Class Catalog

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.

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.