Class Catalog

Instructor: Matthew Olzmann. This generative love poem workshop will explore risking vulnerability without being crushed under the weight of sentimentality, why so many love poems are so very sad, how abstract experience of a specific emotion can be made tangible, and so much more.

Instructor: Liza Birnbaum. How can we delve deeper into texts that feel mysterious, thorny, or complex? In this class, we’ll experiment with hands-on practices—annotation, structural mapping, and more—that open up new understandings of what’s on the page and what might come next.

Instructor: Meredith Arena. "Deglazing" is using an acid to dilute sediment from fats left in a pan to make a gravy or sauce. Sometimes we've worked on something too long or can't figure out what the piece wants to be. Sometimes we need to "deglaze" our work and start with a new sauce as our guide.

Instructor: Kimberly Dark. Memories aren’t enough to make a memoir. In this generative workshop, we’ll open a number of creative doorways (and windows and portholes and tunnels) into discovering meaning and discuss how and why they work.

Instructor: Kimberly Lee. This exploratory workshop is designed to help writers determine their personal thematic by distinguishing which topics resonate most. We’ll engage with imaginative prompts, including an exercise in which participants will analyze their film favorites.

Instructor: Kate Raphael. What makes a more powerful story than real people’s struggles to change their world? In this class, we will analyze successful social justice stories and create narratives that bring our passions to life through complex characters and compelling conflicts.

Instructor: Katie Kitamura. How do we render place on the page? Study how writers create vivid, multi-dimensional settings, looking at examples from writers including Shirley Jackson, Sam Selvon, and George Saunders.

Instructor: Michele L. Simms-Burton. Avoid the pitfalls of stereotypes by practicing seeing diverse people in their full humanity. Examine examples of writing that successfully present unique, fully drawn, non-stereotypical characters.

Instructor: Minda Honey. Learn to hop across multiple timelines by flashing forward and back to show the connection between the personal and larger cultural narratives at play.

Through guided and practical exercises, this course will give you the confidence to turn your art into a long-term, successful business.

This asynchronous course features online workbooks, including ten essential templates in Word and Excel to kickstart your writing life, and resources professional writers use to get published.

Instructor: Ed Skoog. Build upon a foundation of craft and elements of poetry. Students will participate in workshops, examine contemporary poets, and generate and revise new work.

Instructor: Becca Yenser. Explore the fundamentals of flash (both fiction and nonfiction) while reading, generating writing, and workshopping with peers.

Instructors: Allison Ellis, Amy Bowers. Delve deep into the lore and canon of witches, examining themes such as feminism, domesticity, power, and social change. Students can expect to craft their own witchy narratives and generate new stories, essays, or longer scenes.

Instructor: Rachel Sobel. Through writing exercises and class discussion, students will delve deep into the craft element of structure and come away with a solid toolbox of strategies for thinking about design in their own writing.

Instructor: Nicole Hardy. Focusing on structure, narrative voice, and scene, students will draft, workshop, and revise first person essays. Participants will receive one-on-one editorial advice and leave with a polished essay.

Instructor: Tina Tocco. With optional take-home exercises and in-class writing prompts, students will generate and workshop new work focused on writing for ages 8-12.

Instructor: Darien Hsu Gee. We’ll explore the roles of women in our lives and how they’ve shaped us by generating micro narratives of 300 words or less.

Instructor: Ramon Isao. This course will introduce students to the basics of the workshop model, with in class writing prompts and readings, and focus on key elements of craft such as character, plot, and setting.

Instructor: Elise Hooper. Start off the new year by jumping into the novel you've been wanting to write, with a focus on plotting, character development, setting, point of view, and structure.

Instructor: Gabriela Denise Frank. In this generative course, we’ll experiment with different models and create image/text hybrids, concrete poems, and docupoetic essays. 

Instructor: Sabra Boyd. In this hybrid course, students will workshop a draft, craft pitches for publication, and strategize finding an editor. We will also discuss the politics and ethics of food writing.

Instructor: Kristi Coulter. This class will give you new skills for navigating the creative, ethical, and personal issues that arise when other people become characters in our own stories.

Instructor: Claudia Castro Luna. In this class, we will engage with a variety of texts (letters, essays, mostly poetry) to examine our relationships to our arboreal neighbor: how they inspire, heal, protect, anchor, and orient us—and what we in turn offer them.