When we write memoir, personal essay, or autofiction, we have to make choices about how to represent our various selves at different moments in time. In order to bring the past alive, it becomes necessary to think of the shifting self as a character. Our task becomes to find ways to represent this self on the page—just as a novelist must do when writing fiction. This attempt plays a role in the choices we make around setting, dramatic movement and tension, voice, narrative distance, and more. In this weekend workshop, you’ll learn from a variety of ways authors have written themselves as characters. We’ll read excerpts from the work of Marguerite Duras, Vivian Gornick, Jamaica Kincaid, and others as we try our hand at a range of strategies. By the end of our weekend, you’ll have lots of material, and you’ll have discovered new ways to represent the self on the page. We will end the weekend with time for everyone to share new work with the group and leave with plenty of ideas for moving forward. 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 an effort to get over ourselves as personal storytellers, we’ll strive in this intensive course to make every sentence, indeed every word, count. What must be there for a reader to get a sense of us? What’s that inciting incident, organizing principle, heat-seeking moment, that could drive our memoirs? We’ll spend Saturday talking about how we all have many memoirs in us, but each needs to be a specific slice—the statue within the block of marble, the sculpture within the lump of clay, the story-within-the-story. What’s this particular memoir about? (“Me” or “My life” aren’t precise enough answers.) We’ll also engage in in-class writing exercises, to see what memories rise to the surface as crucial memoir kernels, and discuss excerpts from published works—by economical personal writers such as Jeannette Walls and Karen Schneider—to energize and inspire us. Overnight, we’ll write our “life stories” in 500 words, allowing the narrower story to start taking shape. Sunday, we’ll share our pieces and workshop them on the spot. Nothing to submit in advance. Open-minded introspectives with a desire to communicate, at all levels of writing experience, 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 weekend.

For writers, getting your work published and recognized is a step toward realizing your goals as an author. However, finding the right contests or publications can be challenging, time consuming, and even mystifying. In this hands-on workshop, we’ll talk through all the joys and perils of the submission process and the world of publishing poetry. We’ll review lists of helpful tips, look at ways to identify and find publishers who might be receptive to your work, practice methods to track and manage your submissions, and even talk about how to deal with rejection. We’ll cover strategies for submitting individual poems to literary journals, as well as strategies for submitting chapbooks and book-length manuscripts for publication, using the features of Submittable, a submission management system for the literary world. There will be a lot of time for questions and discussion, and our workshop will in part be tailored to your curiosities and interests. You'll leave armed with tools to identify journals and publishers that are a good fit for your work, the know-how to create a personalized submission strategy, and a new confidence in sending your work out for publication.

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.

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.

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.

Have you ever wanted to create a character totally different from your own experience but got cold feet? Possibly because you’ve heard or read the adage that writers should “write what you know.” Toni Morrison, however, famously instructed her students to “write something you don’t know. And don’t be scared, ever.” Myriad writers across the ages have challenged themselves to write about characters quite unlike themselves with regard to race, gender, age, ethnicity, etc.—some more successfully than others. We all possess the right to write about whomever we please. But we must write the truth about these folks despite not having “walked in their shoes.” So, how do we avoid creating characters who are inauthentic—or worse, stereotypes? Author Dani Shapiro says that as writers “we need to know what makes a character unique, nuanced, indelible.” In this brief course we will examine works from writers who have successfully created authentic characters with whom they have little in common. We will explore what type of research is required for this undertaking. We will also look at unsuccessful and inauthentic attempts, deciphering where the writers went wrong. Participants will generate work both in class and out via writing prompts and mini-assignments and will receive workshop-style feedback with instructions on giving feedback with compassion. They will leave the class with clear strategies for developing realistic characters who are markedly different from themselves. New as well as established writers may enroll in this class. They may bring work they want to improve but may also create new work. Everyone will leave bursting with ideas about story and characterization, including a music playlist for one main character. 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.

Who are the characters you really want to read about? Not the well-behaved ones, but the scoundrels: the characters you love to hate and really want to follow. In this workshop for fiction writers at any level, we will discuss some stories and novel excerpts that feature characters who are flawed—the transgressors, the obsessives, and more—see how they work on the page, and develop some memorable characters of our own. We will do generative exercises in which you can explore different types of compelling characters. Students will receive a one- to two-page homework assignment on Saturday, and can share characters they create with the class on Sunday; we will do generative work both days. In this workshop, we will generate new writing through guided exercises and prompts; offer feedback/first impressions on writing you produce in our weekend.

How useful the emoji! Beyond their charm, these little images clarify tone, save us time and sometimes trouble, and offer pops of flair to our otherwise mundane communication (fireworks! dancing lady in red!). How, we wonder, did we ever communicate without them? And now that they’re here, how can written language hope to keep up? Well, consider this two-day bootcamp a celebration of that most incredible of human technologies—the sentence. We all have our patterns for sentence-making, our go-tos of syntax and diction. Which means that we’re all at risk of settling into ruts. This class aims to diversify our toolkits, starting with a clean distinction between two primary types of sentences. From there, we’ll move among in-class, generative writing exercises, brief craft lessons, and close-reading discussions about exemplary sentences drawn from novels, stories, essays, and poems. Because the best way to become a better sentence writer is to become a better sentence appreciator. We will emulate, appropriate, and absorb from literature’s best teachers. This course will benefit new and experienced writers alike–any sharing of work will be voluntary and the critical atmosphere will be one of discovery, exploration, and mutual support. All students will leave this weekend with a richer understanding of diction, syntax, and the interplay between speaker and voice. And, perhaps, a better understanding of what we mean by that elusive, slippery thing we call “style.” In this workshop, we will generate new writing through guided exercises and prompts; offer feedback/first impressions on writing you produce in our weekend.

Are you a kid at heart? Got a great idea for a picture book? This course is designed with you in mind! The children’s book publishing market is alive, thriving, and very competitive. So, how do you make sure your manuscript stands out? Let’s explore! By reading and discussing award-winning books and ones that simply touch hearts, we will investigate why and how writing for children is different from—but not easier than—writing for adults. Please bring one of your favorite children’s books to the first class (hard copies or pdfs acceptable). We will sort out the “rules” of picture-book writing as we discern what makes these books work. In addition, we will examine craft tips about writing for children from experts in the field. There will be in-class writing prompts and assignments to complete after class. We will “workshop” (students read and comment on each other’s work compassionately) the writing generated inside as well as outside of class. The focus will be on fiction, but we will also touch on tips for children’s nonfiction. This course is for new writers and/or writers who are new to picture-book writing, as well as those who have written a picture book manuscript but have not yet published one. (Participants may have previously published works for adults.) Through our readings, group discussions, and writing prompts, and by workshopping the writing you generate, you will come away brimming with ideas. You’ll leave the week with a draft manuscript and/or ideas for revising a manuscript you already have in the works. We will also touch on the world of traditional publishing and marketing. (Disclaimer: I have no experience with self-publishing.) 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. We will do it all!