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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

When we write memoirs or personal essays, we inevitably find ourselves depicting those who have had the most influence in our lives—our family members. To understand the self, we must understand them. Take a look at a shelf of memoirs, and you will see just how vital those relationships are—in Tara Westover’s Education or Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home or Michael Ondaatje’s Running in the Family. However, writing about family is risky, and there are legendary stories of family members who stopped talking after a memoir was published. As a result, we don’t want to get it wrong. In this weeklong workshop, we will practice ways to write more freely and honestly while still honoring those we care about. We will discuss how other authors have handled writing about mothers, fathers, spouses, and children, and we will generate new stories, getting feedback on how we portray the central relationships. Nonfiction writers are welcome, along with fiction writers who are drawing upon family experience. If you are developing a longer manuscript, bring it along. There will be time for sharing. In this workshop, we will generate new writing through exercises and assignments and also provide feedback on writing you produce during the week.

No matter what type of novel you’re interested in—literary, science fiction, paranormal, young adult, rom-com, mystery, etc.—you’d probably think it ideal if it had many readers. If it attracted buzz. If it were, in other words, popular. In this weeklong workshop, we’ll discuss the elements that make popular novels (across genres) so popular (according to bestseller lists and computer algorithms), and we’ll look at participants’ submissions with these elements in mind, to increase the odds that your own novels will become widely read. Our goal in this workshop is to help you plan or strengthen your ideas for novels so that they become works you’re not only proud of—but also works that just might enable you to buy that nice little château you have your eye on…. This weeklong class is best-suited for writers with some experience. (We define “experience” broadly. If you’ve taken workshops in fiction or narrative nonfiction, or you’ve established a writing practice on your own, or you’re familiar with the elements of narrative craft via some other means, you’re experienced!) The class welcomes those with a novel already underway and those interested in generating new work. While the class is focused on the novel, if writers writing memoirs or connected short story collections feel they would benefit from the class, they are welcome. Read more...

Memoirists face two essential tasks: First, to tell the story of plotted story of action, the narrative of what happened. Second, to tell the story of one’s own change and growth over time, and the story of what it all means. That second story is where the author’s larger message is conveyed, elevating one person’s experience from the unique and personal to the universal and shared. It reveals what your story is about. But how do we extract that deeper message from a story, and articulate it to readers in a meaningful way? And how can we expect to achieve this, if we haven’t yet identified what that larger message is? Read more...

Maybe you have an exciting idea for a memoir or narrative nonfiction book you’d like to write. “That’s a great idea!” people say. “Just write it!” they say. So you sit down and write. And you write. And you write some more. But the story meanders aimlessly, spins off in multiple directions, or seems to fizzle after 30 or 40 pages. You aren’t sure where it’s going, how to tell your story, or how to actually turn this unwieldy thing into a book. Do not despair. You are not alone. This workshop is for you! In this workshop, we will talk about common pitfalls in writing a book-length project. We’ll discuss things like the importance of structure and a clear understanding of the underlying themes that drive your book in order to carry your reader from chapter to chapter. We’ll share our individual projects and writing to receive peer and instructor feedback, and to evaluate potential overarching issues. You’ll leave the course with tangible resources to support you, and a better idea of how to approach and develop your longer writing project, so that when you return home you will feel more confident about where exactly you’re going when you sit down to write your book. In this workshop, we will generate new writing through exercises and assignments, and provide feedback on writing you produce in our week.

Plot and character drive the action in most fiction, but time-management and “camerawork” are crucial for enriching the story and drawing a reader in. This weeklong session is open to all levels, but will be particularly useful for writers who feel comfortable with the basics and are looking for techniques to make their storytelling more dynamic—“dynamic” because time-management and camerawork thrive on variation, as much as on consistency. At any point in a story, the normal forward tempo of time—maybe for a sentence, or maybe for a passage—stops (for a description of the mud room beside the kitchen) or rewinds itself in a blur (for a flashback of how the windowpane got cracked) or speeds up (for a sweeping summary of how that crack spread in subtle ways throughout the house). Likewise, a single short paragraph that begins with a bird’s-eye view of a city might zoom in and finish inside one character’s inner monologue. We’ll look at dozens of examples of both techniques and do guided writing exercises so that you can feel from the inside the textures these techniques create. Most importantly, we’ll examine how the two techniques influence each other—how time-management affects the camerawork, and vice versa. You’ll go home with the tools to make your narrator nimbler and your storytelling more gripping. In this workshop, we will generate new writing through exercises and assignments; provide feedback on writing you produce in our week.