Now more than ever we need you to write and share the story of your body, history, identity, family, and experiences. We need you to put yourself on the page. In this five week course we will read and discuss published personal essays, drawing out specific techniques and approaches to writing as well as inspiration for the bravery it requires to get real with a reader. Each week, students will receive prompts to spark their own work and have the opportunity to write and share a short essay with their peers, which we’ll discuss during class.

Journals are one of the most helpful tools a writer can have, and yet many writers feel that journals are too tedious, difficult, or dangerous to employ. A journal can help you make sense of the formless stuff of life. It can be a low-stakes place to play with ideas, a format for experimenting with voice, a way to clear out the mind (a la Julia Cameron’s famous “morning pages”). The latter is maybe the most important — for me, anyway, if there’s something that’s happened to me that I want to write about, first I have to journal about it in the most unfiltered, unedited, artless, raw way possible, before I can even get close to making something like art from it.

Stories come to us from many sources: a lived experience, a conversation, a niggling question—or an image. Some writers are naturally visual while others lean toward interiority, perhaps missing all the rich visual cues surrounding us. In this generative workshop, we’ll focus on the ways that images can provoke associations that in turn, become compelling narrative.

All great fiction is about facing our fears. In this session, we’ll explore the history, strategies, and theories behind horror fiction to discover practical tools for writing scary stories, and powerful stories of all genres.

Are you a conflict-averse fiction writer? This class is for you! We will consider examples of triangular relationships in fiction as a fruitful source of tension and conflict and engine of story. How do characters’ competing loyalties and complicated relationships engage us on the page? How can we reflect on our own private experiences and observations as raw material to be transformed into powerful fiction? While love triangles will be covered, we will also consider familial triangles. We will discuss examples from Mavis Gallant, Anne Carson, Peter Mountford, Jamel Brinkley, and more. The course will include in-class writing exercises with an opportunity to share.

Ever written something on the page and wondered if it's poetry? What makes a poem a poem? This is a beginner-friendly generative writing workshop for someone who has never dabbled in poetry; wants to learn more about craft and form; and seeks a structure for the chaos of one's own mind.  

In this generative class, we will discuss how fairy tales can be sources of plot, symbols, and narrative shapes, outside of retelling. We will read short fairy tales and work inspired by fairy tales, spend time free-writing and generating ideas for new stories and novels. We will touch on the work of Kate Bernheimer, Michael Cunningham, Anne Sexton, among others. Students are asked to pick a favorite or new to them fairy tale to bring to class. The tale will be used to begin a new story. In the forest, we can encounter a stranger, or something left behind. Behind every tree is a story.

In these four sessions, we will look at the folktales, fairy tales, ghost stories, and urban legends we may have learned as children. Why do these stories stick with us? How can we use the elements of folklore to tap into the childhood parts of our imaginations, move past self-doubt, and have fun with writing? In each session, we will have in-class writing story prompts based on the folktales we read that I invite you to complete at home. In addition to traditional folktales, we will look at contemporary authors who have used this material to reclaim their own stories and histories while introducing us to strange new worlds. We will read short stories and novel excerpts from authors like Toni Morrison, Carmen Maria Machado, and Maisy Card. There will also be time for discussion and opportunities to share our work in class.

When reading international literature, we’re also reading the histories and cultures from a rich array of languages from across the world. Literary translation is an art that brings these books into cross-cultural conversations. What are the pathways like, breaking into the world of literary translation? How do we go from finding a book that speaks to us in another language, and eventually publishing the work and interacting with English-speaking audiences?  In class, we’ll do weekly readings that include essays about translations and excerpts of books translated from various languages, based on each week’s theme. Starting from Week 3, we’ll workshop short translation practices or translation-in-progress from each student. This is a non-language-specific workshop and there is no limit in the genres to submit (poetry, hybrid forms, and picture books are very welcomed). If you are just starting a project, or already have a project in-progress, this is the workshop for you.

Looking to blend your pop culture obsessions with gut punching or hilarious stories from your life? Learn to mix criticism and the memoir in this in-depth class. Elizabeth Teets, editor of the film anthology Isn’t She Great: Writers on Women Led Comedies from 9 to 5 to Booksmart, will help you blend the pop culture that consumes your thoughts with the deeply personal. This class will teach you to blend the art you can’t stop talking about with the experiences you can’t stop thinking about!

Start your weekend off right (write!) with this shot to your imaginative spirit, designed specifically for the busy person who craves a little space in their schedule for creativity and community. Inspired by the popular class Writing for Women on the Verge, with a little bit of that good #1000wordsofsummer accountable energy tossed into the mix, this course will feature readings, writing prompts, and shared writing time for an hour on Fridays.

We write about what we hold onto, both in fact and memory. In this class, we'll look at the work of Thomas Lux, Ben Shattuck, and others as a means of examining the relics from our own lives, and the stories they contain and elicit.

In this selective 8-week writing workshop, we’ll further explore the themes we looked at in Writing for Women on the Verge. (Having taken the generative Writing for Women on the Verge isn’t required, but it’s helpful.)  Like a traditional writing workshop, each week we’ll look at some published work and plumb it for craft wisdom, and each week we’ll discuss one student piece, with an eye towards helping the student writer hone and clarify their work. Unlike a traditional writing workshop, our discussions will be open and flowing (no “cone of silence” for the writer). You don’t have to write up feedback on each others’ work (something that can be incredibly time-consuming, keeping you from your own work). You can write in any genre that serves you, and our reading will be focused on the themes and topics of the class, spanning a diverse array of authors, styles, and genres.

Nearly all of us, at this point in human history, are all living two different lives, the one IRL and the one we conduct on the internet. In this session, we'll examine the work of the brilliant Jia Tolentino to explore our relationship to the internet and the stories we're telling about ourselves when we go online. 

To have a body is to have pleasure and shame about that body, to carry our emotions in our flesh. We'll look at the work of Nora Ephron, and others, in an effort to get "out of our heads" and map out the story of our bodies. 

Travel and food writing can go beyond the commercial spheres—there are many more stories that are worth discovering. Travel and food writings are foundational ways for us to document our past journeys, our connection with languages, places, and memories; it also brings us a chance to learn how best to write about the things and environments that once nourished us. Each week, we’ll focus on reading 1-2 essays about travel or food that intersect with the theme of migration and home. Both emerging and established writers who work on different genres are welcomed. If you have your writings to be workshopped, or are just looking for a place to kickstart your work, this is the workshop for you. The goal for the 6 weeks is for us to generate more writings and to foster a safe writing community down the road. If you’re interested in the business side of writing and pitching, we’ll also include resources in the last two sessions.

Do you have an idea for a novel, but are struggling to develop it? Are you stuck in the messy middle? Have you finished a draft, but you aren’t sure how to evaluate your work or begin revising? This four-week course investigates the fundamentals of character and plot to help you build a satisfying and compelling story.

A generative writing class for women (or anyone who identifies as female / nonbinary / gender-nonconforming) who feel like they miiiiiight be losing it. Instead of running away from home... try this class first? Whether you're overwhelmed or stretched thin; wound up or worn out; blocked, stuck, or just feel like making some time to write each week, this class is a way to reconnect with your creative core. You can write in any genre you like—nonfiction, fiction, poetry, stream-of-consciousness, journaling, fragments, rants, letters, lists—whatever feels right each day. This class is about process, creativity, and making some space for your own voice. It's just an hour, and there's no homework. Sneak it in on your lunch break (or while the kids are watching a movie; they'll live). It'll be encouraging, regenerative, nourishing, and fun.

We tend to think of our job history as just about labor. But the world of work--especially those jobs that we hated at the time--is also a powerful teacher, a way of understanding the world beyond our home lives and families--our own powers and vulnerabilities. We'll look at the work of T. Kira Madden and others as inspiration for our own work stories.

You did it before, let’s do it again: Come in with nothing but your ideas and willingness to write, and leave with four short essays ready to show the world. The discipline of writing every week will strengthen your writerly muscles, while the energy in the class will be supportive and enthusiastic. You can and will write better, sharper essays than you did before, and while that work won’t always be easy, it will be rewarding.

Diary Comics (a.k.a. comics-form diary entries) are a whole lot of fun to put together and share. But how do you fit a bit of your day into just four panels? This 1.5 hour hands-on writing/drawing session will start with a discussion of some other artists' diary comics, and then we'll get to work making our own.

A generative writing class for women (or anyone who identifies as female / nonbinary / gender-nonconforming) who feel like they miiiiiight be losing it. Instead of running away from home... try this class first? Whether you're overwhelmed or stretched thin; wound up or worn out; blocked, stuck, or just feel like making some time to write each week, this class is a way to reconnect with your creative core. You can write in any genre you like—nonfiction, fiction, poetry, stream-of-consciousness, journaling, fragments, rants, letters, lists—whatever feels right each day. This class is about process, creativity, and making some space for your own voice. It's just an hour, and there's no homework. Sneak it in on your lunch break (or while the kids are watching a movie; they'll live). It'll be encouraging, regenerative, nourishing, and fun.

Journals are one of the most helpful tools a writer can have, and yet many writers feel that journals are too tedious, difficult, or dangerous to employ. A journal can help you make sense of the formless stuff of life. It can be a low-stakes place to play with ideas, a format for experimenting with voice, a way to clear out the mind (a la Julia Cameron’s famous “morning pages”). The latter is maybe the most important — for me, anyway, if there’s something that’s happened to me that I want to write about, first I have to journal about it in the most unfiltered, unedited, artless, raw way possible, before I can even get close to making something like art from it.

One night only: join Writing Co-Lab co-founders Brian Gresko (YOU MUST GO ON), Sara Lippmann (SMASHING THE TABLETS), and Amy Shearn (ANIMAL INSTINCT) at this free event as they discuss the paths to publication of their most recent (and past) books and answer any questions you have about writing, publishing, and the creative life.

We’re living in an age of wrath, one in which the impulse to make art is being shouted down by the desire to make war. In this freewheeling workshop, we’ll examine how writers such as Claire Messud and Herman Melville are able to harness their anger and use it to super-charge their stories. Then we'll use an in-class exercise to examine the sorrows that lurk beneath the armor of our anger.

Hooray! You’ve crossed the proverbial finish line of your creative project. But the end, of course, is just the beginning. In this lively 2 hour online session, we will share various strategies and approaches to the revision process — and discuss next steps toward publication. Bring all your questions for candid discussion.