This advanced prose workshop is intended for students who’ve completed a draft, or a substantial portion of a draft, of a novel or a longform work of nonfiction, be it memoir or narrative. It’s designed to answer the question: I’ve come this far, now what? To begin, we will consider up to 7 double-spaced pages of material that students bring from home. These pages could be the opening scenes of your book, but that’s not a requirement. Students will also generate a new “missing” scene, so be prepared to write. During our weekend together, class members will be guided through the process of transforming an early draft into a polished one, or a polished draft into a final one. I’ve completed this process quite a few times and guided many students through it as well. What will make the manuscript better? Does the book start where it should? How do you know when you’re done? In whose voice, or voices, should the narrative be told? What crucial scene have you omitted because it’s difficult, or even terrifying, to write? We’ll attempt to answer these questions and more. You’ll come away with one new scene. We’ll also touch on what to do with your manuscript once you’ve finished. In this workshop, we will generate new writing through guided exercises and prompts; workshop writing you bring from home.

Cursing the blinking cursor? Maybe you’ve reached an impasse in your project. Maybe you’ve wanted to start a project for a while but you can’t seem to find the way in. There are only a few lucky writers who never seem to have this problem, and for whom the words flow forth unimpeded. For the rest of us, some literary Drano™ comes in handy from time to time. This course for writers at all levels aims to help you figure out where you’re stuck, why you’re stuck, and how to get moving so you leave the class inspired and reengaged with your projects. We’ll look at helpful tools for overcoming your blocks, use in-class writing exercises to address your issues, and get words on paper to motivate you to move forward beyond the class. Together, we will slay writer’s block in a fun, inspiring atmosphere. In this workshop, we will generate new writing through guided exercises and prompts; workshop writing you bring from home.

Close your eyes and imagine the drawing room scene in which Darcy proposes to Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice. Now imagine the Tea Party scene with the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland. What about the scene in The Shining in which Wendy sees what her husband Jack has been typing all this time? Now think of a vivid scene from a novel or memoir from your reading. Can you picture everything clearly, as if you’re watching a movie? World building is not just for fantasy writers. All fiction writers and memoirists must build our worlds, whether the world is Edwardian England, an imaginary land through a rabbit hole, a haunted hotel in Colorado, the world of your 1970s childhood, or the world we’re all currently living in. When we do this, scenes come to life and readers truly enter the world of our stories—and don’t want to return to the “real world” again. In this weekend workshop, we will: Introduce the concept of world building. Study a few examples of well-built fictional and autobiographical worlds. Learn how to create a history and timeline (backstory) for our characters. Visualize our worlds, using various techniques. Learn techniques that will help us create vivid scenes—and then put them into practice through exercises. Discover the just-right balance between exposition and dialogue in scenes so that they come to life. Be a member of a supportive and stimulating community of writers. Write! The class will consist of a combination of lecture, discussion, writing, and sharing. We will do various exercises throughout the weekend to work on world building, and you’ll have the opportunity to receive verbal feedback on your work. Writers may bring work from home to work on or generate new material—or both. This class is appropriate for writers of all levels. We can’t wait to enter into your fictional or autobiographical worlds! In this workshop, we will generate new writing through guided exercises and prompts; offer feedback/first impressions on writing you produce in our weekend; workshop writing you bring from home.

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 guided exercises and prompts; offer feedback/first impressions on writing you produce in our weekend. Feedback for in-class writing is strictly positive.

This workshop is designed for students writing their first novel (or short story) or those who are starting the next one. Purposefully crafted for the beginner or intermediate writer, Novel Bootcamp is created specifically for writers who are fuzzy about where to begin, what do to next, and how to develop a new story from scratch. Curriculum centers mainly around engaging writing prompts to help you generate ideas with results that will surprise you. Consider the writing prompts as idea-incubators for locating the emotional truth in your story. The goal is to find your voice, develop characters, zero in on theme and invent your story—whether that means uncovering your structure or developing the tools to build your fictional world. Each class will include in-class writing, workshopping the results, and craft talks on subjects like how to write believable dialogue, the elements of theme, and tips for staying the course. All fiction genres (literary, contemporary, speculative) and forms (novel, novella, short story, micro stories) are welcome. In this workshop, we will generate new writing through guided exercises and prompts; offer feedback/first impressions on writing you produce in our week.

Good storytelling requires a sure touch with narration, characterization, and dialogue. None of these ingredients can be neglected. But when do you use which? How do you find the right balance? This is a nuts-and-bolts craft workshop for fiction writers of all levels. Novelists, short story writers, and flash aficionados are all welcome. We’ll compare the merits of first-person and third-person narration, and the extra risks of using the second person. We’ll also dissect characterization techniques and the question of empathy. Does your main character have to be “likeable”? What is “likeable” anyway? We’ll also ask questions about dialogue, idiolect, and profanity (yes, swearing is an artful activity!). We’ll reflect on when to give your characters a rest and let your narrator do the talking. The common saying, “Show, don’t tell” isn’t always true, but this fact begs the questions: How do I show? When do I tell? During the week, we will generate new writing through guided exercises and prompts; offer feedback/first impressions on what you produce; AND, for participants who desire it, we will workshop writing you bring from home. (This last activity is not obligatory, but it is encouraged.) I’ll also supply reading materials from eminent writers to illustrate key issues. Whether you’re an experienced writer or a newbie, whether you’re in the process of revision or haven’t finished your first draft, you will leave this workshop with a keener appreciation of the tools at your disposal and how they might serve your writing. In this workshop, we will generate new writing through guided exercises and prompts; offer feedback/first impressions on writing you produce in our week; workshop writing you bring from home.

Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book tells the seemingly simple story of two characters passing a single season on a small island, and yet writers ranging from Ali Smith to Phillip Pullman to Kathryn Davis have praised the novel’s “magnitude” and “genius,” and have suggested that it “comes to represent the whole universe.” In this generative prose workshop, we will use Johnson’s deceptively minimal masterpiece as a touchstone as we begin to assemble our own summer books from the unique driftwood floating in our memories and imaginations. How might a whole world—or at least a whole book—be constructed out of these discrete pieces? What locations, seasons, or characters from our own imagined or actual experiences might intersect—or bump surprisingly against one another—to yield a sustained and sustaining longer work? What narrative and expressive possibilities might be afforded by dispensing with causal plot structures, and by imagining a book not as a propulsive progression but as a more mysterious container for discontinuous but coalescing material? We will endeavor to answer such questions by collaboratively reading the crystalline, yet obscurely connected, components that comprise Johnson’s novel, alongside selections from other books built out of small prose blocks by writers like Sei Shōnagon, Giada Scodellaro, Maggie Nelson, and Sigrid Nunez. Just as crucially, we will explore the novelistic potential of the vignette by responding to writing prompts inspired by all we’ve discussed and discovered. By the end of the week, each student should expect to have started their own [Iowa] Summer [Writing Festival] Book! Lovers of literature (and summer!) at all levels of experience are welcome. In this workshop, we will generate new writing through guided exercises and prompts.

This class will focus on how we can use an investigation and exploration of the wider world as a springboard for writing more nuanced and resonant personal narratives. How can we situate our stories in larger social, political, and cultural spheres? How might we use research, journalism, or lyric association to show the connections held within our own stories? By the end of this course, participants will have greater fluency with blending various types of nonfiction and a more thorough understanding of the possibilities for opening up their personal narratives. Participants will have the opportunity to discuss a longer piece of their own work and read each other’s; while much of that discussion will focus on feedback for these pieces, we will also talk about how to grow and sustain communities of like-minded (and sometimes not like-minded!) readers. Participants will also have the option of completing short daily writing assignments that model the various strategies of approaching a narrative and are based upon the authors we read, such as Zadie Smith, Emily Maloney, Elena Passarello, and Lidia Yuknavitch. In this workshop, we will generate new writing through guided exercises and prompts; offer feedback/first impressions on writing you produce in our week.

For anyone who dreams about writing the movie they want to see—here’s your opportunity. Join award-winning screenwriter, producer, and story consultant Kat O’Brien in this weeklong workshop to unlock the cinematic potential of your storytelling. Whether you’re a novelist, memoirist, journalist, poet, or playwright curious about translating your storytelling skills to film, this course will help you navigate the art and craft of screenwriting while staying true to your unique voice. For writers new to screenwriting and seasoned pros alike, this course will be tailored to guide you through your unique process of bridging that gap between the movie in your mind and the screenplay on the page. This workshop is an opportunity for writers of all genres and levels of experience to develop and kickstart a draft of a feature-length screenplay. Bring a work in progress to refine or start from scratch and generate something new. Each session will combine lecture, discussion, interactive activities, time to write, and workshops delivering writer-centered feedback and first impressions on writing produced in class. Day one, we’ll start by pitching our ideas for new or existing feature stories. During our subsequent daily sessions, we’ll develop feature-length outlines, learn the guidelines of industry-standard screenplay format, and draft and table-read at least 10 pages of a feature film screenplay that will set you up to write a full-length feature on your own schedule. Whether you’re new to screenwriting or looking to refine your screenwriting craft, this weeklong intensive will offer a dynamic, supportive, structured environment to help you realize your ideas from pitch to page to screen at a pace that works for you, mindful of your unique creative bandwidth. Takeaways: Create professional pitch materials such as loglines, synopses, and one-pagers. Develop a feature-length, detailed step-outline. Draft and receive feedback on at least 10 pages of a feature screenplay that will set you up to finish the script on your own schedule In this workshop, we will generate new writing through guided exercises and prompts; offer feedback/first impressions on writing you produce in our week; workshop writing you bring from home.

Do your poems ignite in form or flurry? Are you a counter, a feeler, a connector, or a mess? A tinkerer or an iterator? Do your lines tend to blossom or knot? In this poetry workshop we’ll read and respond to participant poems with attention to control and chaos (not mutually exclusive) and how they manifest in one’s subjects, processes, revision practices, and endings. This class will be generative, joyful, energetic, and inquisitive. We’ll begin the week by sharing participant-made “calibration bouquets” (a small collection of what influences or provokes your writing) in order to quickly get to know each other’s work. Though our discussions will center participant writing, we’ll also take a look at poems by Lo Kwa Mei-en, Harryette Mullen, Oliver Baez Bendorf, and Lauren Shapiro—all writers interested in the intersection of turmoil and structure. This workshop is open to poets at all levels with a desire to explore what makes a poem fit together or fall apart. Each participant will workshop at least three poems, and our week together will include a one-on-one conference and personalized reading list. In this workshop, we will offer feedback/first impressions on writing you produce in our week; workshop writing you bring from home.