes, freedoms, or gestures that you see over the wall in poetry-land? Are you drawn to authors whose work exists somewhere at the... more
Jillian Weise
The Poet as Spy: 4 Tricks from Espionage: Spring
March 12 to March 16, 2018
TUITION: $400
Since we live in the age of the ubiquitous status update, you are already familiar with spying and being spied, watching and being watched, surveying and being surveyed. So you will make that familiarity manifest by writing poems as a secret agent; inventing a cover story; composing an interrogation; and spying on the culture that... more
The Poet as Spy: 4 Tricks from Espionage: Spring
March 12 to March 16, 2018
TUITION: $400
Since we live in the age of the ubiquitous status update, you are already familiar with spying and being spied, watching and being watched, surveying and being surveyed. So you will make that familiarity manifest by writing poems as a secret agent; inventing a cover story; composing an interrogation; and spying on the culture that... more
Sara Eliza Johnson
Language and the Lucid Dream: Spring
March 12 to May 4, 2018
TUITION: $600
Writing a poem—that is, inventing and manipulating our language to compose it—can be likened to lucid dreaming. In this course, you will learn to write poems as if dreaming lucidly, which means that you will learn to write with intention and precision without sacrificing intuition, and without allowing desire to control the poem (and its... more
Language and the Lucid Dream: Spring
March 12 to May 4, 2018
TUITION: $600
Writing a poem—that is, inventing and manipulating our language to compose it—can be likened to lucid dreaming. In this course, you will learn to write poems as if dreaming lucidly, which means that you will learn to write with intention and precision without sacrificing intuition, and without allowing desire to control the poem (and its... more
Suzanne Rivecca
Good Things in Small Packages: The Art of the Short Story: Spring
March 12 to May 4, 2018
TUITION: $600
A great short story is all the proof we need that bigger isn’t necessarily better—or more beautiful, or more profound. In this new class, you will learn how to apply new ideas of structure, character, plot and language to your short stories to help make them have a larger payoff and a sense of emotional... more
Good Things in Small Packages: The Art of the Short Story: Spring
March 12 to May 4, 2018
TUITION: $600
A great short story is all the proof we need that bigger isn’t necessarily better—or more beautiful, or more profound. In this new class, you will learn how to apply new ideas of structure, character, plot and language to your short stories to help make them have a larger payoff and a sense of emotional... more
Ed Skoog
Called to Speech: A One-Week Workshop
March 5 to March 9, 2018
TUITION: $400
What is happening when you begin to write a poem? What does it mean to be called to speech, to break into song? Why this, why now? How does the occasion of a poem lead you to write a poem in a certain way, and what avenues do you take to pursue or avoid this... more
Called to Speech: A One-Week Workshop
March 5 to March 9, 2018
TUITION: $400
What is happening when you begin to write a poem? What does it mean to be called to speech, to break into song? Why this, why now? How does the occasion of a poem lead you to write a poem in a certain way, and what avenues do you take to pursue or avoid this... more
Rebecca Seiferle
The Poem's Intention
March 5 to March 30, 2018
TUITION: $500
Often, a poem has its own intentions that are at odds with the intentions of the poet. The poet will begin the poem with a certain aim, feeling, perspective, or subject, only to find that the poem veers into unknown territory. Often the preferred method of revision is to ‘correct’ the poem by deleting or... more
The Poem's Intention
March 5 to March 30, 2018
TUITION: $500
Often, a poem has its own intentions that are at odds with the intentions of the poet. The poet will begin the poem with a certain aim, feeling, perspective, or subject, only to find that the poem veers into unknown territory. Often the preferred method of revision is to ‘correct’ the poem by deleting or... more
Ada Limón
Staying True: Authenticity and Voice: Spring
March 5 to April 27, 2018
TUITION: $600
With so many poetic and artistic influences circulating wildly in the modern world, it can be difficult to remain true to your own instinctual style and idiosyncratic voice. Because contemporary writers are continually inundated with exciting new styles and innovative voices, the need to find the quiet strength in your own work has never been... more
Staying True: Authenticity and Voice: Spring
March 5 to April 27, 2018
TUITION: $600
With so many poetic and artistic influences circulating wildly in the modern world, it can be difficult to remain true to your own instinctual style and idiosyncratic voice. Because contemporary writers are continually inundated with exciting new styles and innovative voices, the need to find the quiet strength in your own work has never been... more
Daisy Fried
“Some People Have Been Unkind”: A Workshop on Literary Book Reviewing
March 5 to March 30, 2018
TUITION: $500
In this workshop, you will look at literary book reviewing from aesthetic, ethical, and practical angles, exploring possible approaches for reviewing and discovering what elements are useful in reviews. By examining and discussing samples of different kinds of reviews as well as writing your own, you will discover how writing reviews can help us in... more
“Some People Have Been Unkind”: A Workshop on Literary Book Reviewing
March 5 to March 30, 2018
TUITION: $500
In this workshop, you will look at literary book reviewing from aesthetic, ethical, and practical angles, exploring possible approaches for reviewing and discovering what elements are useful in reviews. By examining and discussing samples of different kinds of reviews as well as writing your own, you will discover how writing reviews can help us in... more
Ann Hood
Jumpstart Your Memoir: Spring
March 5 to March 9, 2018
TUITION: $500
A writing sample is required for admittance to this class. Before registering, please email a writing sample to gleghorn@fawc.org. Often, that moment when you first begin to write is the scariest. This one-week intensive workshop will help you get started by asking the right questions. Whether you’re stuck in a draft that isn’t working, having... more
Jumpstart Your Memoir: Spring
March 5 to March 9, 2018
TUITION: $500
A writing sample is required for admittance to this class. Before registering, please email a writing sample to gleghorn@fawc.org. Often, that moment when you first begin to write is the scariest. This one-week intensive workshop will help you get started by asking the right questions. Whether you’re stuck in a draft that isn’t working, having... more
Devi Lockwood
Tangible Things: Object-based Storytelling
February 19 to February 23, 2018
TUITION: $400
This multi-genre course is a scavenger hunt. Each day will ask you to collect a different object, introduce it to an unexpected space, and to write. We will ask questions of how spaces cradle bodies, objects cradle space, and how the presence of tangible things dictates the types of interactions that we can have in... more
Tangible Things: Object-based Storytelling
February 19 to February 23, 2018
TUITION: $400
This multi-genre course is a scavenger hunt. Each day will ask you to collect a different object, introduce it to an unexpected space, and to write. We will ask questions of how spaces cradle bodies, objects cradle space, and how the presence of tangible things dictates the types of interactions that we can have in... more
Jillian Weise
The Poet as Spy: 4 Tricks from Espionage: Winter
February 12 to February 16, 2018
TUITION: $400
Since we live in the age of the ubiquitous status update, you are already familiar with spying and being spied, watching and being watched, surveying and being surveyed. So you will make that familiarity manifest by writing poems as a secret agent; inventing a cover story; composing an interrogation; and spying on the culture that... more
The Poet as Spy: 4 Tricks from Espionage: Winter
February 12 to February 16, 2018
TUITION: $400
Since we live in the age of the ubiquitous status update, you are already familiar with spying and being spied, watching and being watched, surveying and being surveyed. So you will make that familiarity manifest by writing poems as a secret agent; inventing a cover story; composing an interrogation; and spying on the culture that... more
Michelle Tea
Memoir that Reads Like Fiction: Winter
February 12 to February 16, 2018
TUITION: $400
In this intensive memoir workshop, you will learn techniques to create a memoir with a cinematic feel and the singular voice of an immersive novel. In addition to discussing style and craft, you will also touch on the personal concerns that inevitably arise when a writer takes on the telling of their own story. You... more
Memoir that Reads Like Fiction: Winter
February 12 to February 16, 2018
TUITION: $400
In this intensive memoir workshop, you will learn techniques to create a memoir with a cinematic feel and the singular voice of an immersive novel. In addition to discussing style and craft, you will also touch on the personal concerns that inevitably arise when a writer takes on the telling of their own story. You... more
Mark Wunderlich
Neighboring Solitudes: The Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke as generative sources for poems: WINTER
February 5 to March 2, 2018
TUITION: $500
In this workshop course, we will write poems based on some of the major themes present in the poems of the great German-language Modernist poet Rainer Maria Rilke. As a poet and thinker Rilke returned to a handful of ideas which he incorporated into his poems over the course of many years. During our time... more
Neighboring Solitudes: The Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke as generative sources for poems: WINTER
February 5 to March 2, 2018
TUITION: $500
In this workshop course, we will write poems based on some of the major themes present in the poems of the great German-language Modernist poet Rainer Maria Rilke. As a poet and thinker Rilke returned to a handful of ideas which he incorporated into his poems over the course of many years. During our time... more
Jennifer Tseng
Writing the Forbidden
February 5 to March 2, 2018
TUITION: $500
In this four-week class you will work to produce pieces of forbidden writing. What’s forbidden to one writer may not be forbidden to another. Some feel forbidden to write about emotions (i.e. anger, happiness etc.) or circumstances (i.e. trauma, ecstasy, poverty, wealth, sexuality, aging, mental illness, family secrets etc.); some feel forbidden to write about... more
Writing the Forbidden
February 5 to March 2, 2018
TUITION: $500
In this four-week class you will work to produce pieces of forbidden writing. What’s forbidden to one writer may not be forbidden to another. Some feel forbidden to write about emotions (i.e. anger, happiness etc.) or circumstances (i.e. trauma, ecstasy, poverty, wealth, sexuality, aging, mental illness, family secrets etc.); some feel forbidden to write about... more
Rosie Schaap
Essay is a Verb: The Practice of Personal Narrative: Winter
February 5 to March 2, 2018
TUITION: $500
To essay is to try. Informed and animated by the singular life experience and voice of its author, the personal essay represents an attempt to engage deeply with an idea, a problem, a preoccupation, in the most powerful language possible. Personal essay writing presents a particularly rich opportunity to luxuriate in thought—about whatever troubles you,... more
Essay is a Verb: The Practice of Personal Narrative: Winter
February 5 to March 2, 2018
TUITION: $500
To essay is to try. Informed and animated by the singular life experience and voice of its author, the personal essay represents an attempt to engage deeply with an idea, a problem, a preoccupation, in the most powerful language possible. Personal essay writing presents a particularly rich opportunity to luxuriate in thought—about whatever troubles you,... more
Laura Madeline Wiseman
A Chapbook Workshop
February 5 to February 9, 2018
TUITION: $400
This one-week intensive workshop will focus on the chapbook manuscript, including sequencing poems, finding narrative arc, and bringing together the themes of a sequence. We’ll explore how our poems speak across a series as we revise, rethink, and re-see a short manuscript. In addition to writing exercises and guided prompts for new work for the... more
A Chapbook Workshop
February 5 to February 9, 2018
TUITION: $400
This one-week intensive workshop will focus on the chapbook manuscript, including sequencing poems, finding narrative arc, and bringing together the themes of a sequence. We’ll explore how our poems speak across a series as we revise, rethink, and re-see a short manuscript. In addition to writing exercises and guided prompts for new work for the... more
Meg Day
What's Love Got to Do With It: Poems for Valentine's Day
February 5 to February 9, 2018
TUITION: $400
What is more deeply entangled in the genealogy of the poem than love? Poet Eileen Myles writes that the love poem is where all of poet’s best lines should gather. Poet Truong Tran talks about love as a public word, one too multifarious in meaning to mean anything at all. Subjectivity, emotion, & sentimentality have... more
What's Love Got to Do With It: Poems for Valentine's Day
February 5 to February 9, 2018
TUITION: $400
What is more deeply entangled in the genealogy of the poem than love? Poet Eileen Myles writes that the love poem is where all of poet’s best lines should gather. Poet Truong Tran talks about love as a public word, one too multifarious in meaning to mean anything at all. Subjectivity, emotion, & sentimentality have... more
Annie Finch
Working the Beat: How to Make Poems Sing
February 5 to February 9, 2018
TUITION: $400
It can be tempting to think of rhythm, meter, or form as a container, something outside and separate from a poem. But the best poems sing with rhythms that move them as innately and mysteriously as waves work the water. Whether or not you’ve written in meter before, these powerful rhythms are there in your... more
Working the Beat: How to Make Poems Sing
February 5 to February 9, 2018
TUITION: $400
It can be tempting to think of rhythm, meter, or form as a container, something outside and separate from a poem. But the best poems sing with rhythms that move them as innately and mysteriously as waves work the water. Whether or not you’ve written in meter before, these powerful rhythms are there in your... more
Daisy Fried
Writing Poems that Don't Fit: Winter
February 5 to March 2, 2018
TUITION: $500
Does it sometimes seem as if the poetry world is divided into camps determined to prove that the other camps have nothing to offer? And where do you fit in? This workshop recognizes that the best poetry often doesn’t fit into any stylistic mode, and uses what techniques it needs as it finds them. You’ll... more
Writing Poems that Don't Fit: Winter
February 5 to March 2, 2018
TUITION: $500
Does it sometimes seem as if the poetry world is divided into camps determined to prove that the other camps have nothing to offer? And where do you fit in? This workshop recognizes that the best poetry often doesn’t fit into any stylistic mode, and uses what techniques it needs as it finds them. You’ll... more
Jill McDonough
The Dead of Winter: Finding Inspiration Without Finding Your Shoes
January 29 to February 2, 2018
TUITION: $400
It’s easy to get in a rut in the winter. Luckily, the same internet-dependent laziness that got us into this mess can lead to ambitious projects inspired by what we find online. In this intensive one-week class we’ll explore archives and resources and share the treasures we uncover, all without leaving the sofa, or office.... more
The Dead of Winter: Finding Inspiration Without Finding Your Shoes
January 29 to February 2, 2018
TUITION: $400
It’s easy to get in a rut in the winter. Luckily, the same internet-dependent laziness that got us into this mess can lead to ambitious projects inspired by what we find online. In this intensive one-week class we’ll explore archives and resources and share the treasures we uncover, all without leaving the sofa, or office.... more
Peter Campion
Form From Feeling and Feeling From Form: Winter
January 22 to February 16, 2018
TUITION: $500
This class is for people who want to improve their poems, by understanding the art more fully, from the inside out. During our four weeks, we’ll explore seven formal elements—action, voice, sentence, phrase, line, sound, and metaphor—while generating our own new poems. I hope to give each student a better feeling for how formal elements... more
Form From Feeling and Feeling From Form: Winter
January 22 to February 16, 2018
TUITION: $500
This class is for people who want to improve their poems, by understanding the art more fully, from the inside out. During our four weeks, we’ll explore seven formal elements—action, voice, sentence, phrase, line, sound, and metaphor—while generating our own new poems. I hope to give each student a better feeling for how formal elements... more
Devi Lockwood
Tell Me a Story: The Power of Deep Listening
January 22 to January 26, 2018
TUITION: $400
Daily prompts will ask you to engage in oral storytelling sessions with people around you, to make short audio recordings, and to write based on this experience. Reading and listening assignments will include the work of Anna Deavere Smith, John Cage, Krista Tippett, Amy Winehouse, Maggie Nelson, Rebecca Solnit, and Neil Gaiman. In the course... more
Tell Me a Story: The Power of Deep Listening
January 22 to January 26, 2018
TUITION: $400
Daily prompts will ask you to engage in oral storytelling sessions with people around you, to make short audio recordings, and to write based on this experience. Reading and listening assignments will include the work of Anna Deavere Smith, John Cage, Krista Tippett, Amy Winehouse, Maggie Nelson, Rebecca Solnit, and Neil Gaiman. In the course... more
Ann Hood
Jumpstart Your Memoir: Winter
January 22 to January 26, 2018
TUITION: $400
A writing sample is required for admittance to this class. Before registering, please email a writing sample to gleghorn@fawc.org. Often, that moment when you first begin to write is the scariest. This one-week intensive workshop will help you get started by asking the right questions. Whether you’re stuck in a draft that isn’t working, having... more
Jumpstart Your Memoir: Winter
January 22 to January 26, 2018
TUITION: $400
A writing sample is required for admittance to this class. Before registering, please email a writing sample to gleghorn@fawc.org. Often, that moment when you first begin to write is the scariest. This one-week intensive workshop will help you get started by asking the right questions. Whether you’re stuck in a draft that isn’t working, having... more
Adrian Matejka
The Music in My Head: Five Ways of Hearing a Poem
January 15 to January 19, 2018
TUITION: $400
The great poet Etheridge Knight said, “Making jazz swing in / Seventeen syllables AIN’T / No square poet’s job,” but what is a poem that doesn’t embrace its inner music? In this 1 week intensive course, we will look at 5 different ways to make the sounds in a poem more melodious: lines, rhymes, repetition,... more
The Music in My Head: Five Ways of Hearing a Poem
January 15 to January 19, 2018
TUITION: $400
The great poet Etheridge Knight said, “Making jazz swing in / Seventeen syllables AIN’T / No square poet’s job,” but what is a poem that doesn’t embrace its inner music? In this 1 week intensive course, we will look at 5 different ways to make the sounds in a poem more melodious: lines, rhymes, repetition,... more
Lisa Duffy
Elements of Craft: A Fiction Workshop: WINTER
January 15 to February 9, 2018
TUITION: $500
This workshop is for students who are looking for critical feedback on a short story or novel-in-progress (novel excerpt should stand alone). Students will critique each other’s work using a template focused on the essential elements of fiction—plot, structure, character and language. We’ll discuss each of these elements with an eye toward several goals: to... more
Elements of Craft: A Fiction Workshop: WINTER
January 15 to February 9, 2018
TUITION: $500
This workshop is for students who are looking for critical feedback on a short story or novel-in-progress (novel excerpt should stand alone). Students will critique each other’s work using a template focused on the essential elements of fiction—plot, structure, character and language. We’ll discuss each of these elements with an eye toward several goals: to... more
Ed Skoog
Keep Your Foot on the Sustain Pedal: Writing Long Poems
January 15 to February 9, 2018
TUITION: $500
In this workshop, participants will struggle through several drafts of a few poems between 50 and 150 lines in length. Perhaps it seems silly to write those numbers down as meaningful parameters, but in the instructor’s experience that’s where a distinct kind of poem resides, one with a sustained tone and many twists and turns:... more
Keep Your Foot on the Sustain Pedal: Writing Long Poems
January 15 to February 9, 2018
TUITION: $500
In this workshop, participants will struggle through several drafts of a few poems between 50 and 150 lines in length. Perhaps it seems silly to write those numbers down as meaningful parameters, but in the instructor’s experience that’s where a distinct kind of poem resides, one with a sustained tone and many twists and turns:... more
Carolyn Forché
Writing New Poems: Winter
January 15 to January 19, 2018
TUITION: $400
Carolyn Forché’s five-day intensive class is designed to push experienced poets in provocative new writing directions. The week is dedicated to writing and receiving feedback on new poems.This is a generative, guided workshop designed to help poets write intensively for a week. Different approaches to process and revision will be offered, and participants will write... more
Writing New Poems: Winter
January 15 to January 19, 2018
TUITION: $400
Carolyn Forché’s five-day intensive class is designed to push experienced poets in provocative new writing directions. The week is dedicated to writing and receiving feedback on new poems.This is a generative, guided workshop designed to help poets write intensively for a week. Different approaches to process and revision will be offered, and participants will write... more
Rebecca Gayle Howell
We All Write Sentences: Winter
January 15 to January 19, 2018
TUITION: $400
This one-week intensive invites both poets and prose writers to consider more closely the power of pushing out the boundaries of the English sentence. Reading, across genres, sentences by masters of the ecstatic–James Agee, Gwendolyn Brooks, Cormac McCarthy, Emily Dickinson, Ross Gay, Halldór Laxness, Melville, Toni Morrison, Nabokov, Gerald Stern, C.K. Williams, Joy Williams–we will... more
We All Write Sentences: Winter
January 15 to January 19, 2018
TUITION: $400
This one-week intensive invites both poets and prose writers to consider more closely the power of pushing out the boundaries of the English sentence. Reading, across genres, sentences by masters of the ecstatic–James Agee, Gwendolyn Brooks, Cormac McCarthy, Emily Dickinson, Ross Gay, Halldór Laxness, Melville, Toni Morrison, Nabokov, Gerald Stern, C.K. Williams, Joy Williams–we will... more
Emilia Phillips
I Am Trying To Be Marvelous: The Poetics of Body Positivity
January 8 to March 2, 2018
TUITION: $600
The title of our course comes from Chen Chen’s “Winter,” a poem that candidly describes the body’s excretions while celebrating its beauty, sexuality, and humanity. In this course, we will examine the poetries that have arisen alongside the body positivity movement, paying special attention to poets of color, poets with disabilities, female poets, and LGBTQ+... more
I Am Trying To Be Marvelous: The Poetics of Body Positivity
January 8 to March 2, 2018
TUITION: $600
The title of our course comes from Chen Chen’s “Winter,” a poem that candidly describes the body’s excretions while celebrating its beauty, sexuality, and humanity. In this course, we will examine the poetries that have arisen alongside the body positivity movement, paying special attention to poets of color, poets with disabilities, female poets, and LGBTQ+... more
Kimberly Burwick
Mythological Gravity in Poetry
January 8 to February 2, 2018
TUITION: $500
Interested in mythology and folktales? In this generative workshop we’ll take a close look at how oral legends can make their way into contemporary poems in profound and exciting ways. Drawing on poets such as H.D., Sherwin Bitsui, Linda Gregg, Jack Gilbert, Alicia Ostriker, Lucille Clifton, Ted Hughes and others, we will use multiple writing... more
Mythological Gravity in Poetry
January 8 to February 2, 2018
TUITION: $500
Interested in mythology and folktales? In this generative workshop we’ll take a close look at how oral legends can make their way into contemporary poems in profound and exciting ways. Drawing on poets such as H.D., Sherwin Bitsui, Linda Gregg, Jack Gilbert, Alicia Ostriker, Lucille Clifton, Ted Hughes and others, we will use multiple writing... more
Rebecca Seiferle
The Poetic Sequence
January 8 to March 2, 2018
TUITION: $600
A sequence is a long poem that combines shorter pieces by relying on association, juxtaposition, and connection rather than theme or narrative to create an organic poetic whole. Overwhelmed by events, feelings, and thoughts, poets have turned to the sequence, as a way to express what otherwise could not be borne in language or within... more
The Poetic Sequence
January 8 to March 2, 2018
TUITION: $600
A sequence is a long poem that combines shorter pieces by relying on association, juxtaposition, and connection rather than theme or narrative to create an organic poetic whole. Overwhelmed by events, feelings, and thoughts, poets have turned to the sequence, as a way to express what otherwise could not be borne in language or within... more
Sara Eliza Johnson
Language and the Lucid Dream: Winter
January 8 to March 2, 2018
TUITION: $600
Writing a poem—that is, inventing and manipulating our language to compose it—can be likened to lucid dreaming. In this course, you will learn to write poems as if dreaming lucidly, which means that you will learn to write with intention and precision without sacrificing intuition, and without allowing desire to control the poem (and its... more
Language and the Lucid Dream: Winter
January 8 to March 2, 2018
TUITION: $600
Writing a poem—that is, inventing and manipulating our language to compose it—can be likened to lucid dreaming. In this course, you will learn to write poems as if dreaming lucidly, which means that you will learn to write with intention and precision without sacrificing intuition, and without allowing desire to control the poem (and its... more
Ada Limón
Staying True: Authenticity and Voice: Winter
January 8 to March 2, 2018
TUITION: $600
Ada Limón is determined to help you focus in on your own personal style and write poems in your own unique voice in a world filled with constantly challenging external influences. This class you will offer new techniques to help you develop a more powerful personal identity in your poetry that will deepen the connection... more
Staying True: Authenticity and Voice: Winter
January 8 to March 2, 2018
TUITION: $600
Ada Limón is determined to help you focus in on your own personal style and write poems in your own unique voice in a world filled with constantly challenging external influences. This class you will offer new techniques to help you develop a more powerful personal identity in your poetry that will deepen the connection... more
Laura Madeline Wiseman
Delightful Duos: Collaborating Poets
January 8 to March 2, 2018
TUITION: $600
Delightful duos, crafty couples, and writers who dare to work in pairs, this eight-week studio will focus on the art of collaborating with other poets. Each student will participate in 2-4 paired groups to produce new, exciting creations written in collaboration. With writing exercises, guided prompts, and experiments for generating new work, we will explore... more
Delightful Duos: Collaborating Poets
January 8 to March 2, 2018
TUITION: $600
Delightful duos, crafty couples, and writers who dare to work in pairs, this eight-week studio will focus on the art of collaborating with other poets. Each student will participate in 2-4 paired groups to produce new, exciting creations written in collaboration. With writing exercises, guided prompts, and experiments for generating new work, we will explore... more
Suzanne Rivecca
Good Things in Small Packages: The Art of the Short Story: Winter
January 8 to March 2, 2018
TUITION: $600
A great short story is all the proof we need that bigger isn’t necessarily better—or more beautiful, or more profound. In this new class, you will learn how to apply new ideas of structure, character, plot and language to your short stories to help make them have a larger payoff and a sense of emotional... more
Good Things in Small Packages: The Art of the Short Story: Winter
January 8 to March 2, 2018
TUITION: $600
A great short story is all the proof we need that bigger isn’t necessarily better—or more beautiful, or more profound. In this new class, you will learn how to apply new ideas of structure, character, plot and language to your short stories to help make them have a larger payoff and a sense of emotional... more
Meghan O'Gieblyn
Place in Memoir
January 8 to March 2, 2018
TUITION: $600
Too often, location is regarded as the backdrop of a memoir—the fixed stage-set on which the action unfolds. But there is a long tradition of memoir that privileges place, and the writer’s experience with that place. In such works, location takes center stage and becomes a dynamic “character” in the story. Travel memoir is the... more
Place in Memoir
January 8 to March 2, 2018
TUITION: $600
Too often, location is regarded as the backdrop of a memoir—the fixed stage-set on which the action unfolds. But there is a long tradition of memoir that privileges place, and the writer’s experience with that place. In such works, location takes center stage and becomes a dynamic “character” in the story. Travel memoir is the... more
Heidi Jon Schmidt
Telling the Story: Eight Weeks in Winter
January 8 to March 2, 2018
TUITION: $600
John Cheever once stopped himself in the middle of a reading at FAWC and said, “Hell, I can tell it better than this.” Then he looked up and told the story as it had happened, instead of reading what he’d written. Almost all stories begin somewhere in an author’s experience, and are imagined and reimagined... more
Telling the Story: Eight Weeks in Winter
January 8 to March 2, 2018
TUITION: $600
John Cheever once stopped himself in the middle of a reading at FAWC and said, “Hell, I can tell it better than this.” Then he looked up and told the story as it had happened, instead of reading what he’d written. Almost all stories begin somewhere in an author’s experience, and are imagined and reimagined... more
Gabrielle Calvocoressi
Of Knowing Nothing and Everything: A Week of Poem, Pigment, and Paint in the Lab: Winter
January 8 to January 12, 2018
TUITION: $400
In this class we’ll ask rigorous questions like, “What do I mean when I say the sky is blue?” & “What does ‘green’ mean, really?” This is a class about using multiple mediums and the art of surprise to make our poems and our practice of writing poems more expansive, muscular, and joyfully challenging. We’ll... more
Of Knowing Nothing and Everything: A Week of Poem, Pigment, and Paint in the Lab: Winter
January 8 to January 12, 2018
TUITION: $400
In this class we’ll ask rigorous questions like, “What do I mean when I say the sky is blue?” & “What does ‘green’ mean, really?” This is a class about using multiple mediums and the art of surprise to make our poems and our practice of writing poems more expansive, muscular, and joyfully challenging. We’ll... more
Nancy Pearson
15 Works: Winter
January 8 to February 2, 2018
TUITION: $500
This four week poetry workshop is based on a class taught at the former Corcoran School of Art. In “15 Works,” you’ll write 3 to 4 poems a week in response to assignments and prompts, with weekly themes. Comments on one another’s poems will be limited to one poem per week unless you’d like to... more
15 Works: Winter
January 8 to February 2, 2018
TUITION: $500
This four week poetry workshop is based on a class taught at the former Corcoran School of Art. In “15 Works,” you’ll write 3 to 4 poems a week in response to assignments and prompts, with weekly themes. Comments on one another’s poems will be limited to one poem per week unless you’d like to... more
Ann Hood
Writing the Personal Essay: Winter
January 8 to February 2, 2018
TUITION: $500
Each week will begin with my introduction of a topic for that week’s memoir assignment. Topics will include Food, Place, Love, and Loss. I will email you examples from writers I admire such as Jonathan Lethem, JoAnn Beard, Cheryl Strayed, and Tony Early and discuss how they have accomplished writing these strong essays. How did... more
Writing the Personal Essay: Winter
January 8 to February 2, 2018
TUITION: $500
Each week will begin with my introduction of a topic for that week’s memoir assignment. Topics will include Food, Place, Love, and Loss. I will email you examples from writers I admire such as Jonathan Lethem, JoAnn Beard, Cheryl Strayed, and Tony Early and discuss how they have accomplished writing these strong essays. How did... more
Elizabeth Bradfield
Deep Revision
January 1 to January 5, 2018
TUITION: $400
Bring us your tired, your unfinished, your good-but-not-great. If now is the time for intensive feedback on poems you’ve been working on for a while, join us for a week-long intensive of examining each other’s poems. Each participant will offer a packet of five poems to the group. We’ll all offer detailed comments, then create... more
Deep Revision
January 1 to January 5, 2018
TUITION: $400
Bring us your tired, your unfinished, your good-but-not-great. If now is the time for intensive feedback on poems you’ve been working on for a while, join us for a week-long intensive of examining each other’s poems. Each participant will offer a packet of five poems to the group. We’ll all offer detailed comments, then create... more
Juliana Spahr
Five Not Entirely Possible Assignments
December 11 to December 15, 2017
TUITION: $400
Years ago I took a workshop where I was given a chart of immigration numbers by year and country for Bulgaria and asked to write something that summarized the data in the chart. I have no idea what happened to the piece of writing that I wrote out of it but I remember something about... more
Five Not Entirely Possible Assignments
December 11 to December 15, 2017
TUITION: $400
Years ago I took a workshop where I was given a chart of immigration numbers by year and country for Bulgaria and asked to write something that summarized the data in the chart. I have no idea what happened to the piece of writing that I wrote out of it but I remember something about... more
Meg Day
5 Days, 6 Poems, 7 Ways Back Home
December 11 to December 15, 2017
TUITION: $400
Movement is a poet’s dialect: we pace the room of each stanza, we shuttle our readers across & down the page, & we reach inside them & rearrange the furniture. Even our metaphors have a vehicle to transport the tenor to & from. Isn’t revision, too, a kind of effort to get somewhere? In establishing... more
5 Days, 6 Poems, 7 Ways Back Home
December 11 to December 15, 2017
TUITION: $400
Movement is a poet’s dialect: we pace the room of each stanza, we shuttle our readers across & down the page, & we reach inside them & rearrange the furniture. Even our metaphors have a vehicle to transport the tenor to & from. Isn’t revision, too, a kind of effort to get somewhere? In establishing... more
Michelle Tea
Memoir that Reads Like Fiction: Fall
December 11 to December 15, 2017
TUITION: $400
Memoirist, novelist and poet Michelle Tea will advise on the creation of a memoir that has the cinematic feel and the singular voice of an immersive novel. Learn techniques to distance yourself from your own experience, face down fears, slaughter sentimentality, engage in ruthless honesty and create a version of yourself that is both truthful... more
Memoir that Reads Like Fiction: Fall
December 11 to December 15, 2017
TUITION: $400
Memoirist, novelist and poet Michelle Tea will advise on the creation of a memoir that has the cinematic feel and the singular voice of an immersive novel. Learn techniques to distance yourself from your own experience, face down fears, slaughter sentimentality, engage in ruthless honesty and create a version of yourself that is both truthful... more
Rebecca Gayle Howell
We All Write Sentences: Winter
December 11 to December 15, 2017
TUITION: $400
This one-week intensive invites both poets and prose writers to consider more closely the power of pushing out the boundaries of the English sentence. Reading, across genres, sentences by masters of the ecstatic–James Agee, Gwendolyn Brooks, Cormac McCarthy, Emily Dickinson, Ross Gay, Halldór Laxness, Melville, Toni Morrison, Nabokov, Gerald Stern, C.K. Williams, Joy Williams–we will... more
We All Write Sentences: Winter
December 11 to December 15, 2017
TUITION: $400
This one-week intensive invites both poets and prose writers to consider more closely the power of pushing out the boundaries of the English sentence. Reading, across genres, sentences by masters of the ecstatic–James Agee, Gwendolyn Brooks, Cormac McCarthy, Emily Dickinson, Ross Gay, Halldór Laxness, Melville, Toni Morrison, Nabokov, Gerald Stern, C.K. Williams, Joy Williams–we will... more
Kimberly Burwick
The Image, Ravenous
December 4 to December 8, 2017
TUITION: $400
Do you remember how exciting it once was to find a crushed wasp or the first robin in March? In this generative course we will fiercely recollect the early-childhood process of image-making. Focusing on techniques such as synesthesia, anaphora and apostrophe we will play in the mud, so to speak, and rebuild our poems with... more
The Image, Ravenous
December 4 to December 8, 2017
TUITION: $400
Do you remember how exciting it once was to find a crushed wasp or the first robin in March? In this generative course we will fiercely recollect the early-childhood process of image-making. Focusing on techniques such as synesthesia, anaphora and apostrophe we will play in the mud, so to speak, and rebuild our poems with... more
Sara Roahen
What Sustains Us: The Art of Good “Food Writing”
December 4 to December 8, 2017
TUITION: $400
I believe that, when done with intention, using food in our creative writing can reveal great truth and meaning. By the end of this workshop, you will believe too. The newly popular term “food writing” can be misleading, as it implies that writing about food—be it food culture, food in restaurants, or food-focused memoir—is different... more
What Sustains Us: The Art of Good “Food Writing”
December 4 to December 8, 2017
TUITION: $400
I believe that, when done with intention, using food in our creative writing can reveal great truth and meaning. By the end of this workshop, you will believe too. The newly popular term “food writing” can be misleading, as it implies that writing about food—be it food culture, food in restaurants, or food-focused memoir—is different... more
Nicole Terez Dutton
Threading and Building: Working Toward a Manuscript
December 4 to December 8, 2017
TUITION: $400
Whether you’re beginning with one poem or a small group of poems, this week-long intensive workshop will offer strategies to meaningfully expand your work toward a manuscript. By mapping the resonances and symmetries within and between poems, students will gain a sense of where expansion is possible. Engaging daily experimental prompts will help writers explore... more
Threading and Building: Working Toward a Manuscript
December 4 to December 8, 2017
TUITION: $400
Whether you’re beginning with one poem or a small group of poems, this week-long intensive workshop will offer strategies to meaningfully expand your work toward a manuscript. By mapping the resonances and symmetries within and between poems, students will gain a sense of where expansion is possible. Engaging daily experimental prompts will help writers explore... more
Irina Reyn
Open That Drawer!: Reviving the Stalled Novel
December 4 to December 8, 2017
TUITION: $400
Many of us begin work on a novel in a frenzy of inspiration but there are many reasons for why an unfinished novel goes into a drawer: life gets in the way, the initial motivation peters out, we plot ourselves into a dead end or we simply lose confidence in the work. This intensive workshop... more
Open That Drawer!: Reviving the Stalled Novel
December 4 to December 8, 2017
TUITION: $400
Many of us begin work on a novel in a frenzy of inspiration but there are many reasons for why an unfinished novel goes into a drawer: life gets in the way, the initial motivation peters out, we plot ourselves into a dead end or we simply lose confidence in the work. This intensive workshop... more
Nathan Oates
"And the Queen Died of Grief": Approaches to Plot in Fiction
November 27 to December 1, 2017
TUITION: $400
All literary art imposes some form of order on the chaos of experience in order to convey something about the human condition. One of the ways we as working writers have of conceiving of this effort is through plot. How to select information, organize information, and release information (information about characters and conflicts) is one... more
"And the Queen Died of Grief": Approaches to Plot in Fiction
November 27 to December 1, 2017
TUITION: $400
All literary art imposes some form of order on the chaos of experience in order to convey something about the human condition. One of the ways we as working writers have of conceiving of this effort is through plot. How to select information, organize information, and release information (information about characters and conflicts) is one... more
Meg Day
The Elegy & the Emo Poem: A Battle to the Death
November 27 to December 1, 2017
TUITION: $400
What is the responsibility of the poet in times of public mourning? Why is it that we turn to poetry during periods of tragedy or deep sorrow? In this one-week intensive course, we will be in conversation with how poetry informs our public & private responses to loss & interrogate the poet’s position as empath,... more
The Elegy & the Emo Poem: A Battle to the Death
November 27 to December 1, 2017
TUITION: $400
What is the responsibility of the poet in times of public mourning? Why is it that we turn to poetry during periods of tragedy or deep sorrow? In this one-week intensive course, we will be in conversation with how poetry informs our public & private responses to loss & interrogate the poet’s position as empath,... more
Ann Hood
Jumpstart Your Memoir: Fall
November 27 to December 1, 2017
TUITION: $400
A writing sample is required for admittance to this class. Before registering, please email a writing sample to gleghorn@fawc.org. In his book on the craft of writing, Stephen King says: the scariest moment is just before you start. This workshop takes that moment and makes it less scary by asking you the right questions about... more
Jumpstart Your Memoir: Fall
November 27 to December 1, 2017
TUITION: $400
A writing sample is required for admittance to this class. Before registering, please email a writing sample to gleghorn@fawc.org. In his book on the craft of writing, Stephen King says: the scariest moment is just before you start. This workshop takes that moment and makes it less scary by asking you the right questions about... more
Laura Madeline Wiseman
Transportation: On Getting There and Getting Poems
November 13 to December 8, 2017
TUITION: $500
This four-week class will focus on writing about journeys. With writing exercises and guided prompts for generating new work, we will explore a variety of ways to approach this classic and contemporary topic in poetry. We will discuss published work and explore issues of line, image, form, and craft. We will consider these questions and... more
Transportation: On Getting There and Getting Poems
November 13 to December 8, 2017
TUITION: $500
This four-week class will focus on writing about journeys. With writing exercises and guided prompts for generating new work, we will explore a variety of ways to approach this classic and contemporary topic in poetry. We will discuss published work and explore issues of line, image, form, and craft. We will consider these questions and... more
Sam Sax
Heeeeeey!: Queer Poetics
November 13 to November 17, 2017
TUITION: $400
This workshop serves both as a brief survey of queer American poetry as well as an intensive exploration into students’ own writing. We’ll seek to unpack what it is that makes a queer poem queer & further what makes a poem a poem. We’ll try to locate what role desire & identity play in the... more
Heeeeeey!: Queer Poetics
November 13 to November 17, 2017
TUITION: $400
This workshop serves both as a brief survey of queer American poetry as well as an intensive exploration into students’ own writing. We’ll seek to unpack what it is that makes a queer poem queer & further what makes a poem a poem. We’ll try to locate what role desire & identity play in the... more
Michael White
Gazing In Gazing Out
November 13 to November 17, 2017
TUITION: $400
This one-week poetry workshop will offer instruction, support, and dialogue in the craft of writing and revising poems. This class is for intermediate to advanced poets that would like to try fundamentally new approaches to subject matter. We are going to adopt a theme of “Gazing In Gazing Out,” which is drawn from Larry Levis’... more
Gazing In Gazing Out
November 13 to November 17, 2017
TUITION: $400
This one-week poetry workshop will offer instruction, support, and dialogue in the craft of writing and revising poems. This class is for intermediate to advanced poets that would like to try fundamentally new approaches to subject matter. We are going to adopt a theme of “Gazing In Gazing Out,” which is drawn from Larry Levis’... more
Jennifer Tseng
Start Small: What Writers Can Learn from Very Short Stories
November 6 to December 1, 2017
TUITION: $500
Reading and writing Very Short Stories can teach us several basic lessons of fiction writing, including the art of omission, compression, economy, and urgency. Whether you’re already part of the current Very Short Story renaissance or plan to use your Very Short Story as a springboard for a longer project, this four-week class will help... more
Start Small: What Writers Can Learn from Very Short Stories
November 6 to December 1, 2017
TUITION: $500
Reading and writing Very Short Stories can teach us several basic lessons of fiction writing, including the art of omission, compression, economy, and urgency. Whether you’re already part of the current Very Short Story renaissance or plan to use your Very Short Story as a springboard for a longer project, this four-week class will help... more
Jacqueline Kolosov
Writing in an Age of Terror
November 6 to December 1, 2017
TUITION: $500
What is the writer’s obligation in an age of increasing terror and unreliable news? Can writing enact change? Create a conversation? Enlarge one? In this reading and writing intensive workshop, we will look at several writers, both here and abroad, who are using writing as a vehicle for change. Each participant will generate work that... more
Writing in an Age of Terror
November 6 to December 1, 2017
TUITION: $500
What is the writer’s obligation in an age of increasing terror and unreliable news? Can writing enact change? Create a conversation? Enlarge one? In this reading and writing intensive workshop, we will look at several writers, both here and abroad, who are using writing as a vehicle for change. Each participant will generate work that... more
Sarah Messer
Facts, Research, and Memoir: Fall
November 6 to December 1, 2017
TUITION: $500
Even in our most vivid memories, details fade. Sarah Messer’s essential course will help you mine memory through research techniques like archival work, interviewing, travel, music, and information-gathering in order to create vivid, compelling scenes. The course will help you find the facts to get at larger truths and also remember small concrete details. At... more
Facts, Research, and Memoir: Fall
November 6 to December 1, 2017
TUITION: $500
Even in our most vivid memories, details fade. Sarah Messer’s essential course will help you mine memory through research techniques like archival work, interviewing, travel, music, and information-gathering in order to create vivid, compelling scenes. The course will help you find the facts to get at larger truths and also remember small concrete details. At... more
Gabrielle Calvocoressi
Of Knowing Nothing and Everything: A Week of Poem, Pigment, and Paint in the Lab: Fall
November 6 to November 10, 2017
TUITION: $400
In this class we’ll ask rigorous questions like, “What do I mean when I say the sky is blue?” & “What does ‘green’ mean, really?” This is a class about using multiple mediums and the art of surprise to make our poems and our practice of writing poems more expansive, muscular, and joyfully challenging. We’ll... more
Of Knowing Nothing and Everything: A Week of Poem, Pigment, and Paint in the Lab: Fall
November 6 to November 10, 2017
TUITION: $400
In this class we’ll ask rigorous questions like, “What do I mean when I say the sky is blue?” & “What does ‘green’ mean, really?” This is a class about using multiple mediums and the art of surprise to make our poems and our practice of writing poems more expansive, muscular, and joyfully challenging. We’ll... more
Elizabeth Bradfield
Rewilding Your Poems: A Month of Prods, Prompts, and Play
November 6 to December 1, 2017
TUITION: $500
It can be easy to fall into a poetic rut. To feel stuck in routine or less than terrified (don’t we all want to be a little terrified by our poems?) by what we put on the page. This four-week course will focus on exercises that will open new ideas, techniques, and associations in your... more
Rewilding Your Poems: A Month of Prods, Prompts, and Play
November 6 to December 1, 2017
TUITION: $500
It can be easy to fall into a poetic rut. To feel stuck in routine or less than terrified (don’t we all want to be a little terrified by our poems?) by what we put on the page. This four-week course will focus on exercises that will open new ideas, techniques, and associations in your... more
Arisa White
Know Thyself: Poetry of Personal Witness
October 30 to November 24, 2017
TUITION: $500
Those silent places we inhabit are places where we can learn to better listen—to self and to others. In this workshop we turn within, using poetry to cultivate greater attention and embodiment. You will incorporate meditation into your writing process. You will be provided with essays and talks by such writers and thinkers as Audre... more
Know Thyself: Poetry of Personal Witness
October 30 to November 24, 2017
TUITION: $500
Those silent places we inhabit are places where we can learn to better listen—to self and to others. In this workshop we turn within, using poetry to cultivate greater attention and embodiment. You will incorporate meditation into your writing process. You will be provided with essays and talks by such writers and thinkers as Audre... more
Emilia Phillips
The Upside-Down: Contemporary Pastorals and Necropastorals: Fall
October 23 to November 17, 2017
TUITION: $500
“How many ladders to gather an orchard?” asks Brigit Pegeen Kelly in “The Leaving.” Beyond nature poetry, beyond the arcadian romances, this course drives the definition of the poetic pastoral into contemporary fields, including those of ecopoetics and apocalypse narratives, while honoring the classical form’s tradition and its mortification by modernity. The course will begin... more
The Upside-Down: Contemporary Pastorals and Necropastorals: Fall
October 23 to November 17, 2017
TUITION: $500
“How many ladders to gather an orchard?” asks Brigit Pegeen Kelly in “The Leaving.” Beyond nature poetry, beyond the arcadian romances, this course drives the definition of the poetic pastoral into contemporary fields, including those of ecopoetics and apocalypse narratives, while honoring the classical form’s tradition and its mortification by modernity. The course will begin... more
Sara Eliza Johnson
Language and the Lucid Dream: Fall
October 23 to December 15, 2017
TUITION: $600
Many sleepers have experienced the pleasure of the lucid dream: the phenomenon of “waking” inside our dream and realizing that we are in fact dreaming, that we are still in the process of imagining it and therefore able to transform its substance or alter its direction as we move through it. Writing a poem—that is,... more
Language and the Lucid Dream: Fall
October 23 to December 15, 2017
TUITION: $600
Many sleepers have experienced the pleasure of the lucid dream: the phenomenon of “waking” inside our dream and realizing that we are in fact dreaming, that we are still in the process of imagining it and therefore able to transform its substance or alter its direction as we move through it. Writing a poem—that is,... more
Lydia Millet
Fierce Fiction in Five Days
October 23 to October 27, 2017
TUITION: $400
This workshop will take a fiction sample from each student (ten to fifteen pages of a short story or beginning of a novel) and revise it over the five days of the class. We’ll work on honing the piece’s voice to make it as powerful as possible, streamlining and sharpening so that your piece fascinates... more
Fierce Fiction in Five Days
October 23 to October 27, 2017
TUITION: $400
This workshop will take a fiction sample from each student (ten to fifteen pages of a short story or beginning of a novel) and revise it over the five days of the class. We’ll work on honing the piece’s voice to make it as powerful as possible, streamlining and sharpening so that your piece fascinates... more
Rosie Schaap
Essay is a Verb: The Practice of Personal Narrative: Fall
October 16 to November 10, 2017
TUITION: $500
To essay is to try. Informed and animated by the singular life experience and voice of its author, the personal essay represents an attempt to engage deeply with an idea, a problem, a preoccupation, in the most powerful language possible. Personal essay writing presents a particularly rich opportunity to luxuriate in thought—about whatever troubles you,... more
Essay is a Verb: The Practice of Personal Narrative: Fall
October 16 to November 10, 2017
TUITION: $500
To essay is to try. Informed and animated by the singular life experience and voice of its author, the personal essay represents an attempt to engage deeply with an idea, a problem, a preoccupation, in the most powerful language possible. Personal essay writing presents a particularly rich opportunity to luxuriate in thought—about whatever troubles you,... more
Suzanne Rivecca
Good Things in Small Packages: The Art of the Short Story: Fall
October 16 to December 8, 2017
TUITION: $600
A great short story is all the proof we need that bigger isn’t necessarily better—or more beautiful, or more profound. In this new class, you will learn how to apply new ideas of structure, character, plot and language to your short stories to help make them have a larger payoff and a sense of emotional... more
Good Things in Small Packages: The Art of the Short Story: Fall
October 16 to December 8, 2017
TUITION: $600
A great short story is all the proof we need that bigger isn’t necessarily better—or more beautiful, or more profound. In this new class, you will learn how to apply new ideas of structure, character, plot and language to your short stories to help make them have a larger payoff and a sense of emotional... more
Jacqueline Jones Lamon
Exploring the Abecedarian Poetics: More Than Just ABC's
October 9 to October 13, 2017
TUITION: $400
In this intensive course, students will explore several nuanced approaches to this ancient alphabetical form of poetry. By combining current events and difficult subject matter with a rigid adherence to the alphabet as our organizing principle, we’ll discover new ways of accessing subtext in our drafts and develop a plan for further development once our... more
Exploring the Abecedarian Poetics: More Than Just ABC's
October 9 to October 13, 2017
TUITION: $400
In this intensive course, students will explore several nuanced approaches to this ancient alphabetical form of poetry. By combining current events and difficult subject matter with a rigid adherence to the alphabet as our organizing principle, we’ll discover new ways of accessing subtext in our drafts and develop a plan for further development once our... more
Ada Limón
Staying True: Authenticity and Voice: Fall
October 9 to December 1, 2017
TUITION: $600
Ada Limón is determined to help you focus in on your own personal style and write poems in your own unique voice in a world filled with constantly challenging external influences. This class you will offer new techniques to help you develop a more powerful personal identity in your poetry that will deepen the connection... more
Staying True: Authenticity and Voice: Fall
October 9 to December 1, 2017
TUITION: $600
Ada Limón is determined to help you focus in on your own personal style and write poems in your own unique voice in a world filled with constantly challenging external influences. This class you will offer new techniques to help you develop a more powerful personal identity in your poetry that will deepen the connection... more
Rebecca Gayle Howell
Translation as Creative Practice: Fall
October 9 to November 4, 2017
TUITION: $500
We write in the age of globalization and in the language most universal for our time. Contemporary international writers are now being brought into English at a high frequency, and major writers of English are revisiting classics for the first time in a generation. Where do you fit in? In this class, we will study... more
Translation as Creative Practice: Fall
October 9 to November 4, 2017
TUITION: $500
We write in the age of globalization and in the language most universal for our time. Contemporary international writers are now being brought into English at a high frequency, and major writers of English are revisiting classics for the first time in a generation. Where do you fit in? In this class, we will study... more
Ed Skoog
Have You Tried the Side Door? Finding a Way In to Your Next Poems: Fall
October 2 to November 24, 2017
TUITION: $600
Sometimes, starting a poem, I feel paralyzed by the task. Each time I need to find the way around my expectations, over the seemingly unsurmountable traditions and the already-trod reactions against tradition, under the deep sea of …whatever—you get my drift: starting a poem is difficult because of the barriers we ourselves have built. Often,... more
Have You Tried the Side Door? Finding a Way In to Your Next Poems: Fall
October 2 to November 24, 2017
TUITION: $600
Sometimes, starting a poem, I feel paralyzed by the task. Each time I need to find the way around my expectations, over the seemingly unsurmountable traditions and the already-trod reactions against tradition, under the deep sea of …whatever—you get my drift: starting a poem is difficult because of the barriers we ourselves have built. Often,... more
Sara Eliza Johnson
Mad Science
October 2 to October 6, 2017
TUITION: $400
It may often seem that poetry and science are at odds with one another—the former typically associated with subjectivity and emotion, and the latter with objectivity and facts—but poets have long looked to scientific endeavors and discoveries for inspiration. Whether one chooses to write about quantum entanglement or bioluminescence, the weather on Mars or nanotechnology,... more
Mad Science
October 2 to October 6, 2017
TUITION: $400
It may often seem that poetry and science are at odds with one another—the former typically associated with subjectivity and emotion, and the latter with objectivity and facts—but poets have long looked to scientific endeavors and discoveries for inspiration. Whether one chooses to write about quantum entanglement or bioluminescence, the weather on Mars or nanotechnology,... more
Fred Marchant
Staying With It: A Five-Day Meditation in Poetry for Fall
October 2 to October 6, 2017
TUITION: $400
In this one-week intensive online course we will begin a new poem and stay with it for the whole five days, the goal being to nurture and expand that poem into an extended meditation. We will consider what a meditative poem is and does, and why one might want to write one. We will study... more
Staying With It: A Five-Day Meditation in Poetry for Fall
October 2 to October 6, 2017
TUITION: $400
In this one-week intensive online course we will begin a new poem and stay with it for the whole five days, the goal being to nurture and expand that poem into an extended meditation. We will consider what a meditative poem is and does, and why one might want to write one. We will study... more
Heidi Jon Schmidt
Telling the Story: Fall
October 2 to October 27, 2017
TUITION: $500
John Cheever once stopped himself in the middle of a reading at FAWC and said, “Hell, I can tell it better than this.” Then he looked up and told the story as it had happened, instead of reading what he’d written. Almost all stories begin somewhere in an author’s experience, and are imagined and reimagined... more
Telling the Story: Fall
October 2 to October 27, 2017
TUITION: $500
John Cheever once stopped himself in the middle of a reading at FAWC and said, “Hell, I can tell it better than this.” Then he looked up and told the story as it had happened, instead of reading what he’d written. Almost all stories begin somewhere in an author’s experience, and are imagined and reimagined... more
Ann Hood
Writing the Personal Essay: Fall
October 2 to October 27, 2017
TUITION: $500
During this memoir course you will work toward completing a final, personal essay through a series of short, guided writing assignments focused on specific topics. In this workshop you will use and build on the writing tools you already have, get lots of feedback on your work, while also reading and thinking and commenting on... more
Writing the Personal Essay: Fall
October 2 to October 27, 2017
TUITION: $500
During this memoir course you will work toward completing a final, personal essay through a series of short, guided writing assignments focused on specific topics. In this workshop you will use and build on the writing tools you already have, get lots of feedback on your work, while also reading and thinking and commenting on... more
Peter Campion
Form From Feeling and Feeling From Form: Fall
October 2 to October 27, 2017
TUITION: $500
This class is for people who want to improve their poems, by understanding the art more fully, from the inside out. During our four weeks, we’ll explore seven formal elements—action, voice, sentence, phrase, line, sound, and metaphor—while generating our own new poems. I hope to give each student a better feeling for how formal elements... more
Form From Feeling and Feeling From Form: Fall
October 2 to October 27, 2017
TUITION: $500
This class is for people who want to improve their poems, by understanding the art more fully, from the inside out. During our four weeks, we’ll explore seven formal elements—action, voice, sentence, phrase, line, sound, and metaphor—while generating our own new poems. I hope to give each student a better feeling for how formal elements... more
Lisa Duffy
Elements of Craft: A Fiction Workshop: SEPTEMBER
September 25 to October 20, 2017
TUITION: $500
This workshop is for students who are looking for critical feedback on a short story or novel-in-progress (novel excerpt should stand alone). Students will critique each other’s work using a template focused on the essential elements of fiction—plot, structure, character and language. We’ll discuss each of these elements with an eye toward several goals: to... more
Elements of Craft: A Fiction Workshop: SEPTEMBER
September 25 to October 20, 2017
TUITION: $500
This workshop is for students who are looking for critical feedback on a short story or novel-in-progress (novel excerpt should stand alone). Students will critique each other’s work using a template focused on the essential elements of fiction—plot, structure, character and language. We’ll discuss each of these elements with an eye toward several goals: to... more
Ed Skoog
Called to Speech: A One-Week Workshop
September 25 to September 29, 2017
TUITION: $500
What is happening when you begin to write a poem? What does it mean to be called to speech, to break into song? Why this, why now? How does the occasion of a poem lead you to write a poem in a certain way, and what avenues do you take to pursue or avoid this... more
Called to Speech: A One-Week Workshop
September 25 to September 29, 2017
TUITION: $500
What is happening when you begin to write a poem? What does it mean to be called to speech, to break into song? Why this, why now? How does the occasion of a poem lead you to write a poem in a certain way, and what avenues do you take to pursue or avoid this... more
Joseph O. Legaspi
I Must Confess
September 25 to October 20, 2017
TUITION: $500
Why does confessional poetry get a bad rap? Arguably, aren’t all poems confessional, revealing of truths? This workshop aims to encourage and ease the risks it takes to write about risky subjects. The focus will be on poems-in-progress, elaborating on intent, craft and process. There will also be weekly writing exercises/prompts, resulting in the creation... more
I Must Confess
September 25 to October 20, 2017
TUITION: $500
Why does confessional poetry get a bad rap? Arguably, aren’t all poems confessional, revealing of truths? This workshop aims to encourage and ease the risks it takes to write about risky subjects. The focus will be on poems-in-progress, elaborating on intent, craft and process. There will also be weekly writing exercises/prompts, resulting in the creation... more
Jennifer Tseng
Writing the Forbidden
September 25 to September 29, 2017
TUITION: $500
In this one-week intensive you will work to produce a piece of forbidden writing. What’s forbidden to one writer may not be forbidden to another. Some feel forbidden to write about emotions (i.e. anger, happiness etc.) or circumstances (i.e. trauma, ecstasy, poverty, wealth, sexuality, aging, mental illness, family secrets etc.); some feel forbidden to write... more
Writing the Forbidden
September 25 to September 29, 2017
TUITION: $500
In this one-week intensive you will work to produce a piece of forbidden writing. What’s forbidden to one writer may not be forbidden to another. Some feel forbidden to write about emotions (i.e. anger, happiness etc.) or circumstances (i.e. trauma, ecstasy, poverty, wealth, sexuality, aging, mental illness, family secrets etc.); some feel forbidden to write... more
Jacqueline Kolosov
Experimenting with Hybrid Literary Genres
September 25 to October 20, 2017
TUITION: $500
In this exploratory workshop, we will experiment with the increasingly fluid boundaries between genre, specifically looking at flash fiction, the prose poem, short form nonfiction & the lyric essay. Expect to push beyond your comfort zone and rethink the way you look at notions of genre. more
Experimenting with Hybrid Literary Genres
September 25 to October 20, 2017
TUITION: $500
In this exploratory workshop, we will experiment with the increasingly fluid boundaries between genre, specifically looking at flash fiction, the prose poem, short form nonfiction & the lyric essay. Expect to push beyond your comfort zone and rethink the way you look at notions of genre. more
Nathan Oates
“And the Queen Died of Grief”: Approaches to Plot in Fiction
September 18 to September 22, 2017
TUITION: $500
All literary art imposes some form of order on the chaos of experience in order to convey something about the human condition. One of the ways we as working writers have of conceiving of this effort is through plot. How to select information, organize information, and release information (information about characters and conflicts) is one... more
“And the Queen Died of Grief”: Approaches to Plot in Fiction
September 18 to September 22, 2017
TUITION: $500
All literary art imposes some form of order on the chaos of experience in order to convey something about the human condition. One of the ways we as working writers have of conceiving of this effort is through plot. How to select information, organize information, and release information (information about characters and conflicts) is one... more
Peter Campion
Next Steps: SEPTEMBER
September 18 to September 22, 2017
TUITION: $500
This five day course has been designed to take your poems to the next level. Our online discussion will provide tools to help you connect more fully with the sources of your poems, bring new life to old drafts, and write more vivacious lines and sentences. With the help of time-proven prompts, each student will... more
Next Steps: SEPTEMBER
September 18 to September 22, 2017
TUITION: $500
This five day course has been designed to take your poems to the next level. Our online discussion will provide tools to help you connect more fully with the sources of your poems, bring new life to old drafts, and write more vivacious lines and sentences. With the help of time-proven prompts, each student will... more
Kim Addonizio
Exploring the Sonnet
September 18 to October 13, 2017
TUITION: $500
Whether you’ve been writing sonnets for years, or have forgotten what iambic pentameter is, or never knew in the first place—this workshop is for you. The sonnet is a beautiful, flexible form that is as vital now as it was when Petrarch and Dante wrote in the fourteenth century, and when the Elizabethan writers (including... more
Exploring the Sonnet
September 18 to October 13, 2017
TUITION: $500
Whether you’ve been writing sonnets for years, or have forgotten what iambic pentameter is, or never knew in the first place—this workshop is for you. The sonnet is a beautiful, flexible form that is as vital now as it was when Petrarch and Dante wrote in the fourteenth century, and when the Elizabethan writers (including... more
Emilia Phillips
This Last, Selfish Stitch: On Empathy, Appropriation, and Writing Poems About the Body
September 18 to October 13, 2017
TUITION: $500
Why should we write about our bodies, rendering them frankly in our poems? How should we approach writing about the bodies of others without appropriation? What is the relationship of poetry to the body, and how does this dynamic influence our writing process? In this generative workshop and conversation, we will answer these questions by... more
This Last, Selfish Stitch: On Empathy, Appropriation, and Writing Poems About the Body
September 18 to October 13, 2017
TUITION: $500
Why should we write about our bodies, rendering them frankly in our poems? How should we approach writing about the bodies of others without appropriation? What is the relationship of poetry to the body, and how does this dynamic influence our writing process? In this generative workshop and conversation, we will answer these questions by... more
Rosie Schaap
Essay is a Verb: The Practice of Personal Narrative: SEPTEMBER
September 11 to October 13, 2017
TUITION: $500
To essay is to try. Informed and animated by the singular life experience and voice of its author, the personal essay represents an attempt to engage deeply with an idea, a problem, a preoccupation, in the most powerful language possible. Personal essay writing presents a particularly rich opportunity to luxuriate in thought—about whatever troubles you,... more
Essay is a Verb: The Practice of Personal Narrative: SEPTEMBER
September 11 to October 13, 2017
TUITION: $500
To essay is to try. Informed and animated by the singular life experience and voice of its author, the personal essay represents an attempt to engage deeply with an idea, a problem, a preoccupation, in the most powerful language possible. Personal essay writing presents a particularly rich opportunity to luxuriate in thought—about whatever troubles you,... more
Chloe Garcia Roberts
Crossing Borders and Subverting Genre: The Lyric Essay: FALL
September 11 to October 6, 2017
TUITION: $500
Have your poems ever felt jealous of scientific essays, investigative journalism, instruction manuals, business correspondence, or religious texts to name a few? Or conversely does your prose feel like it’s missing certain flourishes, freedoms, or gestures that you see over the wall in poetry land? Are you drawn to authors whose work exists somewhere at... more
Crossing Borders and Subverting Genre: The Lyric Essay: FALL
September 11 to October 6, 2017
TUITION: $500
Have your poems ever felt jealous of scientific essays, investigative journalism, instruction manuals, business correspondence, or religious texts to name a few? Or conversely does your prose feel like it’s missing certain flourishes, freedoms, or gestures that you see over the wall in poetry land? Are you drawn to authors whose work exists somewhere at... more
Jillian Weise
The Poet as Spy: 4 Tricks from Espionage: Fall
September 11 to September 15, 2017
TUITION: $500
Since we live in the age of the ubiquitous status update, you are already familiar with spying and being spied, watching and being watched, surveying and being surveyed. So you will make that familiarity manifest by writing poems as a secret agent; inventing a cover story; composing an interrogation; and spying on the culture that... more
The Poet as Spy: 4 Tricks from Espionage: Fall
September 11 to September 15, 2017
TUITION: $500
Since we live in the age of the ubiquitous status update, you are already familiar with spying and being spied, watching and being watched, surveying and being surveyed. So you will make that familiarity manifest by writing poems as a secret agent; inventing a cover story; composing an interrogation; and spying on the culture that... more
Rebecca Lindenberg
Writing for the Senses: Poetic Imagery, Experience, Emotion, and Evocation: September
September 11 to September 15, 2017
TUITION: $500
Though this course may be online, it’s a highly experiential one, devoted exclusively to developing the writer’s perceptual path from sensation to language. Richly original attention to the world and our experience of it is the best possible antidote to clichéd or stale writing. It can also be the best inspiration for new work. And... more
Writing for the Senses: Poetic Imagery, Experience, Emotion, and Evocation: September
September 11 to September 15, 2017
TUITION: $500
Though this course may be online, it’s a highly experiential one, devoted exclusively to developing the writer’s perceptual path from sensation to language. Richly original attention to the world and our experience of it is the best possible antidote to clichéd or stale writing. It can also be the best inspiration for new work. And... more
Reginald Dwayne Betts
Juxtaposing the Public & Private to Add Depth to Poetry
September 11 to October 6, 2017
TUITION: $500
In this course we will look at the work of writers who skillfully juxtapose the public with the private in their poetry. We will pay special attention to identifying techniques that we can replicate and discussing strategies that make it feel natural to combine the public and private in poetry. We’ll look at poems by... more
Juxtaposing the Public & Private to Add Depth to Poetry
September 11 to October 6, 2017
TUITION: $500
In this course we will look at the work of writers who skillfully juxtapose the public with the private in their poetry. We will pay special attention to identifying techniques that we can replicate and discussing strategies that make it feel natural to combine the public and private in poetry. We’ll look at poems by... more
Alex Marzano-Lesnevich
Narrating Memoir: Who’s Telling Your Life Story?
September 11 to September 15, 2017
TUITION: $500
The memoirist is asked to play many roles: simultaneously that of the author, the narrator, and the character. And while those of the author (you, who sits at the keyboard) and the character (younger you, in the scenes you are recollecting) may be easily understood, that of the narrator is both the slipperiest and perhaps... more
Narrating Memoir: Who’s Telling Your Life Story?
September 11 to September 15, 2017
TUITION: $500
The memoirist is asked to play many roles: simultaneously that of the author, the narrator, and the character. And while those of the author (you, who sits at the keyboard) and the character (younger you, in the scenes you are recollecting) may be easily understood, that of the narrator is both the slipperiest and perhaps... more
Julie Carr
The Epistolary Poem
September 4 to September 8, 2017
TUITION: $500
In 1959, American poet Frank O’Hara wrote a mock-manifesto he called “Personism” in which he argued that a poem should be immediate and intimate, that it should “address itself to one person (other than the poet himself), thus evoking overtones of love without destroying love’s life-giving vulgarity.” Long before O’Hara, the poem-as-letter (or Epistle) has... more
The Epistolary Poem
September 4 to September 8, 2017
TUITION: $500
In 1959, American poet Frank O’Hara wrote a mock-manifesto he called “Personism” in which he argued that a poem should be immediate and intimate, that it should “address itself to one person (other than the poet himself), thus evoking overtones of love without destroying love’s life-giving vulgarity.” Long before O’Hara, the poem-as-letter (or Epistle) has... more
Elizabeth Bradfield
The Project Book
September 4 to September 29, 2017
TUITION: $500
Finishing a book of poems focused on a topic, rather than a loose aggregation, is a particular art. Some poets unify books by form or voice as well as subject (such as Ellen Bryant Voigt’s Kyrie, Frank X Walker’s Buffalo Dance: The Journey of York, Martha Collins’ White Papers, or Derek Walcott’s Omeros), others want... more
The Project Book
September 4 to September 29, 2017
TUITION: $500
Finishing a book of poems focused on a topic, rather than a loose aggregation, is a particular art. Some poets unify books by form or voice as well as subject (such as Ellen Bryant Voigt’s Kyrie, Frank X Walker’s Buffalo Dance: The Journey of York, Martha Collins’ White Papers, or Derek Walcott’s Omeros), others want... more
Rebecca Gayle Howell
We All Write Sentences: September
September 4 to September 8, 2017
TUITION: $500
This one-week intensive invites both poets and prose writers to consider more closely the power of pushing out the boundaries of the English sentence. Reading, across genres, sentences by masters of the ecstatic–James Agee, Gwendolyn Brooks, Cormac McCarthy, Emily Dickinson, Ross Gay, Halldór Laxness, Melville, Toni Morrison, Nabokov, Gerald Stern, C.K. Williams, Joy Williams–we will... more
We All Write Sentences: September
September 4 to September 8, 2017
TUITION: $500
This one-week intensive invites both poets and prose writers to consider more closely the power of pushing out the boundaries of the English sentence. Reading, across genres, sentences by masters of the ecstatic–James Agee, Gwendolyn Brooks, Cormac McCarthy, Emily Dickinson, Ross Gay, Halldór Laxness, Melville, Toni Morrison, Nabokov, Gerald Stern, C.K. Williams, Joy Williams–we will... more
Ann Hood
Writing the Personal Essay: September
September 4 to September 29, 2017
TUITION: $500
Each week will begin with my introduction of a topic for that week’s memoir assignment. Topics will include Food, Place, Love, and Loss. I will email you examples from writers I admire such as Jonathan Lethem, JoAnn Beard, Cheryl Strayed, and Tony Early and discuss how they have accomplished writing these strong essays. How did... more
Writing the Personal Essay: September
September 4 to September 29, 2017
TUITION: $500
Each week will begin with my introduction of a topic for that week’s memoir assignment. Topics will include Food, Place, Love, and Loss. I will email you examples from writers I admire such as Jonathan Lethem, JoAnn Beard, Cheryl Strayed, and Tony Early and discuss how they have accomplished writing these strong essays. How did... more
Ed Skoog
Called to Speech: A One-Week Workshop
August 21 to August 25, 2017
TUITION: $500
What is happening when you begin to write a poem? What does it mean to be called to speech, to break into song? Why this, why now? How does the occasion of a poem lead you to write a poem in a certain way, and what avenues do you take to pursue or avoid this... more
Called to Speech: A One-Week Workshop
August 21 to August 25, 2017
TUITION: $500
What is happening when you begin to write a poem? What does it mean to be called to speech, to break into song? Why this, why now? How does the occasion of a poem lead you to write a poem in a certain way, and what avenues do you take to pursue or avoid this... more
Porochista Khakpour
Experimental Writing for the Non-Experimental Writers
August 21 to August 25, 2017
TUITION: $500
What does it mean for literature to be experimental? The great Margaret Atwood defines it as: “Fiction that sets up certain rules for itself . . .while subverting the conventions according to which readers have understood what constitutes a proper work of literature.” In making its own rules, a lot of the old rules must... more
Experimental Writing for the Non-Experimental Writers
August 21 to August 25, 2017
TUITION: $500
What does it mean for literature to be experimental? The great Margaret Atwood defines it as: “Fiction that sets up certain rules for itself . . .while subverting the conventions according to which readers have understood what constitutes a proper work of literature.” In making its own rules, a lot of the old rules must... more
Sarah Green
Your Best Beach Body
August 7 to August 11, 2017
TUITION: $500
Where in your body do you house longing? Where does surprise live? Tenderness? Humor? This week we’ll prep our summer poem bodies with seven prompts designed to provoke and invite the visceral and somatic, both dark and light. We’ll build muscle with, and move freely around, anaphora, syllabics, direct address, found text, ekphrasis, and erasure.... more
Your Best Beach Body
August 7 to August 11, 2017
TUITION: $500
Where in your body do you house longing? Where does surprise live? Tenderness? Humor? This week we’ll prep our summer poem bodies with seven prompts designed to provoke and invite the visceral and somatic, both dark and light. We’ll build muscle with, and move freely around, anaphora, syllabics, direct address, found text, ekphrasis, and erasure.... more
Lydia Millet
Fierce Fiction: Five Days
August 7 to August 11, 2017
TUITION: $500
This workshop will take a fiction sample from each student (ten to fifteen pages of a short story or beginning of a novel) and revise it over the five days of the class. We’ll work on honing the piece’s voice to make it as powerful as possible, streamlining and sharpening so that your piece fascinates... more
Fierce Fiction: Five Days
August 7 to August 11, 2017
TUITION: $500
This workshop will take a fiction sample from each student (ten to fifteen pages of a short story or beginning of a novel) and revise it over the five days of the class. We’ll work on honing the piece’s voice to make it as powerful as possible, streamlining and sharpening so that your piece fascinates... more
Lisa Duffy
Elements of Craft: A Fiction Workshop
July 31 to August 25, 2017
TUITION: $500
This workshop is for students who are looking for critical feedback on a short story or novel-in-progress (novel excerpt should stand alone). Students will critique each other’s work using a template focused on the essential elements of fiction—plot, structure, character and language. We’ll discuss each of these elements with an eye toward several goals: to... more
Elements of Craft: A Fiction Workshop
July 31 to August 25, 2017
TUITION: $500
This workshop is for students who are looking for critical feedback on a short story or novel-in-progress (novel excerpt should stand alone). Students will critique each other’s work using a template focused on the essential elements of fiction—plot, structure, character and language. We’ll discuss each of these elements with an eye toward several goals: to... more
Sara Eliza Johnson
First and Last(ing) Impressions: A Poetry Workshop
July 31 to August 25, 2017
TUITION: $500
“Since when,” he asked,“Are the first line and last line of any poemWhere the poem begins and ends?” —Seamus Heaney, “The Fragment” First and last impressions may not be everything, as the familiar sayings claim, but they are certainly critical in poetry. The first and final lines of our poems influence how our readers engage... more
First and Last(ing) Impressions: A Poetry Workshop
July 31 to August 25, 2017
TUITION: $500
“Since when,” he asked,“Are the first line and last line of any poemWhere the poem begins and ends?” —Seamus Heaney, “The Fragment” First and last impressions may not be everything, as the familiar sayings claim, but they are certainly critical in poetry. The first and final lines of our poems influence how our readers engage... more
Ada Limón
Staying True: Authenticity and Voice: Summer
July 31 to August 25, 2017
TUITION: $500
Ada Limón is determined to help you focus in on your own personal style and write poems in your own unique voice in a world filled with constantly challenging external influences. This class you will offer new techniques to help you develop a more powerful personal identity in your poetry that will deepen the connection... more
Staying True: Authenticity and Voice: Summer
July 31 to August 25, 2017
TUITION: $500
Ada Limón is determined to help you focus in on your own personal style and write poems in your own unique voice in a world filled with constantly challenging external influences. This class you will offer new techniques to help you develop a more powerful personal identity in your poetry that will deepen the connection... more
Nancy Pearson
15 Works: August
July 31 to August 25, 2017
TUITION: $500
This four week poetry workshop is based on a class taught at the former Corcoran School of Art. In “15 Works,” you’ll write 3 to 4 poems a week in response to assignments and prompts, with weekly themes. Comments on one another’s poems will be limited to one poem per week unless you’d like to... more
15 Works: August
July 31 to August 25, 2017
TUITION: $500
This four week poetry workshop is based on a class taught at the former Corcoran School of Art. In “15 Works,” you’ll write 3 to 4 poems a week in response to assignments and prompts, with weekly themes. Comments on one another’s poems will be limited to one poem per week unless you’d like to... more
Anne Sanow
Revision is the Writing: Prose Workshop, Summer
July 31 to August 25, 2017
TUITION: $500
It’s easy to resist revision as the “work” part of creating—but when you embrace it fully as part of the creative process, your writing will start to go to new levels. Real revision is bold and daring. It demands that you get into the guts of your writing and reconceive anything from point of view... more
Revision is the Writing: Prose Workshop, Summer
July 31 to August 25, 2017
TUITION: $500
It’s easy to resist revision as the “work” part of creating—but when you embrace it fully as part of the creative process, your writing will start to go to new levels. Real revision is bold and daring. It demands that you get into the guts of your writing and reconceive anything from point of view... more
Ed Skoog
Keep Your Foot on the Sustain Pedal: Writing Long Poems in July and August
July 24 to August 18, 2017
TUITION: $500
In this workshop, participants will struggle through several drafts of a few poems between 50 and 150 lines in length. Perhaps it seems silly to write those numbers down as meaningful parameters, but in the instructor’s experience that’s where a distinct kind of poem resides, one with a sustained tone and many twists and turns:... more
Keep Your Foot on the Sustain Pedal: Writing Long Poems in July and August
July 24 to August 18, 2017
TUITION: $500
In this workshop, participants will struggle through several drafts of a few poems between 50 and 150 lines in length. Perhaps it seems silly to write those numbers down as meaningful parameters, but in the instructor’s experience that’s where a distinct kind of poem resides, one with a sustained tone and many twists and turns:... more
Arisa White
Know Thyself: Poetry of Personal Witness
July 17 to August 11, 2017
TUITION: $500
Those silent places we inhabit are places where we can learn to better listen—to self and to others. In this workshop we turn within, using poetry to cultivate greater attention and embodiment. You will incorporate meditation into your writing process. You will be provided with essays and talks by such writers and thinkers as Audre... more
Know Thyself: Poetry of Personal Witness
July 17 to August 11, 2017
TUITION: $500
Those silent places we inhabit are places where we can learn to better listen—to self and to others. In this workshop we turn within, using poetry to cultivate greater attention and embodiment. You will incorporate meditation into your writing process. You will be provided with essays and talks by such writers and thinkers as Audre... more
D. Gilson
Life Drawing: Public Persona Poetry
July 17 to July 21, 2017
TUITION: $500
“I am ashamed of my century,” Frank O’Hara explains, “for being so entertaining but I have to smile.” In this one-week intensive course, students will mine speech acts — from Twitter to long-form interviews — by a public figure of their choosing to develop a portfolio of persona poems. An exercise in character development, we’ll... more
Life Drawing: Public Persona Poetry
July 17 to July 21, 2017
TUITION: $500
“I am ashamed of my century,” Frank O’Hara explains, “for being so entertaining but I have to smile.” In this one-week intensive course, students will mine speech acts — from Twitter to long-form interviews — by a public figure of their choosing to develop a portfolio of persona poems. An exercise in character development, we’ll... more
Peter Campion
Form From Feeling and Feeling From Form: Summer
July 10 to August 4, 2017
TUITION: $500
This class is for people who want to improve their poems, by understanding the art more fully, from the inside out. During our four weeks, we’ll explore seven formal elements—action, voice, sentence, phrase, line, sound, and metaphor—while generating our own new poems. I hope to give each student a better feeling for how formal elements... more
Form From Feeling and Feeling From Form: Summer
July 10 to August 4, 2017
TUITION: $500
This class is for people who want to improve their poems, by understanding the art more fully, from the inside out. During our four weeks, we’ll explore seven formal elements—action, voice, sentence, phrase, line, sound, and metaphor—while generating our own new poems. I hope to give each student a better feeling for how formal elements... more
Ann Hood
Writing the Personal Essay: July
July 10 to August 4, 2017
TUITION: $500
Each week will begin with my introduction of a topic for that week’s memoir assignment. Topics will include Food, Place, Love, and Loss. I will email you examples from writers I admire such as Jonathan Lethem, JoAnn Beard, Cheryl Strayed, and Tony Early and discuss how they have accomplished writing these strong essays. How did... more
Writing the Personal Essay: July
July 10 to August 4, 2017
TUITION: $500
Each week will begin with my introduction of a topic for that week’s memoir assignment. Topics will include Food, Place, Love, and Loss. I will email you examples from writers I admire such as Jonathan Lethem, JoAnn Beard, Cheryl Strayed, and Tony Early and discuss how they have accomplished writing these strong essays. How did... more
Nancy Pearson
15 Works: July
July 3 to July 28, 2017
TUITION: $500
This four week poetry workshop is based on a class taught at the former Corcoran School of Art. In “15 Works,” you’ll write 3 to 4 poems a week in response to assignments and prompts, with weekly themes. Comments on one another’s poems will be limited to one poem per week unless you’d like to... more
15 Works: July
July 3 to July 28, 2017
TUITION: $500
This four week poetry workshop is based on a class taught at the former Corcoran School of Art. In “15 Works,” you’ll write 3 to 4 poems a week in response to assignments and prompts, with weekly themes. Comments on one another’s poems will be limited to one poem per week unless you’d like to... more
Paisley Rekdal
Towards a Documentary Poetics
June 26 to July 21, 2017
TUITION: $500
Paisley Rekdal’s hands-on class is designed to help you explore the very special challenges poets face when writing documentary poetry. Whether you are expressing individual occurrences or a series of events, this class will focus primarily on developing new techniques and exercises for the creation of a longer series of compelling poems. What is a... more
Towards a Documentary Poetics
June 26 to July 21, 2017
TUITION: $500
Paisley Rekdal’s hands-on class is designed to help you explore the very special challenges poets face when writing documentary poetry. Whether you are expressing individual occurrences or a series of events, this class will focus primarily on developing new techniques and exercises for the creation of a longer series of compelling poems. What is a... more
Meghan O'Gieblyn
Place in Memoir
June 26 to August 11, 2017
TUITION: $500
Too often, location is regarded as the backdrop of a memoir—the fixed stage-set on which the action unfolds. But there is a long tradition of memoir that privileges place, and the writer’s experience with that place. In such works, location takes center stage and becomes a dynamic “character” in the story. Travel memoir is the... more
Place in Memoir
June 26 to August 11, 2017
TUITION: $500
Too often, location is regarded as the backdrop of a memoir—the fixed stage-set on which the action unfolds. But there is a long tradition of memoir that privileges place, and the writer’s experience with that place. In such works, location takes center stage and becomes a dynamic “character” in the story. Travel memoir is the... more
Lillian-Yvonne Bertram
Make it Sing, Make it Strange: A Summer Poetry Lab
June 26 to July 21, 2017
TUITION: $500
Into the laboratory we go! In this course we are going to utilize techniques and strategies to make our poems sing and to embrace the strange in the process. On the one hand, we will examine the craft of extended metaphor by looking at exemplary poems and mapping how metaphors are constructed. On the other... more
Make it Sing, Make it Strange: A Summer Poetry Lab
June 26 to July 21, 2017
TUITION: $500
Into the laboratory we go! In this course we are going to utilize techniques and strategies to make our poems sing and to embrace the strange in the process. On the one hand, we will examine the craft of extended metaphor by looking at exemplary poems and mapping how metaphors are constructed. On the other... more
Chloe Garcia Roberts
Crossing Borders and Subverting Genre: The Lyric Essay
June 19 to June 23, 2017
TUITION: $500
Have your poems ever felt jealous of scientific essays, investigative journalism, instruction manuals, business correspondence, or religious texts to name a few? Or conversely does your prose feel like it’s missing certain flourishes, freedoms, or gestures that you see over the wall in poetry land? Are you drawn to authors whose work exists somewhere at... more
Crossing Borders and Subverting Genre: The Lyric Essay
June 19 to June 23, 2017
TUITION: $500
Have your poems ever felt jealous of scientific essays, investigative journalism, instruction manuals, business correspondence, or religious texts to name a few? Or conversely does your prose feel like it’s missing certain flourishes, freedoms, or gestures that you see over the wall in poetry land? Are you drawn to authors whose work exists somewhere at... more
Troy Jollimore
Seeing, Hearing, and Letting Poems Be
June 19 to June 23, 2017
TUITION: $500
Many of us have had the experience of sensing a poem hovering at the edge of our peripheral vision, drifting in the margins of being heard, trembling on the verge of announcing itself. You know it’s there, waiting to exist, but how do you write it, how do you actually call it into being? How... more
Seeing, Hearing, and Letting Poems Be
June 19 to June 23, 2017
TUITION: $500
Many of us have had the experience of sensing a poem hovering at the edge of our peripheral vision, drifting in the margins of being heard, trembling on the verge of announcing itself. You know it’s there, waiting to exist, but how do you write it, how do you actually call it into being? How... more
Meg Day
The Elegy & the Emo Poem: A Battle to the Death: Summer
June 19 to July 14, 2017
TUITION: $500
What is the responsibility of the poet in times of public mourning? Why is it that we turn to poetry during periods of tragedy or deep sorrow? In this course we will be in conversation with how poetry informs our public & private responses to loss & interrogate the poet’s position as empath, archivist, &... more
The Elegy & the Emo Poem: A Battle to the Death: Summer
June 19 to July 14, 2017
TUITION: $500
What is the responsibility of the poet in times of public mourning? Why is it that we turn to poetry during periods of tragedy or deep sorrow? In this course we will be in conversation with how poetry informs our public & private responses to loss & interrogate the poet’s position as empath, archivist, &... more
Mark Wunderlich
Getting Poems Started, Keeping Them Going
June 12 to July 7, 2017
TUITION: $500
Mark Wunderlich’s course will provide you with practical tools for starting poems, building on them, revising them and pushing them to their best possible conclusions. Using letters, directions, prayers, lists, litanies, etc. as a starting point, you will be guided through the entire development process for creating your own personal poems. In this course, students... more
Getting Poems Started, Keeping Them Going
June 12 to July 7, 2017
TUITION: $500
Mark Wunderlich’s course will provide you with practical tools for starting poems, building on them, revising them and pushing them to their best possible conclusions. Using letters, directions, prayers, lists, litanies, etc. as a starting point, you will be guided through the entire development process for creating your own personal poems. In this course, students... more
Rosie Schaap
Writing About Food & Drink
June 12 to July 7, 2017
TUITION: $500
Sometimes a pastrami sandwich is just a pastrami sandwich. And sometimes a pastrami sandwich is a way of looking at the world: a lens through which to consider an idea, a problem, a relationship, perhaps even a social movement. When we write essays about food and drink, more than a meal or a cocktail should... more
Writing About Food & Drink
June 12 to July 7, 2017
TUITION: $500
Sometimes a pastrami sandwich is just a pastrami sandwich. And sometimes a pastrami sandwich is a way of looking at the world: a lens through which to consider an idea, a problem, a relationship, perhaps even a social movement. When we write essays about food and drink, more than a meal or a cocktail should... more
Jason Zuzga
When Language is the Artist’s Material: The Poet’s Palette
June 12 to June 16, 2017
TUITION: $500
What exactly is it that poets do with language, or, rather, what opportunities for creation and effects does language afford? We’ll work to get a concrete feel for language as one possible art-making material among others such as paint, or stone and chisel. This workshop will refresh your relationship with language and also get your... more
When Language is the Artist’s Material: The Poet’s Palette
June 12 to June 16, 2017
TUITION: $500
What exactly is it that poets do with language, or, rather, what opportunities for creation and effects does language afford? We’ll work to get a concrete feel for language as one possible art-making material among others such as paint, or stone and chisel. This workshop will refresh your relationship with language and also get your... more
Kimberly Burwick
The Image, Ravenous
June 12 to June 16, 2017
TUITION: $500
Do you remember how exciting it once was to find a crushed wasp or the first robin in March? In this generative course we will fiercely recollect the early-childhood process of image-making. Focusing on techniques such as synesthesia, anaphora and apostrophe we will play in the mud, so to speak, and rebuild our poems with... more
The Image, Ravenous
June 12 to June 16, 2017
TUITION: $500
Do you remember how exciting it once was to find a crushed wasp or the first robin in March? In this generative course we will fiercely recollect the early-childhood process of image-making. Focusing on techniques such as synesthesia, anaphora and apostrophe we will play in the mud, so to speak, and rebuild our poems with... more
CA Conrad
JUNO: An Online (Soma)tic Poetry Workshop
June 5 to June 30, 2017
TUITION: $500
Every living person is creative, but many people stop using their artistic skills when the routines of career, family and the many stresses of survival take hold of our lives. We will discuss how having an active, vibrant creative life keeps us innovative to enhance every decision we make and everything we do. (Soma)tic rituals... more
JUNO: An Online (Soma)tic Poetry Workshop
June 5 to June 30, 2017
TUITION: $500
Every living person is creative, but many people stop using their artistic skills when the routines of career, family and the many stresses of survival take hold of our lives. We will discuss how having an active, vibrant creative life keeps us innovative to enhance every decision we make and everything we do. (Soma)tic rituals... more
Paula Bohince
Ekphrasis: Poems from Visual Art
June 5 to June 9, 2017
TUITION: $500
Poets across time and culture have found inspiration in visual art, drawn into a conversation with these artworks and responding with fresh perspectives. This generative workshop will examine poetic models that employ different approaches to this kind of poem and use them as jumpstarts for our own poems to be written and discussed during the... more
Ekphrasis: Poems from Visual Art
June 5 to June 9, 2017
TUITION: $500
Poets across time and culture have found inspiration in visual art, drawn into a conversation with these artworks and responding with fresh perspectives. This generative workshop will examine poetic models that employ different approaches to this kind of poem and use them as jumpstarts for our own poems to be written and discussed during the... more
Aamina Ahmad
Long form screenwriting; stories that move us.
June 5 to June 30, 2017
TUITION: $500
How do screenwriters draw us into the world of a story? How do they breathe life into characters, making them real and complex? And how does the story told make us feel as though we have lived through something deep and true with those characters? In this class, we will consider a number of films... more
Long form screenwriting; stories that move us.
June 5 to June 30, 2017
TUITION: $500
How do screenwriters draw us into the world of a story? How do they breathe life into characters, making them real and complex? And how does the story told make us feel as though we have lived through something deep and true with those characters? In this class, we will consider a number of films... more
Nathan Oates
Key to Mystery: Methods for Building Stories
June 5 to June 30, 2017
TUITION: $500
This workshop will focus on learning techniques used in mystery stories and how those can be deployed in our stories and novels. Mystery stories use many of the same basic blocks of literary fiction, and then accentuate and emphasize some elements to generate powerful effects that can rivet the reader to the page. We will... more
Key to Mystery: Methods for Building Stories
June 5 to June 30, 2017
TUITION: $500
This workshop will focus on learning techniques used in mystery stories and how those can be deployed in our stories and novels. Mystery stories use many of the same basic blocks of literary fiction, and then accentuate and emphasize some elements to generate powerful effects that can rivet the reader to the page. We will... more
Ann Hood
Writing the Personal Essay: June
June 5 to June 30, 2017
TUITION: $500
Each week will begin with my introduction of a topic for that week’s memoir assignment. Topics will include Food, Place, Love, and Loss. I will email you examples from writers I admire such as Jonathan Lethem, JoAnn Beard, Cheryl Strayed, and Tony Early and discuss how they have accomplished writing these strong essays. How did... more
Writing the Personal Essay: June
June 5 to June 30, 2017
TUITION: $500
Each week will begin with my introduction of a topic for that week’s memoir assignment. Topics will include Food, Place, Love, and Loss. I will email you examples from writers I admire such as Jonathan Lethem, JoAnn Beard, Cheryl Strayed, and Tony Early and discuss how they have accomplished writing these strong essays. How did... more
Nancy Pearson
15 Works: June
June 5 to June 30, 2017
TUITION: $500
This four week poetry workshop is based on a class taught at the former Corcoran School of Art. In “15 Works,” you’ll write 3 to 4 poems a week in response to assignments and prompts, with weekly themes. Comments on one another’s poems will be limited to one poem per week unless you’d like to... more
15 Works: June
June 5 to June 30, 2017
TUITION: $500
This four week poetry workshop is based on a class taught at the former Corcoran School of Art. In “15 Works,” you’ll write 3 to 4 poems a week in response to assignments and prompts, with weekly themes. Comments on one another’s poems will be limited to one poem per week unless you’d like to... more
Rebecca Lindenberg
What I Should Have Said: Writing Funny Poems
June 5 to June 30, 2017
TUITION: $500
It is really hard to write funny. It’s even harder to write funny with substance and pathos. But in this class, we’ll look at several poems that succeed at being funny in different ways – some by unlikely juxtapositions, some by satire, some by the ways they create, fulfill, and subvert reader’s expectations, some by... more
What I Should Have Said: Writing Funny Poems
June 5 to June 30, 2017
TUITION: $500
It is really hard to write funny. It’s even harder to write funny with substance and pathos. But in this class, we’ll look at several poems that succeed at being funny in different ways – some by unlikely juxtapositions, some by satire, some by the ways they create, fulfill, and subvert reader’s expectations, some by... more
Rebecca Gayle Howell
Translation as Creative Practice
June 5 to June 30, 2017
TUITION: $500
We write in the age of globalization and in the language most universal for our time. Contemporary international writers are now being brought into English at a high frequency, and major writers of English are revisiting classics for the first time in a generation. Where do you fit in? In this class, we will study... more
Translation as Creative Practice
June 5 to June 30, 2017
TUITION: $500
We write in the age of globalization and in the language most universal for our time. Contemporary international writers are now being brought into English at a high frequency, and major writers of English are revisiting classics for the first time in a generation. Where do you fit in? In this class, we will study... more
Lisa Duffy
Elements of Craft: A Fiction Workshop
May 29 to June 23, 2017
TUITION: $500
This workshop is for students who are looking for critical feedback on a short story or novel-in-progress (novel excerpt should stand alone). Students will critique each other’s work using a template focused on the essential elements of fiction—plot, structure, character and language. We’ll discuss each of these elements with an eye toward several goals: to... more
Elements of Craft: A Fiction Workshop
May 29 to June 23, 2017
TUITION: $500
This workshop is for students who are looking for critical feedback on a short story or novel-in-progress (novel excerpt should stand alone). Students will critique each other’s work using a template focused on the essential elements of fiction—plot, structure, character and language. We’ll discuss each of these elements with an eye toward several goals: to... more
Paula Bohince
Small but Mighty
May 29 to June 2, 2017
TUITION: $500
Sometimes the smallest poems have the biggest hearts. In this generative workshop, we’ll concentrate on creating small but mighty poems, using such models as Dickinson and Basho, Clifton, Hirshfield, and others. Together, in a supportive environment, we’ll unlock the large spirits often contained within brief poems and develop the power of compression, learn how to... more
Small but Mighty
May 29 to June 2, 2017
TUITION: $500
Sometimes the smallest poems have the biggest hearts. In this generative workshop, we’ll concentrate on creating small but mighty poems, using such models as Dickinson and Basho, Clifton, Hirshfield, and others. Together, in a supportive environment, we’ll unlock the large spirits often contained within brief poems and develop the power of compression, learn how to... more
Aamina Ahmad
TV Pilot Boot Camp!
May 29 to June 2, 2017
TUITION: $500
In this course we will look at the enormous storytelling potential that television offers us as writers, as well as the necessary parameters of budget, schedule and branding within which we have to work. We’ll consider the way in which audiences now watch television (on demand, Netflix) and how that impacts the kinds of stories... more
TV Pilot Boot Camp!
May 29 to June 2, 2017
TUITION: $500
In this course we will look at the enormous storytelling potential that television offers us as writers, as well as the necessary parameters of budget, schedule and branding within which we have to work. We’ll consider the way in which audiences now watch television (on demand, Netflix) and how that impacts the kinds of stories... more
Ed Skoog
Keep Your Foot on the Sustain Pedal: Writing Long Poems in June
May 29 to June 23, 2017
TUITION: $500
In this workshop, participants will struggle through several drafts of a few poems between 50 and 150 lines in length. Perhaps it seems silly to write those numbers down as meaningful parameters, but in the instructor’s experience that’s where a distinct kind of poem resides, one with a sustained tone and many twists and turns:... more
Keep Your Foot on the Sustain Pedal: Writing Long Poems in June
May 29 to June 23, 2017
TUITION: $500
In this workshop, participants will struggle through several drafts of a few poems between 50 and 150 lines in length. Perhaps it seems silly to write those numbers down as meaningful parameters, but in the instructor’s experience that’s where a distinct kind of poem resides, one with a sustained tone and many twists and turns:... more
Paula Bohince
From One, Many: Radical Revision
May 22 to May 26, 2017
TUITION: $500
You’ll begin the week with one poem and end with five new poems, each derived from the original, which will serve as the source, or seed bed, for these radical revisions, each now a distinct poem. Through exercises and a shared ideas from our group, your source poem will serve as a wellspring for new... more
From One, Many: Radical Revision
May 22 to May 26, 2017
TUITION: $500
You’ll begin the week with one poem and end with five new poems, each derived from the original, which will serve as the source, or seed bed, for these radical revisions, each now a distinct poem. Through exercises and a shared ideas from our group, your source poem will serve as a wellspring for new... more
Christina Davis
Ourselves, I Sing: Experiments in Selfhood & Humanhood
May 22 to May 26, 2017
TUITION: $500
“It is said to be the age of the first person singular.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson (1827) In a country that still prides itself on self-reliance and individualism, and that often gives linguistic precedence to personal testimony, do we lose something when we over-rely on the first person as the sole authenticating voice? And in such... more
Ourselves, I Sing: Experiments in Selfhood & Humanhood
May 22 to May 26, 2017
TUITION: $500
“It is said to be the age of the first person singular.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson (1827) In a country that still prides itself on self-reliance and individualism, and that often gives linguistic precedence to personal testimony, do we lose something when we over-rely on the first person as the sole authenticating voice? And in such... more
Sandra Simonds
From Your Diary to Publication
May 22 to June 16, 2017
TUITION: $500
Are you secretly writing poetry in a diary, blog or anonymously on social media, but might be nervous to share your writing in a more public way? Maybe you want to send your poems out for publication but you don’t feel confident enough yet? Or maybe you are a writer in another genre, but you... more
From Your Diary to Publication
May 22 to June 16, 2017
TUITION: $500
Are you secretly writing poetry in a diary, blog or anonymously on social media, but might be nervous to share your writing in a more public way? Maybe you want to send your poems out for publication but you don’t feel confident enough yet? Or maybe you are a writer in another genre, but you... more
Nathan Oates
“And the Queen Died of Grief”: Approaches to Plot in Fiction
May 15 to May 19, 2017
TUITION: $500
All literary art imposes some form of order on the chaos of experience in order to convey something about the human condition. One of the ways we as working writers have of conceiving of this effort is through plot. How to select information, organize information, and release information (information about characters and conflicts) is one... more
“And the Queen Died of Grief”: Approaches to Plot in Fiction
May 15 to May 19, 2017
TUITION: $500
All literary art imposes some form of order on the chaos of experience in order to convey something about the human condition. One of the ways we as working writers have of conceiving of this effort is through plot. How to select information, organize information, and release information (information about characters and conflicts) is one... more
Sandra Simonds
Shouldn’t the Sonnet?
May 15 to June 9, 2017
TUITION: $500
Just what is a sonnet, anyway? Is it simply a fourteen line poem? Can your sonnet have more or less than 14 lines and still be called a sonnet? Does your sonnet have to have a rhyme scheme in order to be called a sonnet? In this four-week study of the sonnet, we will look... more
Shouldn’t the Sonnet?
May 15 to June 9, 2017
TUITION: $500
Just what is a sonnet, anyway? Is it simply a fourteen line poem? Can your sonnet have more or less than 14 lines and still be called a sonnet? Does your sonnet have to have a rhyme scheme in order to be called a sonnet? In this four-week study of the sonnet, we will look... more
Kimberly Burwick
Mythological Gravity in Poetry
May 8 to June 2, 2017
TUITION: $500
Interested in mythology and folktales? In this generative workshop we’ll take a close look at how oral legends can make their way into contemporary poems in profound and exciting ways. Drawing on poets such as H.D., Sherwin Bitsui, Linda Gregg, Jack Gilbert, Alicia Ostriker, Lucille Clifton, Ted Hughes and others, we will use multiple writing... more
Mythological Gravity in Poetry
May 8 to June 2, 2017
TUITION: $500
Interested in mythology and folktales? In this generative workshop we’ll take a close look at how oral legends can make their way into contemporary poems in profound and exciting ways. Drawing on poets such as H.D., Sherwin Bitsui, Linda Gregg, Jack Gilbert, Alicia Ostriker, Lucille Clifton, Ted Hughes and others, we will use multiple writing... more
Meghan O'Gieblyn
Place in Memoir
May 8 to June 30, 2017
TUITION: $500
Too often, location is regarded as the backdrop of a memoir—the fixed stage-set on which the action unfolds. But there is a long tradition of memoir that privileges place, and the writer’s experience with that place. In such works, location takes center stage and becomes a dynamic “character” in the story. Travel memoir is the... more
Place in Memoir
May 8 to June 30, 2017
TUITION: $500
Too often, location is regarded as the backdrop of a memoir—the fixed stage-set on which the action unfolds. But there is a long tradition of memoir that privileges place, and the writer’s experience with that place. In such works, location takes center stage and becomes a dynamic “character” in the story. Travel memoir is the... more
Peter Campion
Form From Feeling and Feeling From Form: Spring
May 8 to June 2, 2017
TUITION: $500
This class is for people who want to improve their poems, by understanding the art more fully, from the inside out. During our four weeks, we’ll explore seven formal elements—action, voice, sentence, phrase, line, sound, and metaphor—while generating our own new poems. I hope to give each student a better feeling for how formal elements... more
Form From Feeling and Feeling From Form: Spring
May 8 to June 2, 2017
TUITION: $500
This class is for people who want to improve their poems, by understanding the art more fully, from the inside out. During our four weeks, we’ll explore seven formal elements—action, voice, sentence, phrase, line, sound, and metaphor—while generating our own new poems. I hope to give each student a better feeling for how formal elements... more
Jennifer Tseng
Writing the Forbidden: Poetry
May 8 to May 12, 2017
TUITION: $500
In this one-week poetry intensive you will work to produce a piece of forbidden writing. What’s forbidden to one writer may not be forbidden to another. Some feel forbidden to write about emotions (i.e. anger, happiness etc.) or circumstances (i.e. trauma, ecstasy, poverty, wealth, sexuality, aging, mental illness, family secrets etc.); some feel forbidden to... more
Writing the Forbidden: Poetry
May 8 to May 12, 2017
TUITION: $500
In this one-week poetry intensive you will work to produce a piece of forbidden writing. What’s forbidden to one writer may not be forbidden to another. Some feel forbidden to write about emotions (i.e. anger, happiness etc.) or circumstances (i.e. trauma, ecstasy, poverty, wealth, sexuality, aging, mental illness, family secrets etc.); some feel forbidden to... more
Sandra Beasley
Your Voice: Work It, Raise It, Change It
May 8 to May 12, 2017
TUITION: $500
We often regard the author’s voice as having an inherent, unchangeable quality. Many writers have invoked the analogy comparing one’s voice to a fingerprint. But one person’s “fingerprint” is another person’s rut, and no author should feel trapped in his or her voice. In this one-week intensive course we will identify the voice you have,... more
Your Voice: Work It, Raise It, Change It
May 8 to May 12, 2017
TUITION: $500
We often regard the author’s voice as having an inherent, unchangeable quality. Many writers have invoked the analogy comparing one’s voice to a fingerprint. But one person’s “fingerprint” is another person’s rut, and no author should feel trapped in his or her voice. In this one-week intensive course we will identify the voice you have,... more
Nancy Pearson
Almost Certainly But Not Quite Right At All
May 1 to May 26, 2017
TUITION: $500
Perhaps you have a poem you can’t get off the ground, a poem that bugs you, annoys you, drives you mad because you can’t figure out how to revise it. This 4-week workshop explores ways to begin revising poems that have been driving you crazy for months or for years. To get unstuck, I’ll provide... more
Almost Certainly But Not Quite Right At All
May 1 to May 26, 2017
TUITION: $500
Perhaps you have a poem you can’t get off the ground, a poem that bugs you, annoys you, drives you mad because you can’t figure out how to revise it. This 4-week workshop explores ways to begin revising poems that have been driving you crazy for months or for years. To get unstuck, I’ll provide... more
Elizabeth Bradfield
Socializing the Nature Poem: EcoJustice Poetry in the Anthropocene
May 1 to May 26, 2017
TUITION: $500
“Nature abhors a vacuum,” Aristotle famously said. When we look at anything, we put ourselves into that gaze. How do we write about our interactions with the non-human world in ways that are full, accurate, ethical, nuanced, and surprising? And how do our social selves – gender, race, geography, culture, education – influence and comment... more
Socializing the Nature Poem: EcoJustice Poetry in the Anthropocene
May 1 to May 26, 2017
TUITION: $500
“Nature abhors a vacuum,” Aristotle famously said. When we look at anything, we put ourselves into that gaze. How do we write about our interactions with the non-human world in ways that are full, accurate, ethical, nuanced, and surprising? And how do our social selves – gender, race, geography, culture, education – influence and comment... more
Matthew Olzmann
Surprise and Revelation: Building and Overthrowing Expectations in a Poem
May 1 to May 5, 2017
TUITION: $500
How is surprise created? Often, it’s an effect of poetic structure: the order in which information is presented to the reader. One piece of information introduces a set of assumptions or possibilities, and the next piece of information calls those assumptions or possibilities into question. In this class, we’ll examine how poems—from beginning to end—constantly... more
Surprise and Revelation: Building and Overthrowing Expectations in a Poem
May 1 to May 5, 2017
TUITION: $500
How is surprise created? Often, it’s an effect of poetic structure: the order in which information is presented to the reader. One piece of information introduces a set of assumptions or possibilities, and the next piece of information calls those assumptions or possibilities into question. In this class, we’ll examine how poems—from beginning to end—constantly... more
Cam Terwilliger
Flash Fiction: Spring
May 1 to May 5, 2017
TUITION: $500
Regularly appearing in the pages of literary magazines, flash fiction has become one of the most vibrant modes in which to write. A protean form, these extremely short stories come in many different shapes: some realistic, some fantastic, and some relying on the associative power of poetry. Whatever the case, flash fiction is a great... more
Flash Fiction: Spring
May 1 to May 5, 2017
TUITION: $500
Regularly appearing in the pages of literary magazines, flash fiction has become one of the most vibrant modes in which to write. A protean form, these extremely short stories come in many different shapes: some realistic, some fantastic, and some relying on the associative power of poetry. Whatever the case, flash fiction is a great... more
Reginald Dwayne Betts
Juxtaposing the Public & Private to Add Depth to Poetry
April 24 to May 19, 2017
TUITION: $500
In this course we will look at the work of writers who skillfully juxtapose the public with the private in their poetry. We will pay special attention to identifying techniques that we can replicate and discussing strategies that make it feel natural to combine the public and private in poetry. We’ll look at poems by... more
Juxtaposing the Public & Private to Add Depth to Poetry
April 24 to May 19, 2017
TUITION: $500
In this course we will look at the work of writers who skillfully juxtapose the public with the private in their poetry. We will pay special attention to identifying techniques that we can replicate and discussing strategies that make it feel natural to combine the public and private in poetry. We’ll look at poems by... more
Dariel Suarez
Keep the Narrative Going: How to Successfully Provide Context in Fiction
April 17 to April 21, 2017
TUITION: $500
This week-long intensive course will focus on that crucial element for creating socially layered, culturally nuanced, but ultimately accessible stories: context. During the course of the week, you will be given several exercises aimed at efficiently integrating backstory, socio-political context, and character background into a narrative. Students will post their writing, whether as a result... more
Keep the Narrative Going: How to Successfully Provide Context in Fiction
April 17 to April 21, 2017
TUITION: $500
This week-long intensive course will focus on that crucial element for creating socially layered, culturally nuanced, but ultimately accessible stories: context. During the course of the week, you will be given several exercises aimed at efficiently integrating backstory, socio-political context, and character background into a narrative. Students will post their writing, whether as a result... more
Jacqueline Kolosov
Voice-Driven and Urgent: Contemporary Young Adult Fiction
April 10 to May 5, 2017
TUITION: $500
Young adult fiction is a thriving part of publishing and includes genres such as historical fiction, coming-of-age narratives, fantasy, paranormal, romance and literary fiction. Although YA authors primarily aim their novels at teens, adults continue read these books for their voice-driven narratives and the issues with which they wrestle as well as the questions about... more
Voice-Driven and Urgent: Contemporary Young Adult Fiction
April 10 to May 5, 2017
TUITION: $500
Young adult fiction is a thriving part of publishing and includes genres such as historical fiction, coming-of-age narratives, fantasy, paranormal, romance and literary fiction. Although YA authors primarily aim their novels at teens, adults continue read these books for their voice-driven narratives and the issues with which they wrestle as well as the questions about... more
Alix Ohlin
Making Beautiful Sentences
April 10 to May 5, 2017
TUITION: $500
What makes a sentence so powerful and enduring that it will stick in your mind forever? In this four-week class, we’ll take a look at some beautiful sentences and try to figure out exactly what makes them work, what distinguishes a writer’s style at the syntax level, and where the music of prose resides. We’ll... more
Making Beautiful Sentences
April 10 to May 5, 2017
TUITION: $500
What makes a sentence so powerful and enduring that it will stick in your mind forever? In this four-week class, we’ll take a look at some beautiful sentences and try to figure out exactly what makes them work, what distinguishes a writer’s style at the syntax level, and where the music of prose resides. We’ll... more
Mark Wunderlich
Neighboring Solitudes: The Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke as Generative Sources for Poems
April 10 to May 5, 2017
TUITION: $500
In this workshop course, we will write poems based on some of the major themes present in the poems of the great German-language Modernist poet Rainer Maria Rilke. As a poet and thinker Rilke returned to a handful of ideas which he incorporated into his poems over the course of many years. During our time... more
Neighboring Solitudes: The Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke as Generative Sources for Poems
April 10 to May 5, 2017
TUITION: $500
In this workshop course, we will write poems based on some of the major themes present in the poems of the great German-language Modernist poet Rainer Maria Rilke. As a poet and thinker Rilke returned to a handful of ideas which he incorporated into his poems over the course of many years. During our time... more
Jacqueline Jones Lamon
Exploring the Abecedarian Poetics: More Than Just ABC's: Spring
April 10 to April 14, 2017
TUITION: $500
In this intensive course, students will explore several nuanced approaches to this ancient alphabetical form of poetry. By combining current events and difficult subject matter with a rigid adherence to the alphabet as our organizing principle, we’ll discover new ways of accessing subtext in our drafts and develop a plan for further development once our... more
Exploring the Abecedarian Poetics: More Than Just ABC's: Spring
April 10 to April 14, 2017
TUITION: $500
In this intensive course, students will explore several nuanced approaches to this ancient alphabetical form of poetry. By combining current events and difficult subject matter with a rigid adherence to the alphabet as our organizing principle, we’ll discover new ways of accessing subtext in our drafts and develop a plan for further development once our... more
Michael White
Writing the Personal Journey: A Multi-Genre Travel Writing Workshop
April 3 to April 28, 2017
TUITION: $500
Anthony Doerr’s favorite travel book is D.H. Lawrence’s Sea and Sardinia. According to Doerr, Lawrence “never stops paying attention, and in his prose everything—sunlight, a steamship, a vegetable market—becomes ecstatic.” He might’ve been talking about the writing of Mark Twain or Elizabeth Bishop or Cheryl Strayed—the explicit subject may be travel and/or place, but the... more
Writing the Personal Journey: A Multi-Genre Travel Writing Workshop
April 3 to April 28, 2017
TUITION: $500
Anthony Doerr’s favorite travel book is D.H. Lawrence’s Sea and Sardinia. According to Doerr, Lawrence “never stops paying attention, and in his prose everything—sunlight, a steamship, a vegetable market—becomes ecstatic.” He might’ve been talking about the writing of Mark Twain or Elizabeth Bishop or Cheryl Strayed—the explicit subject may be travel and/or place, but the... more
Sarah Messer
Facts, Research, and Memoir: Spring
April 3 to April 28, 2017
TUITION: $500
Even in our most vivid memories, details fade. Sarah Messer’s essential course will help you mine memory through research techniques like archival work, interviewing, travel, music, and information-gathering in order to create vivid, compelling scenes. The course will help you find the facts to get at larger truths and also remember small concrete details. At... more
Facts, Research, and Memoir: Spring
April 3 to April 28, 2017
TUITION: $500
Even in our most vivid memories, details fade. Sarah Messer’s essential course will help you mine memory through research techniques like archival work, interviewing, travel, music, and information-gathering in order to create vivid, compelling scenes. The course will help you find the facts to get at larger truths and also remember small concrete details. At... more
Laura Madeline Wiseman
Transportation: On Getting There and Getting Poems
April 3 to April 28, 2017
TUITION: $500
This four-week class will focus on writing about journeys. With writing exercises and guided prompts for generating new work, we will explore a variety of ways to approach this classic and contemporary topic in poetry. We will discuss published work and explore issues of line, image, form, and craft. We will consider these questions and... more
Transportation: On Getting There and Getting Poems
April 3 to April 28, 2017
TUITION: $500
This four-week class will focus on writing about journeys. With writing exercises and guided prompts for generating new work, we will explore a variety of ways to approach this classic and contemporary topic in poetry. We will discuss published work and explore issues of line, image, form, and craft. We will consider these questions and... more
Fred Marchant
Staying With It: A Five-Day Meditation in Poetry for Spring
April 3 to April 7, 2017
TUITION: $500
In this one-week intensive online course we will begin a new poem and stay with it for the whole five days, the goal being to nurture and expand that poem into an extended meditation. We will consider what a meditative poem is and does, and why one might want to write one. We will study... more
Staying With It: A Five-Day Meditation in Poetry for Spring
April 3 to April 7, 2017
TUITION: $500
In this one-week intensive online course we will begin a new poem and stay with it for the whole five days, the goal being to nurture and expand that poem into an extended meditation. We will consider what a meditative poem is and does, and why one might want to write one. We will study... more
Nancy Pearson
Almost Certainly But Not Quite Right: Poetry Manuscript Consultation Workshop
March 27 to March 31, 2017
TUITION: $500
This one-week personal class is designed to strengthen your poetry manuscript using a series of question-and answer-style prompts tailored for you. During the week, I will write comments about my overall impressions (what is your book “about”) and my ideas concerning organization, titles and thematic content. I will also provide line edits and comments for... more
Almost Certainly But Not Quite Right: Poetry Manuscript Consultation Workshop
March 27 to March 31, 2017
TUITION: $500
This one-week personal class is designed to strengthen your poetry manuscript using a series of question-and answer-style prompts tailored for you. During the week, I will write comments about my overall impressions (what is your book “about”) and my ideas concerning organization, titles and thematic content. I will also provide line edits and comments for... more
Rebecca Seiferle
The Poetic Sequence
March 27 to May 19, 2017
TUITION: $500
A sequence is a long poem that combines shorter pieces by relying on association, juxtaposition, and connection rather than theme or narrative to create an organic poetic whole. Overwhelmed by events, feelings, and thoughts, poets have turned to the sequence, as a way to express what otherwise could not be borne in language or within... more
The Poetic Sequence
March 27 to May 19, 2017
TUITION: $500
A sequence is a long poem that combines shorter pieces by relying on association, juxtaposition, and connection rather than theme or narrative to create an organic poetic whole. Overwhelmed by events, feelings, and thoughts, poets have turned to the sequence, as a way to express what otherwise could not be borne in language or within... more
Meghan O'Gieblyn
Conversions and Deconversions
March 27 to April 21, 2017
TUITION: $500
Most of us can think of a moment in our life when everything changed. This might have been a religious conversion, a mystical experience, or an encounter with the transcendent. Or it may have been a experience that had little to do with the spiritual realm, be it adopting a new way of life, changing... more
Conversions and Deconversions
March 27 to April 21, 2017
TUITION: $500
Most of us can think of a moment in our life when everything changed. This might have been a religious conversion, a mystical experience, or an encounter with the transcendent. Or it may have been a experience that had little to do with the spiritual realm, be it adopting a new way of life, changing... more
Jennifer Tseng
Writing the Forbidden: Fiction
March 27 to March 31, 2017
TUITION: $500
In this one-week fiction intensive you will work to produce a piece of forbidden writing. What’s forbidden to one writer may not be forbidden to another. Some feel forbidden to write about emotions (i.e. anger, happiness etc.) or circumstances (i.e. trauma, ecstasy, poverty, wealth, sexuality, aging, mental illness, family secrets etc.); some feel forbidden to... more
Writing the Forbidden: Fiction
March 27 to March 31, 2017
TUITION: $500
In this one-week fiction intensive you will work to produce a piece of forbidden writing. What’s forbidden to one writer may not be forbidden to another. Some feel forbidden to write about emotions (i.e. anger, happiness etc.) or circumstances (i.e. trauma, ecstasy, poverty, wealth, sexuality, aging, mental illness, family secrets etc.); some feel forbidden to... more
CA Conrad
THE STRENGTH OF POETRY: (Soma)tic Poetry Rituals & The Antidote To Spiritual Crisis SPRING
March 27 to March 31, 2017
TUITION: $500
Poet CAConrad has successfully used (Soma)tic poetry rituals to overcome destructive and debilitating depression after the murder of his boyfriend Earth (aka Mark Holmes). He has also created writing rituals using the night sky to design homemade star constellations, another ritual to experience what the impact of hearing the word “drone” has on the human... more
THE STRENGTH OF POETRY: (Soma)tic Poetry Rituals & The Antidote To Spiritual Crisis SPRING
March 27 to March 31, 2017
TUITION: $500
Poet CAConrad has successfully used (Soma)tic poetry rituals to overcome destructive and debilitating depression after the murder of his boyfriend Earth (aka Mark Holmes). He has also created writing rituals using the night sky to design homemade star constellations, another ritual to experience what the impact of hearing the word “drone” has on the human... more
Nancy Pearson
15 Works: Spring
March 27 to April 21, 2017
TUITION: $500
This four week poetry workshop is based on a class taught at the former Corcoran School of Art. In “15 Works,” you’ll write 3 to 4 poems a week in response to assignments and prompts, with weekly themes. Comments on one another’s poems will be limited to one poem per week unless you’d like to... more
15 Works: Spring
March 27 to April 21, 2017
TUITION: $500
This four week poetry workshop is based on a class taught at the former Corcoran School of Art. In “15 Works,” you’ll write 3 to 4 poems a week in response to assignments and prompts, with weekly themes. Comments on one another’s poems will be limited to one poem per week unless you’d like to... more
Ann Hood
Writing the Personal Essay: Spring
March 27 to April 21, 2017
TUITION: $500
During this memoir course you will work toward completing a final, personal essay through a series of short, guided writing assignments focused on specific topics. In this workshop you will use and build on the writing tools you already have, get lots of feedback on your work, while also reading and thinking and commenting on... more
Writing the Personal Essay: Spring
March 27 to April 21, 2017
TUITION: $500
During this memoir course you will work toward completing a final, personal essay through a series of short, guided writing assignments focused on specific topics. In this workshop you will use and build on the writing tools you already have, get lots of feedback on your work, while also reading and thinking and commenting on... more
Michelle Tea
Memoir that Reads Like Fiction: Spring
March 20 to March 24, 2017
TUITION: $500
In this intensive memoir workshop, you will learn techniques to create a memoir with a cinematic feel and the singular voice of an immersive novel. In addition to discussing style and craft, you will also touch on the personal concerns that inevitably arise when a writer takes on the telling of their own story. You... more
Memoir that Reads Like Fiction: Spring
March 20 to March 24, 2017
TUITION: $500
In this intensive memoir workshop, you will learn techniques to create a memoir with a cinematic feel and the singular voice of an immersive novel. In addition to discussing style and craft, you will also touch on the personal concerns that inevitably arise when a writer takes on the telling of their own story. You... more
Rebecca Lindenberg
Writing for the Senses: Poetic Imagery, Experience, Emotion, and Evocation
March 20 to March 24, 2017
TUITION: $500
Though this course may be online, it’s a highly experiential one, devoted exclusively to developing the writer’s perceptual path from sensation to language. Richly original attention to the world and our experience of it is the best possible antidote to clichéd or stale writing. It can also be the best inspiration for new work. And... more
Writing for the Senses: Poetic Imagery, Experience, Emotion, and Evocation
March 20 to March 24, 2017
TUITION: $500
Though this course may be online, it’s a highly experiential one, devoted exclusively to developing the writer’s perceptual path from sensation to language. Richly original attention to the world and our experience of it is the best possible antidote to clichéd or stale writing. It can also be the best inspiration for new work. And... more
Alex Marzano-Lesnevich
Narrating Memoir: Who’s Telling Your Life Story?
March 20 to March 24, 2017
TUITION: $500
The memoirist is asked to play many roles: simultaneously that of the author, the narrator, and the character. And while those of the author (you, who sits at the keyboard) and the character (younger you, in the scenes you are recollecting) may be easily understood, that of the narrator is both the slipperiest and perhaps... more
Narrating Memoir: Who’s Telling Your Life Story?
March 20 to March 24, 2017
TUITION: $500
The memoirist is asked to play many roles: simultaneously that of the author, the narrator, and the character. And while those of the author (you, who sits at the keyboard) and the character (younger you, in the scenes you are recollecting) may be easily understood, that of the narrator is both the slipperiest and perhaps... more
Rebecca Gayle Howell
We All Write Sentences: Spring
March 20 to March 24, 2017
TUITION: $500
This one-week intensive invites both poets and prose writers to consider more closely the power of pushing out the boundaries of the English sentence. Reading, across genres, sentences by masters of the ecstatic–James Agee, Gwendolyn Brooks, Cormac McCarthy, Emily Dickinson, Ross Gay, Halldór Laxness, Melville, Toni Morrison, Nabokov, Gerald Stern, C.K. Williams, Joy Williams–we will... more
We All Write Sentences: Spring
March 20 to March 24, 2017
TUITION: $500
This one-week intensive invites both poets and prose writers to consider more closely the power of pushing out the boundaries of the English sentence. Reading, across genres, sentences by masters of the ecstatic–James Agee, Gwendolyn Brooks, Cormac McCarthy, Emily Dickinson, Ross Gay, Halldór Laxness, Melville, Toni Morrison, Nabokov, Gerald Stern, C.K. Williams, Joy Williams–we will... more
Nomi Stone
Anthro-Poetics: Living, Seeing, and Wonder
March 20 to March 24, 2017
TUITION: $500
We will “sing the [world] electric” through experiments in anthro-poetics. Our goal: to expand both our seeing and writing practices, by estranging the familiar and deestranging the hitherto unknown. We will adventure together into wonder by bringing brief excerpts of philosophical texts in conversation with ethnographic explorations in the world. Together we will extend your... more
Anthro-Poetics: Living, Seeing, and Wonder
March 20 to March 24, 2017
TUITION: $500
We will “sing the [world] electric” through experiments in anthro-poetics. Our goal: to expand both our seeing and writing practices, by estranging the familiar and deestranging the hitherto unknown. We will adventure together into wonder by bringing brief excerpts of philosophical texts in conversation with ethnographic explorations in the world. Together we will extend your... more
Anne Sanow
Revision is the Writing: Prose Workshop
March 20 to April 14, 2017
TUITION: $500
It’s easy to resist revision as the “work” part of creating—but when you embrace it fully as part of the creative process, your writing will start to go to new levels. Real revision is bold and daring. It demands that you get into the guts of your writing and reconceive anything from point of view... more
Revision is the Writing: Prose Workshop
March 20 to April 14, 2017
TUITION: $500
It’s easy to resist revision as the “work” part of creating—but when you embrace it fully as part of the creative process, your writing will start to go to new levels. Real revision is bold and daring. It demands that you get into the guts of your writing and reconceive anything from point of view... more
Lydia Millet
Fierce Fiction in Five Days: Spring
March 13 to March 17, 2017
TUITION: $500
This workshop will take a fiction sample from each student (ten to fifteen pages of a short story or beginning of a novel) and revise it over the five days of the class. We’ll work on honing the piece’s voice to make it as powerful as possible, streamlining and sharpening so that your piece fascinates... more
Fierce Fiction in Five Days: Spring
March 13 to March 17, 2017
TUITION: $500
This workshop will take a fiction sample from each student (ten to fifteen pages of a short story or beginning of a novel) and revise it over the five days of the class. We’ll work on honing the piece’s voice to make it as powerful as possible, streamlining and sharpening so that your piece fascinates... more
Juliana Spahr
Five Not Entirely Possible Assignments
March 13 to March 17, 2017
TUITION: $500
Years ago I took a workshop where I was given a chart of immigration numbers by year and country for Bulgaria and asked to write something that summarized the data in the chart. I have no idea what happened to the piece of writing that I wrote out of it but I remember something about... more
Five Not Entirely Possible Assignments
March 13 to March 17, 2017
TUITION: $500
Years ago I took a workshop where I was given a chart of immigration numbers by year and country for Bulgaria and asked to write something that summarized the data in the chart. I have no idea what happened to the piece of writing that I wrote out of it but I remember something about... more
Ed Skoog
Have You Tried the Side Door? Finding a Way In to Your Next Poems: Spring
March 13 to May 5, 2017
TUITION: $500
Sometimes, starting a poem, I feel paralyzed by the task. Each time I need to find the way around my expectations, over the seemingly unsurmountable traditions and the already-trod reactions against tradition, under the deep sea of …whatever—you get my drift: starting a poem is difficult because of the barriers we ourselves have built. Often,... more
Have You Tried the Side Door? Finding a Way In to Your Next Poems: Spring
March 13 to May 5, 2017
TUITION: $500
Sometimes, starting a poem, I feel paralyzed by the task. Each time I need to find the way around my expectations, over the seemingly unsurmountable traditions and the already-trod reactions against tradition, under the deep sea of …whatever—you get my drift: starting a poem is difficult because of the barriers we ourselves have built. Often,... more
Sara Eliza Johnson
Language and the Lucid Dream: Spring
March 13 to May 5, 2017
TUITION: $500
Writing a poem—that is, inventing and manipulating our language to compose it—can be likened to lucid dreaming. In this course, you will learn to write poems as if dreaming lucidly, which means that you will learn to write with intention and precision without sacrificing intuition, and without allowing desire to control the poem (and its... more
Language and the Lucid Dream: Spring
March 13 to May 5, 2017
TUITION: $500
Writing a poem—that is, inventing and manipulating our language to compose it—can be likened to lucid dreaming. In this course, you will learn to write poems as if dreaming lucidly, which means that you will learn to write with intention and precision without sacrificing intuition, and without allowing desire to control the poem (and its... more
Carolyn Forché
Writing New Poems: Spring
March 13 to March 17, 2017
TUITION: $500
Carolyn Forché’s five-day intensive class is designed to push experienced poets in provocative new writing directions. The week is dedicated to writing and receiving feedback on new poems.This is a generative, guided workshop designed to help poets write intensively for a week. Different approaches to process and revision will be offered, and participants will write... more
Writing New Poems: Spring
March 13 to March 17, 2017
TUITION: $500
Carolyn Forché’s five-day intensive class is designed to push experienced poets in provocative new writing directions. The week is dedicated to writing and receiving feedback on new poems.This is a generative, guided workshop designed to help poets write intensively for a week. Different approaches to process and revision will be offered, and participants will write... more
Suzanne Rivecca
Good Things in Small Packages: The Art of the Short Story: Spring
March 13 to May 5, 2017
TUITION: $500
A great short story is all the proof we need that bigger isn’t necessarily better—or more beautiful, or more profound. In this new class, you will learn how to apply new ideas of structure, character, plot and language to your short stories to help make them have a larger payoff and a sense of emotional... more
Good Things in Small Packages: The Art of the Short Story: Spring
March 13 to May 5, 2017
TUITION: $500
A great short story is all the proof we need that bigger isn’t necessarily better—or more beautiful, or more profound. In this new class, you will learn how to apply new ideas of structure, character, plot and language to your short stories to help make them have a larger payoff and a sense of emotional... more
Rebecca Seiferle
The Poem’s Intention
March 6 to March 31, 2017
TUITION: $500
Often, a poem has its own intentions that are at odds with the intentions of the poet. The poet will begin the poem with a certain aim, feeling, perspective, or subject, only to find that the poem veers into unknown territory. Often the preferred method of revision is to ‘correct’ the poem by deleting or... more
The Poem’s Intention
March 6 to March 31, 2017
TUITION: $500
Often, a poem has its own intentions that are at odds with the intentions of the poet. The poet will begin the poem with a certain aim, feeling, perspective, or subject, only to find that the poem veers into unknown territory. Often the preferred method of revision is to ‘correct’ the poem by deleting or... more
Emilia Phillips
Every Phantom // A Story: Erasure and Revision
March 6 to April 28, 2017
TUITION: $500
What isn’t said in a poem is just as meaningful-just as much a craft choice-as what is said. As poets, we so often go to the page with the intention of telling our readers something; this approach, however, often positions us between the reader and the text, like a person narrating a movie in front... more
Every Phantom // A Story: Erasure and Revision
March 6 to April 28, 2017
TUITION: $500
What isn’t said in a poem is just as meaningful-just as much a craft choice-as what is said. As poets, we so often go to the page with the intention of telling our readers something; this approach, however, often positions us between the reader and the text, like a person narrating a movie in front... more
Hilary Price
Make it Funny: The Basics of Drawing and Writing Single Panel Cartoons
March 6 to March 10, 2017
TUITION: $500
What are the components of a caption cartoon? (Plot, setting, characters, surprise. . . all in a snapshot.) Each day’s lecture will focus on a different element of panel cartooning and I’ll assign exercises to strengthen that cartooning muscle. During this class you will learn ways to generate ideas, execute them effectively in a drawing,... more
Make it Funny: The Basics of Drawing and Writing Single Panel Cartoons
March 6 to March 10, 2017
TUITION: $500
What are the components of a caption cartoon? (Plot, setting, characters, surprise. . . all in a snapshot.) Each day’s lecture will focus on a different element of panel cartooning and I’ll assign exercises to strengthen that cartooning muscle. During this class you will learn ways to generate ideas, execute them effectively in a drawing,... more
Ada Limón
Staying True: Authenticity and Voice: Spring
March 6 to April 28, 2017
TUITION: $500
Ada Limón is determined to help you focus in on your own personal style and write poems in your own unique voice in a world filled with constantly challenging external influences. This class you will offer new techniques to help you develop a more powerful personal identity in your poetry that will deepen the connection... more
Staying True: Authenticity and Voice: Spring
March 6 to April 28, 2017
TUITION: $500
Ada Limón is determined to help you focus in on your own personal style and write poems in your own unique voice in a world filled with constantly challenging external influences. This class you will offer new techniques to help you develop a more powerful personal identity in your poetry that will deepen the connection... more
Rosie Schaap
Essay is a Verb: The Practice of Personal Narrative: Spring
March 6 to March 31, 2017
TUITION: $500
Informed and animated by the singular life experience and voice of its author, the personal essay represents an attempt to deeply speak about an idea, a problem, or a preoccupation in the most powerful language possible. In this new workshop, you will develop dialogue, characters, scenes, and structure to create thought-provoking essays that will engage... more
Essay is a Verb: The Practice of Personal Narrative: Spring
March 6 to March 31, 2017
TUITION: $500
Informed and animated by the singular life experience and voice of its author, the personal essay represents an attempt to deeply speak about an idea, a problem, or a preoccupation in the most powerful language possible. In this new workshop, you will develop dialogue, characters, scenes, and structure to create thought-provoking essays that will engage... more
Elizabeth Bradfield
The Project Book: Spring
March 6 to March 31, 2017
TUITION: $500
Finishing a book of poems focused on a topic, rather than a loose aggregation, is a particular art. Some poets unify books by form or voice as well as subject (such as Ellen Bryant Voigt’s Kyrie, Frank X Walker’s Buffalo Dance: The Journey of York, Martha Collins’ White Papers, or Derek Walcott’s Omeros), others want... more
The Project Book: Spring
March 6 to March 31, 2017
TUITION: $500
Finishing a book of poems focused on a topic, rather than a loose aggregation, is a particular art. Some poets unify books by form or voice as well as subject (such as Ellen Bryant Voigt’s Kyrie, Frank X Walker’s Buffalo Dance: The Journey of York, Martha Collins’ White Papers, or Derek Walcott’s Omeros), others want... more
Ann Hood
Jumpstart Your Memoir: Spring
March 6 to March 10, 2017
TUITION: $500
In his book on the craft of writing, Stephen King says: the scariest moment is just before you start. This workshop takes that moment and makes it less scary by asking you the right questions about what you are writing and why. Then we will move on to how to begin, and by the end... more
Jumpstart Your Memoir: Spring
March 6 to March 10, 2017
TUITION: $500
In his book on the craft of writing, Stephen King says: the scariest moment is just before you start. This workshop takes that moment and makes it less scary by asking you the right questions about what you are writing and why. Then we will move on to how to begin, and by the end... more
Gabrielle Calvocoressi
Of Knowing Nothing and Everything: A Week of Poem, Pigment, and Paint in the Lab
March 6 to March 10, 2017
TUITION: $500
In this class we’ll ask rigorous questions like, “What do I mean when I say the sky is blue?” & “What does ‘green’ mean, really?” This is a class about using multiple mediums and the art of surprise to make our poems and our practice of writing poems more expansive, muscular, and joyfully challenging. We’ll... more
Of Knowing Nothing and Everything: A Week of Poem, Pigment, and Paint in the Lab
March 6 to March 10, 2017
TUITION: $500
In this class we’ll ask rigorous questions like, “What do I mean when I say the sky is blue?” & “What does ‘green’ mean, really?” This is a class about using multiple mediums and the art of surprise to make our poems and our practice of writing poems more expansive, muscular, and joyfully challenging. We’ll... more
Laura Madeline Wiseman
Delightful Duos: Collaborating Poets
March 6 to March 31, 2017
TUITION: $500
Delightful duos, crafty couples, and writers who dare to work in pairs, this eight-week studio will focus on the art of collaborating with other poets. Each student will participate in 2-4 paired groups to produce new, exciting creations written in collaboration. With writing exercises, guided prompts, and experiments for generating new work, we will explore... more
Delightful Duos: Collaborating Poets
March 6 to March 31, 2017
TUITION: $500
Delightful duos, crafty couples, and writers who dare to work in pairs, this eight-week studio will focus on the art of collaborating with other poets. Each student will participate in 2-4 paired groups to produce new, exciting creations written in collaboration. With writing exercises, guided prompts, and experiments for generating new work, we will explore... more
Sara Roahen
What Sustains Us: The Art of Good "Food Writing"
March 6 to March 10, 2017
TUITION: $500
I believe that, when done with intention, using food in our creative writing can reveal great truth and meaning. By the end of this workshop, you will believe too. The newly popular term “food writing” can be misleading, as it implies that writing about food—be it food culture, food in restaurants, or food-focused memoir—is different... more
What Sustains Us: The Art of Good "Food Writing"
March 6 to March 10, 2017
TUITION: $500
I believe that, when done with intention, using food in our creative writing can reveal great truth and meaning. By the end of this workshop, you will believe too. The newly popular term “food writing” can be misleading, as it implies that writing about food—be it food culture, food in restaurants, or food-focused memoir—is different... more
Rebecca Lindenberg
Writing for the Senses: Poetic Imagery, Experience, Emotion, and Evocation
February 27 to March 3, 2017
TUITION: $500
Though this course may be online, it’s a highly experiential one, devoted exclusively to developing the writer’s perceptual path from sensation to language. Richly original attention to the world and our experience of it is the best possible antidote to clichéd or stale writing. It can also be the best inspiration for new work. And... more
Writing for the Senses: Poetic Imagery, Experience, Emotion, and Evocation
February 27 to March 3, 2017
TUITION: $500
Though this course may be online, it’s a highly experiential one, devoted exclusively to developing the writer’s perceptual path from sensation to language. Richly original attention to the world and our experience of it is the best possible antidote to clichéd or stale writing. It can also be the best inspiration for new work. And... more
CA Conrad
Queer Bodies Poetry Workshop
February 20 to February 24, 2017
TUITION: $500
“If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.” –Audre Lorde This workshop will focus on (Soma)tic poetry rituals designed for the Queer body. With over 200 anti-LGBTQ laws issued by USA lawmakers in 2016, a queer poetics is more essential than ever for... more
Queer Bodies Poetry Workshop
February 20 to February 24, 2017
TUITION: $500
“If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.” –Audre Lorde This workshop will focus on (Soma)tic poetry rituals designed for the Queer body. With over 200 anti-LGBTQ laws issued by USA lawmakers in 2016, a queer poetics is more essential than ever for... more
Julie Carr
The Epistolary Poem
February 13 to February 17, 2017
TUITION: $500
In 1959, American poet Frank O’Hara wrote a mock-manifesto he called “Personism” in which he argued that a poem should be immediate and intimate, that it should “address itself to one person (other than the poet himself), thus evoking overtones of love without destroying love’s life-giving vulgarity.” Long before O’Hara, the poem-as-letter (or Epistle) has... more
The Epistolary Poem
February 13 to February 17, 2017
TUITION: $500
In 1959, American poet Frank O’Hara wrote a mock-manifesto he called “Personism” in which he argued that a poem should be immediate and intimate, that it should “address itself to one person (other than the poet himself), thus evoking overtones of love without destroying love’s life-giving vulgarity.” Long before O’Hara, the poem-as-letter (or Epistle) has... more
Sam Sax
Heeeeeey!: Queer Poetics
February 13 to February 17, 2017
TUITION: $500
This workshop serves both as a brief survey of queer American poetry as well as an intensive exploration into students’ own writing. We’ll seek to unpack what it is that makes a queer poem queer & further what makes a poem a poem. We’ll try to locate what role desire & identity play in the... more
Heeeeeey!: Queer Poetics
February 13 to February 17, 2017
TUITION: $500
This workshop serves both as a brief survey of queer American poetry as well as an intensive exploration into students’ own writing. We’ll seek to unpack what it is that makes a queer poem queer & further what makes a poem a poem. We’ll try to locate what role desire & identity play in the... more
Devi Lockwood
Tangible Things: Object-based Storytelling
February 13 to February 17, 2017
TUITION: $500
This multi-genre course is a scavenger hunt. Each day will ask you to collect a different object, introduce it to an unexpected space, and to write. We will ask questions of how spaces cradle bodies, objects cradle space, and how the presence of tangible things dictates the types of interactions that we can have in... more
Tangible Things: Object-based Storytelling
February 13 to February 17, 2017
TUITION: $500
This multi-genre course is a scavenger hunt. Each day will ask you to collect a different object, introduce it to an unexpected space, and to write. We will ask questions of how spaces cradle bodies, objects cradle space, and how the presence of tangible things dictates the types of interactions that we can have in... more
Rosie Schaap
Essay is a Verb: The Practice of Personal Narrative: Winter
February 6 to March 3, 2017
TUITION: $500
Informed and animated by the singular life experience and voice of its author, the personal essay represents an attempt to deeply speak about an idea, a problem, or a preoccupation in the most powerful language possible. In this new workshop, you will develop dialogue, characters, scenes, and structure to create thought-provoking essays that will engage... more
Essay is a Verb: The Practice of Personal Narrative: Winter
February 6 to March 3, 2017
TUITION: $500
Informed and animated by the singular life experience and voice of its author, the personal essay represents an attempt to deeply speak about an idea, a problem, or a preoccupation in the most powerful language possible. In this new workshop, you will develop dialogue, characters, scenes, and structure to create thought-provoking essays that will engage... more
Meg Day
What's Love Got to Do With It: Poems for Valentine's Day
February 6 to February 10, 2017
TUITION: $500
What is more deeply entangled in the genealogy of the poem than love? Poet Eileen Myles writes that the love poem is where all of poet’s best lines should gather. Poet Truong Tran talks about love as a public word, one too multifarious in meaning to mean anything at all. Subjectivity, emotion, & sentimentality have... more
What's Love Got to Do With It: Poems for Valentine's Day
February 6 to February 10, 2017
TUITION: $500
What is more deeply entangled in the genealogy of the poem than love? Poet Eileen Myles writes that the love poem is where all of poet’s best lines should gather. Poet Truong Tran talks about love as a public word, one too multifarious in meaning to mean anything at all. Subjectivity, emotion, & sentimentality have... more
Daisy Fried
Writing Poems that Don't Fit
February 6 to March 3, 2017
TUITION: $500
In her four-week workshop, Daisy Fried will guide you as you formulate what your poems want to be and how you fit into your work. With a goal of helping you clarify your themes and focusing on your own voice, this workshop is designed to teach you new ways to generate poems that truly reflect... more
Writing Poems that Don't Fit
February 6 to March 3, 2017
TUITION: $500
In her four-week workshop, Daisy Fried will guide you as you formulate what your poems want to be and how you fit into your work. With a goal of helping you clarify your themes and focusing on your own voice, this workshop is designed to teach you new ways to generate poems that truly reflect... more
Sarah Messer
Facts, Research, and Memoir: Winter
February 6 to March 3, 2017
TUITION: $500
Even in our most vivid memories, details fade. Sarah Messer’s essential course will help you mine memory through research techniques like archival work, interviewing, travel, music, and information-gathering in order to create vivid, compelling scenes. The course will help you find the facts to get at larger truths and also remember small concrete details. At... more
Facts, Research, and Memoir: Winter
February 6 to March 3, 2017
TUITION: $500
Even in our most vivid memories, details fade. Sarah Messer’s essential course will help you mine memory through research techniques like archival work, interviewing, travel, music, and information-gathering in order to create vivid, compelling scenes. The course will help you find the facts to get at larger truths and also remember small concrete details. At... more
Jillian Weise
The Poet as Spy: 4 Tricks from Espionage: Winter
January 30 to February 3, 2017
TUITION: $500
Since we live in the age of the ubiquitous status update, you are already familiar with spying and being spied, watching and being watched, surveying and being surveyed. So you will make that familiarity manifest by writing poems as a secret agent; inventing a cover story; composing an interrogation; and spying on the culture that... more
The Poet as Spy: 4 Tricks from Espionage: Winter
January 30 to February 3, 2017
TUITION: $500
Since we live in the age of the ubiquitous status update, you are already familiar with spying and being spied, watching and being watched, surveying and being surveyed. So you will make that familiarity manifest by writing poems as a secret agent; inventing a cover story; composing an interrogation; and spying on the culture that... more
Jacqueline Jones Lamon
Exploring the Abecedarian Poetic Sequence: More Than Just ABC's: Winter
January 30 to February 3, 2017
TUITION: $500
In this intensive course, students will explore several nuanced approaches to this ancient alphabetical form of poetry. By combining current events and difficult subject matter with a rigid adherence to the alphabet as our organizing principle, we’ll discover new ways of accessing subtext in our drafts and develop a plan for further development once our... more
Exploring the Abecedarian Poetic Sequence: More Than Just ABC's: Winter
January 30 to February 3, 2017
TUITION: $500
In this intensive course, students will explore several nuanced approaches to this ancient alphabetical form of poetry. By combining current events and difficult subject matter with a rigid adherence to the alphabet as our organizing principle, we’ll discover new ways of accessing subtext in our drafts and develop a plan for further development once our... more
Alicia Oltuski
Fix-It Shop
January 23 to January 27, 2017
TUITION: $500
Many wonderful courses serve writers by providing close readings of chapters, stories, and essays. In this class we will work with the issues in writing that do NOT fall neatly into a sequential set of pages. This course is for writers who are looking to troubleshoot sticking points in their longform or shortform work and... more
Fix-It Shop
January 23 to January 27, 2017
TUITION: $500
Many wonderful courses serve writers by providing close readings of chapters, stories, and essays. In this class we will work with the issues in writing that do NOT fall neatly into a sequential set of pages. This course is for writers who are looking to troubleshoot sticking points in their longform or shortform work and... more
Garrard Conley
Illuminating the Past in Memoir
January 23 to February 17, 2017
TUITION: $500
How do memoirists re-enter the mysteries of past experience? The answer, for many of us, resides in our ability to ‘play’ with the past and find enjoyment in exciting literary techniques memoirists and fiction writers have passed down to us. To that end, our writing exercises will focus primarily on imagery and perspective: imagery, because... more
Illuminating the Past in Memoir
January 23 to February 17, 2017
TUITION: $500
How do memoirists re-enter the mysteries of past experience? The answer, for many of us, resides in our ability to ‘play’ with the past and find enjoyment in exciting literary techniques memoirists and fiction writers have passed down to us. To that end, our writing exercises will focus primarily on imagery and perspective: imagery, because... more
Rebecca Gayle Howell
We All Write Sentences: Winter
January 23 to January 27, 2017
TUITION: $500
This one-week intensive invites both poets and prose writers to consider more closely the power of pushing out the boundaries of the English sentence. Reading, across genres, sentences by masters of the ecstatic–James Agee, Gwendolyn Brooks, Cormac McCarthy, Emily Dickinson, Ross Gay, Halldór Laxness, Melville, Toni Morrison, Nabokov, Gerald Stern, C.K. Williams, Joy Williams–we will... more
We All Write Sentences: Winter
January 23 to January 27, 2017
TUITION: $500
This one-week intensive invites both poets and prose writers to consider more closely the power of pushing out the boundaries of the English sentence. Reading, across genres, sentences by masters of the ecstatic–James Agee, Gwendolyn Brooks, Cormac McCarthy, Emily Dickinson, Ross Gay, Halldór Laxness, Melville, Toni Morrison, Nabokov, Gerald Stern, C.K. Williams, Joy Williams–we will... more
Rebecca Gayle Howell
Translation as Creative Practice: Winter
January 23 to February 17, 2017
TUITION: $500
We write in the age of globalization and in the language most universal for our time. Contemporary international writers are now being brought into English at a high frequency, and major writers of English are revisiting classics for the first time in a generation. Where do you fit in? In this class, we will study... more
Translation as Creative Practice: Winter
January 23 to February 17, 2017
TUITION: $500
We write in the age of globalization and in the language most universal for our time. Contemporary international writers are now being brought into English at a high frequency, and major writers of English are revisiting classics for the first time in a generation. Where do you fit in? In this class, we will study... more
Cam Terwilliger
Flash Fiction: Winter
January 23 to January 27, 2017
TUITION: $500
Regularly appearing in the pages of literary magazines, flash fiction has become one of the most vibrant modes in which to write. A protean form, these extremely short stories come in many different shapes: some realistic, some fantastic, and some relying on the associative power of poetry. Whatever the case, flash fiction is a great... more
Flash Fiction: Winter
January 23 to January 27, 2017
TUITION: $500
Regularly appearing in the pages of literary magazines, flash fiction has become one of the most vibrant modes in which to write. A protean form, these extremely short stories come in many different shapes: some realistic, some fantastic, and some relying on the associative power of poetry. Whatever the case, flash fiction is a great... more
Sandra Beasley
“You Should Write About That"
January 23 to January 27, 2017
TUITION: $500
We are writers, but not just writers. We bring different areas of expertise to the table—whether a profession, another creative passion, travel, or the experience of parenting a sick child. Have you ever had someone say “You should write about that,” and not known where to begin? This one-week intensive course unlocks that material. We’ll... more
“You Should Write About That"
January 23 to January 27, 2017
TUITION: $500
We are writers, but not just writers. We bring different areas of expertise to the table—whether a profession, another creative passion, travel, or the experience of parenting a sick child. Have you ever had someone say “You should write about that,” and not known where to begin? This one-week intensive course unlocks that material. We’ll... more
Ann Hood
Jumpstart Your Memoir: Winter
January 23 to January 27, 2017
TUITION: $500
In his book on the craft of writing, Stephen King says: the scariest moment is just before you start. This workshop takes that moment and makes it less scary by asking you the right questions about what you are writing and why. Then we will move on to how to begin, and by the end... more
Jumpstart Your Memoir: Winter
January 23 to January 27, 2017
TUITION: $500
In his book on the craft of writing, Stephen King says: the scariest moment is just before you start. This workshop takes that moment and makes it less scary by asking you the right questions about what you are writing and why. Then we will move on to how to begin, and by the end... more
Rebecca Lindenberg
What I Should Have Said: Writing Funny Poems
January 16 to February 10, 2017
TUITION: $500
It is really hard to write funny. It’s even harder to write funny with substance and pathos. But in this class, we’ll look at several poems that succeed at being funny in different ways – some by unlikely juxtapositions, some by satire, some by the ways they create, fulfill, and subvert reader’s expectations, some by... more
What I Should Have Said: Writing Funny Poems
January 16 to February 10, 2017
TUITION: $500
It is really hard to write funny. It’s even harder to write funny with substance and pathos. But in this class, we’ll look at several poems that succeed at being funny in different ways – some by unlikely juxtapositions, some by satire, some by the ways they create, fulfill, and subvert reader’s expectations, some by... more
Carolyn Forché
Writing New Poems: Winter
January 16 to January 20, 2017
TUITION: $500
Carolyn Forché’s five-day intensive class is designed to push experienced poets in provocative new writing directions. The week is dedicated to writing and receiving feedback on new poems.This is a generative, guided workshop designed to help poets write intensively for a week. Different approaches to process and revision will be offered, and participants will write... more
Writing New Poems: Winter
January 16 to January 20, 2017
TUITION: $500
Carolyn Forché’s five-day intensive class is designed to push experienced poets in provocative new writing directions. The week is dedicated to writing and receiving feedback on new poems.This is a generative, guided workshop designed to help poets write intensively for a week. Different approaches to process and revision will be offered, and participants will write... more
Devi Lockwood
Tell Me a Story: The Power of Deep Listening
January 16 to January 20, 2017
TUITION: $500
In this multi-genre workshop you’ll learn how to use the material of everyday conversations as the starting place for your writing. We will cover basic techniques of interviewing, audio recording, and transcription. Learn what questions to ask, how to keep a conversation fluid, and how to seamlessly integrate dialogue into your writing practice. Daily prompts... more
Tell Me a Story: The Power of Deep Listening
January 16 to January 20, 2017
TUITION: $500
In this multi-genre workshop you’ll learn how to use the material of everyday conversations as the starting place for your writing. We will cover basic techniques of interviewing, audio recording, and transcription. Learn what questions to ask, how to keep a conversation fluid, and how to seamlessly integrate dialogue into your writing practice. Daily prompts... more
Ethan Gilsdorf
Writing and Selling Personal Essays about Deeply Personal Subjects
January 16 to January 20, 2017
TUITION: $500
Romantic love and heartbreak. Marriage and family strike. Friendship and conflict. Loss and death. In Ethan Gilsdorf’s intensive course, you will learn how to write a short personal essay about a significant and complex event, theme, or relationship in your life. You’ll model your essays after work published in such places as the New York... more
Writing and Selling Personal Essays about Deeply Personal Subjects
January 16 to January 20, 2017
TUITION: $500
Romantic love and heartbreak. Marriage and family strike. Friendship and conflict. Loss and death. In Ethan Gilsdorf’s intensive course, you will learn how to write a short personal essay about a significant and complex event, theme, or relationship in your life. You’ll model your essays after work published in such places as the New York... more
Meghan O'Gieblyn
Place in Memoir
January 9 to March 3, 2017
TUITION: $500
Too often, location is regarded as the backdrop of a memoir—the fixed stage-set on which the action unfolds. But there is a long tradition of memoir that privileges place, and the writer’s experience with that place. In such works, location takes center stage and becomes a dynamic “character” in the story. Travel memoir is the... more
Place in Memoir
January 9 to March 3, 2017
TUITION: $500
Too often, location is regarded as the backdrop of a memoir—the fixed stage-set on which the action unfolds. But there is a long tradition of memoir that privileges place, and the writer’s experience with that place. In such works, location takes center stage and becomes a dynamic “character” in the story. Travel memoir is the... more
Ada Limón
Staying True: Authenticity and Voice: Winter
January 9 to March 3, 2017
TUITION: $500
Ada Limón is determined to help you focus in on your own personal style and write poems in your own unique voice in a world filled with constantly challenging external influences. This class you will offer new techniques to help you develop a more powerful personal identity in your poetry that will deepen the connection... more
Staying True: Authenticity and Voice: Winter
January 9 to March 3, 2017
TUITION: $500
Ada Limón is determined to help you focus in on your own personal style and write poems in your own unique voice in a world filled with constantly challenging external influences. This class you will offer new techniques to help you develop a more powerful personal identity in your poetry that will deepen the connection... more
Ed Skoog
Have You Tried the Side Door? Finding a Way In to Your Next Poems: Winter
January 9 to March 3, 2017
TUITION: $500
Sometimes, starting a poem, I feel paralyzed by the task. Each time I need to find the way around my expectations, over the seemingly unsurmountable traditions and the already-trod reactions against tradition, under the deep sea of …whatever—you get my drift: starting a poem is difficult because of the barriers we ourselves have built. Often,... more
Have You Tried the Side Door? Finding a Way In to Your Next Poems: Winter
January 9 to March 3, 2017
TUITION: $500
Sometimes, starting a poem, I feel paralyzed by the task. Each time I need to find the way around my expectations, over the seemingly unsurmountable traditions and the already-trod reactions against tradition, under the deep sea of …whatever—you get my drift: starting a poem is difficult because of the barriers we ourselves have built. Often,... more
Heidi Jon Schmidt
Telling the Story: Eight Weeks in Winter
January 9 to March 3, 2017
TUITION: $500
John Cheever once stopped himself in the middle of a reading at FAWC and said, “Hell, I can tell it better than this.” Then he looked up and told the story as it had happened, instead of reading what he’d written. Almost all stories begin somewhere in an author’s experience, and are imagined and reimagined... more
Telling the Story: Eight Weeks in Winter
January 9 to March 3, 2017
TUITION: $500
John Cheever once stopped himself in the middle of a reading at FAWC and said, “Hell, I can tell it better than this.” Then he looked up and told the story as it had happened, instead of reading what he’d written. Almost all stories begin somewhere in an author’s experience, and are imagined and reimagined... more
Nancy Pearson
15 Works: Winter
January 9 to February 3, 2017
TUITION: $500
This four week poetry workshop is based on a class taught at the former Corcoran School of Art. In “15 Works,” you’ll write 3 to 4 poems a week in response to assignments and prompts, with weekly themes. Comments on one another’s poems will be limited to one poem per week unless you’d like to... more
15 Works: Winter
January 9 to February 3, 2017
TUITION: $500
This four week poetry workshop is based on a class taught at the former Corcoran School of Art. In “15 Works,” you’ll write 3 to 4 poems a week in response to assignments and prompts, with weekly themes. Comments on one another’s poems will be limited to one poem per week unless you’d like to... more
Matt Miller
Tiny Tales, Prose Poems, and Micro Memoirs
January 9 to January 13, 2017
TUITION: $500
This class will wade into those estuaries where the waters of genre blend and mingle and birth something new. We will try to blend the lyrical intensity of the poem with the narrative movement of the story as well as the wandering discovery of the essay. We will write untethered from the poetic line yet... more
Tiny Tales, Prose Poems, and Micro Memoirs
January 9 to January 13, 2017
TUITION: $500
This class will wade into those estuaries where the waters of genre blend and mingle and birth something new. We will try to blend the lyrical intensity of the poem with the narrative movement of the story as well as the wandering discovery of the essay. We will write untethered from the poetic line yet... more
Ann Hood
Writing the Personal Essay: Winter
January 9 to February 3, 2017
TUITION: $500
A writing sample is required for admittance to this class. Before registering, please email a writing sample to gleghorn@fawc.org. During this memoir course you will work toward completing a final, personal essay through a series of short, guided writing assignments focused on specific topics. In this workshop you will use and build on the writing... more
Writing the Personal Essay: Winter
January 9 to February 3, 2017
TUITION: $500
A writing sample is required for admittance to this class. Before registering, please email a writing sample to gleghorn@fawc.org. During this memoir course you will work toward completing a final, personal essay through a series of short, guided writing assignments focused on specific topics. In this workshop you will use and build on the writing... more
Gabrielle Calvocoressi
Of Knowing Nothing and Everything: A Week of Poem, Pigment, and Paint in the Lab
January 9 to January 13, 2017
TUITION: $500
In this class we’ll ask rigorous questions like, “What do I mean when I say the sky is blue?” & “What does ‘green’ mean, really?” This is a class about using multiple mediums and the art of surprise to make our poems and our practice of writing poems more expansive, muscular, and joyfully challenging. We’ll... more
Of Knowing Nothing and Everything: A Week of Poem, Pigment, and Paint in the Lab
January 9 to January 13, 2017
TUITION: $500
In this class we’ll ask rigorous questions like, “What do I mean when I say the sky is blue?” & “What does ‘green’ mean, really?” This is a class about using multiple mediums and the art of surprise to make our poems and our practice of writing poems more expansive, muscular, and joyfully challenging. We’ll... more
Suzanne Rivecca
Good Things in Small Packages: The Art of the Short Story: Winter
January 9 to March 3, 2017
TUITION: $500
A great short story is all the proof we need that bigger isn’t necessarily better—or more beautiful, or more profound. In this new class, you will learn how to apply new ideas of structure, character, plot and language to your short stories to help make them have a larger payoff and a sense of emotional... more
Good Things in Small Packages: The Art of the Short Story: Winter
January 9 to March 3, 2017
TUITION: $500
A great short story is all the proof we need that bigger isn’t necessarily better—or more beautiful, or more profound. In this new class, you will learn how to apply new ideas of structure, character, plot and language to your short stories to help make them have a larger payoff and a sense of emotional... more
Ron MacLean
Shaping Short Fiction: From Aristotle to Borges and Beyond
January 9 to March 3, 2017
TUITION: $500
We’ll study a variety of approaches to story structure, from the classic story curve, to the drama-focused unity of opposites, to postmodern structures that stretch the form. We’ll look at examples through each lens; what does each structure uniquely allow for; what does each require; what are principles you can apply to your own writing.... more
Shaping Short Fiction: From Aristotle to Borges and Beyond
January 9 to March 3, 2017
TUITION: $500
We’ll study a variety of approaches to story structure, from the classic story curve, to the drama-focused unity of opposites, to postmodern structures that stretch the form. We’ll look at examples through each lens; what does each structure uniquely allow for; what does each require; what are principles you can apply to your own writing.... more
Rebecca Gayle Howell
We All Write Sentences: Fall
December 12 to December 16, 2016
TUITION: $500
This one-week intensive invites both poets and prose writers to consider more closely the power of pushing out the boundaries of the English sentence. Reading, across genres, sentences by masters of the ecstatic–James Agee, Gwendolyn Brooks, Cormac McCarthy, Emily Dickinson, Ross Gay, Halldór Laxness, Melville, Toni Morrison, Nabokov, Gerald Stern, C.K. Williams, Joy Williams–we will... more
We All Write Sentences: Fall
December 12 to December 16, 2016
TUITION: $500
This one-week intensive invites both poets and prose writers to consider more closely the power of pushing out the boundaries of the English sentence. Reading, across genres, sentences by masters of the ecstatic–James Agee, Gwendolyn Brooks, Cormac McCarthy, Emily Dickinson, Ross Gay, Halldór Laxness, Melville, Toni Morrison, Nabokov, Gerald Stern, C.K. Williams, Joy Williams–we will... more
CA Conrad
THE STRENGTH OF POETRY: (Soma)tic Poetry Rituals & The Antidote To Spiritual Crisis FALL Session 2
December 5 to December 9, 2016
TUITION: $500
Poet CAConrad has successfully used (Soma)tic poetry rituals to overcome destructive and debilitating depression after the murder of his boyfriend Earth (aka Mark Holmes). He has also created writing rituals using the night sky to design homemade star constellations, another ritual to experience what the impact of hearing the word “drone” has on the human... more
THE STRENGTH OF POETRY: (Soma)tic Poetry Rituals & The Antidote To Spiritual Crisis FALL Session 2
December 5 to December 9, 2016
TUITION: $500
Poet CAConrad has successfully used (Soma)tic poetry rituals to overcome destructive and debilitating depression after the murder of his boyfriend Earth (aka Mark Holmes). He has also created writing rituals using the night sky to design homemade star constellations, another ritual to experience what the impact of hearing the word “drone” has on the human... more
Irina Reyn
Open That Drawer!: Reviving the Stalled Novel
December 5 to December 9, 2016
TUITION: $500
Many of us begin work on a novel in a frenzy of inspiration but there are many reasons for why an unfinished novel goes into a drawer: life gets in the way, the initial motivation peters out, we plot ourselves into a dead end or we simply lose confidence in the work. This intensive workshop... more
Open That Drawer!: Reviving the Stalled Novel
December 5 to December 9, 2016
TUITION: $500
Many of us begin work on a novel in a frenzy of inspiration but there are many reasons for why an unfinished novel goes into a drawer: life gets in the way, the initial motivation peters out, we plot ourselves into a dead end or we simply lose confidence in the work. This intensive workshop... more
Meg Day
5 Days, 6 Poems, 7 Ways Back Home
December 5 to December 9, 2016
TUITION: $500
Movement is a poet’s dialect: we pace the room of each stanza, we shuttle our readers across & down the page, & we reach inside them & rearrange the furniture. Even our metaphors have a vehicle to transport the tenor to & from. Isn’t revision, too, a kind of effort to get somewhere? In establishing... more
5 Days, 6 Poems, 7 Ways Back Home
December 5 to December 9, 2016
TUITION: $500
Movement is a poet’s dialect: we pace the room of each stanza, we shuttle our readers across & down the page, & we reach inside them & rearrange the furniture. Even our metaphors have a vehicle to transport the tenor to & from. Isn’t revision, too, a kind of effort to get somewhere? In establishing... more
Michelle Tea
Memoir that Reads Like Fiction: Fall
December 5 to December 9, 2016
TUITION: $500
In this intensive memoir workshop, you will learn techniques to create a memoir with a cinematic feel and the singular voice of an immersive novel. In addition to discussing style and craft, you will also touch on the personal concerns that inevitably arise when a writer takes on the telling of their own story. You... more
Memoir that Reads Like Fiction: Fall
December 5 to December 9, 2016
TUITION: $500
In this intensive memoir workshop, you will learn techniques to create a memoir with a cinematic feel and the singular voice of an immersive novel. In addition to discussing style and craft, you will also touch on the personal concerns that inevitably arise when a writer takes on the telling of their own story. You... more
Nicole Terez Dutton
Threading and Building: Working Toward a Manuscript
December 5 to December 9, 2016
TUITION: $500
Whether you’re beginning with one poem or a small group of poems, this week-long intensive workshop will offer strategies to meaningfully expand your work toward a manuscript. By mapping the resonances and symmetries within and between poems, students will gain a sense of where expansion is possible. Engaging daily experimental prompts will help writers explore... more
Threading and Building: Working Toward a Manuscript
December 5 to December 9, 2016
TUITION: $500
Whether you’re beginning with one poem or a small group of poems, this week-long intensive workshop will offer strategies to meaningfully expand your work toward a manuscript. By mapping the resonances and symmetries within and between poems, students will gain a sense of where expansion is possible. Engaging daily experimental prompts will help writers explore... more
Meg Day
The Elegy & the Emo Poem: A Battle to the Death: Fall
November 28 to December 2, 2016
TUITION: $500
What is the responsibility of the poet in times of public mourning? Why is it that we turn to poetry during periods of tragedy or deep sorrow? In this one-week intensive course, we will be in conversation with how poetry informs our public & private responses to loss & interrogate the poet’s position as empath,... more
The Elegy & the Emo Poem: A Battle to the Death: Fall
November 28 to December 2, 2016
TUITION: $500
What is the responsibility of the poet in times of public mourning? Why is it that we turn to poetry during periods of tragedy or deep sorrow? In this one-week intensive course, we will be in conversation with how poetry informs our public & private responses to loss & interrogate the poet’s position as empath,... more
Ann Hood
Jumpstart Your Memoir: Fall
November 28 to December 2, 2016
TUITION: $500
A writing sample is required for admittance to this class. Before registering, please email a writing sample to gleghorn@fawc.org. Often, that moment when you first begin to write is the scariest. This one-week intensive workshop will help you get started by asking the right questions. Whether you’re stuck in a draft that isn’t working, having... more
Jumpstart Your Memoir: Fall
November 28 to December 2, 2016
TUITION: $500
A writing sample is required for admittance to this class. Before registering, please email a writing sample to gleghorn@fawc.org. Often, that moment when you first begin to write is the scariest. This one-week intensive workshop will help you get started by asking the right questions. Whether you’re stuck in a draft that isn’t working, having... more
Daisy Fried
4 Poets: Adaptation and Rejection as Technique
November 21 to December 16, 2016
TUITION: $500
What is creative influence and how can we best use it? The first week of this course we’ll read and discuss sets of poems from six different contemporary poets: Anne Carson, Ciaran Carson, Natalie Diaz, Yusef Komunyakaa, Thylias Moss and Alicia Ostriker. We’ll collectively identify each poet’s defining strategies, themes, attitudes and forms. For the... more
4 Poets: Adaptation and Rejection as Technique
November 21 to December 16, 2016
TUITION: $500
What is creative influence and how can we best use it? The first week of this course we’ll read and discuss sets of poems from six different contemporary poets: Anne Carson, Ciaran Carson, Natalie Diaz, Yusef Komunyakaa, Thylias Moss and Alicia Ostriker. We’ll collectively identify each poet’s defining strategies, themes, attitudes and forms. For the... more
Kim Addonizio
Finding the Form in Free Verse
November 14 to December 9, 2016
TUITION: $500
Kim Addonizio’s class won’t just inspire you to write—it will also help you shape your poems in order to release the power and energy of your vision. Sure, our poems need heart, mind, fresh metaphors, precise language, ravishing imagery—but they also need structure. How can you shape a poem about events in the past? What... more
Finding the Form in Free Verse
November 14 to December 9, 2016
TUITION: $500
Kim Addonizio’s class won’t just inspire you to write—it will also help you shape your poems in order to release the power and energy of your vision. Sure, our poems need heart, mind, fresh metaphors, precise language, ravishing imagery—but they also need structure. How can you shape a poem about events in the past? What... more
Thomas Page McBee
The Reported Life: Using Journalism to Tell a Truer Story: Fall
November 14 to November 18, 2016
TUITION: $500
Since the gonzo stylings of Hunter S. Thompson, Joan Didion, and Truman Capote disrupted once and for all the false notion of “objective” reporting, many journalists and literary nonfiction writers have utilized one another’s tools to get closer to the truth of their stories. This workshop will focus primarily on the craft of interviewing and/or... more
The Reported Life: Using Journalism to Tell a Truer Story: Fall
November 14 to November 18, 2016
TUITION: $500
Since the gonzo stylings of Hunter S. Thompson, Joan Didion, and Truman Capote disrupted once and for all the false notion of “objective” reporting, many journalists and literary nonfiction writers have utilized one another’s tools to get closer to the truth of their stories. This workshop will focus primarily on the craft of interviewing and/or... more
Michael White
Gazing In Gazing Out
November 14 to November 18, 2016
TUITION: $500
This one-week poetry workshop will offer instruction, support, and dialogue in the craft of writing and revising poems. This class is for intermediate to advanced poets that would like to try fundamentally new approaches to subject matter. We are going to adopt a theme of “Gazing In Gazing Out,” which is drawn from Larry Levis’... more
Gazing In Gazing Out
November 14 to November 18, 2016
TUITION: $500
This one-week poetry workshop will offer instruction, support, and dialogue in the craft of writing and revising poems. This class is for intermediate to advanced poets that would like to try fundamentally new approaches to subject matter. We are going to adopt a theme of “Gazing In Gazing Out,” which is drawn from Larry Levis’... more
Michael Klein
"If It's True...": A Memoir Workshop
November 14 to December 9, 2016
TUITION: $500
It’s become an almost unmovable piece popular literary culture to make a clear distinction in a memoir between what’s true and what’s made up. But memoir—the form itself—can be as various, wild and eclectic as the individual putting their life down on paper. Anything goes, if it can move the reader. And truth, I feel,... more
"If It's True...": A Memoir Workshop
November 14 to December 9, 2016
TUITION: $500
It’s become an almost unmovable piece popular literary culture to make a clear distinction in a memoir between what’s true and what’s made up. But memoir—the form itself—can be as various, wild and eclectic as the individual putting their life down on paper. Anything goes, if it can move the reader. And truth, I feel,... more
Annie Finch
Working the Beat: How to Make Poems Sing
November 7 to November 11, 2016
TUITION: $500
It can be tempting to think of rhythm, meter, or form as a container, something outside and separate from a poem. But the best poems sing with rhythms that move them as innately and mysteriously as waves work the water. Whether or not you’ve written in meter before, these powerful rhythms are there in your... more
Working the Beat: How to Make Poems Sing
November 7 to November 11, 2016
TUITION: $500
It can be tempting to think of rhythm, meter, or form as a container, something outside and separate from a poem. But the best poems sing with rhythms that move them as innately and mysteriously as waves work the water. Whether or not you’ve written in meter before, these powerful rhythms are there in your... more
Kirsten Andersen
Stealing Time: The Tricky Dance of Being a Writing Parent
November 7 to December 2, 2016
TUITION: $500
“I keep stealing away to take notes…what kind of mother am I, I think, taking notes at a time like this?”—Jamie Quatro, “What It Takes,” Poets & Writers 2014 Beginning writers are often instructed to write what they know: they set pen to page and write about their professions, their hometowns, their enduring interests and... more
Stealing Time: The Tricky Dance of Being a Writing Parent
November 7 to December 2, 2016
TUITION: $500
“I keep stealing away to take notes…what kind of mother am I, I think, taking notes at a time like this?”—Jamie Quatro, “What It Takes,” Poets & Writers 2014 Beginning writers are often instructed to write what they know: they set pen to page and write about their professions, their hometowns, their enduring interests and... more
Francesca Lia Block
12 Questions to Help Structure your Novel in Five Days
November 7 to November 11, 2016
TUITION: $500
Over the years, Francesca Lia Block has helped hundreds and hundreds of writers discover and develop their novels using twelve essential, inter-related questions: What is the character gift and flaw? What is the character want and need? What is the character’s arc? Who is the antagonist and how to they contribute to the story problem?... more
12 Questions to Help Structure your Novel in Five Days
November 7 to November 11, 2016
TUITION: $500
Over the years, Francesca Lia Block has helped hundreds and hundreds of writers discover and develop their novels using twelve essential, inter-related questions: What is the character gift and flaw? What is the character want and need? What is the character’s arc? Who is the antagonist and how to they contribute to the story problem?... more
Gabrielle Calvocoressi
Of Knowing Nothing and Everything: A Week of Poem, Pigment, and Paint in the Lab
November 7 to November 11, 2016
TUITION: $500
In this class we’ll ask rigorous questions like, “What do I mean when I say the sky is blue?” & “What does ‘green’ mean, really?” This is a class about using multiple mediums and the art of surprise to make our poems and our practice of writing poems more expansive, muscular, and joyfully challenging. We’ll... more
Of Knowing Nothing and Everything: A Week of Poem, Pigment, and Paint in the Lab
November 7 to November 11, 2016
TUITION: $500
In this class we’ll ask rigorous questions like, “What do I mean when I say the sky is blue?” & “What does ‘green’ mean, really?” This is a class about using multiple mediums and the art of surprise to make our poems and our practice of writing poems more expansive, muscular, and joyfully challenging. We’ll... more
Sara Eliza Johnson
Language and the Lucid Dream: Fall
October 24 to December 16, 2016
TUITION: $500
Many sleepers have experienced the pleasure of the lucid dream: the phenomenon of “waking” inside our dream and realizing that we are in fact dreaming, that we are still in the process of imagining it and therefore able to transform its substance or alter its direction as we move through it. Writing a poem—that is,... more
Language and the Lucid Dream: Fall
October 24 to December 16, 2016
TUITION: $500
Many sleepers have experienced the pleasure of the lucid dream: the phenomenon of “waking” inside our dream and realizing that we are in fact dreaming, that we are still in the process of imagining it and therefore able to transform its substance or alter its direction as we move through it. Writing a poem—that is,... more
Lydia Millet
The Charismatic Narrator
October 24 to October 28, 2016
TUITION: $500
What is charisma, on the page? What does it take to make voice compelling? This workshop will take a ten-to-fifteen page fiction sample from each student (a short story or novel beginning) and rewrite and revise it over the five days of the class. We’ll work on honing the piece’s voice so that it fascinates... more
The Charismatic Narrator
October 24 to October 28, 2016
TUITION: $500
What is charisma, on the page? What does it take to make voice compelling? This workshop will take a ten-to-fifteen page fiction sample from each student (a short story or novel beginning) and rewrite and revise it over the five days of the class. We’ll work on honing the piece’s voice so that it fascinates... more
Elizabeth Bradfield
Animals in the Anthropocene—Toward a Beastly, Eco-Justice Poetic
October 24 to October 28, 2016
TUITION: $500
Many of us are moved by the non-humans we encounter. But how do we write about our interactions with animals in ways that are full, accurate, and surprising? With today’s developing conversations about animal rights, animal biology/ecology/intelligence, and awareness of humans’ impacts on the lives of animals, we’ll work toward poems that can embrace all... more
Animals in the Anthropocene—Toward a Beastly, Eco-Justice Poetic
October 24 to October 28, 2016
TUITION: $500
Many of us are moved by the non-humans we encounter. But how do we write about our interactions with animals in ways that are full, accurate, and surprising? With today’s developing conversations about animal rights, animal biology/ecology/intelligence, and awareness of humans’ impacts on the lives of animals, we’ll work toward poems that can embrace all... more
Carolyn Forché
Writing New Poems: Fall
October 24 to October 28, 2016
TUITION: $500
Carolyn Forché’s five-day intensive class is designed to push experienced poets in provocative new writing directions. The week is dedicated to writing and receiving feedback on new poems.This is a generative, guided workshop designed to help poets write intensively for a week. Different approaches to process and revision will be offered, and participants will write... more
Writing New Poems: Fall
October 24 to October 28, 2016
TUITION: $500
Carolyn Forché’s five-day intensive class is designed to push experienced poets in provocative new writing directions. The week is dedicated to writing and receiving feedback on new poems.This is a generative, guided workshop designed to help poets write intensively for a week. Different approaches to process and revision will be offered, and participants will write... more
CA Conrad
THE STRENGTH OF POETRY: (Soma)tic Poetry Rituals & The Antidote To Spiritual Crisis FALL Session 1
October 17 to October 21, 2016
TUITION: $500
Poet CAConrad has successfully used (Soma)tic poetry rituals to overcome destructive and debilitating depression after the murder of his boyfriend Earth (aka Mark Holmes). He has also created writing rituals using the night sky to design homemade star constellations, another ritual to experience what the impact of hearing the word “drone” has on the human... more
THE STRENGTH OF POETRY: (Soma)tic Poetry Rituals & The Antidote To Spiritual Crisis FALL Session 1
October 17 to October 21, 2016
TUITION: $500
Poet CAConrad has successfully used (Soma)tic poetry rituals to overcome destructive and debilitating depression after the murder of his boyfriend Earth (aka Mark Holmes). He has also created writing rituals using the night sky to design homemade star constellations, another ritual to experience what the impact of hearing the word “drone” has on the human... more
Suzanne Rivecca
Good Things in Small Packages: The Art of the Short Story: Fall
October 17 to December 9, 2016
TUITION: $500
A great short story is all the proof we need that bigger isn’t necessarily better—or more beautiful, or more profound. In this new class, you will learn how to apply new ideas of structure, character, plot and language to your short stories to help make them have a larger payoff and a sense of emotional... more
Good Things in Small Packages: The Art of the Short Story: Fall
October 17 to December 9, 2016
TUITION: $500
A great short story is all the proof we need that bigger isn’t necessarily better—or more beautiful, or more profound. In this new class, you will learn how to apply new ideas of structure, character, plot and language to your short stories to help make them have a larger payoff and a sense of emotional... more
Rosie Schaap
Essay is a Verb: The Practice of Personal Narrative: Fall
October 17 to November 11, 2016
TUITION: $500
To essay is to attempt. Informed and animated by the singular life experience and voice of its author, the personal essay represents an attempt to engage deeply with an idea, a problem, a preoccupation, in the most powerful language possible. Personal essay writing presents a particularly rich opportunity to luxuriate in thought—about whatever troubles you,... more
Essay is a Verb: The Practice of Personal Narrative: Fall
October 17 to November 11, 2016
TUITION: $500
To essay is to attempt. Informed and animated by the singular life experience and voice of its author, the personal essay represents an attempt to engage deeply with an idea, a problem, a preoccupation, in the most powerful language possible. Personal essay writing presents a particularly rich opportunity to luxuriate in thought—about whatever troubles you,... more
Nancy Pearson
15 Works: Fall
October 17 to November 11, 2016
TUITION: $500
This four week poetry workshop is based on a class taught at the former Corcoran School of Art. In “15 Works,” you’ll write 3 to 4 poems a week in response to assignments and prompts, with weekly themes. Comments on one another’s poems will be limited to one poem per week unless you’d like to... more
15 Works: Fall
October 17 to November 11, 2016
TUITION: $500
This four week poetry workshop is based on a class taught at the former Corcoran School of Art. In “15 Works,” you’ll write 3 to 4 poems a week in response to assignments and prompts, with weekly themes. Comments on one another’s poems will be limited to one poem per week unless you’d like to... more
Ada Limón
Staying True: Authenticity and Voice: Fall
October 10 to December 2, 2016
TUITION: $500
With so many poetic and artistic influences circulating wildly in the modern world, it can be difficult to remain true to your own instinctual style and idiosyncratic voice. Because contemporary writers are continually inundated with exciting new styles and innovative voices, the need to find the quiet strength in your own work has never been... more
Staying True: Authenticity and Voice: Fall
October 10 to December 2, 2016
TUITION: $500
With so many poetic and artistic influences circulating wildly in the modern world, it can be difficult to remain true to your own instinctual style and idiosyncratic voice. Because contemporary writers are continually inundated with exciting new styles and innovative voices, the need to find the quiet strength in your own work has never been... more
Rebecca Gayle Howell
Translation as Creative Practice: Fall
October 10 to November 4, 2016
TUITION: $500
We write in the age of globalization and in the language most universal for our time. Contemporary international writers are now being brought into English at a high frequency, and major writers of English are revisiting classics for the first time in a generation. Where do you fit in? In this class, we will study... more
Translation as Creative Practice: Fall
October 10 to November 4, 2016
TUITION: $500
We write in the age of globalization and in the language most universal for our time. Contemporary international writers are now being brought into English at a high frequency, and major writers of English are revisiting classics for the first time in a generation. Where do you fit in? In this class, we will study... more
Jacqueline Jones Lamon
Exploring the Abecedarian Poetic Sequence: More Than Just ABC's: Fall
October 10 to October 14, 2016
TUITION: $500
In this intensive course, students will explore several nuanced approaches to this ancient alphabetical form of poetry. By combining current events and difficult subject matter with a rigid adherence to the alphabet as our organizing principle, we’ll discover new ways of accessing subtext in our drafts and develop a plan for further development once our... more
Exploring the Abecedarian Poetic Sequence: More Than Just ABC's: Fall
October 10 to October 14, 2016
TUITION: $500
In this intensive course, students will explore several nuanced approaches to this ancient alphabetical form of poetry. By combining current events and difficult subject matter with a rigid adherence to the alphabet as our organizing principle, we’ll discover new ways of accessing subtext in our drafts and develop a plan for further development once our... more
Garrard Conley
Structuring Memoir
October 3 to October 7, 2016
TUITION: $500
So you have a draft of a memoir, and now you want to shape your story into a compelling narrative. How do you do this without sacrificing the integrity of the story? Which details of your research and/or life should you include? How do you make art out of this mess of details? Our intensive... more
Structuring Memoir
October 3 to October 7, 2016
TUITION: $500
So you have a draft of a memoir, and now you want to shape your story into a compelling narrative. How do you do this without sacrificing the integrity of the story? Which details of your research and/or life should you include? How do you make art out of this mess of details? Our intensive... more
Cam Terwilliger
Flash Fiction: Fall
October 3 to October 7, 2016
TUITION: $500
Regularly appearing in the pages of literary magazines, flash fiction has become one of the most vibrant modes in which to write. A protean form, these extremely short stories come in many different shapes: some realistic, some fantastic, and some relying on the associative power of poetry. Whatever the case, flash fiction is a great... more
Flash Fiction: Fall
October 3 to October 7, 2016
TUITION: $500
Regularly appearing in the pages of literary magazines, flash fiction has become one of the most vibrant modes in which to write. A protean form, these extremely short stories come in many different shapes: some realistic, some fantastic, and some relying on the associative power of poetry. Whatever the case, flash fiction is a great... more
Daisy Fried
“Some People Have Been Unkind”: A Workshop on Literary Book Reviewing
October 3 to October 28, 2016
TUITION: $500
In this workshop, you will look at literary book reviewing from aesthetic, ethical, and practical angles, exploring possible approaches for reviewing and discovering what elements are useful in reviews. By examining and discussing samples of different kinds of reviews as well as writing your own, you will discover how writing reviews can help us in... more
“Some People Have Been Unkind”: A Workshop on Literary Book Reviewing
October 3 to October 28, 2016
TUITION: $500
In this workshop, you will look at literary book reviewing from aesthetic, ethical, and practical angles, exploring possible approaches for reviewing and discovering what elements are useful in reviews. By examining and discussing samples of different kinds of reviews as well as writing your own, you will discover how writing reviews can help us in... more
Peter Campion
Form From Feeling and Feeling From Form: Fall
October 3 to October 28, 2016
TUITION: $500
This class is for people who want to improve their poems, by understanding the art more fully, from the inside out. During our four weeks, we’ll explore seven formal elements—action, voice, sentence, phrase, line, sound, and metaphor—while generating our own new poems. I hope to give each student a better feeling for how formal elements... more
Form From Feeling and Feeling From Form: Fall
October 3 to October 28, 2016
TUITION: $500
This class is for people who want to improve their poems, by understanding the art more fully, from the inside out. During our four weeks, we’ll explore seven formal elements—action, voice, sentence, phrase, line, sound, and metaphor—while generating our own new poems. I hope to give each student a better feeling for how formal elements... more
Ed Skoog
Have You Tried the Side Door? Finding a Way In to Your Next Poems: Fall
October 3 to November 25, 2016
TUITION: $500
Sometimes, starting a poem, I feel paralyzed by the task. Each time I need to find the way around my expectations, over the seemingly unsurmountable traditions and the already-trod reactions against tradition, under the deep sea of …whatever—you get my drift: starting a poem is difficult because of the barriers we ourselves have built. Often,... more
Have You Tried the Side Door? Finding a Way In to Your Next Poems: Fall
October 3 to November 25, 2016
TUITION: $500
Sometimes, starting a poem, I feel paralyzed by the task. Each time I need to find the way around my expectations, over the seemingly unsurmountable traditions and the already-trod reactions against tradition, under the deep sea of …whatever—you get my drift: starting a poem is difficult because of the barriers we ourselves have built. Often,... more
Sara Eliza Johnson
Mad Science
October 3 to October 7, 2016
TUITION: $500
It may often seem that poetry and science are at odds with one another—the former typically associated with subjectivity and emotion, and the latter with objectivity and facts—but poets have long looked to scientific endeavors and discoveries for inspiration. Whether one chooses to write about quantum entanglement or bioluminescence, the weather on Mars or nanotechnology,... more
Mad Science
October 3 to October 7, 2016
TUITION: $500
It may often seem that poetry and science are at odds with one another—the former typically associated with subjectivity and emotion, and the latter with objectivity and facts—but poets have long looked to scientific endeavors and discoveries for inspiration. Whether one chooses to write about quantum entanglement or bioluminescence, the weather on Mars or nanotechnology,... more
Ann Hood
Writing the Personal Essay: Fall
October 3 to October 28, 2016
TUITION: $500
During this memoir course you will work toward completing a final, personal essay through a series of short, guided writing assignments focused on specific topics. In this workshop you will use and build on the writing tools you already have, get lots of feedback on your work, while also reading and thinking and commenting on... more
Writing the Personal Essay: Fall
October 3 to October 28, 2016
TUITION: $500
During this memoir course you will work toward completing a final, personal essay through a series of short, guided writing assignments focused on specific topics. In this workshop you will use and build on the writing tools you already have, get lots of feedback on your work, while also reading and thinking and commenting on... more
Heidi Jon Schmidt
Telling the Story: Fall
October 3 to October 28, 2016
TUITION: $500
John Cheever once stopped himself in the middle of a reading at FAWC and said, “Hell, I can tell it better than this.” Then he looked up and told the story as it had happened, instead of reading what he’d written. Almost all stories begin somewhere in an author’s experience, and are imagined and reimagined... more
Telling the Story: Fall
October 3 to October 28, 2016
TUITION: $500
John Cheever once stopped himself in the middle of a reading at FAWC and said, “Hell, I can tell it better than this.” Then he looked up and told the story as it had happened, instead of reading what he’d written. Almost all stories begin somewhere in an author’s experience, and are imagined and reimagined... more
Daisy Fried
Poetry Revision Boot Camp
September 19 to September 23, 2016
TUITION: $500
Get ready, get set…You’ll either come into workshop with a poem draft you’re interested in but dissatisfied with, or, at the workshop’s beginning, you’ll generate a brand new first draft following a prompt designed to give you something substantial to work with. Each day, you’ll overhaul the poem in a different way according to a... more
Poetry Revision Boot Camp
September 19 to September 23, 2016
TUITION: $500
Get ready, get set…You’ll either come into workshop with a poem draft you’re interested in but dissatisfied with, or, at the workshop’s beginning, you’ll generate a brand new first draft following a prompt designed to give you something substantial to work with. Each day, you’ll overhaul the poem in a different way according to a... more
Meghan O'Gieblyn
The ‘I’ in Memoir
September 12 to September 16, 2016
TUITION: $500
In a lecture titled “Why I Write,” Joan Didion remarked that all she could hear in those three words was “I, I, I.” She was alluding to a common criticism of memoir—that it encourages navel-gazing. But the primacy of first-person narrative—the “I”—is also what makes memoir such a compelling form. Memoirists draw us into their... more
The ‘I’ in Memoir
September 12 to September 16, 2016
TUITION: $500
In a lecture titled “Why I Write,” Joan Didion remarked that all she could hear in those three words was “I, I, I.” She was alluding to a common criticism of memoir—that it encourages navel-gazing. But the primacy of first-person narrative—the “I”—is also what makes memoir such a compelling form. Memoirists draw us into their... more
Sarah Rose Nordgren
Griffins, Harpies, and Jackalopes: Hybrid Poetics: Fall
September 5 to September 9, 2016
TUITION: $500
“What grows in that place is possessed of a beauty all its own, ramshackle and unexpected.”– Campbell McGrath, “The Prose Poem” Poetry’s history is one of change, of expansion in and out of new forms, purposes, contexts. It wasn’t too long ago that it broke the binds of meter to create vers libre and to... more
Griffins, Harpies, and Jackalopes: Hybrid Poetics: Fall
September 5 to September 9, 2016
TUITION: $500
“What grows in that place is possessed of a beauty all its own, ramshackle and unexpected.”– Campbell McGrath, “The Prose Poem” Poetry’s history is one of change, of expansion in and out of new forms, purposes, contexts. It wasn’t too long ago that it broke the binds of meter to create vers libre and to... more
Nancy Pearson
15 Works: September
September 5 to September 30, 2016
TUITION: $500
This four week poetry workshop is based on a class taught at the former Corcoran School of Art. In “15 Works,” you’ll write 3 to 4 poems a week in response to assignments and prompts, with weekly themes. Comments on one another’s poems will be limited to one poem per week unless you’d like to... more
15 Works: September
September 5 to September 30, 2016
TUITION: $500
This four week poetry workshop is based on a class taught at the former Corcoran School of Art. In “15 Works,” you’ll write 3 to 4 poems a week in response to assignments and prompts, with weekly themes. Comments on one another’s poems will be limited to one poem per week unless you’d like to... more
Ann Hood
Writing the Personal Essay: September
September 5 to September 30, 2016
TUITION: $500
During Ann Hood’s memoir course you will work toward completing a final, personal essay through a series of short, guided assignments. Using these weekly writing exercises – focused on specific topics as stepping-stones – you will learn to hone your ideas, settings, characters and dialogue to build emotional impact into your personal stories. Each week... more
Writing the Personal Essay: September
September 5 to September 30, 2016
TUITION: $500
During Ann Hood’s memoir course you will work toward completing a final, personal essay through a series of short, guided assignments. Using these weekly writing exercises – focused on specific topics as stepping-stones – you will learn to hone your ideas, settings, characters and dialogue to build emotional impact into your personal stories. Each week... more
Reginald Dwayne Betts
Juxtaposing the Public & Private to Add Depth to Poetry
May 2 to May 6, 2016
TUITION: $500
SPRING DISCOUNT: Use code SPRING16 at registration checkout to get 10% off tuition for this course. In this course we will look at the work of writers who skillfully juxtapose the public with the private in their poetry. We will pay special attention to identifying techniques that we can replicate and discussing strategies that make... more
Juxtaposing the Public & Private to Add Depth to Poetry
May 2 to May 6, 2016
TUITION: $500
SPRING DISCOUNT: Use code SPRING16 at registration checkout to get 10% off tuition for this course. In this course we will look at the work of writers who skillfully juxtapose the public with the private in their poetry. We will pay special attention to identifying techniques that we can replicate and discussing strategies that make... more
Cam Terwilliger
Flash Fiction
May 2 to May 6, 2016
TUITION: $500
SPRING DISCOUNT: Use code SPRING16 at registration checkout to get 10% off tuition for this course. Regularly appearing in the pages of literary magazines, flash fiction has become one of the most vibrant modes in which to write. A protean form, these extremely short stories come in many different shapes: some realistic, some fantastic, and... more
Flash Fiction
May 2 to May 6, 2016
TUITION: $500
SPRING DISCOUNT: Use code SPRING16 at registration checkout to get 10% off tuition for this course. Regularly appearing in the pages of literary magazines, flash fiction has become one of the most vibrant modes in which to write. A protean form, these extremely short stories come in many different shapes: some realistic, some fantastic, and... more
Jennifer Tseng
Writing the Forbidden
May 2 to May 6, 2016
TUITION: $500
SPRING DISCOUNT: Use code SPRING16 at registration checkout to get 10% off tuition for this course. In this one-week intensive you will work to produce a piece of forbidden writing, using the form of your choice. What’s forbidden to one writer may not be forbidden to another. Some feel forbidden to write about emotions (i.e.... more
Writing the Forbidden
May 2 to May 6, 2016
TUITION: $500
SPRING DISCOUNT: Use code SPRING16 at registration checkout to get 10% off tuition for this course. In this one-week intensive you will work to produce a piece of forbidden writing, using the form of your choice. What’s forbidden to one writer may not be forbidden to another. Some feel forbidden to write about emotions (i.e.... more
Justin St. Germain
Memoir: Getting Started
May 2 to May 6, 2016
TUITION: $500
SPRING DISCOUNT: Use code SPRING16 at registration checkout to get 10% off tuition for this course. One of the hardest practical challenges writers face when beginning a memoir is where to start. It might seem obvious–just start at the beginning–but a cursory read of published memoirs will reveal many different approaches. Some start with family... more
Memoir: Getting Started
May 2 to May 6, 2016
TUITION: $500
SPRING DISCOUNT: Use code SPRING16 at registration checkout to get 10% off tuition for this course. One of the hardest practical challenges writers face when beginning a memoir is where to start. It might seem obvious–just start at the beginning–but a cursory read of published memoirs will reveal many different approaches. Some start with family... more
Fred Marchant
Deep Revision: The Poem as Discovery
May 2 to May 6, 2016
TUITION: $500
SPRING DISCOUNT: Use code SPRING16 at registration checkout to get 10% off tuition for this course. Everybody revises, but then again what does revision really mean? Is it just good poetic hygiene? Tidying up the diction? Tightening a line? Lopping off or re-arranging stanzas? All of these can of course be important dimensions to revision,... more
Deep Revision: The Poem as Discovery
May 2 to May 6, 2016
TUITION: $500
SPRING DISCOUNT: Use code SPRING16 at registration checkout to get 10% off tuition for this course. Everybody revises, but then again what does revision really mean? Is it just good poetic hygiene? Tidying up the diction? Tightening a line? Lopping off or re-arranging stanzas? All of these can of course be important dimensions to revision,... more
Meg Day
The Elegy & the Emo Poem: A Battle to the Death
April 25 to April 29, 2016
TUITION: $500
SPRING DISCOUNT: Use code SPRING16 at registration checkout to get 10% off tuition for this course. What is the responsibility of the poet in times of public mourning? Why is it that we turn to poetry during periods of tragedy or deep sorrow? In this one-week intensive course, we will be in conversation with how... more
The Elegy & the Emo Poem: A Battle to the Death
April 25 to April 29, 2016
TUITION: $500
SPRING DISCOUNT: Use code SPRING16 at registration checkout to get 10% off tuition for this course. What is the responsibility of the poet in times of public mourning? Why is it that we turn to poetry during periods of tragedy or deep sorrow? In this one-week intensive course, we will be in conversation with how... more
Laura Madeline Wiseman
A Chapbook Workshop
April 25 to April 29, 2016
TUITION: $500
SPRING DISCOUNT: Use code SPRING16 at registration checkout to get 10% off tuition for this course. This one-week intensive workshop will focus on the chapbook manuscript, including sequencing poems, finding narrative arc, and bringing together the themes of a sequence. We’ll explore how our poems speak across a series as we revise, rethink, and re-see... more
A Chapbook Workshop
April 25 to April 29, 2016
TUITION: $500
SPRING DISCOUNT: Use code SPRING16 at registration checkout to get 10% off tuition for this course. This one-week intensive workshop will focus on the chapbook manuscript, including sequencing poems, finding narrative arc, and bringing together the themes of a sequence. We’ll explore how our poems speak across a series as we revise, rethink, and re-see... more
Hilary Price
Make it Funny: The Basics of Drawing and Writing Single Panel Cartoons
April 25 to April 29, 2016
TUITION: $500
SPRING DISCOUNT: Use code SPRING16 at registration checkout to get 10% off tuition for this course. What are the components of a caption cartoon? (Plot, setting, characters, surprise… all in a snapshot.) Each day’s lecture will focus on a different element of panel cartooning and I’ll assign exercises to strengthen that cartooning muscle. During this... more
Make it Funny: The Basics of Drawing and Writing Single Panel Cartoons
April 25 to April 29, 2016
TUITION: $500
SPRING DISCOUNT: Use code SPRING16 at registration checkout to get 10% off tuition for this course. What are the components of a caption cartoon? (Plot, setting, characters, surprise… all in a snapshot.) Each day’s lecture will focus on a different element of panel cartooning and I’ll assign exercises to strengthen that cartooning muscle. During this... more
Thomas Page McBee
The Reported Life: Using Journalism to Tell a Truer Story
April 25 to April 29, 2016
TUITION: $500
SPRING DISCOUNT: Use code SPRING16 at registration checkout to get 10% off tuition for this course. Since the gonzo stylings of Hunter S. Thompson, Joan Didion, and Truman Capote disrupted once and for all the false notion of “objective” reporting, many journalists and literary nonfiction writers have utilized one another’s tools to get closer to... more
The Reported Life: Using Journalism to Tell a Truer Story
April 25 to April 29, 2016
TUITION: $500
SPRING DISCOUNT: Use code SPRING16 at registration checkout to get 10% off tuition for this course. Since the gonzo stylings of Hunter S. Thompson, Joan Didion, and Truman Capote disrupted once and for all the false notion of “objective” reporting, many journalists and literary nonfiction writers have utilized one another’s tools to get closer to... more
Ethan Gilsdorf
Absent Fathers, Controlling Mothers, Treacherous Exes and Other Interpersonal Dysfunction: Writing the Publishable Relationship Essay
April 18 to April 22, 2016
TUITION: $500
SPRING DISCOUNT: Use code SPRING16 at registration checkout to get 10% off tuition for this course. Romantic love. Marriage. Heartbreak. Family. Friendship. Conflict. Loss. Pain. Death. Yes! In Ethan Gilsdorf’s essay class, you will learn how to write a short personal essay about a significant and complex relationship in your life–an essay that hopefully will... more
Absent Fathers, Controlling Mothers, Treacherous Exes and Other Interpersonal Dysfunction: Writing the Publishable Relationship Essay
April 18 to April 22, 2016
TUITION: $500
SPRING DISCOUNT: Use code SPRING16 at registration checkout to get 10% off tuition for this course. Romantic love. Marriage. Heartbreak. Family. Friendship. Conflict. Loss. Pain. Death. Yes! In Ethan Gilsdorf’s essay class, you will learn how to write a short personal essay about a significant and complex relationship in your life–an essay that hopefully will... more
Matthew Olzmann
Surprise and Revelation: Building and Overthrowing Expectations in a Poem
April 18 to April 22, 2016
TUITION: $500
SPRING DISCOUNT: Use code SPRING16 at registration checkout to get 10% off tuition for this course. How is surprise created? Often, it’s an effect of poetic structure: the order in which information is presented to the reader. One piece of information introduces a set of assumptions or possibilities, and the next piece of information calls... more
Surprise and Revelation: Building and Overthrowing Expectations in a Poem
April 18 to April 22, 2016
TUITION: $500
SPRING DISCOUNT: Use code SPRING16 at registration checkout to get 10% off tuition for this course. How is surprise created? Often, it’s an effect of poetic structure: the order in which information is presented to the reader. One piece of information introduces a set of assumptions or possibilities, and the next piece of information calls... more
Reif Larsen
The Sentence as a Gift
April 11 to April 15, 2016
TUITION: $500
SPRING DISCOUNT: Use code SPRING16 at registration checkout to get 10% off tuition for this course. Do you see your sentences simply as a way to get from here to there or as an opportunity to try something never done before? In this one-week intensive workshop, you will revise a short piece of fiction (short... more
The Sentence as a Gift
April 11 to April 15, 2016
TUITION: $500
SPRING DISCOUNT: Use code SPRING16 at registration checkout to get 10% off tuition for this course. Do you see your sentences simply as a way to get from here to there or as an opportunity to try something never done before? In this one-week intensive workshop, you will revise a short piece of fiction (short... more
Michael Klein
If It’s True. . . : A Memoir Workshop: SPRING
April 4 to April 29, 2016
TUITION: $500
SPRING DISCOUNT: Use code SPRING16 at registration checkout to get 10% off tuition for this course. It’s become an almost unmovable piece popular literary culture to make a clear distinction in a memoir between what’s true and what’s made up. But memoir—the form itself—can be as various, wild and eclectic as the individual putting their... more
If It’s True. . . : A Memoir Workshop: SPRING
April 4 to April 29, 2016
TUITION: $500
SPRING DISCOUNT: Use code SPRING16 at registration checkout to get 10% off tuition for this course. It’s become an almost unmovable piece popular literary culture to make a clear distinction in a memoir between what’s true and what’s made up. But memoir—the form itself—can be as various, wild and eclectic as the individual putting their... more
Daisy Fried
“Some People Have Been Unkind”: A Workshop on Literary Book Reviewing
April 4 to April 29, 2016
TUITION: $500
SPRING DISCOUNT: Use code SPRING16 at registration checkout to get 10% off tuition for this course. In this workshop, you will look at literary book reviewing from aesthetic, ethical, and practical angles, exploring possible approaches for reviewing and discovering what elements are useful in reviews. By examining and discussing samples of different kinds of reviews... more
“Some People Have Been Unkind”: A Workshop on Literary Book Reviewing
April 4 to April 29, 2016
TUITION: $500
SPRING DISCOUNT: Use code SPRING16 at registration checkout to get 10% off tuition for this course. In this workshop, you will look at literary book reviewing from aesthetic, ethical, and practical angles, exploring possible approaches for reviewing and discovering what elements are useful in reviews. By examining and discussing samples of different kinds of reviews... more
Peter Campion
Form From Feeling and Feeling From Form: Spring
April 4 to April 29, 2016
TUITION: $500
PETER CAMPION’s new four-week workshop will help you better understand poetry from the inside out by exploring seven formal elements – action, voice, sentence, phrase, line, sound and metaphor. You will learn how these elements work together in effective ways to help you generate your own new poems. This class is for people who want... more
Form From Feeling and Feeling From Form: Spring
April 4 to April 29, 2016
TUITION: $500
PETER CAMPION’s new four-week workshop will help you better understand poetry from the inside out by exploring seven formal elements – action, voice, sentence, phrase, line, sound and metaphor. You will learn how these elements work together in effective ways to help you generate your own new poems. This class is for people who want... more
Lydia Millet
The Charismatic Narrator
April 4 to April 8, 2016
TUITION: $500
SPRING DISCOUNT: Use code SPRING16 at registration checkout to get 10% off tuition for this course. In her one-week intensive class, Lydia Millet wants to help you write a story so thought provoking that your readers will be unable to turn away before reading it through to the end. Via examination and refinement of language,... more
The Charismatic Narrator
April 4 to April 8, 2016
TUITION: $500
SPRING DISCOUNT: Use code SPRING16 at registration checkout to get 10% off tuition for this course. In her one-week intensive class, Lydia Millet wants to help you write a story so thought provoking that your readers will be unable to turn away before reading it through to the end. Via examination and refinement of language,... more
Devi Lockwood
Tangible Things: Object-based Storytelling
March 28 to April 1, 2016
TUITION: $500
This multi-genre course is a scavenger hunt. Each day will ask you to collect a different object, introduce it to an unexpected space, and to write. We will ask questions of how spaces cradle bodies, objects cradle space, and how the presence of tangible things dictates the types of interactions that we can have in... more
Tangible Things: Object-based Storytelling
March 28 to April 1, 2016
TUITION: $500
This multi-genre course is a scavenger hunt. Each day will ask you to collect a different object, introduce it to an unexpected space, and to write. We will ask questions of how spaces cradle bodies, objects cradle space, and how the presence of tangible things dictates the types of interactions that we can have in... more
Dariel Suarez
Keep the Narrative Going: How to Successfully Provide Context in Fiction
March 28 to April 1, 2016
TUITION: $500
This week-long intensive course will focus on that crucial element for creating socially layered, culturally nuanced, but ultimately accessible stories: context. During the course of the week, you will be given several exercises aimed at efficiently integrating backstory, socio-political context, and character background into a narrative. Students will post their writing, whether as a result... more
Keep the Narrative Going: How to Successfully Provide Context in Fiction
March 28 to April 1, 2016
TUITION: $500
This week-long intensive course will focus on that crucial element for creating socially layered, culturally nuanced, but ultimately accessible stories: context. During the course of the week, you will be given several exercises aimed at efficiently integrating backstory, socio-political context, and character background into a narrative. Students will post their writing, whether as a result... more
Angelo Nikolopoulos
Remix: A Contemporary Approach to Poetic Form
March 21 to March 25, 2016
TUITION: $500
Does formal writing seem dated and unfashionable? Perhaps a literary makeover is in order. This generative one-week workshop will look at contemporary approaches to writing in poetic form. We’ll focus on traditional forms (ghazal, pantoum, sestina, sonnet, and villanelle) while brushing the dust off them to find “remixed” ways of approaching formal constraints. We’ll examine... more
Remix: A Contemporary Approach to Poetic Form
March 21 to March 25, 2016
TUITION: $500
Does formal writing seem dated and unfashionable? Perhaps a literary makeover is in order. This generative one-week workshop will look at contemporary approaches to writing in poetic form. We’ll focus on traditional forms (ghazal, pantoum, sestina, sonnet, and villanelle) while brushing the dust off them to find “remixed” ways of approaching formal constraints. We’ll examine... more
Michelle Tea
Memoir That Reads Like Fiction
March 21 to March 25, 2016
TUITION: $500
In this intensive memoir workshop, you will learn techniques to create a memoir with a cinematic feel and the singular voice of an immersive novel. In addition to discussing style and craft, you will also touch on the personal concerns that inevitably arise when a writer takes on the telling of their own story. You... more
Memoir That Reads Like Fiction
March 21 to March 25, 2016
TUITION: $500
In this intensive memoir workshop, you will learn techniques to create a memoir with a cinematic feel and the singular voice of an immersive novel. In addition to discussing style and craft, you will also touch on the personal concerns that inevitably arise when a writer takes on the telling of their own story. You... more
Rebecca Gayle Howell
We All Write Sentences
March 21 to March 25, 2016
TUITION: $500
Poets, fiction writers, and nonfiction writers alike are all invited to consider the power of the English sentence–specifically, in pushing its boundaries–in this one-week intensive workshop. You will read across genres to discover masters of linguistic craft and learn to perform grammatical analysis for the sake of better serving the imagination. This one-week intensive invites... more
We All Write Sentences
March 21 to March 25, 2016
TUITION: $500
Poets, fiction writers, and nonfiction writers alike are all invited to consider the power of the English sentence–specifically, in pushing its boundaries–in this one-week intensive workshop. You will read across genres to discover masters of linguistic craft and learn to perform grammatical analysis for the sake of better serving the imagination. This one-week intensive invites... more
CA Conrad
Every Pebble Shapes the Mountain: (Soma)tic Poetry Rituals
March 14 to March 18, 2016
TUITION: $500
CAConrad wants us to understand how real it is that 95% of poets stop writing when the demands of our lives take over. This is a workshop gathering and sharpening our tools to always stay attentive, to always be a poet who sees the creative viability of the world around us no matter what life... more
Every Pebble Shapes the Mountain: (Soma)tic Poetry Rituals
March 14 to March 18, 2016
TUITION: $500
CAConrad wants us to understand how real it is that 95% of poets stop writing when the demands of our lives take over. This is a workshop gathering and sharpening our tools to always stay attentive, to always be a poet who sees the creative viability of the world around us no matter what life... more
Ada Limón
Staying True: Authenticity & Voice: Spring
March 14 to May 6, 2016
TUITION: $500
Ada Limón is determined to help you focus in on your own personal style and write poems in your own unique voice in a world filled with constantly challenging external influences. This class you will offer new techniques to help you develop a more powerful personal identity in your poetry that will deepen the connection... more
Staying True: Authenticity & Voice: Spring
March 14 to May 6, 2016
TUITION: $500
Ada Limón is determined to help you focus in on your own personal style and write poems in your own unique voice in a world filled with constantly challenging external influences. This class you will offer new techniques to help you develop a more powerful personal identity in your poetry that will deepen the connection... more
Sara Roahen
Food in Memoir: What Sustains Us
March 14 to March 18, 2016
TUITION: $500
Food sustains us—or in some cases, fails to sustain us. Because of food’s omnipresent role in our lives, using food in our writing can help us narrow in on, or expound upon, the weightiest of topics. In this workshop, you will learn how to give food the appropriate weight, emotion, and time; when using food... more
Food in Memoir: What Sustains Us
March 14 to March 18, 2016
TUITION: $500
Food sustains us—or in some cases, fails to sustain us. Because of food’s omnipresent role in our lives, using food in our writing can help us narrow in on, or expound upon, the weightiest of topics. In this workshop, you will learn how to give food the appropriate weight, emotion, and time; when using food... more
Peter Campion
Next Steps
March 14 to March 18, 2016
TUITION: $500
This five day course has been designed to take your poems to the next level. Our online discussion will provide tools to help you connect more fully with the sources of your poems, bring new life to old drafts, and write more vivacious lines and sentences. With the help of time-proven prompts, each student will... more
Next Steps
March 14 to March 18, 2016
TUITION: $500
This five day course has been designed to take your poems to the next level. Our online discussion will provide tools to help you connect more fully with the sources of your poems, bring new life to old drafts, and write more vivacious lines and sentences. With the help of time-proven prompts, each student will... more
Jacqueline Jones Lamon
Exploring the Abecedarian Poetic Sequence: More Than Just ABC’s
March 14 to March 18, 2016
TUITION: $500
In this intensive course, students will explore several nuanced approaches to this ancient alphabetical form of poetry. By combining current events and difficult subject matter with a rigid adherence to the alphabet as our organizing principle, we’ll discover new ways of accessing subtext in our drafts and develop a plan for further development once our... more
Exploring the Abecedarian Poetic Sequence: More Than Just ABC’s
March 14 to March 18, 2016
TUITION: $500
In this intensive course, students will explore several nuanced approaches to this ancient alphabetical form of poetry. By combining current events and difficult subject matter with a rigid adherence to the alphabet as our organizing principle, we’ll discover new ways of accessing subtext in our drafts and develop a plan for further development once our... more
Gabrielle Calvocoressi
On Knowing Nothing and Everything: A Week of Poem, Pigment, & Paint in the LAB: SPRING
March 14 to March 18, 2016
TUITION: $500
In this class we’ll ask rigorous questions like, “What do I mean when I say the sky is blue?” & “What does ‘green’ mean, really?” This is a class about using multiple mediums and the art of surprise to make our poems and our practice of writing poems more expansive, muscular, and joyfully challenging. We’ll... more
On Knowing Nothing and Everything: A Week of Poem, Pigment, & Paint in the LAB: SPRING
March 14 to March 18, 2016
TUITION: $500
In this class we’ll ask rigorous questions like, “What do I mean when I say the sky is blue?” & “What does ‘green’ mean, really?” This is a class about using multiple mediums and the art of surprise to make our poems and our practice of writing poems more expansive, muscular, and joyfully challenging. We’ll... more
Devi Lockwood
Tell Me a Story: The Power of Deep Listening
March 7 to March 11, 2016
TUITION: $500
In this multi-genre workshop you’ll learn how to use the material of everyday conversations as the starting place for your writing. We will cover basic techniques of interviewing, audio recording, and transcription. Learn what questions to ask, how to keep a conversation fluid, and how to seamlessly integrate dialogue into your writing practice. Daily prompts... more
Tell Me a Story: The Power of Deep Listening
March 7 to March 11, 2016
TUITION: $500
In this multi-genre workshop you’ll learn how to use the material of everyday conversations as the starting place for your writing. We will cover basic techniques of interviewing, audio recording, and transcription. Learn what questions to ask, how to keep a conversation fluid, and how to seamlessly integrate dialogue into your writing practice. Daily prompts... more
Nicole Terez Dutton
Threading and Building: Working Toward a Manuscript
March 7 to March 11, 2016
TUITION: $500
Whether you’re beginning with one poem or a small group of poems, this week-long intensive workshop will offer strategies to meaningfully expand your work toward a manuscript. By mapping the resonances and symmetries within and between poems, students will gain a sense of where expansion is possible. You will leave this class with many new... more
Threading and Building: Working Toward a Manuscript
March 7 to March 11, 2016
TUITION: $500
Whether you’re beginning with one poem or a small group of poems, this week-long intensive workshop will offer strategies to meaningfully expand your work toward a manuscript. By mapping the resonances and symmetries within and between poems, students will gain a sense of where expansion is possible. You will leave this class with many new... more
Jacqueline Kolosov
Voice-Driven and Urgent: Contemporary Young Adult Fiction
March 7 to April 1, 2016
TUITION: $500
Although YA authors primarily aim their novels at teens, adults continue read these books for their voice-driven narratives and the issues with which they wrestle. In this workshop, you will focus on the facets of a successful YA novel, guided by weekly craft discussions and exercises centered on character development, dialogue, voice, beginnings, plotting, and... more
Voice-Driven and Urgent: Contemporary Young Adult Fiction
March 7 to April 1, 2016
TUITION: $500
Although YA authors primarily aim their novels at teens, adults continue read these books for their voice-driven narratives and the issues with which they wrestle. In this workshop, you will focus on the facets of a successful YA novel, guided by weekly craft discussions and exercises centered on character development, dialogue, voice, beginnings, plotting, and... more
Sara Eliza Johnson
Language and the Lucid Dream
March 7 to April 29, 2016
TUITION: $500
Writing a poem—that is, inventing and manipulating our language to compose it—can be likened to lucid dreaming. In this course, you will learn to write poems as if dreaming lucidly, which means that you will learn to write with intention and precision without sacrificing intuition, and without allowing desire to control the poem (and its... more
Language and the Lucid Dream
March 7 to April 29, 2016
TUITION: $500
Writing a poem—that is, inventing and manipulating our language to compose it—can be likened to lucid dreaming. In this course, you will learn to write poems as if dreaming lucidly, which means that you will learn to write with intention and precision without sacrificing intuition, and without allowing desire to control the poem (and its... more
Nancy Pearson
To Be Moved and To Move
March 7 to April 29, 2016
TUITION: $500
How can we write personal poems without sounding sentimental or self-serving? Experimenting with a dynamic mixture of time, images and phrases, this eight-week studio will help you create new poems that express a deeper personal story and “move” your readers emotionally in unexpected, unconventional ways. The poet James Tate said, “What we want from poetry... more
To Be Moved and To Move
March 7 to April 29, 2016
TUITION: $500
How can we write personal poems without sounding sentimental or self-serving? Experimenting with a dynamic mixture of time, images and phrases, this eight-week studio will help you create new poems that express a deeper personal story and “move” your readers emotionally in unexpected, unconventional ways. The poet James Tate said, “What we want from poetry... more
Ann Hood
Writing the Personal Essay: Spring
March 7 to April 1, 2016
TUITION: $500
During Ann Hood’s memoir course you will work toward completing a final, personal essay through a series of short, guided assignments. Using these weekly writing exercises – focused on specific topics as stepping-stones – you will learn to hone your ideas, settings, characters and dialogue to build emotional impact into your personal stories. Each week... more
Writing the Personal Essay: Spring
March 7 to April 1, 2016
TUITION: $500
During Ann Hood’s memoir course you will work toward completing a final, personal essay through a series of short, guided assignments. Using these weekly writing exercises – focused on specific topics as stepping-stones – you will learn to hone your ideas, settings, characters and dialogue to build emotional impact into your personal stories. Each week... more
Daisy Fried
Writing Poems That Don't Fit: Spring
March 7 to April 1, 2016
TUITION: $500
In her four-week workshop, Daisy Fried will guide you as you formulate what your poems want to be and how you fit into your work. With a goal of helping you clarify your themes and focusing on your own voice, this workshop is designed to teach you new ways to generate poems that truly reflect... more
Writing Poems That Don't Fit: Spring
March 7 to April 1, 2016
TUITION: $500
In her four-week workshop, Daisy Fried will guide you as you formulate what your poems want to be and how you fit into your work. With a goal of helping you clarify your themes and focusing on your own voice, this workshop is designed to teach you new ways to generate poems that truly reflect... more
Corey Van Landingham
Documentary Poetry
February 29 to March 4, 2016
TUITION: $500
In this new poetry workshop, you will consider what liberties writer take when recreating, representing, and exposing experience, especially the experiences of others. Topics of interest will include reportage, historical narratives, interviews, poetic license, subjectivity, genre, and form. Through thoughtful exercises, you will learn how to look at your work in new way and write... more
Documentary Poetry
February 29 to March 4, 2016
TUITION: $500
In this new poetry workshop, you will consider what liberties writer take when recreating, representing, and exposing experience, especially the experiences of others. Topics of interest will include reportage, historical narratives, interviews, poetic license, subjectivity, genre, and form. Through thoughtful exercises, you will learn how to look at your work in new way and write... more
Marcus Wicker
Locking Down Your Free Verse: Containers that Fit
February 29 to March 25, 2016
TUITION: $500
In this four-week workshop focused on free verse, you will be guided through a series of exercises designed to facilitate experimentation and surprise in your work. Studying various techniques, you will investigate many of the intriguing inner-workings of free verse and learn how to work them into your own poems. Among too many circles “free... more
Locking Down Your Free Verse: Containers that Fit
February 29 to March 25, 2016
TUITION: $500
In this four-week workshop focused on free verse, you will be guided through a series of exercises designed to facilitate experimentation and surprise in your work. Studying various techniques, you will investigate many of the intriguing inner-workings of free verse and learn how to work them into your own poems. Among too many circles “free... more
Michael White
Gazing In Gazing Out
February 22 to February 26, 2016
TUITION: $500
In this new one-week intensive workshop designed for intermediate to advanced poets, you will explore fundamentally new approaches to subject manner while writing new poems and revising old ones. The class will also explore the intersection of the public and the private in poetry, and students will be encouraged to engage in an animated dialogue... more
Gazing In Gazing Out
February 22 to February 26, 2016
TUITION: $500
In this new one-week intensive workshop designed for intermediate to advanced poets, you will explore fundamentally new approaches to subject manner while writing new poems and revising old ones. The class will also explore the intersection of the public and the private in poetry, and students will be encouraged to engage in an animated dialogue... more
Elizabeth Bradfield
Beastly: Animals as Poetic Source and Subject for Poems
February 22 to February 26, 2016
TUITION: $500
Many of us are moved by our time outside, by the non-humans we encounter. But how do we write about those experiences in ways that are full, accurate, and surprising? In this week-long course we’ll study how others have written animals and use those models as templates for our own work. We’ll skirt the treacherous... more
Beastly: Animals as Poetic Source and Subject for Poems
February 22 to February 26, 2016
TUITION: $500
Many of us are moved by our time outside, by the non-humans we encounter. But how do we write about those experiences in ways that are full, accurate, and surprising? In this week-long course we’ll study how others have written animals and use those models as templates for our own work. We’ll skirt the treacherous... more
Sara Eliza Johnson
Mad Science
February 15 to February 19, 2016
TUITION: $500
In this class, you will look to scientific endeavors and discoveries for inspiration, considering the potential yields of the creative relationship between science and poetry. Through a series of experiments and exercises, you will write poems that respond to the findings of contemporary science, using poets who incorporate scientific material into their work as guides.... more
Mad Science
February 15 to February 19, 2016
TUITION: $500
In this class, you will look to scientific endeavors and discoveries for inspiration, considering the potential yields of the creative relationship between science and poetry. Through a series of experiments and exercises, you will write poems that respond to the findings of contemporary science, using poets who incorporate scientific material into their work as guides.... more
Rebecca Gayle Howell
The No Po-Biz Po-Biz: How to Finish Your Poems for Publication
February 15 to February 19, 2016
TUITION: $500
The submission process is a communication, a conversation between you and your future editors. In this workshop you will explore how to cultivate that conversation meaningfully. Through intensive and diverse studies of syntax, lineation, punctuation, diction, and style, you will learn how to drive your poems into a shareable space without losing their originality. Have... more
The No Po-Biz Po-Biz: How to Finish Your Poems for Publication
February 15 to February 19, 2016
TUITION: $500
The submission process is a communication, a conversation between you and your future editors. In this workshop you will explore how to cultivate that conversation meaningfully. Through intensive and diverse studies of syntax, lineation, punctuation, diction, and style, you will learn how to drive your poems into a shareable space without losing their originality. Have... more
Anne Sanow
Liftoff: Finishing that Story Draft
February 8 to March 4, 2016
TUITION: $500
This four-week workshop is geared toward helping you make something happen in your story—through helping you grow your draft in ways you hadn’t anticipated. Discussions will revolve around clarifying story ideas, sustaining scenes, deepening characters, expanding the story’s world, and making connections. This class is designed for advanced beginners and up who want to bring... more
Liftoff: Finishing that Story Draft
February 8 to March 4, 2016
TUITION: $500
This four-week workshop is geared toward helping you make something happen in your story—through helping you grow your draft in ways you hadn’t anticipated. Discussions will revolve around clarifying story ideas, sustaining scenes, deepening characters, expanding the story’s world, and making connections. This class is designed for advanced beginners and up who want to bring... more
Ocean Vuong
The First Step Backward: Memory as Creative Force
February 1 to February 5, 2016
TUITION: $500
This new intensive course will examine the myriad ways in which memory works on the artistic practice. You will investigate the ways in which the body, memories, and scars are living relics of the past, seeking to honor past moments while learning from them new ways of composition. Ultimately, you will look at memory as... more
The First Step Backward: Memory as Creative Force
February 1 to February 5, 2016
TUITION: $500
This new intensive course will examine the myriad ways in which memory works on the artistic practice. You will investigate the ways in which the body, memories, and scars are living relics of the past, seeking to honor past moments while learning from them new ways of composition. Ultimately, you will look at memory as... more
Ann Hood
Jumpstart Your Memoir
February 1 to February 5, 2016
TUITION: $500
Often, that moment when you first begin to write is the scariest. This one-week intensive workshop will help you get started by asking the right questions. Whether you’re stuck in a draft that isn’t working, having trouble organizing your story, or are just unable to get started, this class is designed to help you. In... more
Jumpstart Your Memoir
February 1 to February 5, 2016
TUITION: $500
Often, that moment when you first begin to write is the scariest. This one-week intensive workshop will help you get started by asking the right questions. Whether you’re stuck in a draft that isn’t working, having trouble organizing your story, or are just unable to get started, this class is designed to help you. In... more
Ed Skoog
Have You Tried the Side Door? Finding a Way In to Your Next Poems.
February 1 to March 25, 2016
TUITION: $500
Starting a poem is difficult because of the barriers we often build for ourselves. In this new course, you will learn how to recognize your individual barriers and bypass them. In this workshop you will write and revise new poems through a series of guided encouragements, deadlines, and feedback from the group and one-on-one discussion.... more
Have You Tried the Side Door? Finding a Way In to Your Next Poems.
February 1 to March 25, 2016
TUITION: $500
Starting a poem is difficult because of the barriers we often build for ourselves. In this new course, you will learn how to recognize your individual barriers and bypass them. In this workshop you will write and revise new poems through a series of guided encouragements, deadlines, and feedback from the group and one-on-one discussion.... more
Kirsten Andersen
Stealing Time: The Tricky Dance of Being a Writing Parent
February 1 to February 26, 2016
TUITION: $500
Writing about the parent-child experience is rich territory, but it is often difficult to balance parenting time with your writing. In this new workshop, you will discover how to embrace your new experiences and begin writing again. This course will also help you establish and sustain a viable writing practice while navigating the identities of... more
Stealing Time: The Tricky Dance of Being a Writing Parent
February 1 to February 26, 2016
TUITION: $500
Writing about the parent-child experience is rich territory, but it is often difficult to balance parenting time with your writing. In this new workshop, you will discover how to embrace your new experiences and begin writing again. This course will also help you establish and sustain a viable writing practice while navigating the identities of... more
Nancy Pearson
15 Works
February 1 to February 26, 2016
TUITION: $500
This four week poetry workshop is based on a class taught at the former Corcoran School of Art. In “15 Works,” you’ll write 3 to 4 poems a week in response to assignments and prompts, with weekly themes. The workshop promises to stretch the boundaries of your imagination, silence your internal editor and help you... more
15 Works
February 1 to February 26, 2016
TUITION: $500
This four week poetry workshop is based on a class taught at the former Corcoran School of Art. In “15 Works,” you’ll write 3 to 4 poems a week in response to assignments and prompts, with weekly themes. The workshop promises to stretch the boundaries of your imagination, silence your internal editor and help you... more
Francesca Lia Block
Not Always Happily : Writing the Contemporary Fairy Tale
February 1 to February 5, 2016
TUITION: $500
Francesca Lia Block’s one-week intensive course will show you how to utilize the various elements of fairy tale writing as inspiration for writing short stories, novels and even poetry. During the course you will delve into character, plot, setting, language and theme as you compose contemporary fairy tales for both adults and young adults. During... more
Not Always Happily : Writing the Contemporary Fairy Tale
February 1 to February 5, 2016
TUITION: $500
Francesca Lia Block’s one-week intensive course will show you how to utilize the various elements of fairy tale writing as inspiration for writing short stories, novels and even poetry. During the course you will delve into character, plot, setting, language and theme as you compose contemporary fairy tales for both adults and young adults. During... more
Gabrielle Calvocoressi
On Knowing Nothing and Everything: A Week of Poem, Pigment, & Paint in the LAB: WINTER
January 18 to January 22, 2016
TUITION: $500
In this generative one-week workshop, you will use multiple mediums and the art of surprise to make your practice of poetry more expansive, muscular, and joyfully challenging. In this class, painting and poetry will coincide to allow for students to experiment in their processes and make exciting discoveries. Topics of interest will include the writing... more
On Knowing Nothing and Everything: A Week of Poem, Pigment, & Paint in the LAB: WINTER
January 18 to January 22, 2016
TUITION: $500
In this generative one-week workshop, you will use multiple mediums and the art of surprise to make your practice of poetry more expansive, muscular, and joyfully challenging. In this class, painting and poetry will coincide to allow for students to experiment in their processes and make exciting discoveries. Topics of interest will include the writing... more
Rosie Schaap
Essay is a Verb: The Practice of Personal Narrative
January 4 to February 26, 2016
TUITION: $500
Informed and animated by the singular life experience and voice of its author, the personal essay represents an attempt to deeply speak about an idea, a problem, or a preoccupation in the most powerful language possible. In this new workshop, you will develop dialogue, characters, scenes, and structure to create thought-provoking essays that will engage... more
Essay is a Verb: The Practice of Personal Narrative
January 4 to February 26, 2016
TUITION: $500
Informed and animated by the singular life experience and voice of its author, the personal essay represents an attempt to deeply speak about an idea, a problem, or a preoccupation in the most powerful language possible. In this new workshop, you will develop dialogue, characters, scenes, and structure to create thought-provoking essays that will engage... more
Suzanne Rivecca
Good Things in Small Packages: The Art of the Short Story
January 4 to February 26, 2016
TUITION: $500
A great short story is all the proof we need that bigger isn’t necessarily better—or more beautiful, or more profound. In this new class, you will learn how to apply new ideas of structure, character, plot and language to your short stories to help make them have a larger payoff and a sense of emotional... more
Good Things in Small Packages: The Art of the Short Story
January 4 to February 26, 2016
TUITION: $500
A great short story is all the proof we need that bigger isn’t necessarily better—or more beautiful, or more profound. In this new class, you will learn how to apply new ideas of structure, character, plot and language to your short stories to help make them have a larger payoff and a sense of emotional... more
Ada Limón
Staying True: Authenticity & Voice: Winter
January 4 to February 26, 2016
TUITION: $500
Ada Limón is determined to help you focus in on your own personal style and write poems in your own unique voice in a world filled with constantly challenging external influences. This class you will offer new techniques to help you develop a more powerful personal identity in your poetry that will deepen the connection... more
Staying True: Authenticity & Voice: Winter
January 4 to February 26, 2016
TUITION: $500
Ada Limón is determined to help you focus in on your own personal style and write poems in your own unique voice in a world filled with constantly challenging external influences. This class you will offer new techniques to help you develop a more powerful personal identity in your poetry that will deepen the connection... more
Michael Klein
“If It’s True. . . ": A Memoir Workshop: WINTER
January 4 to January 29, 2016
TUITION: $500
Memoir can be as various, wild, and eclectic as the individual putting their life down on paper. In this class, you will be guided through a series of excercises to learn how to extend both the anecdote and the essay forms into something more substantiated: a memoir that reads both as revelation and as literature.... more
“If It’s True. . . ": A Memoir Workshop: WINTER
January 4 to January 29, 2016
TUITION: $500
Memoir can be as various, wild, and eclectic as the individual putting their life down on paper. In this class, you will be guided through a series of excercises to learn how to extend both the anecdote and the essay forms into something more substantiated: a memoir that reads both as revelation and as literature.... more
Alix Ohlin
Crafting Charismatic Characters
January 4 to January 29, 2016
TUITION: $500
Alix Ohlin’s workshop will help you create rich, compelling characters who will grab readers’ attention and involve them deeply in your story. In this four-week class, you will learn techniques to develop dynamic characters whose complexity will catalyze the narrative and intensify the emotion in your work. Great characters aren’t perfect; sometimes they aren’t even... more
Crafting Charismatic Characters
January 4 to January 29, 2016
TUITION: $500
Alix Ohlin’s workshop will help you create rich, compelling characters who will grab readers’ attention and involve them deeply in your story. In this four-week class, you will learn techniques to develop dynamic characters whose complexity will catalyze the narrative and intensify the emotion in your work. Great characters aren’t perfect; sometimes they aren’t even... more
Carolyn Forché
Writing New Poems: Fall
November 30 to December 4, 2015
TUITION: $500
This one-week intensive class will help experienced poets push their writing in exciting new directions. In this generative, guided workshop, you will work intensively as as you explore different approaches to process and revision. Carolyn Forché’s five-day intensive class is designed to push experienced poets in provocative new writing directions. The week is dedicated to... more
Writing New Poems: Fall
November 30 to December 4, 2015
TUITION: $500
This one-week intensive class will help experienced poets push their writing in exciting new directions. In this generative, guided workshop, you will work intensively as as you explore different approaches to process and revision. Carolyn Forché’s five-day intensive class is designed to push experienced poets in provocative new writing directions. The week is dedicated to... more
Daisy Fried
Writing Poems That Don't Fit: Fall
October 26 to November 20, 2015
TUITION: $500
In her four-week workshop, Daisy Fried will guide you as you formulate what your poems want to be and how you fit into your work. With a goal of helping you clarify your themes and focusing on your own voice, this workshop is designed to teach you new ways to generate poems that truly reflect... more
Writing Poems That Don't Fit: Fall
October 26 to November 20, 2015
TUITION: $500
In her four-week workshop, Daisy Fried will guide you as you formulate what your poems want to be and how you fit into your work. With a goal of helping you clarify your themes and focusing on your own voice, this workshop is designed to teach you new ways to generate poems that truly reflect... more
Heidi Jon Schmidt
Telling the Story
October 26 to November 20, 2015
TUITION: $500
Almost all stories begin somewhere in an author’s experience. In this workshop, you will learn to unlock your own experience and reimagine it as a compelling and fulfilling story that makes characters feel alive. The goal is to create a rich story that drives a reader to urgently want to turn each page. John Cheever... more
Telling the Story
October 26 to November 20, 2015
TUITION: $500
Almost all stories begin somewhere in an author’s experience. In this workshop, you will learn to unlock your own experience and reimagine it as a compelling and fulfilling story that makes characters feel alive. The goal is to create a rich story that drives a reader to urgently want to turn each page. John Cheever... more
Sarah Messer
Facts, Research, and Memoir
October 26 to November 20, 2015
TUITION: $500
Even in our most vivid memories, details fade. Sarah Messer’s essential course will help you mine memory through research techniques like archival work, interviewing, travel, music, and information-gathering in order to create vivid, compelling scenes. The course will help you find the facts to get at larger truths and also remember small concrete details. At... more
Facts, Research, and Memoir
October 26 to November 20, 2015
TUITION: $500
Even in our most vivid memories, details fade. Sarah Messer’s essential course will help you mine memory through research techniques like archival work, interviewing, travel, music, and information-gathering in order to create vivid, compelling scenes. The course will help you find the facts to get at larger truths and also remember small concrete details. At... more
Rebecca Gayle Howell
Translation as Creative Practice
October 12 to November 6, 2015
TUITION: $500
We write in the age of globalization and in the language most universal for our time. Contemporary international writers are now being brought into English at a high frequency, and major writers of English are revisiting classics for the first time in a generation. Where do you fit in? In this class, we will study... more
Translation as Creative Practice
October 12 to November 6, 2015
TUITION: $500
We write in the age of globalization and in the language most universal for our time. Contemporary international writers are now being brought into English at a high frequency, and major writers of English are revisiting classics for the first time in a generation. Where do you fit in? In this class, we will study... more
Ada Limón
Staying True: Authenticity & Voice: Fall
October 12 to December 4, 2015
TUITION: $500
Ada Limón is determined to help you focus in on your own personal style and write poems in your own unique voice in a world filled with constantly challenging external influences. This class you will offer new techniques to help you develop a more powerful personal identity in your poetry that will deepen the connection... more
Staying True: Authenticity & Voice: Fall
October 12 to December 4, 2015
TUITION: $500
Ada Limón is determined to help you focus in on your own personal style and write poems in your own unique voice in a world filled with constantly challenging external influences. This class you will offer new techniques to help you develop a more powerful personal identity in your poetry that will deepen the connection... more
Charles McLeod
New Forms of Fiction
October 12 to December 4, 2015
TUITION: $500
Charles McLeod’s provocative new class will help you sharpen and enhance your narrative skills through a series of unlikely written assignments. Over the eight-week run of this class, you will explore writing for different forms of new media, unexpected situations and other unusual narrative vehicles – all with the ultimate goal of learning how to... more
New Forms of Fiction
October 12 to December 4, 2015
TUITION: $500
Charles McLeod’s provocative new class will help you sharpen and enhance your narrative skills through a series of unlikely written assignments. Over the eight-week run of this class, you will explore writing for different forms of new media, unexpected situations and other unusual narrative vehicles – all with the ultimate goal of learning how to... more
Sarah Rose Nordgren
The Sources of Poetry
September 21 to November 13, 2015
TUITION: $500
In Sarah Rose Nordgren’s workshop you’ll explore the inner obsessions and sources that fuel your urge to write. Through guided prompts that will encourage you to experiment, you will learn to write poems that really matter and that are charged with energy, clarity, and power. “You mention Immortality. That is the Flood subject.” – Emily... more
The Sources of Poetry
September 21 to November 13, 2015
TUITION: $500
In Sarah Rose Nordgren’s workshop you’ll explore the inner obsessions and sources that fuel your urge to write. Through guided prompts that will encourage you to experiment, you will learn to write poems that really matter and that are charged with energy, clarity, and power. “You mention Immortality. That is the Flood subject.” – Emily... more
Ann Hood
Writing the Personal Essay: Fall
September 21 to October 16, 2015
TUITION: $500
During Ann Hood’s memoir course you will work toward completing a final, personal essay through a series of short, guided assignments. Using these weekly writing exercises – focused on specific topics as stepping-stones – you will learn to hone your ideas, settings, characters and dialogue to build emotional impact into your personal stories. Each week... more
Writing the Personal Essay: Fall
September 21 to October 16, 2015
TUITION: $500
During Ann Hood’s memoir course you will work toward completing a final, personal essay through a series of short, guided assignments. Using these weekly writing exercises – focused on specific topics as stepping-stones – you will learn to hone your ideas, settings, characters and dialogue to build emotional impact into your personal stories. Each week... more
Peter Campion
Form From Feeling and Feeling From Form: Fall
September 14 to October 9, 2015
TUITION: $500
PETER CAMPION’s four-week workshop will help you better understand poetry from the inside out by exploring seven formal elements – action, voice, sentence, phrase, line, sound and metaphor. You will learn how these elements work together in effective ways to help you generate your own new poems. This class is for people who want to... more
Form From Feeling and Feeling From Form: Fall
September 14 to October 9, 2015
TUITION: $500
PETER CAMPION’s four-week workshop will help you better understand poetry from the inside out by exploring seven formal elements – action, voice, sentence, phrase, line, sound and metaphor. You will learn how these elements work together in effective ways to help you generate your own new poems. This class is for people who want to... more