Long-time writer or just getting started? Writing an epic poem or a short story? Whoever you are and wherever your passions lie—if you want to write, there’s a Hugo House class for you. Explore our catalog and find yours.
When we say we want our classes to be for everyone, we mean it.
Instructor: Tess Taylor. In this class, we'll develop actionable strategies for dreaming and writing the poems that are missing from your manuscript-in-progress. Engage in reading, generative exercises, and collaborative editing, with the goal of completing the book of poems inside you.
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.
Instructor: Elise Hooper. Explore the balance between fact and fiction by diving into history. Students will examine research strategies, and participate in class writing exercises and discussions.
Instructor: Liza Birnbaum. In this reading-focused course, we'll take an in-depth look at work by six poets, and explore how their craft decisions might influence and inspire our own writing across genres.
Instructor: Cass Garison. This class will explore the concept of erasure poetry as a fundamentally queer practice, one with the capability to subvert and redirect power structures.
Instructor: Gabriela Denise Frank. Explore the myriad forms of flash essays, discussing sample works and generating new writing inspired by the winter season.
Instructor: Theo Nestor. Students will read and discuss example columns with a focus on structure, with writing prompts to begin their own Modern Love essays.
Instructor: Cara Diaconoff. This course will read and examine Six Memos for the Next Millennium and offer students the opportunity to write their own pieces in response (or in productive resistance) to Calvino's ideas about literature's key qualities.
Instructor: Piper Lane. Students will workshop successful personal statements, from grad school to residency applications, with attention to audience and authenticity.
Instructor: Christine Hemp. Delve into the possibilities and opportunities of a compelling essay, generating work in and outside of class with a focus on language, humor, and form.
Instructor: Deborah Woodard. With weekly prompts, instructor feedback, and discussion, students will examine the stories of Lydia Davis.
Instructor: Nhatt Nichols. Students will create works of graphic journalism, documentary comic, and visual poetry and leave with the skills to create nonfiction comics that say something true about the world as they understand it.
Instructor: Kascha Semonovitch. Students will read and discuss philosophical theories and fiction that explicitly address the ethical issues of utilitarianism, deontology, virtue ethics, and theodicy.
Instructor: Marguerite Harrold. Students will read and discuss how images are used in various forms, including haiku, tanka, and short-form poetry and create poems that capture what they've learned.
Instructor: Emily Sernaker. Inspired by Ilya Kaminsky’s Poets in the World series, this class will examine the work of living poets based outside of the United States.
Instructor: Lish McBride. For adults writing for an adult or young adult audience, this class will follow the workshop-style format as students learn to constructively critique and discuss each other's work.
Instructor: Noah Zanella. In this generative course, students will experiment and play to expand their ideas about the possibilities of language, composition, and form of the lyric poem.
Instructor: Sierra Nelson. Taking inspiration from science, art, and literature, students will participate in generative writing prompts using color as the prismatic approach to create a portfolio of new work.
Instructors: Yasmine Ameli & Saba Keramati. In this interactive, generative poetry workshop all about tea, we will consider poems at the intersections of ritual and sensory experience and engage in writing prompts to explore image, memory, culture, and narrative.
Instructor: Kaelie Giffel. In class, we'll close read and discuss the novel, Motherhood, then turn to writing prompts to develop our own autofictions.
Instructor: Joe Wilkins. In this craft workshop, students will read selections from prose writers utilizing poetic techniques, identify four ways to attend to language, and practice using these techniques in their own writing.
Instructor: Laura Da'. Students will read, discuss, and create new works informed by long poems including sequence poems, epic poems, and book-length poems.
Instructor: Jennifer Perrine. Students will read nature-centered poetry, essays, and fiction by Black, Indigenous, Asian American, and Latine writers and generate drafts of poems or prose inspired by nature.
Instructor: Gracie Bialecki. This course is designed for writers new to submissions who want to familiarize themselves with the process while learning from, and sharing experiences with, their peers.
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