February 2021
The Storytellers (Virtual meetings)
This is a closed writing group led by members Ingrid Alewine and Marijean Oldham. The group members are alumni of Jay Kauffmann's Creative Nonfiction courses.
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Snowed Under a Blizzard of Unfinished Stories? (Online seminar)
Instructor: BettyJoyce Nash $60 Members | $65 Nonmembers Weekend One: Saturday & Sunday, 2/20/21 & 2/21/21 | 10:00 am – 11:15 am Weekend Two: Saturday & Sunday, 2/27/21 & 2/28/21 | 10:00 am – 11:15 am How many days does a blizzard last? That's an unanswerable question, but this short story "blizzard" will span four days. Bring your blanket, bring your hot chocolate and bring a short story you want to polish for publication. We’ll examine point of view, character development, and story arc, but we’ll…
Find out more »Staying the Course (Online class)
Instructor: Jody Hobbs Hesler $260 Members | $289 Nonmembers Every other Saturday for eleven months, 9/19/20 - 7/24/21 | 1:00 pm - 2:30 pm This course is designed for writers charting their way through longer projects, such as novels, memoirs, story collections, etc., but it could also work for writers who are simply working toward a more disciplined writing practice. In this class, we will set broad goals for the year and more specific targets for each next class meeting; discuss…
Find out more »March 2021
Advanced Fiction (Online course) – This class is full!
Instructor: Sharon Harrigan $189 Members | $210 Nonmembers Mondays and Wednesdays, 1/11/21 – 3/3/21 | 9:30 am – 10:45 am Requirements: Students are asked to purchase Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction by Benjamin Percy. In this class, we will spend Mondays studying techniques that will make your fiction more engaging, gripping, and vivid. We will discuss selections from Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction by Benjamin Percy, as well as short stories and novel excerpts from Bret Anthony Johnston, Rebecca Makkai, and others. On…
Find out more »Multi-genre course: The Language of Environment (Online course) – This class is full!
Instructor: Erika Howsare $189 Members | $210 Nonmembers Mondays and Wednesdays, 1/11/21 – 3/3/21 | 4:00 pm – 5:15 pm “Nature writing” might make you think of Thoreau or John Muir, but it’s obvious that the world has moved beyond the state of idyllic wilderness. We need writing that tries to reckon with our current conditions—finding words for the grief, rage, and yet joy and connection that we feel in the midst of the Anthropocene. This will be a multi-genre…
Find out more »Evening Creative Nonfiction (Online course) – This class is full!
Instructor: Brendan Wolfe $189 Members | $210 Nonmembers Mondays and Wednesdays, 1/11/21 – 3/3/21 | 6:00 pm – 7:15 pm In this workshop, we'll critique student writing in addition to considering samples of a few published selections. We’ll consider essays and memoir as a distinctive genre, with the goal of moving from the chin-strokingly philosophical—"What is a true story?" "Is it memoir or mem-wah?"—to the more practical: "How should this story be told?" "How do I convince my readers to…
Find out more »Explorations in Imitation: Using Poetry to Communicate the Uncommunicable (Online course)
Instructor: James Cole $189 Members | $210 Nonmembers Mondays and Thursdays, 1/11/21 – 3/4/21 | 6:30 pm – 7:45 pm The goal of poetry has always been to communicate sensation and emotion through keen deployment of sound, structure, and image. However, the concrete nature of language imposes limits on our ability to share experiences. How does one use noumena (things as they are) to convey phenomenon (things as they appear) in an effective, engaging way? How can poets produce nuance…
Find out more »Putting the Pen to the Page: Drafting Your Novel in One Year (Online class) – This class is full
Instructor: Kristen-Paige Madonia $1,399* Members | $1,399* Nonmembers Select Tuesdays, 1/5/21 - 8/31/21** | 6:00 PM - 8:30 PM *Payment plans will be available to students accepted into this program. Overview: Putting the Pen to the Page is an opportunity for writers to study the craft of creative writing, share and workshop portions of their novel manuscript, provide and receive constructive criticism, and work with a published author at an MFA-level of instruction as they write their way through the…
Find out more »Chopped: The Writing Class (Online course)
Instructor: Jody Hobbs Hesler $115 Members | $128 Nonmembers Thursdays, 1/14/21 – 3/4/21 | 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm Inspired by the TV cooking game show Chopped, this generative writing class will present students with a new "basket" of four "ingredients" each week. "Ingredients" might include objects, people, moods, genres, etc. During our writing time, each writer will not only include all four items, but must "transform" them so that they work together organically. Students may write fiction, nonfiction, or…
Find out more »Writing The Pandemic Through SciFi: Plague Tales (Online seminar)
Instructor: Warren Rochelle $60 Members | $65 Nonmembers Session One: Saturday, March 6, 1:00 pm – 3:00 pm Session Two: Sunday, March 7, 1:00 pm – 3:00 pm Imaginative responses to the pandemic are beginning to appear. But plague literature, plague fiction, has been around for a long time. Boccacio writes about the Black Death in The Decameron in 1349-1353. In 1722, Daniel Defoe published A Journal of the Plague Year, "the account of one man's experience of the year 1665, when the bubonic…
Find out more »WriterHouse Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror/Speculative Fiction Writers Group (Virtual Meetings)
Do rolling green hills inspire you to think of brutal orc armies bearing down on ancient elfin civilizations? Intrepid heroes slashing their way through overgrown jungles in search of the one cure to a deadly pandemic? Forgotten tribes descended from a humanoid ancestor other than our own? Government enclaves for top secret and highly unethical experiments? Mother Nature’s healing touch after the nuclear apocalypse? If so then we would love to hear about it! The WriterHouse Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror/Speculative Fiction Writers Group…
Find out more »Cville YA Writers Group (Online meetings)
This group is open to any member of WriterHouse. We welcome more voices in our lively discussions about writing as it pertains to the YA audience. Questions? Contact Bonnie Redding at riderwriter5@yahoo.com
Find out more »Poets At Large 2020 (Meeting online)
This is a closed group facilitated by Sharon Ackerman and Priscilla Melchior. The group's goal is a detailed study of the craft of poetry.
Find out more »The Craft of Prose (multi-genre)
Instructor: Chris Register $75 Members | $82 Nonmembers Monday - Friday, 3/22/21 – 3/26/21 | 9:30 am – 11:00 am The Craft of Prose is a week-long mini course based in the notion that good writing should be an end unto itself. Together, we will: • examine the elements of sentence, paragraph, and chapter construction; • survey advice from masters of the trade; • explore ways to enhance storytelling and persuasiveness through concise syntax, and; • address any specific challenges…
Find out more »Tell Your Story: Launch and Sustain Your Creative Writing Project (multi-genre)
Instructor: Deborah Harris $189 Members | $210 Nonmembers Mondays and Wednesdays, 3/22/21 – 5/12/21 | 1:00 pm – 2:15 pm Do you have a story inside, waiting to be told? Are you struggling to begin? To keep going? To figure out where you'll end up? Welcome to the writing life. Come to this workshop and launch yourself into it. Share your work with supportive, thoughtful classmates. Discuss the fundamentals of writing — narrative, structure, point-of-view, voice — and how they…
Find out more »Advanced Fiction: Planning Your Plot Roller Coaster
Instructor: Kristie Smeltzer $189 Members | $210 Nonmembers Tuesdays and Thursdays, 3/23/21 – 5/13/21 | 6:00 pm – 7:15 pm Prerequisite: Students are required to submit a chapter or story for instructor review prior to acceptance to the class. A hallmark of good fiction is that it keeps readers turning the page, eager to see what happens next. As writers, we know that what needs to look effortless doesn't always come so easily. Creating a compelling plot that manages to…
Find out more »Advanced Poetry Workshop: Poetry as Anchor
Instructor: Joanna Currey $189 Members | $210 Nonmembers Wednesdays, 3/24/21 – 5/12/21 | 6:30 pm – 9:00 pm This class will focus primarily on sharing and workshopping participant writing. It will also include close reading and analysis of the kinds of poems we keep coming back to—poems that are bright lights in times of trouble and poems that serve as anchors throughout every season of life. This class will include prompts based on the readings and opportunities for participants to…
Find out more »Earning That Creative License: A Generative Class for Nonfiction Writers
Instructor: Jody Hobbs Hesler $150 Members | $165 Nonmembers Thursdays, 3/25/21 – 5/27/21 | 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm (Ten-week class) Emphasizing the “create” in creative nonfiction, this generative writing class will employ exercises to help creative nonfiction writers dig deeper into hard to recreate real-life scenes. Students will explore techniques more often associated with fiction writing to fully embody and envision motivations, conversations, behaviors, and backstories about which limited or no factual information exists. In-class exercises can help spark…
Find out more »Hearing Voices: Narration and Dialogue in Fiction
Instructor: Andrew Martin $60 Members | $65 Nonmembers Session One: Saturday, March 27, 11:00 am – 12:30 pm Session Two: Saturday, April 3, 11:00 am – 12:30 pm Voice, in both narration and dialogue, is one of the most important elements of fiction, but also one of the most difficult to get right. How do we channel the voices we hear in our heads, and out in the world, into writing that is both artful and realistic? How do we…
Find out more »Dabblers Group (Online meetings)
This is a writing group organized by member Carol Cutler that meets in the Salon. The group members review each other's writing in fiction, non-fiction, and poetry with submissions once a month. The group is currently looking for 2 or 3 more members. If you are interested in joining, please contact Carol Cutler at carolcutler@embarqmail.com.
Find out more »April 2021
Go On, Get Out There! Getting Your Work Noticed
Instructor: Liza Nash Taylor $30 Members | $35 Nonmembers Saturday, April 10, 10:30 am – 12:00 pm Here at WriterHouse we’re taught to be better writers, but it’s up to us to get our work out there and learn how to be writers in the world. Liza will share her own experience and methods for finding publishing and submission opportunities that are a fit for your short stories, novel excerpts, creative nonfiction, and poetry. She’ll also discuss creating an author…
Find out more »Exit Strategies: How to End a Poem (Only 4 spots left!)
Instructor: Chet'la Sebree $60 Members | $65 Nonmembers Session One: Saturday, April 24, 10:00 am – 11:30 am Session Two: Sunday, April 25, 10:00 am - 11:30 am A poem is only as strong as all of its parts—the opening, the language, the imagery, the closing. Even though that is the case, the end of a poem is the final image or idea with which readers are left. How do you determine how to end a poem and what a…
Find out more »Middle Grade, Young Adult, Adult: What’s the best fit for your SciFi/Fantasy novel idea?
Instructor: Emily Thiede $40 Members | $45 Nonmembers Saturday, April 24, 1:00 pm – 3:00 pm Can you curse in YA? How long are MG novels? Are dragons "in" or "out?" If my main character is 17 years old, can my book still be for adults? What does "crossover" mean? In recent years, the publishing world has drawn some clear lines (and some less clear lines) between age-categories, so how can writers decide where their book idea might belong? In…
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