This workshop focuses on forms of song in poetry. How can we create a sense of melody from nothing but words on a page? How can a poem cause us to clap and sway and tap our toes in time? We’ll experiment with techniques inspired by recent and ancient examples, from many traditions, as we work to...

My writing life began with fiction. It was a delight to study the tools of that particular craft, as for years I wrote, taught, and edited works of fiction. When what would eventually become my memoir began to call to me, it was a significant surprise to realize how much I could rely on those hard...

This advanced prose workshop is intended for students who’ve completed a draft, or a substantial portion of a draft, of a novel or longform work of nonfiction, be it memoir or narrative. It’s designed to answer the question: I’ve come this far, so now what? To begin, we will consider up to 15 pages...

Every writer has overwhelming subjects—the places, events, people, themes, or parts of ourselves that pursue us or elude us or keep us up at night. Maybe we’ve tried to write something umpteen times, and keep hitting a wall. Or maybe we never try, unsure of how to enter, or what we might find there...

Fiction writers are the ones who get all the sympathy for their struggles with creative angst. But writers of nonfiction—memoirs, reportage, profiles, commentaries, and the like—also know the trials of creating, and completing, a coherent and compelling article or book. This is the place to bring...

This class is designed for teachers who find themselves teaching writing. Perhaps you’re teaching history, or the sociology of education, or physics, and you find yourself wringing your hands over your students’ prose and trying to figure out how to help them write more clearly. Or you’re teaching...

In this weeklong generative poetry writing class, we’ll explore many ways to write elegiac poetry. The elegy is an ancient poetic form containing the elements of lament, praise, and solace. Traditionally written in a metrical form, elegies are now typically written in free verse. Elegy often...

Why do our characters do what they do? Every story brings headlines from the human heart, and those headlines turn on motivations as petty as a pet peeve and as grand as a ruling passion. Character-driven fiction encourages us to abandon the conventional and to explore new ways of being with others...

All fiction is speculative. Our grasp on the real world is limited, and it is a writer's job to push the boundaries. Why are we here? Why do we suffer? God. Space. Time. Life. Death. To enter a character is an act of empathy. To master a compelling plot is a structural feat. And to harness the music...

Whether fiction or memoir or something in between, many powerful works of literature are structured in a fractured, fragmented, nonlinear style. In this course, we will experiment with forms, styles, approaches to time and place, structure, POV, character, and more, all in an attempt to tell (and...