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.

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.

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.

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.

Whether your story unfolds in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, an urban stockyard, a college campus or a quiet neighborhood, setting is a vital element. It shapes mood, deepens themes, and influences character. Setting is not necessarily a lengthy description of native plants and trees, although—if it’s integral to the unfolding drama—it can be. Nor is setting simply a backdrop. Setting is more akin to the air we breathe and, in some stories, the way we breathe it. In this course, we’ll explore techniques that evoke atmosphere, integrate sensory details, and make setting an active part of the plot. Together we’ll analyze literary examples of iconic worlds and identify the elements that make them vivid and unforgettable. We’ll consider the scope of setting, by comparing stories whose drama sprawls across entire towns to those contained within a home’s four walls. We’ll consider how sensory details create mood, genre, and atmosphere. Since all worlds—whether speculative, contemporary, or historical—have their unique histories and rules, we’ll study a variety of techniques for worldbuilding. We’ll use the language of film, too, to think about framing place through long-shots and close-ups. Whether you’re seeking inspiration for a new project or revising something old, this course will help you hone the contours of your fictional worlds. Participants will be given writing prompts at the end of each class and will share their short responses on the following day. Feedback will be given in class. Through a combination of collaborative craft talks, writing exercises, and peer feedback, participants will learn how to infuse their settings with sensual details, to evoke tension and mood through setting, as well as how to frame their settings. This course is for beginning and experienced writers alike. Participants will revise existing material or generate new material in response to daily prompts. Participants will share their responses in class and receive instructor and peer feedback orally. While we’ll draw largely on published fictions for inspiration, this course welcomes writers of all genres who wish to imagine and compose evocative settings. In this workshop, we will generate new writing through guided exercises and prompts; offer feedback/first impressions on writing you produce in our week.

Romance is one of the most read genres in fiction with a voracious readership. Whether this takes the form of a sweeping romantasy, a Hallmark-ish rom-com, or an action-packed contemporary, there’s one thing every good romance has in common, and that’s well-written chemistry. The draw of a happily ever after is the crux of the romance genre, but romantic relationships exist on the page across the expanse of literature. This class will include an exploration of the facets of creating romantic chemistry on page, including the use of common and not-so-common romance tropes, the role of conflict in romance, how to use dialogue to build on chemistry, the skills needed to write physical intimacy that sparks, and more. This class will be ideal for those beginning or exploring their interest in writing romance and may be very helpful for those hoping to strengthen their skills in writing romantic relationships in other genres. This class will provide an opportunity to share existing work with classmates and to create new work through exercises and assignments. You will leave this class with: An understanding of genre expectations. An introduction to the structure of a romance arc through character and plot. Skills for creating chemistry between love interests. Exercises to build and strengthen romantic relationships in your writing. A roadmap to begin writing your romance (if you’re new to writing in the genre). Denise Williams is the author of ten romance novels and novellas and her work has received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Library Journal, been selected as an Indie Next Pick, highlighted by NPR, The Washington Post, and Good Morning, America, and she’s a Library Reads Hall of Fame author. Denise co-taught a university course on using romance novels to explore social justice concepts and is a regular contributors to Writer’s Digest. More importantly, she’s one of those voracious romance readers and loves love stories. 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. Workshopping time will be limited, but there can be opportunity!

The personal essay—the most flexible, shapeshifting genre—has much to offer writers. This workshop is designed to educate students about the dynamic possibilities of creative nonfiction while also informing them about the origin of the essay and its demands. When and why do we weave public histories into individual stories? What is the impact of emotional truth versus factual truth? How do we distinguish memoir from autobiography, and the lyric essay from the traditional essay and reportage? What tools do writers have in terms of structure, and how do we use form to enrich any type of material? We’ll look at a range of essays—from the historic to the modern—and seek to understand what defines creative nonfiction in all its permutations. We’ll explore how various writers have navigated its possibilities and discuss ways to experiment with the typologies to create new directions for our own work. Participants will engage in writing prompts that address several experimental forms, including a found essay, a structural challenge, an exercise built around identity, and the use of a listicle to uncover topics that feel daring to the writer. Please come to class ready to write and engage in discussion with classmates. All students will be asked to share in class. In this workshop, we will generate new writing through guided exercises and prompts; offer feedback/first impressions on writing you produce in our weekend.

In his essay, “The Triggering Town,” Richard Hugo suggests that certain subjects inspire us to turn our attention to the music and play of language. In this weekend workshop, I propose we spend time discussing how our own triggering subjects—memories, places glimpsed in passing, an aroma that takes us back years, for example—might lead us forward in our own writing. We will begin our weekend by discussing the process by which such triggers prompt the imagination, the need to find words in response, and the desire to "fashion a text," as Annie Dillard says. I will share a few prompts, poems, and exercises that might “trigger” imaginative possibilities for your poems and prose (both new and in process) as well as suggest ways to develop your work. There will be time for writing in and out of class and sharing where these exercises have led you. Bring short pieces you have started, or attend simply to generate new material. By Sunday, I hope that we can share our work with each other and serve as a sympathetic and thoughtful audience. Our goal will be to discover new possibilities for our essays and poems, to come away with new material, and maybe even to discover new approaches to generating our written work. 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.

Let’s say you’re looking forward to a visit from your dear old Aunt Ida, but when she arrives, you’re disappointed by how tiresome and dull she is. Actually you’re disappointed in yourself: Aunt Ida has always been dull—why should this time be any different? Likewise, as writers, if we expect to succeed by working in the same way every time, no matter the subject, falling back on habitual patterns, we’re just inviting old Aunt Ida (bless her heart) for another visit. Even worse—we’re becoming her! As a teacher, I introduce writers to a multiplicity of practices for making discoveries on the page. But if I could only teach one, it would be “working against your drift.” Working against your drift is a dynamic practice that trains us to never be complacent, never settle for even a smart idea or clever move, never “get high off your own supply.” When we work against our drift, we adjust ourselves into greater precision and possibility, inviting the world’s subtlety and surprise onto the page. This workshop will include models, discussion and practices to help any writer, no matter the subject or genre. In this workshop, we will generate new writing through guided exercises and prompts; offer feedback/first impressions on writing you produce in our weekend.

John Boyne wrote The Boy in the Striped Pajamas in less than three days. Kazuo Ishiguro drafted The Remains of the Day in four weeks. About his process, Ishiguro explained, “The priority was simply to get the ideas surfacing and growing. Awful sentences, hideous dialogue, scenes that went nowhere—I let them remain and ploughed on.” By examining the fast-drafting process of established writers, this course will teach you how to silence the inner critic and accept imperfection as a necessary part of writing the first draft of any book. Whether you’re writing fiction or nonfiction or working on a novel or memoir, this course will teach you how to write as quickly and imperfectly as possible. You can expect short lectures on fast drafting, including but not limited to where to begin, how to outline and prepare, how to set your word count and deadlines, and how to overcome mental obstacles. You should also expect to complete in-class exercises or writing prompts and engage in partner or group discussions that strengthen your understanding of fast drafting. By the end of this course, you’ll have learned fast drafting techniques to help jumpstart a new writing project or reignite enthusiasm for a languishing manuscript. In this workshop, we will generate new writing through guided exercises and prompts.