In this fun weekend workshop, we'll write our life stories through one single category of objects or experiences. All about my life according to...the shoes I wore, the houses I lived in, or the cars I drove. My life told through my most important conversations or the photographs I wish had been taken but never were. My life through the books that shaped the way I think. Or my life via art objects, hats, movies, sports events, gardens, video games, people I will never see again, favorite walks, songs, or quilts sewed. You know what has mattered to you over time. But remember, you can only pick one! It's so much easier to write a memoir (or call it a series of linked personal essays) when you have a structure to work with. This simple unifying structure conveys the passage of time while its draconian limitations free you to leave out all those extraneous details that bedevil the memoir writer and swamp the reader. (Although you'll be surprised at how much deeper meaning you can sneak in if you work at it.) All writers, from the most beginning to the most experienced, are welcome as long as they're willing to experiment. A bonus gold star if you don't take yourself or this project too seriously. You'll leave this quirky workshop with a basic understanding of structure, a project underway, and a simple plan for completing it. In this workshop we will generate new writing through exercises and assignments; provide limited feedback on work produced during the workshop.

We’ll take a patient look at two revered American poets, spending a day on each of these marvelous lyricists, specifically poems from the collections The Wild Iris and The Tradition. Both poets generate layered and complex poems that don’t shy away from vulnerability, that openly court and create beauty in both image and music, and that bravely face what’s unknown, bewildering, and even violent in both real and imagined landscapes. In training our focus and collective attention to styles and subject matter present in a handful of poems, we'll translate our close reading and appreciation into multiple drafts of poems that both borrow from our reading and bear our own singular stamp. On Saturday we’ll start with some poems from the 2020 Nobel Prize winner’s 1992 collection, The Wild Iris. We’ll read the poems through a writer’s lens: how does this poet use voice, image, metaphor, music, and structure to create its effects on a reader? And how might we play with such effects in our own poems? We’ll then roll up our sleeves and generate our own poems off of what we discover and discuss from our reading. Sunday, we’ll turn to The Tradition, the 2020 winner of the Pulitzer Prize and continue with a similar day of reading into writing. Students are encouraged to purchase the collections by each poet prior to arriving in Iowa City, as I’ll ask participants to read a few poems by each poet before we meet – that way we can hit the ground running! Lovers of poetry at all levels of experience are welcome. In this workshop, we will generate new writing through exercises and assignments.

If you can't find the time to write your novel, your memoir, or your collection of poems, chances are you're a human being living in a society. This weekend-long workshop (itself a time crunch, and that's the point) will teach writers then to "make time," not only to carve out free moments in their day, but to write literary works in response to, and about, the subject of "time." All genres and all levels welcome. In this generative writing workshop students will learn about writers from several disciplines who write not only about time (the events of James Joyce's monumental "Ulysses" spans 24 hours) but also according to it (Bernadette Mayer's monumental "Midwinter Day" was written in the span of 24 hours). Students will be exposed to works of poetry and prose written under playful time constraints that make time work for them, and students will write in-class and at-home exercises that are time-based and durational. Ultimately, students will, on the practical side, learn strategies to make daily writing an exciting opportunity rather than a chore, and also will plan out and conceive of a project to be completed sometime after the class, whether in a period of years or a period of seconds. In this workshop, we will generate new writing through exercises and assignments; provide feedback on writing you produce in our weekend.

Many beginning poets become quickly proficient with alliteration — the repetition of beginning sounds in nearby words — “lurk late” or “strike straight” or “jazz June” (examples from the poem “We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks). The problem that occurs often is that they begin to overuse alliteration and rely on it too much. In this intermediate poetry workshop, we will explore other ways of patterning sound in poems — assonance, consonance, rhyme, onomatopoeia, and of course, alliteration as well — esp. more advanced applications of these techniques, such as rich consonance and slant rhyme. This class is geared toward those who are fairly experienced already in writing poems. Before the workshop, you will send me three poems in which you are expressly playing with sound. In the course of the weekend you will also write one poem applying sound concepts we discuss in class. We will workshop your poems in class and discuss how better to work with sound. Our goal in the workshop is to help you become more aware of your use of sonic effects and improve how you employ sound. What you will find after the workshop is that your growing skills in using sound in poems will affect all your writing, not just poems but other genres as well, even nonfiction essays. In this workshop, we will generate new writing through exercises and assignments, provide feedback on writing you produce in our weekend, and critique writing you bring from home.

Maybe you’ve written a killer opening, and you have an idea for an electrifying ending. But now you’re in the sagging muddle of the middle of the novel, and you’re not sure how to find your way out. We’ve all been there. The middle can be a confusing spot in a book, when we may feel like we don’t have enough to say, or when we may feel like we’ve written too many words and we’ll never get to the ending. In this weekend workshop, you’ll learn strategies to get your story back on track, so that you can propel towards that electrifying ending. You’ll respond to in-class exercises, which we’ll share on a volunteer basis. (We’ll read aloud, so no need to print out.) This class is focused on generating new material, but writers who are in the middle of a project are free to use their current work as springboards to complete the exercises and assignments. Intermediate and advanced writers who are already working on a novel might be best suited to attend. While the class is focused on the novel, memoirists who believe the class might be useful to them are welcome to attend. Read more...

Yes! It’s back! Post-lockdown, in person, and better than ever, the popular Promptapalooza prompt-a-thon promises to stock you with enough fresh material for 10 narrative essays, stories, or even a book, to flesh out over the months following the class. In an invigorating, supportive, no-pressure environment, we’ll use tested and effective writing prompts to get some “seedlings” planted for further development after the course. We’ll have some time to discuss and share our work each day and get some light feedback on how to proceed with the work we’ve generated, as well as get a list of prompts to generate new material at home. Get ready to surprise yourself with your own creativity and reconnect to your love of writing. It’s a fast-moving, exciting, generative class that’s adaptable to nonfiction and fiction writers of any experience level. 10 prompts. 2 days. Let’s do this! In this workshop, we will generate new writing through exercises and assignments.

In this workshop, we will write a series of short pieces using a range of approaches in style, structure and point of view. Whether it is a story you’ve told many times, one you’ve wanted to tell, or one you don’t think you can tell, this course will offer you ways in and around your particular story. We will ask ourselves why we tell the stories we tell; what we might gain from telling the same story from different perspectives; and how our own telling might alter the past, allowing it to become deeper and richer. Borges wrote, “The past isn’t a dead, fixed place but one which we’re constantly looking back to, discovering things, seeing things anew.” Often it is in the reconstruction of our lives that we are able to collapse time, interrogate the fiction of memory, and come to terms with the chaos and confusion of the past. We will write a lot in this workshop, using a variety of narrative methods and strategies to discover new ways of telling our truth. In this workshop, we will generate new writing through exercises and assignments.

How much of a life can be squeezed into a paragraph? This will be the challenge during our weekend retreat, as we tackle this most common unit of composition. Reading and appreciating these small blocks of type, none of them common, will be our first task. Our focus will be on those sparked by a memory. We will read from After the Fact, by poets Marvin Bell and Chris Merrill. We will read from Margaret Renkl's Late Migrations. We will also read paragraphs you love, those pulled from your bulletin boards or bracketed in the books on your desk. And we will respond with work of our own, producing paragraphs some might call prose poems. Others might feel more like anecdotes. In any case, your writing will shine and deepen, as fellow writers awaken what Philip Lopate calls "that shiver of self-recognition." In their famous Elements of Style, Strunk and White ask us to "remember that paragraphing calls for a good eye as well as a logical mind." Yes, let's certainly employ the former, the visual shape on the page. As far as the latter, well, we will have some fun. Can you write a book like this? Yes, you can. To start you right off upon registration, my introductory letter will include examples and prompts, so you'll hit the ground running, with paragraphs ready to be read and answered in kind. Writers at any level of experience are most welcome. Read more...

Our travels through life are unavoidably interesting. Whatever happens to us—a hike through the desert, a night stuck in the airport, a trip to Hawaii, a stay in the hospital— anywhere we go and anything we do there—becomes a captivating adventure if we pay close attention and turn it into a story. And turning whatever happens in our travels into something we can write about makes us pay attention to whatever’s there, while something is happening or after the fact, and that makes everything more interesting and enjoyable; even the hard stuff becomes easier. In this class, we’ll use easy, fun, foolproof writing exercises to turn our travel stories into writing that’s fresh, exciting, and surprising. We’ll create a small creative community in a strictly positive environment. And we’ll talk about how to use writing as a life tool that can turn every trip we go on, whether it’s exciting and wonderful or not so wonderful, into a transformative experience, for us and our readers, allowing us to make the most of our travels through life. This class welcomes writers at all levels. In this workshop, we will generate new writing through exercises and assignments.

Sometimes the best way to develop your story is to write around the edges of it, to discover the world around the plot, the history of characters, the provenance of an object. In other words, sometimes you have to explore ideas that won't go directly on the page but will flavor everything else that does. The map of the old house, the contents of the bedside table, the one missing from the family photographs – none of these are focused directly on the plot, yet they often hold the key to that elusive plot point or reveal the subconscious drives behind your character's actions. Why? Because in a well-written story, everything connects. If writing is weaving, then every character, every event, and every object is a thread that strengthens the whole. This workshop is best suited to writers well into their draft, whether that is a novel or a short story. Writers should leave the workshop with a new understanding of their work and a clear path to revision. In this workshop, we will generate new writing through exercises and assignments.