Writing Workshops

2024 Workshop Descriptions

"I thought it was nice to hear for guest speakers across multiple genres. My favorite part of the YYWW was the individual workshops. I would have loved more time to get to know the other writers and their work and receive more feedback on my own pieces as we became more comfortable with one another."

Faculty

Fiction

Kristin Bair

Whether your characters are traveling through time, aisle 8 in the grocery store, or a busted-up relationship, we’ll look closely in this workshop at what makes them tick and how to make them feel like real people. We’ll talk about the basics of a scene: action, dialogue, and place. We’ll explore voice, conflict, the power of objects, and more. Together, we’ll read, write, discuss craft, write some more, laugh a lot, and, most likely, cry a little. Writers will return to their desks with big ideas, revision strategies, and more confidence in their work.

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 character exercises you’ll develop original stories and master craft techniques to fill your writing toolbox. These techniques will benefit writers with their future stories. We’ll form a support community to assist each writer in making discoveries on the page. All writers welcome!

Sarah Darer Littman

"Any book that can help you survive the slings and arrows of adolescence is a book to love for life.” Libba Bray.

In a supportive environment, you’ll be asked to get in touch with your inner adolescent. We’ll discuss Dr. Rudine Syms Bishop’s concept of providing young people with "Windows, Mirrors, and Sliding Glass Doors” and explore how structure, voice, point of view, pacing, and most importantly, authenticity combine to hook the reader. Participants in past workshops have continued to work together as critique groups, providing an ongoing source of feedback and encouragement.

Lara Ehrlich

Short can be deep. Quick can cut to the quick. Short stories can shatter your heart. In this workshop, we’ll break down examples of short prose that packs a punch, investigate what makes them powerful, and apply those elements to our own craft. We'll combine generative in-class exercises with craft discussions.

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

Catina Bacote

In this writing workshop, you will have the opportunity to grow in trusting your artistic instinct, cultivating your personal voice, and exercising agency. Through experimentation and practice, you will explore how to push the boundaries of creative nonfiction to tell real-life stories in authentic and unexpected ways. To broaden your notion of the genre and catalog approaches, you’ll read the work of writers who approach storytelling as a source of power, innovate traditional literary forms, and engage with issues of race, class, and gender. Our reading list will help us consider such questions as: How do writers mine the gritty, the sublime, and the comedic to tell their tales? What makes one worthy of the telling? How do writers recreate the past with authenticity? As a supportive writing community, you will give and receive feedback on ongoing creative work and delve into the ethical considerations that come into play when writing from real-life experience.

Poetry

Sean Frederick Forbes

In this course we’ll focus on narrative poetry. As one might surmise, it’s a form of poetry that tells a story using the voices of both a compelling narrator and vibrant characters. Narrative poems may be short or long, and the story it relates to may be complex, comical, dramatic, or somber. It’s a form of poetry with marrow deep roots in the oral tradition: stories passed down from generation to generation dating back thousands of years, a tradition from in every culture. As a poet, I write almost exclusively narrative poems, and I’m often reminded of the stories my maternal grandmother would tell me with such vivid detail; her words was poetry to my ears. We’ll consider how various types of oral and written narratives, whether it be song lyrics or spoken word pieces, or even the written poetic form or digital poetry, helps to inform, influence, and inspire our own poems.

Catherine Pierce

Far from being frivolous, play is an essential part of the poetic process. How can we make something new if we’re not keeping our brains flexible, stretchy, and willing? Even when we’re writing about difficult and complex topics, play is at the heart of how we create. In this generative class, we’ll write, discuss, ask questions, read, and explore as we try out a variety of strategies for crafting vivid, surprising poems.

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