Classes at the Attic

A house can be many things. A witness, a shelter, a prison. A house can hold multitudes. Family matters, domestic conflicts, psychological warfare, ants. What lives in a house? What stays together, and what falls apart? How do writers of the uncanny utilize the rooms and walls in a house? We’ve all heard of the haunted, weary house. But what about the liveliest house on the block? What does it have to say? In this generative workshop, we will explore the role of the house (and the many voices inside it) through writing exercises and prompts. We will also read and discuss short stories by Daisy Johnson, Mariana Enriquez, Samantha Hunt, Helen Oyeyemi, Amelia Gray, K-Ming Chang, and others. Then, with the tools we’ve gained, we will investigate this multifaceted space in our own work.

Register for this workshop

NOTE: To protect everyone during the COVID-19 pandemic, we're offering our workshops via Zoom. All students must first sign up for a free Zoom account. Setting it up is easy. And we can help you with questions, if needed. For each class, you'll receive a Zoom "invitation," from the instructor. Click the link...follow the simple directions about the settings for your microphone and in-computer video, and you're immediately in the "room" for the workshop. For critique workshops, instructors will communicate with students about the process of sharing work. For more generative workshops, students will be writing together while on Zoom.

Liberate your writing practice and bust open the boundaries of your work with this genre-bending workshop. Each week, you'll be introduced to fresh hybrid and mixed genre work while exploring new possibilities in your own poems. What can a poem do when it isn't hemmed-in by convention? How can we achieve poetry's effects without received forms? With plenty of in-class exercises and weekly feedback, this class is an invigorating and sunny literary joy ride for writers of all experience levels. Maximum: 12 writers

Register for this workshop

NOTE: To protect everyone during the COVID-19 pandemic, we're offering our workshops via Zoom. All students must first sign up for a free Zoom account. Setting it up is easy. And we can help you with questions, if needed. For each class, you'll receive a Zoom "invitation," from the instructor. Click the link...follow the simple directions about the settings for your microphone and in-computer video, and you're immediately in the "room" for the workshop. For critique workshops, instructors will communicate with students about the process of sharing work. For more generative workshops, students will be writing together while on Zoom.

A generative workshop that explores the boundaries of poetry. The intersection of poetry and prose offers a range of possibilities for style and subject. No previous writing experience needed. Reading will be provided two weeks before our meeting. 

"Thank you Ruben Quesada for an incredible class. It was full of fascinating information and the prompts Ruben gave us inspired my generative work (and from the other poets, you could tell it was the same for them)! Ruben also cultivated a space of openness and sharing that was truly remarkable for such a short class. He is a fantastic addition to the Attic, and I sincerely hope to take classes with him in the future. I most definitely would be interested to continue learning from and writing with Ruben." ~ Emma Nelson, student

Register for this workshop

NOTE: To protect everyone during the COVID-19 pandemic, we're offering our workshops via Zoom. All students must first sign up for a free Zoom account. Setting it up is easy. And we can help you with questions, if needed. For each class, you'll receive a Zoom "invitation," from the instructor. Click the link...follow the simple directions about the settings for your microphone and in-computer video, and you're immediately in the "room" for the workshop. For critique workshops, instructors will communicate with students about the process of sharing work. For more generative workshops, students will be writing together while on Zoom.

Flash nonfiction, simply put, is true-to-life writing defined by extreme compression: it's saying what you've got to say using as few words, and as much beauty, as possible. An endlessly accessible, playful, potent form, flash nonfiction is evermore popular; from Brevity to Barren, The Forge to The Sun, legions of journals are eager to publish great flash.

In this prompt-driven workshop, we'll read short nonfiction by master writers, including Ross Gay, Natalie Lima, Ira Sukrungruang, Roxane Gay, Jerald Walker, Ruth Ozeki, and many more; we'll talk about what stories are suited for flash, how to tell them well, and where to publish them; and most of all, we'll write, and write, and write, via in-class exercises and take-home prompts. Students will leave the class with reams of new writing and ideas for where to publish.

Register for this workshop

NOTE: To protect everyone during the COVID-19 pandemic, we're offering our workshops via Zoom. All students must first sign up for a free Zoom account. Setting it up is easy. And we can help you with questions, if needed. For each class, you'll receive a Zoom "invitation," from the instructor. Click the link...follow the simple directions about the settings for your microphone and in-computer video, and you're immediately in the "room" for the workshop. For critique workshops, instructors will communicate with students about the process of sharing work. For more generative workshops, students will be writing together while on Zoom.