In this generative poetry-writing workshop, students will learn to recognize and manage that most slippery of pronouns in life and in poetry, “you.” Who “is” you in this poem? Can “you” be a cat? A bus? A planet? Me? Are you so vain you think this poem is about you? How dare “you”? Has this poem even met me? What is it this poem wants from me, the reader? Alternatively, what do I (the poet) want from you (the reader)? In five days with five respective units, we will cover: Unit 1: Cover letter (the private is public) Unit 2: The direct address (who are you this time?) Unit 3: The indirect address (expert eavesdropping) Unit 4: Mistaken identity (I thought you were someone else) Unit 5: I (who am I to address you thusly?) Students will have the opportunity to share work with one another, to read the works of life-changing poets, to receive feedback on previously written poems regarding how to radically re-envision their relationship to the reader (or you), and to meet one-on-one with me towards the end of the course. All levels 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; workshop writing you bring from home.

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.

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.

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.

Do you dream of making a book but feel like you’ll never write enough? You may already have more than you think. Whether you have scattered drafts, notes scribbled in the margins, or a collection of short pieces, this workshop will help you shape them into something whole—a zine, a chapbook, or even a full-length manuscript. In this workshop, we will: Gather the writing you already have, no matter how unfinished or fragmented. Organize these pieces like a collector arranging their most cherished keepsakes—finding connections, themes, and surprising through lines. Curate and showcase them with an editor’s eye, revealing the larger work that’s been waiting to emerge. Along the way, you’ll generate new writing in class, explore strategies for revision and re-writing, and develop a deeper understanding of your book’s potential structure. We’ll examine works by writers such as Cara Blue Adams, Carmen Maria Machado, Claudia Rankine, and Megan Stielstra—authors who have skillfully assembled their own books from a mosaic of prose. This workshop is ideal for writers with works in progress—whether in fiction or nonfiction—but is open to anyone eager to explore how smaller pieces can form a bigger picture. With feedback from both peers and the instructor, you’ll leave with a stronger sense of your book’s blueprint, a clearer vision for your project, and a renewed creative momentum. Come with what you have. Leave with a book in the making. 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.

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.

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.

If you were to find out that the heart of your poem is different from your own heart, would you still care about it? What if your poem doubted, or contradicted, something you have always believed or held dear? What if it misbehaved in public, got arrested, called you in the middle of the night to come down and bail it out—would you show up for it? If your answer is yes, then this workshop is for you. We will spend part of each session revising work participants submit in advance, and the other part composing new poetry. Revising and composing—every writer loves one of these a lot more than the other, but both are vital to master. To compose we must walk in the dark, go through doorways, and surprise ourselves on the page. We must be willing to play like children and not care about sucking. To revise we must put ourselves in the shoes of the reader, and zero in on what the poem wants to say, which is seldom (if ever) what we want to say. We must be ruthless, willing to cut even our best line if it advances the poem. This workshop is for anyone with a love of poetry writing, hungry to stretch their craft and deepen their approach. In this workshop, we will generate new writing through guided exercises and prompts; 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.

Let’s say you have a book idea, a book in progress, or a bunch of fragments that you hope will someday come together as a book. Let’s say that you’re unable to see exactly how everything should fit together or what the glue of the narrative is. Perhaps you’ve kicked around an idea for years but haven’t really committed to it, or possibly you’ve written the book already or are halfway through and have stopped. If this sounds like you, then you might consider writing a book proposal, whether you intend to submit this proposal to a publisher or not. Book proposals don’t have to be submitted to a publisher, but they can be an opportunity for you to understand your book more clearly and help you finish it. In this weeklong workshop, we will go through the process of writing proposals to potential publishers (or to yourself). While submitting a book proposal makes the most sense for writers of nonfiction or memoir, as it’s rare for a book of fiction to sell on one, anyone who wants to get a better handle on a longer project, regardless of genre, will benefit from this workshop. Even finished books need proposals sometimes to whet the appetites of agents and editors. We’ll learn about sample chapters, comparing your book to others, identifying your audience, and the chapter-by-chapter outline. Come to the class with one idea or several, or an outline (no more than 500 words) of your book in progress, or simply your frustration that the book you started years ago still isn’t done. While we can’t promise a cure-all, the book proposal might be a helpful tool for you. The class will largely be generative and will include daily exercises. 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.