24PearlStreet Past Workshops

Displaying 1 - 507 of 507

Sarah Messer

Facts, Research, and Memoir

October 26 to November 20

Tuition: $500

Even in our most vivid memories, details fade. Sarah Messer’s essential course will help you mine memory through research techniques like archival work, interviewing, travel, music, and information-gathering in order to create vivid, compelling...More

Sam Sax

Heeeeeey!: Queer Poetics

November 13 to November 17

Tuition: $400

This workshop serves both as a brief survey of queer American poetry as well as an intensive exploration into students' own writing. We’ll seek to unpack what it is that makes a queer poem queer & further what makes a poem a poem. We’ll try to...More

Paula Bohince

Ekphrasis: Poems from Visual Art

June 5 to June 9

Tuition: $500

Poets across time and culture have found inspiration in visual art, drawn into a conversation with these artworks and responding with fresh perspectives. This generative workshop will examine poetic models that employ different approaches to this...More

Sara Eliza Johnson

LANGUAGE AND THE LUCID DREAM: Summer

June 25 to August 17

Tuition: $600

Writing a poem—that is, inventing and manipulating our language to compose it—can be likened to lucid dreaming. In this course, you will learn to write poems as if dreaming lucidly, which means that you will learn to write with intention and...More

Dawn Potter

Interesting Minds: An 8-Week Revision Workshop for Essayists

January 7 to March 1

Tuition: $600

The essayist Philip Lopate has said, “The reason I read nonfiction is to follow an interesting mind.” In this 8-week revision workshop, we will tighten our nonfiction drafts by concentrating on the twists and turns of our own interesting minds. We...More

Matthew Olzmann

Surprise and Revelation: Building and Overthrowing Expectations in a Poem

May 1 to May 5

Tuition: $500

How is surprise created? Often, it’s an effect of poetic structure: the order in which information is presented to the reader. One piece of information introduces a set of assumptions or possibilities, and the next piece of information calls those...More

Michael Klein

"If It's True...": A Memoir Workshop

November 14 to December 9

Tuition: $500

It’s become an almost unmovable piece popular literary culture to make a clear distinction in a memoir between what’s true and what’s made up. But memoir—the form itself—can be as various, wild and eclectic as the individual putting their life down...More

Rebecca Gayle Howell

We All Write Sentences: Spring

March 19 to March 23

Tuition: $400

This one-week intensive invites both poets and prose writers to consider more closely the power of pushing out the boundaries of the English sentence. Reading, across genres, sentences by masters of the ecstatic--James Agee, Gwendolyn Brooks,...More

Rebecca Seiferle

The Poem's Intention

March 5 to March 30

Tuition: $500

Often, a poem has its own intentions that are at odds with the intentions of the poet. The poet will begin the poem with a certain aim, feeling, perspective, or subject, only to find that the poem veers into unknown territory. Often the preferred...More

Emilia Phillips

I Am Trying To Be Marvelous: The Poetics of Body Positivity

January 8 to March 2

Tuition: $600

The title of our course comes from Chen Chen's "Winter," a poem that candidly describes the body's excretions while celebrating its beauty, sexuality, and humanity. In this course, we will examine the poetries that have arisen alongside the body...More

Jennifer Tseng

WRITING THE FORBIDDEN

December 17 to December 21

Tuition: $400

In this one-week class we will work to produce forbidden writing. What’s forbidden to one writer may not be forbidden to another. Some feel forbidden to write about emotions (i.e. anger, happiness etc.) or circumstances (i.e. trauma, ecstasy,...More

Seema Reza

Breaking Open the World: Writing Fearless Lyrical Memoir

October 28 to November 22

Tuition: $500

In this class we will experiment with form, timeline, point of view, and pacing to write lyrical memoir that is fresh, honest, and innovative. Each week students will be given short reading assignments and writing prompts designed to get words on...More

Matt Miller

Tiny Tales, Prose Poems, and Micro Memoirs

January 9 to January 13

Tuition: $500

This class will wade into those estuaries where the waters of genre blend and mingle and birth something new. We will try to blend the lyrical intensity of the poem with the narrative movement of the story as well as the wandering discovery of the...More

Ed Skoog

Have You Tried the Side Door? Finding a Way In to Your Next Poems.

February 1 to March 25

Tuition: $500

Starting a poem is difficult because of the barriers we often build for ourselves. In this new course, you will learn how to recognize your individual barriers and bypass them. In this workshop you will write and revise new poems through a series...More

Ann Hood

Writing the Personal Essay: September

September 5 to September 30

Tuition: $500

During Ann Hood’s memoir course you will work toward completing a final, personal essay through a series of short, guided assignments. Using these weekly writing exercises – focused on specific topics as stepping-stones – you will learn to hone your...More

Ada Limón

Staying True: Authenticity and Voice: Winter

January 8 to March 2

Tuition: $600

Ada Limón is determined to help you focus in on your own personal style and write poems in your own unique voice in a world filled with constantly challenging external influences. This class you will offer new techniques to help you develop a...More

Kim Addonizio

Exploring the Sonnet

September 18 to October 13

Tuition: $500

Whether you’ve been writing sonnets for years, or have forgotten what iambic pentameter is, or never knew in the first place—this workshop is for you. The sonnet is a beautiful, flexible form that is as vital now as it was when Petrarch and Dante...More

Heidi Jon Schmidt

Character and Fate

August 6 to August 31

Tuition: 500

Character is the heart of a fiction writer's work, and we will spend this month with our characters, imagining and re-imagining them and their worlds, breathing life into these unique souls whose actions and reactions drive their destiny--and story...More

Jennifer Tseng

Writing the Forbidden

March 4 to March 8

Tuition: $400

Ada Limón

Staying True: Authenticity & Voice: Spring

March 14 to May 6

Tuition: $500

Irina Reyn

Open That Drawer!: Reviving the Stalled Novel

December 4 to December 8

Tuition: $400

Many of us begin work on a novel in a frenzy of inspiration but there are many reasons for why an unfinished novel goes into a drawer: life gets in the way, the initial motivation peters out, we plot ourselves into a dead end or we simply lose...More

Kimberly Burwick

The Image, Ravenous

June 12 to June 16

Tuition: $500

Do you remember how exciting it once was to find a crushed wasp or the first robin in March? In this generative course we will fiercely recollect the early-childhood process of image-making. Focusing on techniques such as synesthesia, anaphora and...More

Meg Day

5 Days, 6 Poems, 7 Ways Back Home: Spring

March 12 to March 16

Tuition: $400

Movement is a poet’s dialect: we pace the room of each stanza, we shuttle our readers across & down the page, & we reach inside them & rearrange the furniture. Even our metaphors have a vehicle to transport the tenor to & from. Isn’t...More

Anne Sanow

Revision is the Writing: Prose Workshop

October 14 to November 8

Tuition: $500

It’s easy to resist revision as the “work” part of creating—but when you embrace it fully as part of the creative process, your writing will start to go to new levels. Real revision is bold and daring. It demands that you get into the guts of your...More

Ann Hood

Writing the Personal Essay: Winter

January 27 to February 21

Tuition: $500

Each week will begin with my introduction of a topic for that week's memoir assignment. Topics will include Food, Place, Love, and Loss. I will email you examples from writers I admire such as Jonathan Lethem, JoAnn Beard, Cheryl Strayed, and Tony...More

Rebecca Gayle Howell

We All Write Sentences: Winter

January 23 to January 27

Tuition: $500

Sara Eliza Johnson

Mad Science

February 15 to February 19

Tuition: $500

In this class, you will look to scientific endeavors and discoveries for inspiration, considering the potential yields of the creative relationship between science and poetry. Through a series of experiments and exercises, you will write poems...More

Alex Marzano-Lesnevich

Narrating Memoir: Who’s Telling Your Life Story?

March 20 to March 24

Tuition: $500

The memoirist is asked to play many roles: simultaneously that of the author, the narrator, and the character. And while those of the author (you, who sits at the keyboard) and the character (younger you, in the scenes you are recollecting) may be...More

Rebecca Lindenberg

Writing for the Senses: Poetic Imagery, Experience, Emotion, and Evocation

February 27 to March 3

Tuition: $500

Though this course may be online, it’s a highly experiential one, devoted exclusively to developing the writer’s perceptual path from sensation to language. Richly original attention to the world and our experience of it is the best possible...More

Ed Skoog

Called to Speech: A One-Week Workshop

March 5 to March 9

Tuition: $400

What is happening when you begin to write a poem? What does it mean to be called to speech, to break into song? Why this, why now? How does the occasion of a poem lead you to write a poem in a certain way, and what avenues do you take to pursue or...More

Heidi Jon Schmidt

TELLING THE STORY: 8 WEEKS IN Winter

January 7 to March 1

Tuition: $600

John Cheever once stopped himself in the middle of a reading at FAWC and said, "Hell, I can tell it better than this." Then he looked up and told the story as it had happened, instead of reading what he'd written. Almost all stories begin...More

24PearlStreet Staff

Writers' Work Group: The Big Project (Poetry)

June 10 to August 30

Tuition: $175

"The Big Project" accountability Work Group is meant for writers who want to make headway on their poetry manuscript. Whether you are working towards a first draft of a chapbook or full-length collection, or are beginning the process of revising...More

Laura Madeline Wiseman

Transportation: On Getting There and Getting Poems

April 3 to April 28

Tuition: $500

This four-week class will focus on writing about journeys. With writing exercises and guided prompts for generating new work, we will explore a variety of ways to approach this classic and contemporary topic in poetry. We will discuss published work...More

Sarah Rose Nordgren

The Sources of Poetry

September 21 to November 13

Tuition: $500

In Sarah Rose Nordgren's workshop you'll explore the inner obsessions and sources that fuel your urge to write. Through guided prompts that will encourage you to experiment, you will learn to write poems that really matter and that are charged...More

Meg Day

The Elegy & the Emo Poem: A Battle to the Death

November 27 to December 1

Tuition: $400

What is the responsibility of the poet in times of public mourning? Why is it that we turn to poetry during periods of tragedy or deep sorrow? In this one-week intensive course, we will be in conversation with how poetry informs our public &...More

Aamina Ahmad

Long form screenwriting; stories that move us.

June 5 to June 30

Tuition: $500

How do screenwriters draw us into the world of a story? How do they breathe life into characters, making them real and complex? And how does the story told make us feel as though we have lived through something deep and true with those characters?...More

Joseph Cassara

Narrative Voice & Setting: Inhabiting The Fictional World

May 7 to June 29

Tuition: $600

Engaging characters and settings have the potential to be the most memorable aspects in our fiction, staying in our readers’ mind long after they finish reading. In this workshop, we will examine a variety approaches to hone our voice and build...More

Michael Klein

The Intention of the Risk: An Autobiographical Essay Workshop

November 19 to December 14

Tuition: $500

We will be reading essays and writing short essays which will culminate in a long autobiographical essay by the end of the course. The class will be intended around the making of lyric essays—combining the aspects of poetry, journalism, research...More

Ed Skoog

Have You Tried the Side Door? Finding a Way In to Your Next Poems: Winter

January 9 to March 3

Tuition: $500

Sometimes, starting a poem, I feel paralyzed by the task. Each time I need to find the way around my expectations, over the seemingly unsurmountable traditions and the already-trod reactions against tradition, under the deep sea of …whatever—you get...More

Francesca Lia Block

12 Questions to Help Structure your Novel in Five Days

November 7 to November 11

Tuition: $500

Over the years, Francesca Lia Block has helped hundreds and hundreds of writers discover and develop their novels using twelve essential, inter-related questions: What is the character gift and flaw? What is the character want and need? What is the...More

Rebecca Gayle Howell

We All Write Sentences: Winter

December 11 to December 15

Tuition: $400

Rebecca Seiferle

The Poetic Sequence

January 8 to March 2

Tuition: $600

A sequence is a long poem that combines shorter pieces by relying on association, juxtaposition, and connection rather than theme or narrative to create an organic poetic whole. Overwhelmed by events, feelings, and thoughts, poets have turned to...More

Emilia Phillips

The Upside-Down: Contemporary Pastorals and Necropastorals: Spring

March 12 to April 6

Tuition: $500

“How many ladders to gather an orchard?” asks Brigit Pegeen Kelly in “The Leaving.” Beyond nature poetry, beyond the arcadian romances, this course drives the definition of the poetic pastoral into contemporary fields, including those of ecopoetics...More

Elizabeth Bradfield

REWILDING YOUR POEMS: A MONTH OF PRODS, PROMPTS, AND PLAY: Spring

March 11 to April 5

Tuition: $500

It can be easy to fall into a poetic rut. To feel stuck in routine or less than terrified (don't we all want to be a little terrified by our poems?) by what we put on the page. This four-week course will focus on exercises that will open new ideas...More

Indira Ganesan

Narrative Magic: A Fiction Workshop

January 13 to February 7

Tuition: $500

Imagine taking your pencil and throwing it against a window. Now imagine that same pencil growing wings made of feathers, shattering the window, and flying off. What in the world will happen next? Instilling a bit of magical or fabulist realism...More

Ann Hood

Jumpstart Your Memoir: Spring

March 6 to March 10

Tuition: $500

In his book on the craft of writing, Stephen King says: the scariest moment is just before you start. This workshop takes that moment and makes it less scary by asking you the right questions about what you are writing and why. Then we will move on...More

Suzanne Rivecca

Good Things in Small Packages: The Art of the Short Story

January 4 to February 26

Tuition: $500

A great short story is all the proof we need that bigger isn't necessarily better—or more beautiful, or more profound. In this new class, you will learn how to apply new ideas of structure, character, plot and language to your short stories to help...More

Nancy Pearson

15 Works: Winter

January 8 to February 2

Tuition: $500

This four week poetry workshop is based on a class taught at the former Corcoran School of Art. In "15 Works," you’ll write 3 to 4 poems a week in response to assignments and prompts, with weekly themes. Comments on one another’s poems will be...More

Nancy Pearson

Almost Certainly But Not Quite Right: Poetry Manuscript Consultation Workshop

March 27 to March 31

Tuition: $500

This one-week personal class is designed to strengthen your poetry manuscript using a series of question-and answer-style prompts tailored for you. During the week, I will write comments about my overall impressions (what is your book “about”) and...More

Ann Hood

Writing the Personal Essay: Summer

July 23 to August 17

Tuition: $500

Anne Sanow

REVISION IS THE WRITING: PROSE WORKSHOP for Spring

March 4 to March 29

Tuition: $500

Sarah Green

This is the Year: A New Writing Habit Starter

January 20 to February 14

Tuition: $500

Do you keep meaning to write but find yourself waylaid by parenting, work crises, news headlines, Netflix, or other fill-in-the-blank interlopers? Do you periodically sit down and create a draft but never seem to get back to revising it? We've all...More

Rebecca Gayle Howell

Translation as Creative Practice: Winter

January 23 to February 17

Tuition: $500

We write in the age of globalization and in the language most universal for our time. Contemporary international writers are now being brought into English at a high frequency, and major writers of English are revisiting classics for the first time...More

Thomas Page McBee

The Reported Life: Using Journalism to Tell a Truer Story

April 25 to April 29

Tuition: $500

SPRING DISCOUNT: Use code SPRING16 at registration checkout to get 10% off tuition for this course. Since the gonzo stylings of Hunter S. Thompson, Joan Didion, and Truman Capote disrupted once and for all the false notion of "objective" reporting,...More

Reginald Dwayne Betts

Juxtaposing the Public & Private to Add Depth to Poetry

April 24 to May 19

Tuition: 500

In this course we will look at the work of writers who skillfully juxtapose the public with the private in their poetry. We will pay special attention to identifying techniques that we can replicate and discussing strategies that make it feel...More

Rebecca Lindenberg

What I Should Have Said: Writing Funny Poems

July 9 to August 3

Tuition: $500

It is really hard to write funny. It’s even harder to write funny with substance and pathos. But in this class, we’ll look at several poems that succeed at being funny in different ways - some by unlikely juxtapositions, some by satire, some by...More

Arisa White

Know Thyself: Poetry of Personal Witness

July 17 to August 11

Tuition: $500

Those silent places we inhabit are places where we can learn to better listen—to self and to others. In this workshop we turn within, using poetry to cultivate greater attention and embodiment. You will incorporate meditation into your writing...More

Ed Skoog

HAVE YOU TRIED THE SIDE DOOR? FINDING A WAY IN TO YOUR NEXT POEMS: Spring

March 18 to May 3

Tuition: $600

24PearlStreet Staff

Writers' Work Group: Workshop Your Fiction

June 10 to August 30

Tuition: $175

This Work Group is a workshop-style group. It is meant for writers who want regular feedback on their drafts, and who are committed to providing critiques for their fellow writers. Whether you are in generative or revision mode, the primary goal of...More

Ethan Gilsdorf

Absent Fathers, Controlling Mothers, Treacherous Exes and Other Interpersonal Dysfunction: Writing the Publishable Relationship Essay

April 18 to April 22

Tuition: $500

SPRING DISCOUNT: Use code SPRING16 at registration checkout to get 10% off tuition for this course. Romantic love. Marriage. Heartbreak. Family. Friendship. Conflict. Loss. Pain. Death. Yes! In Ethan Gilsdorf’s essay class, you will learn how to...More

Ann Hood

Writing the Personal Essay: Fall

September 21 to October 16

Tuition: $500

Meg Day

What's Love Got to Do With It: Poems for Valentine's Day

February 5 to February 9

Tuition: $400

What is more deeply entangled in the genealogy of the poem than love? Poet Eileen Myles writes that the love poem is where all of poet’s best lines should gather. Poet Truong Tran talks about love as a public word, one too multifarious in meaning to...More

Chloe Garcia Roberts

Crossing Borders and Subverting Genre: The Lyric Essay

June 19 to June 23

Tuition: $500

Have your poems ever felt jealous of scientific essays, investigative journalism, instruction manuals, business correspondence, or religious texts to name a few? Or conversely does your prose feel like it’s missing certain flourishes, freedoms, or...More

Fred Marchant

Living the Dream

October 22 to November 16

Tuition: $500

Just think of how many dreams you have during any given week or month! Think of the imaginative energy that pours into, and emanates from, those images and stories. Think too of how that imaginative energy might be harnessed or otherwise brought to...More

Matt Miller

Haunting and the Haunted: Finding and the Honing the Poetry of Place

November 5 to November 30

Tuition: $500

How do we use image, language, form, and sound to set down our towns, our neighborhoods, and the cities we live in such a way that words capture the truth of a place? How do we resist sentimentality while perhaps welcoming a place’s own particular...More

Sara Eliza Johnson

Language and the Lucid Dream: Fall

October 24 to December 16

Tuition: $500

Many sleepers have experienced the pleasure of the lucid dream: the phenomenon of "waking" inside our dream and realizing that we are in fact dreaming, that we are still in the process of imagining it and therefore able to transform its substance or...More

Ann Hood

Jumpstart Your Memoir: Winter

January 23 to January 27

Tuition: $500

Rebecca Gayle Howell

Translation as Creative Practice: Fall

October 9 to November 4

Tuition: $500

Jacqueline Kolosov

Experimenting with Hybrid Literary Genres

September 25 to October 20

Tuition: $500

In this exploratory workshop, we will experiment with the increasingly fluid boundaries between genre, specifically looking at flash fiction, the prose poem, short form nonfiction & the lyric essay. Expect to push beyond your comfort zone and...More

Kimberly Burwick

Mythological Gravity in Poetry: Spring

May 14 to June 8

Tuition: $500

Interested in mythology and folktales? In this generative workshop we’ll take a close look at how oral legends can make their way into contemporary poems in profound and exciting ways. Drawing on poets such as H.D., Sherwin Bitsui, Linda Gregg, Jack...More

Elizabeth Bradfield

REWILDING YOUR POEMS: A MONTH OF PRODS, PROMPTS, AND PLAY: Fall

October 1 to October 26

Tuition: $500

Kim Addonizio

The Art of the Short Poem

November 18 to December 13

Tuition: $500

This class is full, but we will hold another session in February. To register for the February workshop, click here. Why write short poems? They're fun.They're challenging. They help you to be concise and get to the heart of what you want to say,...More

Ann Hood

Jumpstart Your Memoir: Fall

November 28 to December 2

Tuition: $500

A writing sample is required for admittance to this class. Before registering, please email a writing sample to gleghorn@fawc.org. Often, that moment when you first begin to write is the scariest. This one-week intensive workshop will help you get...More

Gabrielle Calvocoressi

On Knowing Nothing and Everything: A Week of Poem, Pigment, & Paint in the LAB: WINTER

January 18 to January 22

Tuition: $500

In this generative one-week workshop, you will use multiple mediums and the art of surprise to make your practice of poetry more expansive, muscular, and joyfully challenging. In this class, painting and poetry will coincide to allow for students to...More

Francesca Lia Block

12 Questions to Help Structure your Novel in Five Days

May 21 to May 25

Tuition: $400

Ed Skoog

Keep Your Foot on the Sustain Pedal: Writing Long Poems in June

May 29 to June 23

Tuition: $500

In this workshop, participants will struggle through several drafts of a few poems between 50 and 150 lines in length. Perhaps it seems silly to write those numbers down as meaningful parameters, but in the instructor’s experience that’s where a...More

Nathan Oates

"And the Queen Died of Grief": Approaches to Plot in Fiction

November 27 to December 1

Tuition: 400

All literary art imposes some form of order on the chaos of experience in order to convey something about the human condition. One of the ways we as working writers have of conceiving of this effort is through plot. How to select information,...More

Nancy Pearson

15 WORKS: SUMMER

June 24 to July 19

Tuition: $500

Kim Addonizio

The Art of the Short Poem

February 3 to February 28

Tuition: $500

Why write short poems? They're fun.They're challenging. They help you to be concise and get to the heart of what you want to say, and to dive deep. They enable a more detailed critique of their language. We're going to look at and discuss the...More

Cam Terwilliger

Flash Fiction: Winter

January 23 to January 27

Tuition: $500

Regularly appearing in the pages of literary magazines, flash fiction has become one of the most vibrant modes in which to write. A protean form, these extremely short stories come in many different shapes: some realistic, some fantastic, and some...More

Nicole Terez Dutton

Threading and Building: Working Toward a Manuscript

March 7 to March 11

Tuition: $500

Whether you’re beginning with one poem or a small group of poems, this week-long intensive workshop will offer strategies to meaningfully expand your work toward a manuscript. By mapping the resonances and symmetries within and between poems,...More

Garrard Conley

Structuring Memoir

October 3 to October 7

Tuition: $500

So you have a draft of a memoir, and now you want to shape your story into a compelling narrative. How do you do this without sacrificing the integrity of the story? Which details of your research and/or life should you include? How do you make art...More

Emilia Phillips

This Last, Selfish Stitch: On Empathy, Appropriation, and Writing Poems About the Body

September 18 to October 13

Tuition: $500

Why should we write about our bodies, rendering them frankly in our poems? How should we approach writing about the bodies of others without appropriation? What is the relationship of poetry to the body, and how does this dynamic influence our...More

Chloe Garcia Roberts

Crossing Borders and Subverting Genre: The Lyric Essay: FALL

September 11 to October 6

Tuition: $500

Ed Skoog

KEEP YOUR FOOT ON THE SUSTAIN PEDAL: WRITING LONG POEMS

January 7 to March 1

Tuition: $600

John Murillo

Cut, Scratch, and Blend - Revision as Remix: A Poetry Workshop

April 29 to May 24

Tuition: $500

“Poetry,” writes Yusef Komunyakaa in his essay collection Blue Notes, “is an act of meditation and improvisation. And need is the motor that propels the words down the silent white space.” In this workshop, participants will consider various ...More

Meg Day

What's Love Got to Do With It: Poems for Valentine's Day

February 6 to February 10

Tuition: $500

Rebecca Gayle Howell

The No Po-Biz Po-Biz: How to Finish Your Poems for Publication

February 15 to February 19

Tuition: $500

The submission process is a communication, a conversation between you and your future editors. In this workshop you will explore how to cultivate that conversation meaningfully. Through intensive and diverse studies of syntax, lineation, punctuation...More

Lydia Millet

The Charismatic Narrator

October 24 to October 28

Tuition: $500

What is charisma, on the page? What does it take to make voice compelling? This workshop will take a ten-to-fifteen page fiction sample from each student (a short story or novel beginning) and rewrite and revise it over the five days of the class....More

Ann Hood

Writing the Personal Essay: Winter

January 8 to February 2

Tuition: $500

Rosie Schaap

Essay is a Verb: The Practice of Personal Narrative: Winter

February 5 to March 2

Tuition: $500

To essay is to try. Informed and animated by the singular life experience and voice of its author, the personal essay represents an attempt to engage deeply with an idea, a problem, a preoccupation, in the most powerful language possible....More

Kimberly Burwick

Mythological Gravity in Poetry

January 8 to February 2

Tuition: $500

Gabrielle Calvocoressi

OF KNOWING NOTHING AND EVERYTHING: A WEEK OF POEM, PIGMENT, AND PAINT IN THE LAB

January 7 to January 11

Tuition: $400

In this class we'll ask rigorous questions like, "What do I mean when I say the sky is blue?" & "What does 'green' mean, really?" This is a class about using multiple mediums and the art of surprise to make our poems and our practice of writing...More

Fred Marchant

Out There, In Here: Mysteries of the Ekphrastic Poem

October 21 to October 25

Tuition: $400

As a response to a work of visual art, the ekphrastic poem inevitably goes far beyond description and often leads poet and reader into all sorts of associations, insights, memories, feelings, revelations. In our week-long intensive course we will...More

Gabrielle Calvocoressi

Of Knowing Nothing and Everything: A Week of Poem, Pigment, and Paint in the Lab

January 9 to January 13

Tuition: $500

Gabrielle Calvocoressi

On Knowing Nothing and Everything: A Week of Poem, Pigment, & Paint in the LAB: SPRING

March 14 to March 18

Tuition: $500

Heidi Jon Schmidt

Telling the Story: Eight Weeks in Winter

January 8 to March 2

Tuition: $600

Jennifer Tseng

Start Small: What Writers Can Learn from Very Short Stories

November 6 to December 1

Tuition: $500

Reading and writing Very Short Stories can teach us several basic lessons of fiction writing, including the art of omission, compression, economy, and urgency. Whether you’re already part of the current Very Short Story renaissance or plan to use...More

Fred Marchant

Staying With It: A Five-Day Meditation in Poetry

March 26 to March 30

Tuition: $400

In this one-week intensive online course we will begin a new poem and stay with it for the whole five days, the goal being to nurture and expand that poem into an extended meditation. We will consider what a meditative poem is and does, and why one...More

24PearlStreet Staff

Writers' Work Groups: Pilot Term

June 11 to October 26

Tuition: $100

***Please note that the cost for the term is $125. Our registration system will calculate the fee based upon the $100 fee listed here, with a $25 registration fee added on.*** ***No discounts can be applied to Writers' Work Group terms. Please do...More

CA Conrad

THE STRENGTH OF POETRY: (Soma)tic Poetry Rituals & The Antidote To Spiritual Crisis SPRING

March 27 to March 31

Tuition: $500

Poet CAConrad has successfully used (Soma)tic poetry rituals to overcome destructive and debilitating depression after the murder of his boyfriend Earth (aka Mark Holmes). He has also created writing rituals using the night sky to design homemade...More

Ed Skoog

Have You Tried the Side Door? Finding a Way In to Your Next Poems: Fall

October 3 to November 25

Tuition: $500

Reginald Dwayne Betts

Juxtaposing the Public & Private to Add Depth to Poetry

September 11 to October 6

Tuition: $500

Lydia Millet

Fierce Fiction: Five Days

August 7 to August 11

Tuition: $500

This workshop will take a fiction sample from each student (ten to fifteen pages of a short story or beginning of a novel) and revise it over the five days of the class. We’ll work on honing the piece’s voice to make it as powerful as possible,...More

Adrian Matejka

The Music in My Head: Five Ways of Hearing a Poem

January 15 to January 19

Tuition: $400

The great poet Etheridge Knight said, “Making jazz swing in / Seventeen syllables AIN’T / No square poet’s job,” but what is a poem that doesn’t embrace its inner music? In this 1 week intensive course, we will look at 5 different ways to make the...More

Nancy Pearson

15 WORKS: Fall

October 22 to November 16

Tuition: $500

Daisy Fried

Poetry Revision Boot Camp

November 4 to November 8

Tuition: $400

Get ready, get set…You’ll either come into workshop with a poem draft you’re interested in but dissatisfied with, or, at the workshop’s beginning, you’ll generate a brand new first draft following a prompt designed to give you something substantial...More

Nancy Pearson

15 Works: Spring

March 27 to April 21

Tuition: $500

Corey Van Landingham

Documentary Poetry

February 29 to March 4

Tuition: $500

In this new poetry workshop, you will consider what liberties writer take when recreating, representing, and exposing experience, especially the experiences of others. Topics of interest will include reportage, historical narratives, interviews,...More

Daisy Fried

Poetry Revision Boot Camp

September 19 to September 23

Tuition: $500

Ed Skoog

Have You Tried the Side Door? Finding a Way In to Your Next Poems: Fall

October 2 to November 24

Tuition: $600

Sara Eliza Johnson

First and Last(ing) Impressions: A Poetry Workshop

July 31 to August 25

Tuition: $500

“Since when,” he asked,“Are the first line and last line of any poemWhere the poem begins and ends?”—Seamus Heaney, “The Fragment”First and last impressions may not be everything, as the familiar sayings claim, but they are certainly critical in...More

Sara Eliza Johnson

LANGUAGE AND THE LUCID DREAM: Winter

January 7 to March 1

Tuition: $600

Sarah Rose Nordgren

The Sources of Poetry

June 10 to August 2

Tuition: $600

You mention Immortality. That is the Flood subject.” – Emily Dickinson in a letter to T. W. Higginson Writing a poem is not a logical act, and it behooves us now and again to ask ourselves: Why are we writing poems in the first place? Many of us...More

Laura Madeline Wiseman

A Chapbook Workshop

April 25 to April 29

Tuition: $500

SPRING DISCOUNT: Use code SPRING16 at registration checkout to get 10% off tuition for this course. This one-week intensive workshop will focus on the chapbook manuscript, including sequencing poems, finding narrative arc, and bringing together the...More

Daisy Fried

Writing Poems That Don't Fit: Fall

October 26 to November 20

Tuition: $500

In her four-week workshop, Daisy Fried will guide you as you formulate what your poems want to be and how you fit into your work. With a goal of helping you clarify your themes and focusing on your own voice, this workshop is designed to teach you...More

Laura Madeline Wiseman

A Chapbook Workshop

February 5 to February 9

Tuition: $400

This one-week intensive workshop will focus on the chapbook manuscript, including sequencing poems, finding narrative arc, and bringing together the themes of a sequence. We’ll explore how our poems speak across a series as we revise, rethink, and...More

Rosie Schaap

Writing About Food & Drink

June 12 to July 7

Tuition: $500

Sometimes a pastrami sandwich is just a pastrami sandwich. And sometimes a pastrami sandwich is a way of looking at the world: a lens through which to consider an idea, a problem, a relationship, perhaps even a social movement. When we write essays...More

Peter Campion

FORM FROM FEELING AND FEELING FROM FORM: Fall

October 15 to November 9

Tuition: $500

This class is for people who want to improve their poems, by understanding the art more fully, from the inside out. During our four weeks, we’ll explore seven formal elements—action, voice, sentence, phrase, line, sound, and metaphor—while...More

24PearlStreet Staff

Writers' Work Group: The Big Project (Fiction)

February 4 to May 31

Tuition: $175

"The Big Project" accountability Work Group is meant for writers who want to make headway on their fiction manuscript. Whether you are working towards a first draft of a novel or novella, or are beginning the process of revising your manuscript,...More

Kim Addonizio

Finding the Form in Free Verse

November 14 to December 9

Tuition: $500

Kim Addonizio’s class won’t just inspire you to write—it will also help you shape your poems in order to release the power and energy of your vision.Sure, our poems need heart, mind, fresh metaphors, precise language, ravishing imagery—but they also...More

Rosie Schaap

Essay is a Verb: The Practice of Personal Narrative: Fall

October 17 to November 11

Tuition: $500

To essay is to attempt. Informed and animated by the singular life experience and voice of its author, the personal essay represents an attempt to engage deeply with an idea, a problem, a preoccupation, in the most powerful language possible....More

Ann Hood

Jumpstart Your Memoir: Spring

March 5 to March 9

Tuition: $500

Jillian Weise

The Poet as Spy: 4 Tricks from Espionage: Spring

March 12 to March 16

Tuition: $400

Since we live in the age of the ubiquitous status update, you are already familiar with spying and being spied, watching and being watched, surveying and being surveyed. So you will make that familiarity manifest by writing poems as a secret...More

Alix Ohlin

Making Beautiful Sentences

June 4 to June 29

Tuition: $500

What makes a sentence so powerful and enduring that it will stick in your mind forever? In this four-week class, we’ll take a look at some beautiful sentences and try to figure out exactly what makes them work, what distinguishes a writer’s style...More

Ann Hood

Writing the Personal Essay: Fall

October 14 to November 8

Tuition: $500

Joseph Cassara

The Art of Dialogue

October 21 to November 15

Tuition: $500

According to Elizabeth Bowen, dialogue is the most vigorous interaction that characters can have with each other in fiction—short of fighting, murder, and love-making. "Speech is what the characters do to each other," she wrote. In this workshop, we...More

Suzanne Rivecca

Good Things in Small Packages: The Art of the Short Story: Spring

March 13 to May 5

Tuition: $500

Sara Eliza Johnson

Language and the Lucid Dream

March 7 to April 29

Tuition: $500

Annie Finch

Working the Beat: How to Make Poems Sing

February 5 to February 9

Tuition: $400

It can be tempting to think of rhythm, meter, or form as a container, something outside and separate from a poem. But the best poems sing with rhythms that move them as innately and mysteriously as waves work the water. Whether or not you’ve...More

Christina Davis

Ourselves, I Sing: Experiments in Selfhood & Humanhood

May 22 to May 26

Tuition: $500

“It is said to be the age of the first person singular.” --Ralph Waldo Emerson (1827) In a country that still prides itself on self-reliance and individualism, and that often gives linguistic precedence to personal testimony, do we lose something...More

Maria Hummel

Novel Writing: Answering the Top Ten Questions

July 23 to July 27

Tuition: $400

In this course, we'll explore the top ten questions that writers need to consider when writing a novel. These questions include "Is my novel idea-based or character-based?" "What details and action will make my characters seem real and genuine on...More

Duy Doan

Spontaneity, or Disruption and the Illusion of Spontaneity

July 9 to July 13

Tuition: $400

The moments that disrupt the natural movement or direction of a poem are sometimes where the poem’s pulse is most perceptible. Often we can create these moments because we’re feeling spontaneous and free to improvise. Other times we might rely on a...More

Leila Chatti

Sweetbitter: Poems of Love, Longing, and the Exquisite Pain

January 27 to February 21

Tuition: $500

Eros the melter of limbs (now again) stirs me—sweetbitter unmanageable creature who steals in — Sappho (trans. Anne Carson) Desire: the unmanageable creature. How do we begin to write about this unwieldy feeling, this oft-overwhelming...More

CA Conrad

THE STRENGTH OF POETRY: (Soma)tic Poetry Rituals & The Antidote To Spiritual Crisis FALL Session 1

October 17 to October 21

Tuition: $500

Elizabeth Bradfield

Beastly: Animals as Poetic Source and Subject for Poems

February 22 to February 26

Tuition: $500

Many of us are moved by our time outside, by the non-humans we encounter. But how do we write about those experiences in ways that are full, accurate, and surprising? In this week-long course we’ll study how others have written animals and use...More

Meghan O'Gieblyn

Conversions and Deconversions

March 27 to April 21

Tuition: $500

Most of us can think of a moment in our life when everything changed. This might have been a religious conversion, a mystical experience, or an encounter with the transcendent. Or it may have been a experience that had little to do with the...More

Sara Eliza Johnson

Language and the Lucid Dream: Spring

March 12 to May 4

Tuition: $600

Ada Limón

Staying True: Authenticity and Voice: Summer

July 31 to August 25

Tuition: $500

Peter Campion

FORM FROM FEELING AND FEELING FROM FORM: Spring

March 11 to April 5

Tuition: $500

Traci Brimhall

Between Clarity and Wilderness: Tuning Your Tension

April 29 to May 24

Tuition: $500

Every writer has their strengths, but we often tend to over-rely on what we already know we do well. In this workshop we will focus more on how to create a balance of tension in poems. We will look at poems that model a balance of tension between...More

CA Conrad

Every Pebble Shapes the Mountain: (Soma)tic Poetry Rituals

March 14 to March 18

Tuition: $500

CAConrad wants us to understand how real it is that 95% of poets stop writing when the demands of our lives take over. This is a workshop gathering and sharpening our tools to always stay attentive, to always be a poet who sees the creative...More

Peter Campion

Form From Feeling and Feeling From Form: Fall

September 14 to October 9

Tuition: $500

PETER CAMPION’s four-week workshop will help you better understand poetry from the inside out by exploring seven formal elements – action, voice, sentence, phrase, line, sound and metaphor. You will learn how these elements work together in...More

Laura Madeline Wiseman

Transportation: On Getting There and Getting Poems

November 13 to December 8

Tuition: $500

Nancy Pearson

15 Works: August

July 31 to August 25

Tuition: $500

Daisy Fried

Poetry Revision Boot Camp: Summer

September 17 to September 21

Tuition: $400

24PearlStreet Staff

Writers' Work Group: Submit Your Work

February 4 to May 31

Tuition: $175

The “Submit Your Work” accountability Work Group is meant for writers who want to submit to more literary journals in 2019. Whether you’re aiming for 100 rejections or you want to submit work for the first time, this 16-week group can provide...More

Jennifer Tseng

Writing the Forbidden: Poetry

May 8 to May 12

Tuition: $500

In this one-week poetry intensive you will work to produce a piece of forbidden writing. What’s forbidden to one writer may not be forbidden to another. Some feel forbidden to write about emotions (i.e. anger, happiness etc.) or circumstances (i.e....More

Fred Marchant

Staying With It: A Five-Day Meditation in Poetry for Spring

April 3 to April 7

Tuition: $500

Lydia Millet

Fierce Fiction in Five Days

October 23 to October 27

Tuition: $400

Ann Hood

Writing the Personal Essay: June

June 5 to June 30

Tuition: $500

Lisa Duffy

Elements of Craft: A Fiction Workshop: SPRING

March 12 to April 6

Tuition: $500

This workshop is for students who are looking for critical feedback on a short story or novel-in-progress (novel excerpt should stand alone). Students will critique each other’s work using a template focused on the essential elements of fiction—...More

Daisy Fried

“SOME PEOPLE HAVE BEEN UNKIND”: A WORKSHOP ON LITERARY BOOK REVIEWING

November 12 to November 16

Tuition: $400

In this workshop, you will look at literary book reviewing from aesthetic, ethical, and practical angles, exploring possible approaches for reviewing and discovering what elements are useful in reviews. By examining and discussing samples of...More

Erin Adair-Hodges

Fail Up—: A Poetry Workshop

October 28 to November 22

Tuition: $500

What often keeps our competent poems from becoming captivating ones is a fear of failure, an instinctual aversion to risk. In this class, we’ll work at unlearning this impulse, priming ourselves to jump headlong into what we’ve previously side-...More

Carolyn Forché

Writing New Poems: Spring

March 13 to March 17

Tuition: $500

Carolyn Forché’s five-day intensive class is designed to push experienced poets in provocative new writing directions. The week is dedicated to writing and receiving feedback on new poems.This is a generative, guided workshop designed to help poets...More

Ada Limón

Staying True: Authenticity and Voice: Fall

October 10 to December 2

Tuition: $500

With so many poetic and artistic influences circulating wildly in the modern world, it can be difficult to remain true to your own instinctual style and idiosyncratic voice. Because contemporary writers are continually inundated with exciting new...More

Ann Hood

Jumpstart Your Memoir: Fall

November 27 to December 1

Tuition: $400

A writing sample is required for admittance to this class. Before registering, please email a writing sample to gleghorn@fawc.org. In his book on the craft of writing, Stephen King says: the scariest moment is just before you start. This...More

Jillian Weise

The Poet as Spy: 4 Tricks from Espionage: Fall

September 11 to September 15

Tuition: $500

Alex Marzano-Lesnevich

Your Family Members, Your Characters

April 2 to April 6

Tuition: $400

When we write memoir or autobiographical fiction, our characters are drawn from the people we love, the people we know the best. So why is it that sometimes those characters appear the blurriest to readers, less vivid because they’re drawn from...More

Ann Hood

JUMPSTART YOUR MEMOIR: Spring

May 6 to May 10

Tuition: $400

Traci Brimhall

Hybrids and Hermit Crabs: Lyric Forms in Creative Nonfiction

July 29 to August 23

Tuition: $500

In this class we will examine essays that take their forms from other sources in order to write our own. We will look at pieces that borrow form from documents like quizzes, medical charts, and rejection letters, and try and find inspiration in our...More

Suzanne Rivecca

Good Things in Small Packages: The Art of the Short Story: Fall

October 17 to December 9

Tuition: $500

Michael Klein

“If It’s True. . . ": A Memoir Workshop: WINTER

January 4 to January 29

Tuition: $500

Memoir can be as various, wild, and eclectic as the individual putting their life down on paper. In this class, you will be guided through a series of excercises to learn how to extend both the anecdote and the essay forms into something more...More

Sarah Messer

Facts, Research, and Memoir: Spring

April 3 to April 28

Tuition: $500

Sarah Green

Your Best Beach Body

August 7 to August 11

Tuition: $500

Where in your body do you house longing? Where does surprise live? Tenderness? Humor? This week we'll prep our summer poem bodies with seven prompts designed to provoke and invite the visceral and somatic, both dark and light. We'll build muscle...More

Emilia Phillips

Every Phantom // A Story: Erasure and Revision

June 11 to August 9

Tuition: $600

What isn’t said in a poem is just as meaningful--just as much a craft choice--as what is said. As poets, we so often go to the page with the intention of telling our readers something; this approach, however, often positions us between the reader...More

Rebecca Seiferle

Moving with the Text: A Translation Workshop

November 12 to December 7

Tuition: $500

In this workshop we will explore poetic translation as a kind of migration, moving with the body of a text from one language into another. To move with the body of the text, we must not only read closely into language but also listen deeply to the...More

Anne Sanow

Liftoff: Beginning That Story Draft

January 13 to February 7

Tuition: $500

Good stories start from vague ideas, character sketches, images, seemingly random thoughts, odd bits of language and rhythm. But how to put these into motion to get a story started—and moving forward? This new year, commit to getting that story...More

Meg Day

The Elegy & the Emo Poem: A Battle to the Death: Fall

November 28 to December 2

Tuition: $500

Rebecca Gayle Howell

We All Write Sentences

March 21 to March 25

Tuition: $500

Poets, fiction writers, and nonfiction writers alike are all invited to consider the power of the English sentence--specifically, in pushing its boundaries--in this one-week intensive workshop. You will read across genres to discover masters of...More

Sarah Rose Nordgren

Griffins, Harpies, and Jackalopes: Hybrid Poetics: Fall

September 5 to September 9

Tuition: $500

"What grows in that place is possessed of a beauty all its own, ramshackle and unexpected.”- Campbell McGrath, “The Prose Poem”Poetry’s history is one of change, of expansion in and out of new forms, purposes, contexts. It wasn’t too long ago that...More

Sara Eliza Johnson

Language and the Lucid Dream: Fall

October 23 to December 15

Tuition: $600

Ed Skoog

Keep Your Foot on the Sustain Pedal: Writing Long Poems in July and August

July 24 to August 18

Tuition: $500

Peter Campion

FORM FROM FEELING AND FEELING FROM FORM: Winter

January 21 to February 15

Tuition: $500

Ivy Pochoda

Jumping Into Your Novel

April 29 to May 24

Tuition: $500

So, you want to write a novel but you're terrified of the blank page. Or you've started your novel and are unsure about how to proceed. This is the class for you. In this four week intensive course we will examine how to dive into a novel. We will...More

Devi Lockwood

Tell Me a Story: The Power of Deep Listening

March 7 to March 11

Tuition: $500

In this multi-genre workshop you'll learn how to use the material of everyday conversations as the starting place for your writing. We will cover basic techniques of interviewing, audio recording, and transcription. Learn what questions to ask, how...More

Anne Sanow

Liftoff: Finishing that Story Draft

February 8 to March 4

Tuition: $500

This four-week workshop is geared toward helping you make something happen in your story—through helping you grow your draft in ways you hadn't anticipated. Discussions will revolve around clarifying story ideas, sustaining scenes, deepening...More

Suzanne Rivecca

Good Things in Small Packages: The Art of the Short Story: Spring

March 12 to May 4

Tuition: $600

Joseph O. Legaspi

I Must Confess

September 25 to October 20

Tuition: $500

Why does confessional poetry get a bad rap? Arguably, aren’t all poems confessional, revealing of truths? This workshop aims to encourage and ease the risks it takes to write about risky subjects. The focus will be on poems-in-progress, elaborating...More

Erin Adair-Hodges

Fail Up—

September 3 to September 28

Tuition: $500

Erin Adair-Hodges

Fail Up—

June 3 to June 28

Tuition: 500

Hilary Price

Make it Funny: The Basics of Drawing and Writing Single Panel Cartoons

March 6 to March 10

Tuition: $500

What are the components of a caption cartoon? (Plot, setting, characters, surprise. . . all in a snapshot.) Each day's lecture will focus on a different element of panel cartooning and I'll assign exercises to strengthen that cartooning muscle....More

Sara Roahen

What Sustains Us: The Art of Good "Food Writing"

March 6 to March 10

Tuition: $500

I believe that, when done with intention, using food in our creative writing can reveal great truth and meaning. By the end of this workshop, you will believe too. The newly popular term “food writing” can be misleading, as it implies that writing...More

Elizabeth Bradfield

Rewilding Your Poems: A Month of Prods, Prompts, and Play

November 6 to December 1

Tuition: $500

Devi Lockwood

Tangible Things: Object-based Storytelling

February 19 to February 23

Tuition: $400

This multi-genre course is a scavenger hunt. Each day will ask you to collect a different object, introduce it to an unexpected space, and to write. We will ask questions of how spaces cradle bodies, objects cradle space, and how the presence of...More

Lisa Duffy

Elements of Craft: A Fiction Workshop: SEPTEMBER

September 25 to October 20

Tuition: $500

Rebecca Seiferle

THE POETIC SEQUENCE

January 7 to March 1

Tuition: $600

Jessica Jacobs

"In the beginning:" Exploring Questions of Spirituality & Religion Through Poetry

February 3 to February 28

Tuition: $500

We live in a time of always more, always faster, where what’s new insists on itself as what’s most important. But outside this frenzy are questions that demand slow pondering, queries old as human consciousness: Why are we here? Is there a God? How...More

Devi Lockwood

Tangible Things: Object-based Storytelling

February 13 to February 17

Tuition: 500

Fred Marchant

Deep Revision: The Poem as Discovery

May 2 to May 6

Tuition: $500

SPRING DISCOUNT: Use code SPRING16 at registration checkout to get 10% off tuition for this course. Everybody revises, but then again what does revision really mean? Is it just good poetic hygiene? Tidying up the diction? Tightening a line? Lopping...More

Michelle Tea

Memoir that Reads Like Fiction: Winter

February 12 to February 16

Tuition: $400

In this intensive memoir workshop, you will learn techniques to create a memoir with a cinematic feel and the singular voice of an immersive novel. In addition to discussing style and craft, you will also touch on the personal concerns that...More

Porochista Khakpour

Experimental Writing for the Non-Experimental Writers

August 21 to August 25

Tuition: $500

What does it mean for literature to be experimental? The great Margaret Atwood defines it as: “Fiction that sets up certain rules for itself . . .while subverting the conventions according to which readers have understood what constitutes a proper...More

Jill McDonough

The Dead of Winter: Finding Inspiration Without Finding Your Shoes

January 29 to February 2

Tuition: $400

It's easy to get in a rut in the winter. Luckily, the same internet-dependent laziness that got us into this mess can lead to ambitious projects inspired by what we find online. In this intensive one-week class we'll explore archives and resources...More

Rebecca Gayle Howell

WE ALL WRITE SENTENCES: Fall

November 5 to November 30

Tuition: $500

This four-week class invites both poets and prose writers to remember what made them want to write in the first place: a love for language. For the first three weeks we will focus on a variety of syntax styles, which we will engage through...More

Sabrina Orah Mark

Hybrid Forms

January 13 to February 7

Tuition: $500

‘“Who are you?’ said the Caterpillar. This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, ‘I—I hardly know, sir, just at present—at least I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have changed...More

Jacqueline Jones Lamon

Exploring the Abecedarian Poetic Sequence: More Than Just ABC's: Winter

January 30 to February 3

Tuition: $500

In this intensive course, students will explore several nuanced approaches to this ancient alphabetical form of poetry. By combining current events and difficult subject matter with a rigid adherence to the alphabet as our organizing principle, we’...More

Rebecca Gayle Howell

Translation as Creative Practice: Fall

October 10 to November 4

Tuition: $500

Peter Campion

Form From Feeling and Feeling From Form: Fall

October 2 to October 27

Tuition: $500

Michelle Tea

Memoir that Reads Like Fiction: Spring

March 20 to March 24

Tuition: $500

Emilia Phillips

The Upside-Down: Contemporary Pastorals and Necropastorals: Fall

October 23 to November 17

Tuition: $500

Ann Hood

JUMPSTART YOUR MEMOIR: Fall

December 3 to December 7

Tuition: $400

Elissa Altman

The Heart of the Story: Creating Intimacy in Memoir

July 8 to August 2

Tuition: $500

Annie Dillard once said You have to take pains not to hang on the reader’s arms, like a drunk, and say ‘And then I did this and it was so interesting.’ What is it, exactly, that makes personal narrative truly engaging? What makes great memoir what...More

Ron MacLean

Shaping Short Fiction: From Aristotle to Borges and Beyond

January 9 to March 3

Tuition: $500

We’ll study a variety of approaches to story structure, from the classic story curve, to the drama-focused unity of opposites, to postmodern structures that stretch the form. We’ll look at examples through each lens; what does each structure...More

Peter Campion

Next Steps

March 14 to March 18

Tuition: $500

This five day course has been designed to take your poems to the next level. Our online discussion will provide tools to help you connect more fully with the sources of your poems, bring new life to old drafts, and write more vivacious lines and...More

Sarah Rose Nordgren

Griffins, Harpies, and Jackalopes: Hybrid Poetics

May 7 to May 11

Tuition: $400

Elizabeth Bradfield

Socializing the Nature Poem: EcoJustice Poetry in the Anthropocene

May 1 to May 26

Tuition: $500

“Nature abhors a vacuum,” Aristotle famously said. When we look at anything, we put ourselves into that gaze. How do we write about our interactions with the non-human world in ways that are full, accurate, ethical, nuanced, and surprising? And...More

CA Conrad

JUNO: An Online (Soma)tic Poetry Workshop

June 5 to June 30

Tuition: $500

Every living person is creative, but many people stop using their artistic skills when the routines of career, family and the many stresses of survival take hold of our lives. We will discuss how having an active, vibrant creative life keeps us...More

Meghan O'Gieblyn

THE ‘I’ IN MEMOIR

April 1 to April 5

Tuition: $400

In a lecture titled “Why I Write,” Joan Didion remarked that all she could hear in those three words was “I, I, I.” She was alluding to a common criticism of memoir—that it encourages navel-gazing. But the primacy of first-person narrative—the “I”—...More

24PearlStreet Staff

Writers' Work Group: Workshop Your Fiction

February 4 to May 31

Tuition: $175

Dariel Suarez

Keep the Narrative Going: How to Successfully Provide Context in Fiction

March 28 to April 1

Tuition: $500

This week-long intensive course will focus on that crucial element for creating socially layered, culturally nuanced, but ultimately accessible stories: context. During the course of the week, you will be given several exercises aimed at efficiently...More

Alix Ohlin

Crafting Charismatic Characters

January 4 to January 29

Tuition: $500

Alix Ohlin’s workshop will help you create rich, compelling characters who will grab readers’ attention and involve them deeply in your story. In this four-week class, you will learn techniques to develop dynamic characters whose complexity will...More

Suzanne Rivecca

Good Things in Small Packages: The Art of the Short Story: Fall

October 16 to December 8

Tuition: $600

Lillian-Yvonne Bertram

Make it Sing, Make it Strange: A Summer Poetry Lab

June 26 to July 21

Tuition: $500

Into the laboratory we go! In this course we are going to utilize techniques and strategies to make our poems sing and to embrace the strange in the process. On the one hand, we will examine the craft of extended metaphor by looking at exemplary...More

Rachel Lyon

From Form and Function to Microfiction: An 8-Week Micro Craft Intensive

October 8 to November 30

Tuition: $600

Flash fiction is a sexy, versatile form. It can lead the reader somewhere unexpected and leave her there to ponder the unknown. It can crack open a moment to reveal the magnificent eternal. From a writer’s point of view, flash fiction provides an...More

Sarah Van Arsdale

Starting the Novel

January 7 to February 1

Tuition: $500

Starting with "Chapter One" often leads to freezing up in panic long before reaching "Chapter Two." In this workshop, we'll will focus on crafting scenes of your story, regardless of where they may fall in the finished novel. We'll talk about...More

Meg Day

5 Days, 6 Poems, 7 Ways Back Home

December 5 to December 9

Tuition: $500

Anne Sanow

Revision is the Writing: Prose Workshop

March 20 to April 14

Tuition: $500

Michael White

Gazing In Gazing Out

November 13 to November 17

Tuition: $400

This one-week poetry workshop will offer instruction, support, and dialogue in the craft of writing and revising poems. This class is for intermediate to advanced poets that would like to try fundamentally new approaches to subject matter. We are...More

Peter Campion

Form From Feeling and Feeling From Form: Spring

May 8 to June 2

Tuition: $500

Rosie Schaap

Essay is a Verb: The Practice of Personal Narrative: SEPTEMBER

September 11 to October 13

Tuition: $500

Peter Campion

Next Steps: Fall

November 12 to November 16

Tuition: $400

Elissa Altman

Intimacy, Permission, and the Heart of The Story

November 18 to December 13

Tuition: $500

Ethan Gilsdorf

Writing and Selling Personal Essays about Deeply Personal Subjects

January 16 to January 20

Tuition: 500

Romantic love and heartbreak. Marriage and family strike. Friendship and conflict. Loss and death. In Ethan Gilsdorf’s intensive course, you will learn how to write a short personal essay about a significant and complex event, theme, or relationship...More

Nancy Pearson

15 Works

February 1 to February 26

Tuition: $500

Gabrielle Calvocoressi

Of Knowing Nothing and Everything: A Week of Poem, Pigment, and Paint in the Lab: Summer

June 18 to June 22

Tuition: $400

Nathan Oates

Key to Mystery: Methods for Building Stories

June 5 to June 30

Tuition: $500

This workshop will focus on learning techniques used in mystery stories and how those can be deployed in our stories and novels. Mystery stories use many of the same basic blocks of literary fiction, and then accentuate and emphasize some elements...More

Ed Skoog

Have You Tried the Side Door? Finding A Way In To Your Next Poems: SUMMER

July 2 to August 24

Tuition: $600

Rebecca Lindenberg

WHAT I SHOULD HAVE SAID: WRITING FUNNY POEMS in Summer

June 18 to July 13

Tuition: $500

Kristina Marie Darling

Collaboration Across Genres and Disciplines

January 27 to February 21

Tuition: $500

Collaborations inevitably lead creative practitioners to reflect on their own voice, aesthetic choices, and their subject position, expanding one’s sense of what is possible in one’s own projects, even when working alone. With that in mind, this...More

Rosie Schaap

Essay is a Verb: The Practice of Personal Narrative: Winter

February 6 to March 3

Tuition: $500

Informed and animated by the singular life experience and voice of its author, the personal essay represents an attempt to deeply speak about an idea, a problem, or a preoccupation in the most powerful language possible. In this new workshop, you...More

Ann Hood

Writing the Personal Essay: Fall

October 3 to October 28

Tuition: $500

During this memoir course you will work toward completing a final, personal essay through a series of short, guided writing assignments focused on specific topics. In this workshop you will use and build on the writing tools you already have, get...More

Mark Wunderlich

Neighboring Solitudes: The Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke as Generative Sources for Poems

April 10 to May 5

Tuition: $500

In this workshop course, we will write poems based on some of the major themes present in the poems of the great German-language Modernist poet Rainer Maria Rilke. As a poet and thinker Rilke returned to a handful of ideas which he incorporated...More

Sara Roahen

What Sustains Us: The Art of Good “Food Writing”

December 4 to December 8

Tuition: $400

Peter Campion

Form From Feeling and Feeling From Form: Spring

March 12 to April 6

Tuition: $500

Michelle Tea

MEMOIR THAT READS LIKE FICTION: Winter

January 7 to January 11

Tuition: $400

Dawn Potter

Vision and Re-Vision: An 8-Week Master Class on Generating and Revising Poems

July 8 to August 30

Tuition: $600

In this 8-week master class in poetry, we will focus on ways in which the work of both canonical and contemporary poets can help us generate new work and hone revision strategies. By approaching William Shakespeare, Elizabeth Bishop, Yusef...More

Sandra Beasley

“You Should Write About That"

January 23 to January 27

Tuition: $500

We are writers, but not just writers. We bring different areas of expertise to the table—whether a profession, another creative passion, travel, or the experience of parenting a sick child. Have you ever had someone say “You should write about that...More

Francesca Lia Block

Not Always Happily : Writing the Contemporary Fairy Tale

February 1 to February 5

Tuition: $500

Francesca Lia Block’s one-week intensive course will show you how to utilize the various elements of fairy tale writing as inspiration for writing short stories, novels and even poetry. During the course you will delve into character, plot, setting...More

Alix Ohlin

Making Beautiful Sentences

April 10 to May 5

Tuition: $500

Paula Bohince

Small but Mighty

May 29 to June 2

Tuition: $500

Sometimes the smallest poems have the biggest hearts. In this generative workshop, we’ll concentrate on creating small but mighty poems, using such models as Dickinson and Basho, Clifton, Hirshfield, and others. Together, in a supportive...More

Sarah Green

YOUR BEST BEACH BODY: Seven Prompts to Provoke and Invite

July 9 to July 13

Tuition: $400

Dawn Potter

The Quest of Poetry: An 8-Week Master Class on Reading, Writing, and Revising Poems

March 25 to May 17

Tuition: $600

In this 8-week master class in poetry, we will focus on ways in which the work of both canonical and contemporary poets can feed our creativity and help us hone revision strategies. By approaching William Shakespeare, Amy Lowell, Tim Seibles, A. E....More

Ada Limón

Staying True: Authenticity and Voice: Winter

January 9 to March 3

Tuition: $500

Michael White

Gazing In Gazing Out

November 14 to November 18

Tuition: $500

Daisy Fried

“Some People Have Been Unkind”: A Workshop on Literary Book Reviewing

March 5 to March 30

Tuition: $500

Rebecca Seiferle

The Poetic Sequence

March 27 to May 19

Tuition: $500

Ed Skoog

Called to Speech: A One-Week Workshop

September 25 to September 29

Tuition: $500

Fred Marchant

STAYING WITH IT: A FIVE-DAY MEDITATION IN POETRY FOR Spring

April 8 to April 12

Tuition: $400

Paul Guest

Poetry and Apocalypse

October 7 to November 1

Tuition: $500

How do we write poems about this moment, about right now, about global warming and walls and guns and oceans filled with plastic? How do we balance the historic with the lyric, the personal with the political? How can we make art from witness? In...More

Elizabeth Bradfield

The Project Book: Spring

March 6 to March 31

Tuition: $500

Finishing a book of poems focused on a topic, rather than a loose aggregation, is a particular art. Some poets unify books by form or voice as well as subject (such as Ellen Bryant Voigt's Kyrie, Frank X Walker's Buffalo Dance: The Journey of York...More

Jacqueline Jones Lamon

Exploring the Abecedarian Poetic Sequence: More Than Just ABC’s

March 14 to March 18

Tuition: $500

Nancy Pearson

15 Works: September

September 5 to September 30

Tuition: $500

Ada Limón

Staying True: Authenticity and Voice: Spring

March 5 to April 27

Tuition: $600

Paisley Rekdal

Towards a Documentary Poetics

June 26 to July 21

Tuition: $500

Paisley Rekdal’s hands-on class is designed to help you explore the very special challenges poets face when writing documentary poetry. Whether you are expressing individual occurrences or a series of events, this class will focus primarily on...More

Ann Hood

WRITING THE PERSONAL ESSAY: FALL

October 1 to October 26

Tuition: $500

24PearlStreet Staff

Writers' Work Group: Workshop Your Poems

February 4 to May 31

Tuition: $175

Michelle Tea

Memoir That Reads Like Fiction

March 21 to March 25

Tuition: $500

Ann Hood

Writing the Personal Essay: Spring

March 7 to April 1

Tuition: $500

Gabrielle Calvocoressi

Of Knowing Nothing and Everything: A Week of Poem, Pigment, and Paint in the Lab: Fall

November 6 to November 10

Tuition: $400

Sandra Simonds

Shouldn’t the Sonnet?

May 15 to June 9

Tuition: $500

Just what is a sonnet, anyway? Is it simply a fourteen line poem? Can your sonnet have more or less than 14 lines and still be called a sonnet? Does your sonnet have to have a rhyme scheme in order to be called a sonnet? In this four-week study of...More

Meg Day

5 Days, 6 Poems, 7 Ways Back Home: Summer

June 4 to June 8

Tuition: $400

Rebecca Lindenberg

WHAT I SHOULD HAVE SAID: WRITING FUNNY POEMS in Fall

November 12 to December 7

Tuition: $500

Tyler Mills

Radical Revision: Preparing Poems for Publication

January 13 to February 7

Tuition: $500

So you have a draft. What now? This class is geared to helping you rip open the seams of your poems and re-enter them with fresh eyes so that you can prepare them for publication this year. We will look at the revision process of poets like Allen...More

Rebecca Gayle Howell

We All Write Sentences: Spring

March 20 to March 24

Tuition: $500

Carolyn Forché

Writing New Poems: Fall

October 24 to October 28

Tuition: $500

Alicia Oltuski

Fix-It Shop

January 23 to January 27

Tuition: $500

Many wonderful courses serve writers by providing close readings of chapters, stories, and essays. In this class we will work with the issues in writing that do NOT fall neatly into a sequential set of pages. This course is for writers who are...More

Rebecca Lindenberg

Writing for the Senses: Poetic Imagery, Experience, Emotion, and Evocation

March 20 to March 24

Tuition: $500

Ed Skoog

Have You Tried the Side Door? Finding a Way In to Your Next Poems: Spring

May 7 to June 29

Tuition: $600

Michelle Tea

MEMOIR THAT READS LIKE FICTION: Summer

September 24 to September 28

Tuition: $400

24PearlStreet Staff

Writers' Work Group: The Big Project (Fiction)

June 10 to August 30

Tuition: $175

Reginald Dwayne Betts

Juxtaposing the Public & Private to Add Depth to Poetry

May 2 to May 6

Tuition: $500

SPRING DISCOUNT: Use code SPRING16 at registration checkout to get 10% off tuition for this course. In this course we will look at the work of writers who skillfully juxtapose the public with the private in their poetry. We will pay special...More

Meghan O'Gieblyn

Place in Memoir

January 8 to March 2

Tuition: $600

Too often, location is regarded as the backdrop of a memoir—the fixed stage-set on which the action unfolds. But there is a long tradition of memoir that privileges place, and the writer’s experience with that place. In such works, location takes...More

Paula Bohince

From One, Many: Radical Revision

May 22 to May 26

Tuition: $500

You’ll begin the week with one poem and end with five new poems, each derived from the original, which will serve as the source, or seed bed, for these radical revisions, each now a distinct poem. Through exercises and a shared ideas from our group...More

Annie Finch

Working the Beat More; How to Make Poems Sing in Depth

June 18 to July 13

Tuition: $500

Michael Klein

The Bright Light of Possibility: Four Essays

January 28 to February 22

Tuition: $500

In this workshop we will be writing one autobiographical essay each week—and discussing various approaches to looking at and then writing about four essential questions each of us have asked ourselves at one point of our own living: Who am I? ...More

Ed Skoog

Have You Tried the Side Door? Finding a Way In to Your Next Poems: Spring

March 13 to May 5

Tuition: $500

Kirsten Andersen

Stealing Time: The Tricky Dance of Being a Writing Parent

November 7 to December 2

Tuition: $500

"I keep stealing away to take notes...what kind of mother am I, I think, taking notes at a time like this?"—Jamie Quatro, “What It Takes,” Poets & Writers 2014 Beginning writers are often instructed to write what they know: they set pen to page...More

Rebecca Gayle Howell

We All Write Sentences: Winter

January 15 to January 19

Tuition: $400

Rebecca Seiferle

The Poem’s Intention

March 6 to March 31

Tuition: $500

Emilia Phillips

Call (Out): Imitation, Invective, and Conversation

April 9 to May 4

Tuition: $500

Imitation is the highest form of flattery, right? Right? In this course, we'll investigate the practices of poetic imitation and invective, and everything in between. We'll consider the role imitation plays in the development and ongoing practices...More

Jennifer Tseng

START SMALL: WHAT WRITERS CAN LEARN FROM VERY SHORT STORIES

January 7 to February 1

Tuition: $500

Joanne Dugan

Writing Pictures: An Exploration of Text and Image

October 21 to November 15

Tuition: $500

It’s been said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Yet the addition of photographs to text yields surprising results that can greatly deepen the impact of poetry, narrative and other written forms. Or, as Theodor Geisel said, “Words and...More

Ann Hood

Writing the Personal Essay: Spring

March 27 to April 21

Tuition: $500

Reif Larsen

The Sentence as a Gift

April 11 to April 15

Tuition: $500

SPRING DISCOUNT: Use code SPRING16 at registration checkout to get 10% off tuition for this course. Do you see your sentences simply as a way to get from here to there or as an opportunity to try something never done before? In this one-week...More

Julie Carr

The Epistolary Poem

September 4 to September 8

Tuition: $500

In 1959, American poet Frank O’Hara wrote a mock-manifesto he called “Personism” in which he argued that a poem should be immediate and intimate, that it should “address itself to one person (other than the poet himself), thus evoking overtones of...More

Kimberly Burwick

Mythological Gravity in Poetry

May 8 to June 2

Tuition: $500

Sarah Rose Nordgren

The Sources of Poetry

June 4 to July 26

Tuition: $600

"You mention Immortality. That is the Flood subject.” – Emily Dickinson in a letter to T. W. HigginsonWriting a poem is not a logical act, and it behooves us now and again to ask ourselves: Why are we writing poems in the first place? Many of us...More

Anne Sanow

REVISION IS THE WRITING: PROSE WORKSHOP FOR Winter

January 21 to February 15

Tuition: $500

Peter Campion

Form from Feeling and Feeling from Form: Winter

January 27 to February 21

Tuition: 500

Rebecca Gayle Howell

Translation as Creative Practice

June 5 to June 30

Tuition: $500

Michael Klein

If It’s True. . . : A Memoir Workshop: SPRING

April 4 to April 29

Tuition: $500

SPRING DISCOUNT: Use code SPRING16 at registration checkout to get 10% off tuition for this course. It’s become an almost unmovable piece popular literary culture to make a clear distinction in a memoir between what’s true and what’s made up. But...More

Emilia Phillips

Every Phantom // A Story: Erasure and Revision

March 6 to April 28

Tuition: 500

What isn’t said in a poem is just as meaningful-just as much a craft choice-as what is said. As poets, we so often go to the page with the intention of telling our readers something; this approach, however, often positions us between the reader...More

Rebecca Lindenberg

Writing for the Senses: Poetic Imagery, Experience, Emotion, and Evocation: September

September 11 to September 15

Tuition: $500

Ed Skoog

Keep Your Foot on the Sustain Pedal: Writing Long Poems

January 15 to February 9

Tuition: $500

Ed Skoog

HAVE YOU TRIED THE SIDE DOOR? FINDING A WAY IN TO YOUR NEXT POEMS: Summer

August 5 to September 27

Tuition: $600

24PearlStreet Staff

Writers' Work Group: Submit Your Work

June 10 to August 30

Tuition: $175

Laura Madeline Wiseman

Delightful Duos: Collaborating Poets

March 6 to March 31

Tuition: $500

Delightful duos, crafty couples, and writers who dare to work in pairs, this eight-week studio will focus on the art of collaborating with other poets. Each student will participate in 2-4 paired groups to produce new, exciting creations written in...More

Ada Limón

Staying True: Authenticity & Voice: Fall

October 12 to December 4

Tuition: $500

Meg Day

5 Days, 6 Poems, 7 Ways Back Home

December 11 to December 15

Tuition: $400

Aamina Ahmad

TV Pilot Boot Camp!

May 29 to June 2

Tuition: $500

In this course we will look at the enormous storytelling potential that television offers us as writers, as well as the necessary parameters of budget, schedule and branding within which we have to work. We’ll consider the way in which audiences now...More

Oliver de la Paz

Lovers, Liars, Monsters, Saints: You and the Persona Poem

June 18 to July 13

Tuition: $500

Ancient Greeks wore masks to express the emotions of the characters they were playing during dramatic productions. There was a pragmatic reason for this--it was often difficult for those seated far away to see what emotion the character being...More

D. Gilson

Cut to the Quick: Flash Nonfiction

November 12 to December 7

Tuition: $500

Hot takes, op-eds, tweets, statuses, pings: the truth and its opposites are flying around us faster than ever before. This course will focus on the sub-genre of the flash essay. Situated somewhere between prose poem and micro-narrative, flash...More

Sara Eliza Johnson

Language and the Lucid Dream: Spring

March 13 to May 5

Tuition: $500

Gabrielle Calvocoressi

Of Knowing Nothing and Everything: A Week of Poem, Pigment, and Paint in the Lab

November 7 to November 11

Tuition: $500

Rebecca Gayle Howell

We All Write Sentences: September

September 4 to September 8

Tuition: $500

Jacqueline Kolosov

Writing in an Age of Terror

November 6 to December 1

Tuition: $500

What is the writer's obligation in an age of increasing terror and unreliable news? Can writing enact change? Create a conversation? Enlarge one? In this reading and writing intensive workshop, we will look at several writers, both here and abroad,...More

Kimberly Burwick

The Image, Ravenous: Summer

June 11 to June 15

Tuition: $400

Elizabeth Bradfield

THE PROJECT BOOK: Winter

February 4 to March 1

Tuition: $500

Susanna Sonnenberg

Engaging the Experience: How to Make Sense in Memoir of What Happened in Life

October 28 to November 22

Tuition: $500

Vivian Gornick says, "Truth in a memoir is achieved not through a recital of actual events; it is achieved when the reader comes to believe that the writer is working hard to engage with the experience at hand." How do we organize the events of a...More

Ann Hood

Writing the Personal Essay: Winter

January 9 to February 3

Tuition: $500

A writing sample is required for admittance to this class. Before registering, please email a writing sample to gleghorn@fawc.org. During this memoir course you will work toward completing a final, personal essay through a series of short, guided...More

Jacqueline Kolosov

Voice-Driven and Urgent: Contemporary Young Adult Fiction

March 7 to April 1

Tuition: $500

Although YA authors primarily aim their novels at teens, adults continue read these books for their voice-driven narratives and the issues with which they wrestle. In this workshop, you will focus on the facets of a successful YA novel, guided by...More

Nancy Pearson

15 Works: Summer

June 4 to June 29

Tuition: $500

Nancy Pearson

Almost Certainly But Not Quite Right At All

May 1 to May 26

Tuition: $500

Perhaps you have a poem you can’t get off the ground, a poem that bugs you, annoys you, drives you mad because you can’t figure out how to revise it. This 4-week workshop explores ways to begin revising poems that have been driving you crazy for...More

Ann Hood

Jumpstart Your Memoir: Summer

June 4 to June 8

Tuition: $400

Alix Ohlin

MAKING BEAUTIFUL SENTENCES

July 15 to August 9

Tuition: $500

Brian Turner

The Big Wide World: A Poetry Workshop

January 27 to February 21

Tuition: $500

Part of our work as global literary citizens involves forming friendships and affinities with writers across the globe—even if (and oftentimes because) our nation as a whole often struggles to do the same. In this workshop, we’ll attend to what...More

Cam Terwilliger

Flash Fiction: Spring

May 1 to May 5

Tuition: $500

Ocean Vuong

The First Step Backward: Memory as Creative Force

February 1 to February 5

Tuition: $500

This new intensive course will examine the myriad ways in which memory works on the artistic practice. You will investigate the ways in which the body, memories, and scars are living relics of the past, seeking to honor past moments while learning...More

Juliana Spahr

Five Not Entirely Possible Assignments

March 13 to March 17

Tuition: $500

Years ago I took a workshop where I was given a chart of immigration numbers by year and country for Bulgaria and asked to write something that summarized the data in the chart. I have no idea what happened to the piece of writing that I wrote out...More

Rebecca Lindenberg

What I Should Have Said: Writing Funny Poems

January 16 to February 10

Tuition: $500

Chloe Garcia Roberts

Crossing Borders and Subverting Genre: The Lyric Essay: SPRING

March 12 to April 6

Tuition: $500

Ed Skoog

CALLED TO SPEECH: A ONE-WEEK WORKSHOP

February 18 to February 22

Tuition: $400

24PearlStreet Staff

Writers' Work Group: Workshop Your Nonfiction

June 10 to August 30

Tuition: $175

Meg Day

The Elegy & the Emo Poem: A Battle to the Death

April 25 to April 29

Tuition: $500

SPRING DISCOUNT: Use code SPRING16 at registration checkout to get 10% off tuition for this course. What is the responsibility of the poet in times of public mourning? Why is it that we turn to poetry during periods of tragedy or deep sorrow? In...More

Marcus Wicker

Locking Down Your Free Verse: Containers that Fit

February 29 to March 25

Tuition: $500

In this four-week workshop focused on free verse, you will be guided through a series of exercises designed to facilitate experimentation and surprise in your work. Studying various techniques, you will investigate many of the intriguing inner-...More

Sara Eliza Johnson

Mad Science

October 3 to October 7

Tuition: $500

It may often seem that poetry and science are at odds with one another—the former typically associated with subjectivity and emotion, and the latter with objectivity and facts—but poets have long looked to scientific endeavors and discoveries for...More

Ann Hood

Writing the Personal Essay: Spring

March 26 to April 20

Tuition: $500

Rosie Schaap

Essay is a Verb: The Practice of Personal Narrative: Spring

March 19 to April 13

Tuition: $500

Kimberly Burwick

Roughness, Ruckus and Rumble: Writing toward Disquietude

March 12 to May 4

Tuition: $600

Engaging the acuteness of internal and external strife, we will generate poems that do not shy away from distress, but engage this feeling head-on. We look at poets such as Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Tomaž Šalamun, Tomasz Różycki, Rebecca Gayle...More

Meghan O'Gieblyn

PLACE IN MEMOIR

June 24 to August 16

Tuition: $600

Sandra Beasley

Essaying in Unconventional Forms

October 21 to November 15

Tuition: $500

Do you have a story to tell, but struggle in knowing where to begin? Are there gaps in memory, or lulls in action, that make a traditional narrative arc unwieldy? Are you ready to try something new in your nonfiction writing? This class is about...More

Gabrielle Calvocoressi

Of Knowing Nothing and Everything: A Week of Poem, Pigment, and Paint in the Lab

March 6 to March 10

Tuition: $500

Justin St. Germain

Memoir: Getting Started

May 2 to May 6

Tuition: $500

SPRING DISCOUNT: Use code SPRING16 at registration checkout to get 10% off tuition for this course. One of the hardest practical challenges writers face when beginning a memoir is where to start. It might seem obvious--just start at the beginning--...More

Nicole Terez Dutton

Threading and Building: Working Toward a Manuscript

December 4 to December 8

Tuition: $400

Jason Zuzga

When Language is the Artist’s Material: The Poet’s Palette

June 12 to June 16

Tuition: $500

What exactly is it that poets do with language, or, rather, what opportunities for creation and effects does language afford? We’ll work to get a concrete feel for language as one possible art-making material among others such as paint, or stone...More

Fred Marchant

Letters to the World

June 25 to June 29

Tuition: $400

Poets from the ancient world to the present time have often found the idea of a "letter in verse" very appealing. Sometimes that letter poem is addressed to a real person in a real time and place: a friend, a lover, a teacher, a relative, a public...More

Matt Miller

Tiny Tales, Prose Poems, and Micro Memoirs

September 17 to September 21

Tuition: $400

Dariel Suarez

Keep the Narrative Going: How to Successfully Provide Context in Fiction

April 17 to April 21

Tuition: $500

Daisy Fried

Writing Poems that Don't Fit

February 6 to March 3

Tuition: $500

Cam Terwilliger

Flash Fiction: Spring

May 7 to June 1

Tuition: $500

Meghan O'Gieblyn

Place in Memoir

May 8 to June 30

Tuition: $500

Rebecca Lindenberg

Writing for the Senses: Poetic Imagery, Experience, Emotion, and Evocation

May 14 to May 18

Tuition: $400

Nancy Pearson

15 WORKS: Winter

January 14 to February 8

Tuition: $500

Aja Gabel

Writing Love Stories

January 20 to February 14

Tuition: $500

Writing love stories can feel fraught for many reasons. It can feel gendered, cliche, too personal, or not personal enough. It can feel driftless to write about “relationships” and fruitless to try to say something new about the world’s oldest topic...More

Cam Terwilliger

Flash Fiction: Fall

October 3 to October 7

Tuition: $500

Michael White

Gazing In Gazing Out

February 22 to February 26

Tuition: $500

In this new one-week intensive workshop designed for intermediate to advanced poets, you will explore fundamentally new approaches to subject manner while writing new poems and revising old ones. The class will also explore the intersection of the...More

Garrard Conley

Illuminating the Past in Memoir

January 23 to February 17

Tuition: $500

How do memoirists re-enter the mysteries of past experience?The answer, for many of us, resides in our ability to 'play' with the past and find enjoyment in exciting literary techniques memoirists and fiction writers have passed down to us. To that...More

Michael White

Writing the Personal Journey: A Multi-Genre Travel Writing Workshop

April 3 to April 28

Tuition: $500

Anthony Doerr’s favorite travel book is D.H. Lawrence’s Sea and Sardinia. According to Doerr, Lawrence “never stops paying attention, and in his prose everything—sunlight, a steamship, a vegetable market—becomes ecstatic." He might’ve been talking...More

Lisa Duffy

Elements of Craft: A Fiction Workshop

July 31 to August 25

Tuition: $500

Sara Eliza Johnson

LANGUAGE AND THE LUCID DREAM: SUMMER

June 24 to August 16

Tuition: $600

Amber Flora Thomas

The Poetry of Place: Erasures, Journeys, and Transformations on the Way to Home

June 3 to June 28

Tuition: $500

This four-week course will offer participants an opportunity to explore nature writing and environmental poetry through experimental forms and generate new work. Challenge what it means to be at home in a world experiencing intense climate change....More

Matthew Olzmann

Surprise and Revelation: Building and Overthrowing Expectations in a Poem

April 18 to April 22

Tuition: $500

SPRING DISCOUNT: Use code SPRING16 at registration checkout to get 10% off tuition for this course. How is surprise created? Often, it’s an effect of poetic structure: the order in which information is presented to the reader. One piece of...More

Daisy Fried

Writing Poems That Don't Fit: Spring

March 7 to April 1

Tuition: $500

Ada Limón

Staying True: Authenticity and Voice: Fall

October 9 to December 1

Tuition: $600

Meghan O'Gieblyn

Place in Memoir

June 26 to August 11

Tuition: $500

Ed Skoog

HAVE YOU TRIED THE SIDE DOOR? FINDING A WAY IN TO YOUR NEXT POEMS: Fall

October 1 to November 23

Tuition: 600

24PearlStreet Staff

Writers' Work Group: The Big Project (Nonfiction)

February 4 to May 31

Tuition: $175

"The Big Project" accountability Work Group is meant for writers who want to make headway on their nonfiction manuscript. Whether you are working towards a first draft of a collection of essays, or are beginning the process of revising your...More

Irina Reyn

Open That Drawer!: Reviving the Stalled Novel

December 5 to December 9

Tuition: $500

Elizabeth Bradfield

Animals in the Anthropocene—Toward a Beastly, Eco-Justice Poetic

October 24 to October 28

Tuition: $500

Many of us are moved by the non-humans we encounter. But how do we write about our interactions with animals in ways that are full, accurate, and surprising? With today’s developing conversations about animal rights, animal biology/ecology/...More

Ann Hood

Writing the Personal Essay: September

September 4 to September 29

Tuition: $500

Rosie Schaap

Essay is a Verb: The Practice of Personal Narrative: Fall

October 16 to November 10

Tuition: $500

Kimberly Burwick

The Image, Ravenous

December 4 to December 8

Tuition: $400

Kimberly Burwick

MYTHOLOGICAL GRAVITY IN POETRY

October 15 to November 9

Tuition: $500

Peter Campion

Form from Feeling and Feeling from Form: Fall

October 14 to November 8

Tuition: $500

Michelle Tea

Memoir that Reads Like Fiction: Fall

December 5 to December 9

Tuition: $500

Kirsten Andersen

Stealing Time: The Tricky Dance of Being a Writing Parent

February 1 to February 26

Tuition: $500

Writing about the parent-child experience is rich territory, but it is often difficult to balance parenting time with your writing. In this new workshop, you will discover how to embrace your new experiences and begin writing again. This course will...More

Heidi Jon Schmidt

Telling the Story: Fall

October 2 to October 27

Tuition: $500

Jennifer Tseng

Writing the Forbidden

September 25 to September 29

Tuition: $500

In this one-week intensive you will work to produce a piece of forbidden writing. What’s forbidden to one writer may not be forbidden to another. Some feel forbidden to write about emotions (i.e. anger, happiness etc.) or circumstances (i.e. trauma...More

Maria Hummel

Beginning Your Mystery Novel

June 18 to June 22

Tuition: $400

Tana French, Kate Atkinson, and Gillian Flynn are part of an explosion of new mystery novelists who are stretching the strict conventions of this long-beloved genre to make timely, original books. If you’ve ever daydreamed about joining them, this...More

CA Conrad

Occult Poetics & (Soma)tic Poetry Rituals PART 2

August 20 to August 24

Tuition: $400

We will discuss how occult and paranormal experiences and practices of poets in the past shaped their praxis and changed the world of poetry, and in some cases even saved lives. We will read and discuss the occult poetics of Hoa Nguyen, Ariana...More

CA Conrad

Queer Bodies Poetry Workshop

February 20 to February 24

Tuition: $500

“If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.” --Audre Lorde This workshop will focus on (Soma)tic poetry rituals designed for the Queer body. With over 200 anti-LGBTQ laws issued...More

Daisy Fried

“Some People Have Been Unkind”: A Workshop on Literary Book Reviewing

April 4 to April 29

Tuition: $500

SPRING DISCOUNT: Use code SPRING16 at registration checkout to get 10% off tuition for this course. In this workshop, you will look at literary book reviewing from aesthetic, ethical, and practical angles, exploring possible approaches for reviewing...More

Meghan O'Gieblyn

Place in Memoir

January 9 to March 3

Tuition: $500

Anne Sanow

Revision is the Writing: Prose Workshop

April 9 to May 4

Tuition: $500

Ed Skoog

Called to Speech: A One-Week Workshop

August 21 to August 25

Tuition: $500

Sara Eliza Johnson

LANGUAGE AND THE LUCID DREAM: Fall

October 22 to December 14

Tuition: $600

Tessa Fontaine

Writing Your Way to the Spark: A Generative Memoir Workshop

April 29 to May 24

Tuition: $500

In this generative workshop, we'll focus on translating personal experience and research into effective memoir or personal essay. Through prompts, we'll invigorate both right and left brain memories and ideas, incorporate outside materials,...More

Cam Terwilliger

Flash Fiction

May 2 to May 6

Tuition: $500

SPRING DISCOUNT: Use code SPRING16 at registration checkout to get 10% off tuition for this course. Regularly appearing in the pages of literary magazines, flash fiction has become one of the most vibrant modes in which to write. A protean form,...More

Carolyn Forché

Writing New Poems: Fall

November 30 to December 4

Tuition: $500

This one-week intensive class will help experienced poets push their writing in exciting new directions. In this generative, guided workshop, you will work intensively as as you explore different approaches to process and revision. Carolyn Forché’...More

Laura Madeline Wiseman

Delightful Duos: Collaborating Poets

January 8 to March 2

Tuition: $600

Ann Hood

Writing the Personal Essay: July

July 10 to August 4

Tuition: $500

Daisy Fried

Writing the Political Poem

October 8 to November 2

Tuition: $500

What makes a poem political, and what makes a political poem good? Is it harder or easier, in the current American political climate to write political poetry? Can poems change anything in the world anyway? What are political poems for? This...More

24PearlStreet Staff

Writers' Work Group: The Big Project (Poetry)

February 4 to May 31

Tuition: $175

Sam Sax

Heeeeeey!: Queer Poetics

February 13 to February 17

Tuition: $500

Hilary Price

Make it Funny: The Basics of Drawing and Writing Single Panel Cartoons

April 25 to April 29

Tuition: $500

SPRING DISCOUNT: Use code SPRING16 at registration checkout to get 10% off tuition for this course. What are the components of a caption cartoon? (Plot, setting, characters, surprise... all in a snapshot.) Each day's lecture will focus on a...More

Alex Marzano-Lesnevich

Narrating Memoir: Who’s Telling Your Life Story?

September 11 to September 15

Tuition: $500

Anne Sanow

Revision is the Writing: Prose Workshop, Summer

July 31 to August 25

Tuition: $500

Elizabeth Bradfield

Deep Revision

January 1 to January 5

Tuition: $400

Bring us your tired, your unfinished, your good-but-not-great. If now is the time for intensive feedback on poems you've been working on for a while, join us for a week-long intensive of examining each other's poems. Each participant will offer...More

Kim Addonizio

EXPLORING THE SONNET: Fall

October 1 to October 26

Tuition: $500

Leila Chatti

Praise: Poems of Celebration, Ecstasy, and Survival

November 11 to December 6

Tuition: $500

“Come, seereal flowersof this painful world.” – Basho It can be difficult, in these trying times, to make space for praise, or to notice the occasion for it. It is easy to believe it, even, selfish. (“Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers...More

Nancy Pearson

15 Works: Winter

January 9 to February 3

Tuition: $500

Nancy Pearson

15 Works: Fall

October 17 to November 11

Tuition: $500

Ann Hood

Jumpstart Your Memoir: Winter

January 22 to January 26

Tuition: $400

Jillian Weise

The Poet as Spy: 4 Tricks from Espionage: Winter

February 12 to February 16

Tuition: $400

Alex Marzano-Lesnevich

Narrating Memoir: Who's Telling Your Life Story?

July 9 to July 13

Tuition: $400

Ann Hood

JUMPSTART YOUR MEMOIR: SUMMER

June 3 to June 7

Tuition: $400

Emilia Phillips

Writing About Trauma in Poetry and Nonfiction

October 7 to November 1

Tuition: $500

How do we write about trauma even as it writes and rewrites us? In this cross-genre course, we’ll investigate our responsibilities as writers of trauma and discuss the ways in which we can ethically contextualize our content to readers. Class...More

Suzanne Rivecca

Good Things in Small Packages: The Art of the Short Story: Winter

January 9 to March 3

Tuition: $500

Ada Limón

Staying True: Authenticity & Voice: Winter

January 4 to February 26

Tuition: $500

Sarah Messer

Facts, Research, and Memoir: Fall

November 6 to December 1

Tuition: $500

D. Gilson

Life Drawing: Public Persona Poetry

July 17 to July 21

Tuition: $500

"I am ashamed of my century,” Frank O’Hara explains, "for being so entertaining but I have to smile.” In this one-week intensive course, students will mine speech acts — from Twitter to long-form interviews — by a public figure of their choosing to...More

Kim Addonizio

Diving into Metaphor

August 6 to August 31

Tuition: $500

This class is FULL, but Kim's class in the fall still has space. “Juliet is the sun!” Shakespeare famously wrote. And Pound, just as famously, saw the faces at a Metro station as “petals on a wet, black bough.” The magic of metaphor: one thing in...More

Philip Metres

Inviting the Infinite: Poetry and/as Prayer

September 24 to September 28

Tuition: $400

David, Mohammad, Rumi, Donne, Hopkins, Rilke, Louise Gluck, Kaveh Akbar, Danez Smith: all have written poetry as an invitation to the infinite, to wrestle with God, longing create a refuge in the eternal. In this brief workshop, we will discuss a...More

Erin Adair-Hodges

Fail Up--: A Poetry Workshop

January 20 to February 14

Tuition: $500

Meg Day

The Elegy & the Emo Poem: A Battle to the Death: Summer

June 19 to July 14

Tuition: $500

What is the responsibility of the poet in times of public mourning? Why is it that we turn to poetry during periods of tragedy or deep sorrow? In this course we will be in conversation with how poetry informs our public & private responses to...More

Sara Roahen

Food in Memoir: What Sustains Us

March 14 to March 18

Tuition: $500

Food sustains us—or in some cases, fails to sustain us. Because of food’s omnipresent role in our lives, using food in our writing can help us narrow in on, or expound upon, the weightiest of topics. In this workshop, you will learn how to give food...More

Meghan O'Gieblyn

The ‘I’ in Memoir

September 12 to September 16

Tuition: $500

Sara Eliza Johnson

Language and the Lucid Dream: Winter

January 8 to March 2

Tuition: $600

Mark Wunderlich

Getting Poems Started, Keeping Them Going

June 12 to July 7

Tuition: $500

Mark Wunderlich’s course will provide you with practical tools for starting poems, building on them, revising them and pushing them to their best possible conclusions. Using letters, directions, prayers, lists, litanies, etc. as a starting point,...More

Peter Campion

Next Steps: Summer

September 10 to September 14

Tuition: $400

Wendy C. Ortiz

Writing on the Edge: A Multi-Genre Workshop

April 22 to May 17

Tuition: $500

Edgework, as defined by one online dictionary, is “behavior at the edge of what is normally allowed or accepted; risky or radical behavior.” Our four weeks together will be spent looking at how the definitive and formative experiences of our lives...More

Devi Lockwood

Tangible Things: Object-based Storytelling

March 28 to April 1

Tuition: $500

Heidi Jon Schmidt

Telling the Story

October 26 to November 20

Tuition: $500

Almost all stories begin somewhere in an author's experience. In this workshop, you will learn to unlock your own experience and reimagine it as a compelling and fulfilling story that makes characters feel alive. The goal is to create a rich story...More

Juliana Spahr

Five Not Entirely Possible Assignments

December 11 to December 15

Tuition: $400

Nancy Pearson

15 Works: July

July 3 to July 28

Tuition: $500

Erin Adair-Hodges

Lyric and the Lives of Others—

January 7 to February 1

Tuition: $500

Though poetry doesn’t require plot to shape it, as writers we’re naturally drawn to others’ compelling stories. What, then, can we learn from engaging deeply with the lived experiences of others? This class will explore how the particular dynamics...More

Sarah Green

THIS IS THE YEAR: A New Writing Habit Starter

January 7 to January 11

Tuition: 400

Jennifer Tseng

Writing the Forbidden: Fiction

March 27 to March 31

Tuition: $500

In this one-week fiction intensive you will work to produce a piece of forbidden writing. What’s forbidden to one writer may not be forbidden to another. Some feel forbidden to write about emotions (i.e. anger, happiness etc.) or circumstances (i.e...More

Rebecca Gayle Howell

We All Write Sentences: Fall

December 12 to December 16

Tuition: $500

Elizabeth Bradfield

The Project Book

September 4 to September 29

Tuition: $500

Nancy Pearson

15 Works: June

June 5 to June 30

Tuition: $500

Lisa Duffy

Elements of Craft: A Fiction Workshop: WINTER

January 15 to February 9

Tuition: $500

Rebecca Seiferle

THE POEM'S INTENTION

March 4 to March 29

Tuition: $500

Michael Klein

Writing Social Justice in Poetry and Essays

January 20 to February 14

Tuition: $500

At one point in my writing mostly autobiographical poetry and essays/memoir, I got some sage advice from my mentor, Adrienne Rich, who told me that it was time to extend my reach outward, beyond the self, with writing that let in more of the world....More

Carolyn Forché

Writing New Poems: Winter

January 16 to January 20

Tuition: $500

Peter Campion

Form From Feeling and Feeling From Form: Spring

April 4 to April 29

Tuition: $500

PETER CAMPION’s new four-week workshop will help you better understand poetry from the inside out by exploring seven formal elements – action, voice, sentence, phrase, line, sound and metaphor. You will learn how these elements work together in...More

Michelle Tea

Memoir that Reads Like Fiction: Spring

April 9 to April 13

Tuition: $400

Troy Jollimore

Seeing, Hearing, and Letting Poems Be

June 19 to June 23

Tuition: $500

/*-->*/ Many of us have had the experience of sensing a poem hovering at the edge of our peripheral vision, drifting in the margins of being heard, trembling on the verge of announcing itself. You know it’s there, waiting to exist, but how do you...More

Meghan O'Gieblyn

Place in Memoir

July 9 to August 31

Tuition: $600

Rebecca Seiferle

Form as the Body of the Poem

April 1 to April 26

Tuition: $500

In this workshop, we’ll look at how each poem takes an organic form, and how discovery of that form can lead us more fully into the poem. At one point I had a sequence of mostly short poems that refused to come together as a whole. One afternoon,...More

Sandra Beasley

Mapping Your Memoir from Start to Finish

January 13 to March 6

Tuition: $600

What begins with “I have a story to tell” can soon feel unwieldy in terms of structuring a narrative, creating scenes, and adding factual depth. This class helps you create an action plan for getting your memoir written. Week by week, we'll...More

Jacqueline Jones Lamon

Exploring the Abecedarian Poetics: More Than Just ABC's: Spring

April 10 to April 14

Tuition: $500

Sarah Messer

Facts, Research, and Memoir: Winter

February 6 to March 3

Tuition: $500

Ann Hood

Writing the Personal Essay: Fall

October 2 to October 27

Tuition: $500

Jillian Weise

The Poet as Spy: 4 Tricks from Espionage: Winter

January 30 to February 3

Tuition: $500

Mark Wunderlich

Neighboring Solitudes: The Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke as generative sources for poems: WINTER

February 5 to March 2

Tuition: $500

Ann Hood

JUMPSTART YOUR MEMOIR: Winter

February 11 to February 15

Tuition: $400

Rebecca Seiferle

The Poetic Sequence

July 8 to August 30

Tuition: $600

Peter Campion

Form From Feeling and Feeling From Form: Fall

October 3 to October 28

Tuition: $500

Ann Hood

Jumpstart Your Memoir

February 1 to February 5

Tuition: $500

Often, that moment when you first begin to write is the scariest. This one-week intensive workshop will help you get started by asking the right questions. Whether you're stuck in a draft that isn't working, having trouble organizing your story,...More

Annie Finch

Working the Beat: How to Make Poems Sing

November 7 to November 11

Tuition: $500

Sara Eliza Johnson

Mad Science

October 2 to October 6

Tuition: $400

Jennifer Tseng

Writing the Forbidden

February 5 to March 2

Tuition: $500

In this four-week class you will work to produce pieces of forbidden writing. What’s forbidden to one writer may not be forbidden to another. Some feel forbidden to write about emotions (i.e. anger, happiness etc.) or circumstances (i.e. trauma,...More

Ada Limón

STAYING TRUE: AUTHENTICITY AND VOICE: Fall

October 8 to November 30

Tuition: $600

David Kutz-Marks

Beauty in Clouds

May 6 to May 31

Tuition: $500

In this course we will assess the stranger aesthetic virtues of poems we—and the rest of the world—are writing now. Without disavowing the values of form, clarity, logical coherence, and so many other key terms of the workshop that represent the...More

Jennifer Tseng

Writing the Forbidden

May 2 to May 6

Tuition: $500

SPRING DISCOUNT: Use code SPRING16 at registration checkout to get 10% off tuition for this course. In this one-week intensive you will work to produce a piece of forbidden writing, using the form of your choice. What’s forbidden to one writer may...More

Charles McLeod

New Forms of Fiction

October 12 to December 4

Tuition: $500

Charles McLeod’s provocative new class will help you sharpen and enhance your narrative skills through a series of unlikely written assignments. Over the eight-week run of this class, you will explore writing for different forms of new media,...More

Suzanne Rivecca

Good Things in Small Packages: The Art of the Short Story: Winter

January 8 to March 2

Tuition: $600

Arisa White

Know Thyself: Poetry of Personal Witness

October 30 to November 24

Tuition: $500

David Kutz-Marks

BEAUTY IN CLOUDS: A FOUR-WEEK WORKSHOP

November 12 to December 7

Tuition: $500

Erin Adair-Hodges

Fail Up—

April 1 to April 26

Tuition: 500

Daisy Fried

4 Poets: Adaptation and Rejection as Technique

November 21 to December 16

Tuition: $500

What is creative influence and how can we best use it? The first week of this course we’ll read and discuss sets of poems from six different contemporary poets: Anne Carson, Ciaran Carson, Natalie Diaz, Yusef Komunyakaa, Thylias Moss and Alicia...More

Nicole Terez Dutton

Threading and Building: Working Toward a Manuscript

December 5 to December 9

Tuition: $500

Carolyn Forché

Writing New Poems: Winter

January 15 to January 19

Tuition: $400

Devi Lockwood

Tell Me a Story: The Power of Deep Listening

January 22 to January 26

Tuition: $400

Daily prompts will ask you to engage in oral storytelling sessions with people around you, to make short audio recordings, and to write based on this experience. Reading and listening assignments will include the work of Anna Deavere Smith, John...More

Nathan Oates

“And the Queen Died of Grief”: Approaches to Plot in Fiction

September 18 to September 22

Tuition: $500

Peter Campion

FORM FROM FEELING AND FEELING FROM FORM: Summer

July 15 to August 9

Tuition: $500

Nickole Brown

Writing in the Age of Loneliness: Eco-Literature & The Writer's Task

February 3 to February 28

Tuition: $500

We are now in the throes of a sixth mass extinction of plants and animals. Some call it the Anthropocene, but biologist E.O. Wilson said it may be called by scientists and poets alike the Eremozoic, meaning “The Age of Loneliness.” If we take the...More

Devi Lockwood

Tell Me a Story: The Power of Deep Listening

January 16 to January 20

Tuition: 500

Nancy Pearson

To Be Moved and To Move

March 7 to April 29

Tuition: $500

How can we write personal poems without sounding sentimental or self-serving? Experimenting with a dynamic mixture of time, images and phrases, this eight-week studio will help you create new poems that express a deeper personal story and “move”...More

Michelle Tea

Memoir that Reads Like Fiction: Fall

December 11 to December 15

Tuition: $400

Memoirist, novelist and poet Michelle Tea will advise on the creation of a memoir that has the cinematic feel and the singular voice of an immersive novel. Learn techniques to distance yourself from your own experience, face down fears, slaughter...More

Nathan Oates

“And the Queen Died of Grief”: Approaches to Plot in Fiction

May 15 to May 19

Tuition: $500

Major Jackson

Visionary Poetics

August 6 to August 10

Tuition: $400

We designate those poets with vision who have successfully developed an identifiable style or addressed a topic in their poetry that becomes almost synonymous with their name. For example, poets such as Lucille Clifton, Yusef Komunyakaa, CK Williams...More

Mark Wunderlich

NEIGHBORING SOLITUDES: THE POETRY OF RAINER MARIA RILKE AS GENERATIVE SOURCES FOR POEMS

April 8 to May 3

Tuition: $500

Elissa Altman

Intimacy, Permission, and the Heart of the Story: Winter

January 27 to February 21

Tuition: $500

Rosie Schaap

Essay is a Verb: The Practice of Personal Narrative: Spring

March 6 to March 31

Tuition: $500

Jacqueline Jones Lamon

Exploring the Abecedarian Poetic Sequence: More Than Just ABC's: Fall

October 10 to October 14

Tuition: $500

Lydia Millet

Fierce Fiction in Five Days: Spring

March 13 to March 17

Tuition: $500

Jacqueline Jones Lamon

Exploring the Abecedarian Poetics: More Than Just ABC's

October 9 to October 13

Tuition: $400

Peter Campion

Form From Feeling and Feeling From Form: Summer

July 9 to August 3

Tuition: $500

Michelle Tea

MEMOIR THAT READS LIKE FICTION: Summer

August 5 to August 9

Tuition: $400

Ruben Quesada

Prose Poetry Workshop

July 22 to August 16

Tuition: $500

Write at the intersection of prose and poetry in this workshop devoted to the imaginative and innovative possibilities in writing poetry without line breaks. We will look at a historical range of prose and poetry that model elements of story,...More

Nomi Stone

Anthro-Poetics: Living, Seeing, and Wonder

March 20 to March 24

Tuition: $500

We will "sing the [world] electric" through experiments in anthro-poetics. Our goal: to expand both our seeing and writing practices, by estranging the familiar and deestranging the hitherto unknown. We will adventure together into wonder by...More

Lydia Millet

The Charismatic Narrator

April 4 to April 8

Tuition: $500

SPRING DISCOUNT: Use code SPRING16 at registration checkout to get 10% off tuition for this course. In her one-week intensive class, Lydia Millet wants to help you write a story so thought provoking that your readers will be unable to turn away...More

Nomi Stone

Anthro-Poetics: Living, Seeing, and Wonder

May 7 to May 11

Tuition: $500

Lisa Duffy

Elements of Craft: A Fiction Workshop

May 29 to June 23

Tuition: $500

CA Conrad

Occult Poetics & (Soma)tic Poetry Rituals PART 1

August 13 to August 17

Tuition: $400

Sarah Van Arsdale

The Fiction of Truth/The Truth of Fiction

November 5 to November 30

Tuition: $500

Where is the line between memoir and fiction? How much can you fabricate in memoir, and how much can you steal from your own life in fiction? In this workshop, students will submit their work---whether it's fiction, memoir, or a hybrid---for...More

Ada Limón

Staying True: Authenticity and Voice: Spring

March 6 to April 28

Tuition: $500

Thomas Page McBee

The Reported Life: Using Journalism to Tell a Truer Story: Fall

November 14 to November 18

Tuition: $500

Since the gonzo stylings of Hunter S. Thompson, Joan Didion, and Truman Capote disrupted once and for all the false notion of "objective" reporting, many journalists and literary nonfiction writers have utilized one another's tools to get closer to...More

Daisy Fried

Writing Poems that Don't Fit: Winter

February 5 to March 2

Tuition: $500

Does it sometimes seem as if the poetry world is divided into camps determined to prove that the other camps have nothing to offer? And where do you fit in? This workshop recognizes that the best poetry often doesn’t fit into any stylistic mode,...More

Jacqueline Kolosov

Voice-Driven and Urgent: Contemporary Young Adult Fiction

April 10 to May 5

Tuition: $500

Young adult fiction is a thriving part of publishing and includes genres such as historical fiction, coming-of-age narratives, fantasy, paranormal, romance and literary fiction. Although YA authors primarily aim their novels at teens, adults...More

Peter Campion

Next Steps: SEPTEMBER

September 18 to September 22

Tuition: $500

Gabrielle Calvocoressi

Fantastic Worlds In the Realest Poems: How Fantasy Fiction Might Help Our Hardest Realities Bloom

August 6 to August 31

Tuition: $500

What does it mean to tell the truth? And why can it often be so hard to do and/or make the poem seem nothing like the vivid, hallucinatory world of joy/sorrow/daily life? In this class we will read Fantasy Fiction by writers such as Zen Cho,...More

Rebecca Seiferle

The Poem's Intention

January 27 to February 21

Tuition: $500

Daisy Fried

“Some People Have Been Unkind”: A Workshop on Literary Book Reviewing

October 3 to October 28

Tuition: $500

Rosie Schaap

Essay is a Verb: The Practice of Personal Narrative

January 4 to February 26

Tuition: $500

CA Conrad

THE STRENGTH OF POETRY: (Soma)tic Poetry Rituals & The Antidote To Spiritual Crisis FALL Session 2

December 5 to December 9

Tuition: $500

Fred Marchant

Staying With It: A Five-Day Meditation in Poetry for Fall

October 2 to October 6

Tuition: $400

Peter Campion

Form From Feeling and Feeling From Form: Summer

July 10 to August 4

Tuition: $500

Ann Hood

WRITING THE PERSONAL ESSAY: Winter

January 7 to February 1

Tuition: $500

24PearlStreet Staff

Writers' Work Group: Workshop Your Nonfiction

February 4 to May 31

Tuition: $175

Angelo Nikolopoulos

Remix: A Contemporary Approach to Poetic Form

March 21 to March 25

Tuition: $500

Does formal writing seem dated and unfashionable? Perhaps a literary makeover is in order. This generative one-week workshop will look at contemporary approaches to writing in poetic form. We’ll focus on traditional forms (ghazal, pantoum, sestina,...More

Rebecca Gayle Howell

Translation as Creative Practice

October 12 to November 6

Tuition: $500

Gabrielle Calvocoressi

Of Knowing Nothing and Everything: A Week of Poem, Pigment, and Paint in the Lab: Winter

January 8 to January 12

Tuition: $400

Sandra Simonds

From Your Diary to Publication

May 22 to June 16

Tuition: $500

Are you secretly writing poetry in a diary, blog or anonymously on social media, but might be nervous to share your writing in a more public way? Maybe you want to send your poems out for publication but you don’t feel confident enough yet? Or maybe...More

Elizabeth Bradfield

Rewilding Your Poems: A Month of Prods, Prompts, and Play

June 11 to July 6

Tuition: $500

Rebecca Lindenberg

WHAT I SHOULD HAVE SAID: WRITING FUNNY POEMS for Winter

January 28 to February 22

Tuition: $500

Joanne Dugan

Writing Pictures: An Exploration of Text and Image: Winter

January 13 to February 7

Tuition: $500

Heidi Jon Schmidt

Telling the Story: Eight Weeks in Winter

January 9 to March 3

Tuition: $500

Heidi Jon Schmidt

Telling the Story: Fall

October 3 to October 28

Tuition: $500

Julie Carr

The Epistolary Poem

February 13 to February 17

Tuition: $500

Rebecca Lindenberg

What I Should Have Said: Writing Funny Poems

June 5 to June 30

Tuition: $500

Peter Campion

Form From Feeling and Feeling From Form: Winter

January 22 to February 16

Tuition: $500

Michelle Tea

MEMOIR THAT READS LIKE FICTION: Fall

November 5 to November 9

Tuition: $400

24PearlStreet Staff

Writers' Work Group: The Big Project (Nonfiction)

June 10 to August 30

Tuition: $175

Sandra Beasley

Your Voice: Work It, Raise It, Change It

May 8 to May 12

Tuition: $500

We often regard the author’s voice as having an inherent, unchangeable quality. Many writers have invoked the analogy comparing one’s voice to a fingerprint. But one person's “fingerprint” is another person’s rut, and no author should feel trapped...More