Workshop Descriptions
The Yale Young Writers' Workshop offers a range of courses designed to help students refine their writing skills across various genres. The program provides personalized instruction and feedback from experienced faculty, encouraging young writers to explore their creativity, develop their voice, and enhance their writing abilities. Workshops focus on fostering a supportive and collaborative environment, allowing participants to grow as writers while engaging with peers who share similar passions. More details about each workshop can be found below.
On-campus Workshops
Fiction
Kristin Bair
Whether your characters are traveling through time, aisle 8 in the grocery store, or a broken heart, we’ll look closely at what makes them tick and how to make them feel like real people. We’ll talk about the building blocks of a scene: action, dialogue, and place. Expect lots of laughter, some lightbulb moments, and a sprinkling of magic. You will return to your desk with new tools, fresh inspiration, and more confidence in your work. Let’s tell stories!
Jotham Burrello
To write, and write compelling stories readers cannot put down, a writer must, well, write a lot, and study the craft of fiction. In this workshop, through journaling, reading published work, and completing generative exercises writers will develop original stories and master craft techniques to fill your writing toolbox. These techniques will benefit writers in high school, college, and beyond. We’ll form a support community and assist our fellow literary artists in making discoveries on the page. All writers’ welcome!
Non-Fiction
Lara Ehrlich
Whether you’re inspired by personal experiences, curious about the world, or passionate about important topics, this workshop will guide you in transforming your ideas into powerful nonfiction. Through creative exercises, readings, and plenty of opportunities to write and share our work, we'll explore how to structure stories, bring our ideas to life with vivid details, and refine our voices. Together, we’ll create an exciting space to practice and grow as writers.
Poetry
Summer Tate
Where do we find inspiration? It can be in nature with Haiku or in photographs while creating ekphrastic poems. In this workshop, we will find inspiration from various sources that lend themselves to historical documentation. We will explore different literary devices together, creating a collaborative space for poetry creation. The goal is to familiarize you with various writing methods and make generating poems more accessible and less rare. So, get ready to look around you and find your next muse!
Online Workshops
Fiction
Sarah Darer Littman
While stories have common elements (character, setting, dialogue, action) each story we write might require different tools of craft. In this generative workshop, we'll read and discuss short stories with an eye for craft, and through journaling and prompts, experiment with new tools for your writer's toolbox. We'll learn from each other in a supportive environment, and come away with a plan to complete and revise your work.
Anne Thalheimer
Storytelling exists in multiple worlds simultaneously; plotting a story, creating characters, and world-building, while also relying on images and visual description to move narratives forward. We’ll spend some time working with each of these elements while shaping our ideas into stories. Our workshop will begin with an idea and end with a plan. In between, we'll combine in-class exercises of varying length along with conversation about tools and techniques.
Non-Fiction
Emily Skillings
Creative Nonfiction asks us to explore what we don't know (or don't yet know) about what we know (ourselves). In this course, you will read and write a wide variety of nonfiction, drawing on memory, place, identity, and creative research. We will experiment with different forms: from the diary and travel writing to the essay--all the while defining, redefining, and refusing to define this dynamic and ever-expanding genre that begins with YOU.
Poetry
Nick Chhoeun
Poetry is experimentation. It’s using the ordinary and making it special. It’s the willingness to reach acceptance through exploring the confusions of our lives. We will sift through the specifics of our memories to be precise in our expression. We will play with traditional and unconventional forms, and we will create new forms. Through meaningful discussions, writers will provide prescriptive and thought-provoking feedback. Your poems will deepen your understanding of yourself and offer insight to your readers.