2026 Workshops Session I
Character-Centered Storytelling
The core of this workshop consists of the fearless sharing of your work with the class. Everyone will submit either an excerpt or short story, so that when we meet in person in June, we will all be prepared to carefully give feedback. I will deliver short craft talks each day on a variety of subjects: character, dialogue, plot, etc. After our individual meeting you will have a clear plan of attack for next steps. Taught by Trey Ellis
Crafting the Best Literary Fiction
Our workshop will review of novel chapters, short stories, and other narratives. Writers will receive practical critiques to create tailored strategies for rewriting. The class will work collaboratively on exercises to sharpen writing skills as well to create new work, and discuss what makes a great sentence and paragraph, and consider narrative voice, suspense, and metaphor. All workshop members will receive the individual time and focus necessary to take their writing to the next level. Taught by Sergio Troncoso
Crafting Your Story or Novel
How do you transform potential readers into actual ones? In this workshop we begin by reviewing story structure, then move through characterization, description, dialogue, and point of view, emphasizing how these craft elements create and maintain readers' interest in your short story or novel. In-class exercises will keep our writing muscles limber, and workshops will emphasize the positive, since writers must know what they do well in order to do more of it. Taught by Adam Sexton
The Journey As Narrative
The hero's journey is a structure often utilized by fiction writers. This writing workshop will provide in-depth feedback for submissions in short fiction, novel excerpts, novellas, and hybrid fiction in a supportive environment. It will also include creative writing prompts to generate new work. Taught by Lisa Page
Memoir: Writing the Difficult Topic
Why should anyone care about your story? Find out how to make readers (and publishers) engage with your nonfiction. This workshop will focus on translating complex experiences into narratives that resonate on a personal and cultural level. All writers will leave with a clearer map for next steps in their journey as a writer. Taught by Mary Collins
Opening Moves: Building Beginnings That Grab Readers
The first ten pages of any project—novel, short story, essay, or memoir—are critical for grabbing the attention of readers, editors, and agents. While workshopping the first ten pages of your submission and analyzing successful openings of published work, we’ll examine and discuss genre, audience, setting, tone, interiority, scene, perspective (point of view), “voice,” sentence structure, pacing, and other craft elements that work to create compelling openings in fiction and nonfiction. Taught by Sybil Baker
Personal Anthropology: Reporting in the First Person
First-person writing about topics of broad concern can be electrifying, rousing readers to see their surroundings anew. In this creative nonfiction writing workshop, you’ll explore strategies for connecting personal experience to larger ideas in the arts and culture, in your manuscripts. We’ll read in-depth nonfiction that combines memoir with on-the-ground reporting and historical research, and discuss works from great practitioners, past and present, to see how they did it. Taught by Kate Bolick
Writing for the Screen
This session aims to demystify the craft of writing feature screenplays. Participants will critique submissions and read professional screenplays, explore character development and act structure as well as such screen trade principles as: in late, out early; activity is not action, talk is not dialogue. Our ultimate goal will be to write/revise an act or more of an original screenplay or an adaptation from a work of intellectual property in the public domain. Taught by Derek Green