Thursdays, 6:30 - 8pm (Pacific Time), Oct 8 - Nov 12 | ZOOM

Place shapes us before we have words for it. This workshop looks at how poets have written about landscape, region, and the ground they know, or have lost, with a keen eye for detail, earned veracity, and vitality. Over six weeks we will read poets for whom place is sacred ground: Heaney on the Irish bog, Jeffers on the California coast, Forché on Central America torn by war. We will look how the physical world enters into the poem and what it carries when it does, paying particular attention to what arises in times of conflict. Writers will bring their own landscapes to the table and develop new ways of translating the signals they carry to the page. 

Bonus: Exclusive discount when you register by September 8 (discount applied at checkout)

Sundays, 10am - 12pm (Pacific Time), Oct 18 - Nov 22 | ZOOM

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How do we fill our emotional and creative bowls when they are emptied? How do we write when dealing with stress, grief, or anxiety? I believe we can turn to the physical world for guidance and support. In this 6-week generative class, we will write and share together, exploring our own immediate work alongside poems by Michael Dickman, Katie Peterson, Callie Siskel, Erin Clarke, Robin Coste Lewis, Major Jackson, and others. Join me and let's fill our bowls together! Limit: 12 writers.

Bonus: Exclusive discount when you register by September 8 (discount applied at checkout)

Tuesdays, 10:30am - 12pm (Pacific Time), Nov 3 - Dec 8 | ZOOM

Have you set your novel aside for years but it keeps tugging you back to it? Keep thinking about a short story that’s been sitting in your drafts folder for a decade? This course is dedicated to reviving old works through deep re-visioning. We’ll strive to identify what it is about the work that keeps calling you back to it and thinking outside of the piece’s original shape to find the form that truly tells it. This may mean radically changing the story’s structure or even taking what resonates–the characters, a setting, an event–and placing it in an entirely different premise. This course isn’t for putting a bit of polish on the sentences before submitting the story. It’s for taking the work apart, rewriting it, and putting it all together in a different shape. This course will focus on participant’s projects through frequent discussion and workshopping up to 20 pages each.

Bonus: Exclusive discount when you register by September 8 (discount applied at checkout)

Mondays, 10:30am - 12pm (Pacific Time), Nov 16 - Dec 21 | ZOOM

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Oregon poet William Stafford once remarked that poetry is "just talk, with a little luck in it.” In this generative workshop we will explore a plainspoken poetry, the poetry that does not yell "Here I am! Look at me!" but instead relies on its own steady and local music, and a little luck. With poets such as Matsuo Basho, Kobayashi Issa, Jane Kenyon, Harryette Mullen, Marie Howe, and William Stafford as our guides we will write our way into new poems and a lot of luck. Open to all poets.

Bonus: Exclusive discount when you register by September 8 (discount applied at checkout)

Tuesdays, 11:30 - 1:30pm, Jan 12 - Feb 16

Start your day with short stories! Read five short stories. Write and workshop one. Over six weeks, we’ll explore how varied the short story form can be, focusing on craft elements and writing techniques. We’ll learn about creating characters, building plot, developing setting, exploring theme and symbol, and writing sentences that sing. Participants will write one short story in this workshop, receiving peer and instructor feedback in a supportive environment to help them revise. 

Bonus: Exclusive discount when you register by December 15 (discount applied at checkout)

Wednesdays, 6:30 - 8:30pm, Jan 13 - Feb 17

Do you have difficulty writing during these dark winter days? Let’s meet in person and motivate one another to write a short story! Each week, you will complete in-class fiction writing exercises designed to assist you in completing your first full draft. You will also have the opportunity to share excerpts from your story-in-progress with the class and to read recently published, award-winning short stories from writers such as Dave Eggers, Addie Citchens, Jess Walter, and Amber Caron.

Bonus: Exclusive discount when you register by December 15 (discount applied at checkout)

Wednesdays, 6 - 8pm, Jan 13 - Feb 17, ZOOM

Every novel’s opening chapter establishes a contract with the reader. What are you promising in your opening pages? How do you craft that all-important first chapter to draw your reader in while also setting yourself up to tell the story you want to tell? This online workshop includes craft lectures, in-depth exploration of the openings of published novels, and the opportunity to workshop the opening chapter of your own novel.

Bonus: Exclusive discount when you register by December 15 (discount applied at checkout)

Thursdays, 6:30 - 8:00 pm, Jan 14- Feb 18, Zoom

Why tell a story in a poem instead of a short story or a memoir? Because narrative poems, especially ones that use the narrative-associative form, can bend and dilate time, compressing distance, scenes, and events to create the kind of literary velocity and impact that few writers in any genre attain. We'll read poets who knew a story doesn't need to sprawl to devastate — storytellers who found verse the only form fierce enough to hold what they had to say. Then we'll put those tools to work on our own poems. (For those who've taken Art of Prose Poetry: that workshop leans on form and cadence; this one leans on velocity and compression.) We hope you'll join us.

Reading list: Robert Hayden, Natasha Trethewey, Patricia Smith, Ai, Larry Levis, C.K. Williams, Sharon Olds, Yusef Komunyakaa, Marie Howe

Bonus: Exclusive discount when you register by December 15 (discount applied at checkout)

Saturdays, 9am - 12pm, Jan 16 + Jan 23

Many of us believe, ultimately, we have an obligation to ourselves, our practice, and the poetry community to send our poems into the world. Here’s a two-day workshop to fulfill that special New Year’s Resolution. Before our first session, you will send to the group a batch of seven poems from which you want to build a solid submission packet for journals. I will provide instructions in advance about your responsibility as you look at the work of your fellow writers. Once we meet, through discussion, critique, and encouragement, you will leave with all you need to assemble a packet ready for a literary journal and their editorial eye. Then, during the second session, we will convene for a whirlwind. After beginning with thorough instructions (and a bit of folklore) about the submission process, we will identify potential homes for our work, and finally we’ll have an old-fashioned hoedown of a submission party. Everyone will submit one or more batches. No one will leave the room without sending work into the world. Open to all poets at all levels.

Sundays, 4-6pm, Jan 24 - Feb 28

Writing has the power to transport us through time. With a few words, we can return to childhood, suspend a moment, see into the future or perhaps write a better one. This generative, multi-genre workshop is organized by a focus on past, present, and future tense, as we probe into what each unlocks. Great readings and prompts to keep you going long after the workshop wraps up. Writers from all genres welcome.

Wednesdays, Jan 27 - Mar 31, 10:30am - 12:30pm

Writing Lab is a writing group for people who want to learn to do the “little things” well . It's comprised of writers who practice making — both the technical and the private strategies required to push forward your ability to write in whatever genre you’re working in forward -- and help others in the group do so, as well.

• Schedule: Poetry Lab meets for ten week sessions designed to concentrate on nine composition and revision elements every writer needs to handle.

• Philosophy: The group is based on the idea that bringing dedicated writers together to create a rich laboratory to incubate your writing provides accountability and the freedom to grow.

• Focus: The focus of Writing Lab is experimentation, technique, analysis, decision-making, openness, and results.

• Process: Each week is focused on one of the nine elements — practice in class and practice at home to make time for wildly experimenting, troubleshooting, and tinkering, as well as receiving focused feedback.

Thursdays, 6:30 - 8pm, Apr 1 - May 6 | ZOOM

Poetry has a reputation for seriousness, for being literary "high church." But some of the most intelligent and durable poems are funny—not as decoration, as method. Humor uses surprise to get past a reader's defenses. It says what can be difficult to say straight, without sounding pedantic or preachy. This workshop treats humor as craft. We'll follow its range — from satire that punches up at power, to self-deprecation that creates intimacy, to absurdism that fractures logic to make its point, to gallows humor that keeps grief company as a been-there-before witness. We will open the hood to see how these methods work in context and  incorporate their ideas into our own work. Come join us. 

Reading list: Nash, Parker, Collins, Swift, M. Parker, Hayes, Hoagland, Addonizio, O'Hara, Tate, Simic, Duhamel, Alexie, Limón, Ryan.

Bonus: Exclusive discount when you register by December 15 (discount applied at checkout)