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.

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.

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.

This weeklong workshop is intended for anyone whose writing project involves bringing the past to life, whether it’s your own life, the life of family members, or the life and times of fully fictional characters. Some topics we’ll consider: What’s the best way to conduct your research, then incorporate that research into your narrative? How do you animate the past? If you’re writing memoir and the significant events have already happened, how do you make them feel fresh for the reader? What are some writerly tricks when writing historical prose, and what are some common pitfalls to avoid? Workshop members are expected to arrive with a 5- to 10-page sample of their writing project, which the group will consider. We’ll also generate new work using directed writing prompts. Instructor Eric Goodman’s eight book, Mother of Bourbon, a historical novel, will be published in April 2025. His sixth book, Cuppy and Stew (2020), combined historical fiction and faux memoir, so he’s spent considerable time in the past five years wrestling the past onto the page. In this first-time workshop, he’ll pass on what’s he learned. 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.

Where to begin? That’s the question memoirists are faced with at the beginning of a project. Whether your story spans years, months, or days, the opening pages of the book must capture the reader. In this workshop, we’ll look at a range of “beginnings”—considering the various styles, strategies, and approaches writers use to bring the reader into the world of their book. The week will involve a range of reading and writing exercises, as well as time dedicated to workshopping. Overall, you can expect to be writing a lot and reading a lot. The class will be useful for those just starting out, those with a project in mind, and those already in process. In this workshop, we will generate new writing through guided exercises and prompts; offer feedback/first impressions on writing you produce in our week.

In this class, we’ll explore what the people, events, challenges, and experiences in our lives have to teach us, and what we feel, sense, and know—or don’t know—about hope, grace, love, life, and death. Every day we’ll “listen” with our writing to another part of our lives, using prompts and in-class writing to find the concrete details and textured emotional landscapes, the beginnings and endings, the everyday acts and overarching themes enfolded in our lives and stories. As anyone who has engaged with writing in any serious way knows, writing itself is essentially a spiritual endeavor, and in order to write well it’s necessary to tap into the flow of spiritual energy inside each of us, whether we call that energy creativity or inspiration or something else. In the class we’ll use my easy, foolproof method for tapping into the inner wellspring from which all good writing comes, generating new, often surprising writing in an energizing, strictly positive environment. We’ll also spend time working on editing the writing we get, using spiritual skills such as listening to intuition and briefly dropping down into the silence beyond thought, to improve our editing skills and finish some writing we’ve generated. Together we’ll create a small, close-knit community that fosters creativity, engenders fresh material and new ideas, and results in writing that shines from within. This class will be useful for anyone writing essays, a memoir, or a spiritual autobiography; for anyone struggling with perfectionism; and for anyone who’s just getting started or trying to locate their true material. The 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 week. Feedback on writing generated in class is strictly positive, but we'll work on learning to edit, too.

Every piece of nonfiction prose has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Of course we want the beginning to be inviting, even beguiling, and for the end, we want Closure with a capital “C.” But the pesky part is the middle, and sometimes the most bewildering question we ask about an essay in its early drafts is “How is the middle put together?” This workshop is for nonfiction writers who want to dive into the myriad ways to structure an essay or a memoir with power, momentum, and sustained impact on readers. Whether you are just starting out in writing nonfiction, or have many essays finished in your repertoire, this workshop will focus on questions about form. Writers have many options to arrange their prose, from conventional chronology or narrative, to the more postmodern forms, like the “braided” essay, or a “hybrid” form, in which the point seems to be to scramble conventional order so that the prose moves forward with disparate, contrary styles. No matter what we choose, what we want is the indelible feeling that the writing is moving forward, and a sense that the structure fits the language so powerfully that the reader couldn’t imagine the piece being structured in any other way. Our conversations about your manuscripts will give you a chance to listen to readers describe how they perceived form as the essay moved toward its conclusion. We will achieve this through a combination of workshop review of pieces we bring (short or long), as well as a few exercises to shake up our sense of the possibility in structuring nonfiction. We’ll pay particular attention to questions of order, sequence, suspense, and momentum, and we’ll work to describe and control those features that make the “middle” have its own power and depth. 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.

Memoirists face two essential tasks: First, to tell the story of plotted action, the narrative of what happened. And second, to tell the story of one’s own change and growth over time and reflecting on 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 bring that deeper message up to the surface 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? As Vivian Gornick has emphasized, what happened to an author is not what matters. What matters is what the author makes of those experiences. This class will help you clarify what you make of your own story, and give you tools for sharing these insights with readers. We’ll identify the underlying themes and archetypes of your nonfiction narrative. We’ll also work on creating passages of reflection and analysis that will resonate deeply with readers. Come to this intermediate-level workshop with pages you’ve already polished or first-draft work you’re ready to revise. You’ll generate new writing through in- and out-of-class assignments. Plan to share some pages during the week, and to offer other participants as much as you’ll receive. 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. Bringing writing from home is welcome but not required.

This workshop is designed for fiction writers who are familiar with the workshopping process, who feel comfortable with at least some of the craft elements, and who have a story or novel excerpt that they would like to keep revising. The class will give constructive feedback on new manuscripts, highlighting what is working well in this draft and where the next draft might go. The workshop welcomes a wide range of story types, and our guiding principles will be to meet each story where it’s at and to see it on its own terms. As we read and comment on each other’s drafts, the conversation will also explore the writers’ toolbox, discussing topics such as plot, character, time management, point of view, language, image, and more. Looking at one’s work critically can be tough, but this session will be uplifting. The tenor will be professional, decorous, critically informed, and—I hope—inspiring. Plan to send, in advance of our meeting in Iowa City, the story or novel excerpt (no more than fifteen pages) you would like to share. In this workshop, we will workshop writing you bring from home.

If you’ve always wanted to write a novel, this class is for you. Come with an idea, some notes, an outline, a rough draft, or anything in between. Wherever you are in this process, your classmates and I will help you move forward. You’ll generate new work (both in and outside of class) and share it with your classmates and me for immediate feedback. We’ll read and analyze novel excerpts and examine techniques the authors use. I’ll give you writing prompts to help you create a compelling voice, a vivid setting, rounded characters, and a suspenseful structure. You’ll return home with a fuller understanding of the novel writing process, more of your novel written, and renewed confidence that you’ll be able to see it through. Together we’ll work hard, have fun, and inspire each other. In this workshop, we will generate new writing through guided exercises and prompts; offer feedback/first impressions on writing you produce in our week.