UPCOMING CLASSES
January 2020
Staying the Course (Ongoing Class)
Instructor: Jody Hesler $260 Members | $289 Nonmembers Meets monthly on Saturday for eleven months: 9/28/19, 10/26/19, 11/23/19, 12/14/19, 1/25/20, 2/29/20, 3/28/20, 4/25/20, 5/23/20, 6/27/20, 7/25/20 | 1:00 pm – 3:30 pm This is a course for committed writers who want some structure and accountability for reaching their writing goals. Reaching these goals is often more easily said than done. We often lose our way when we have no sounding board, no one to check in with to see if…
Find out more »Fiction and the Craft of Character (This seminar is full!)
Instructor: Bruce Holsinger $60 Members | $65 Nonmembers Saturday, 1/25/20 | 1:00 pm - 4:00 pm This seminar will address the making of human characters in fiction. Characters--believable, authentic, sympathetic--are the lifeblood of story. Who wants to read or keep reading a novel if we don’t care about the fellow human beings inhabiting its setting and guiding its plot? We’ll look at several examples of great characters, learn about the relationship between character and story structure, and try out some…
Find out more »Evening Advanced Creative Nonfiction
Instructor: Jay Kauffmann $189 Members | $210 Nonmembers Tuesdays, 1/14/20 - 3/3/20 | 6:00 PM - 8:30 PM NOTE: This class will start and end half an hour earlier than other evening classes. The goal of this Advanced Creative Nonfiction workshop is to push you to a new level of professionalism and take you from a first draft to a submission-ready final draft. The workshop will be about quality, not quantity, as we adopt a more tough-minded, detailed approach. Since…
Find out more »Daytime Generative Writing (This class is full!)
Instructor: Sharon Harrigan $189 Members | $210 Nonmembers Wednesdays, 1/22/20 – 3/11/20 | 9:30 am -12:00 pm NOTE: This class will start and end one week later than other eight-week classes. No time for homework? No problem. We’ll do all the writing and critique work in class, so you don’t have to do it at home. Each session will begin with a short meditation to clear our heads. Then the instructor will lead participants through a series of prompts that…
Find out more »Writing, Revising, Pitching: Getting Your Novel Out of the Drawer and Off to Market (Ongoing class)
Instructor: Randall Klein$1299* Members | $1299* NonmembersSelect Wednesdays 1/15/20 – 11/4/20 | 6:30 PM – 9:00 PM*Payment plans of $309 per quarter will be available to students accepted into this program. Overview: For most novelists, the ultimate goal is to get published. Before that, however, comes much revision, along with some frustration and confusion at a seemingly impenetrable system of submission, waiting, and hoping. "Writing, Revising, Pitching" is a class for people who have written a substantive portion of…
Find out more »Evening Poetry
Instructor: Douglas Nordfors $189 Members | $210 Nonmembers Wednesdays, 1/15/20 – 3/4/20 | 6:30 pm -9:00 pm This course will follow the traditional, tried-and-true workshop model. Participants will bring in a poem each class to be critiqued by fellow students and the instructor. For anyone who appreciates outside prompts, an optional assignment will be given each week. The aim will be to create a rigorous, but stress free, atmosphere suitable for veteran as well as novice poets. Any style of…
Find out more »Evening Fiction: Short Stories — Memorable Openings
Instructor: BettyJoyce Nash$189 Members | $210 NonmembersWednesdays, 1/22/20 - 3/11/20 | 6:30 PM – 9:00 PMNOTE: This class will start and end one week later than other eight-week classes. Our first short story paragraphs can make or break a story’s journey. Litmags receive hundreds of submissions, and if page one can’t compel readers, the story is instant slush. Notice Flannery O’Connor’s first line in “A Good Man is Hard to Find:” The grandmother did not want to go to Florida.…
Find out more »Daytime Combo: Fiction and Creative Nonfiction
Instructor: Christina Ward-Niven $189 Members | $210 Nonmembers Thursdays, 1/16/20 – 3/12/20 | 1:00 pm -3:30 pm NOTE: No class on 3/5. Last class will be on 3/12. In this workshop, we will read one story or essay by a published author each week and discuss what makes it tick. How exactly does the piece work (or not)? We’ll dig into a wide range of craft topics, as they come up—point of view, characterization, pacing, suspense, mystery, etc. Next we’ll…
Find out more »February 2020
The Short Long Poem
Instructor: Christopher Kondrich $60 Members | $65 Nonmembers Saturday, 2/1/20 | 1:00 pm - 4:00 pm Long poems marvel us with their expansiveness, but many short poems seem to have this quality as well. Their brevity belies their extraordinary breadth and scope. In this seminar, we’ll explore how to harness the expansiveness of long poetry for our more concise work. We’ll consider four poems—one each by Brigit Pegeen Kelly, Louise Glück, Srikanth Reddy, and Robin Coste Lewis—as examples and guides,…
Find out more »Putting the Pen to the Page: Drafting Your Novel in One Year (Ongoing class)
Instructor: Kristen-Paige Madonia $1,399* Members | $1,399* Nonmembers Select Mondays, 9/9/19 - 5/21/20** | 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM *Payment plans of $335 per quarter will be available to students accepted into this program. NOTE: THE APPLICATION DEADLINE FOR THIS PROGRAM HAS PASSED. 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…
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