This generative workshop will use Joe Brainard’s experimental memoir I Remember (1970) as a jumping off point for us to create our own lists of memories and tangents that are prefixed with the phrase, "I remember…” Our discussion will then focus on the importance of proxemics and space and how these factor into a work—poetry, prose, film, photography—and writers’ recollections of it. This workshop is not genre specific. Hopefully participants walk away not with a finished draft of a single piece, but rather with a collection of fragments formed from memory, a long list of beginnings for them to explore in their writing later on.

This generative poetry workshop will excite, nurture, and inspire participants in their poetic practice. In the first part of the session, we will read some poems on the theme of broken things; in the second half, we will read poems about, and have a short craft talk on, the poetic element of anaphora. The workshop will be guided by poems by Ross Gay, Roger Reeves, Silvina López Medin, Joy Harjo, Alicia Mountain, and Mihaela Moscaliuc. Our session time together will include audio and video of the poets performing their work, so we can enjoy hearing the authors’ words in their own voices. Over the course of the session, participants will draft some new poems, stimulated by provided prompts, and will have the opportunity to share their work in an encouraging, inclusive, supportive environment. Participants will leave this workshop with more poems and prompts to keep the inspiration flowing after the course is completed.

This generative poetry workshop will excite, nurture, and inspire participants in their poetic practice. In the first part of this session, we will read poems on the theme of the sky; in the second half, we will read poems about, and have a short craft talk on, the poetic element of leaping. The workshop will be guided by poems by writers such as Tracy K. Smith, Christina Pugh, Christopher DeWeese, James Tate, James Wright, Philip Schaefer, francine j. harris, and Dara Barrois-Dixon. Our time together will include audio and video of the poets performing their work, so we can enjoy hearing the authors’ words in their own voices. Over the course of the session, we will draft some new poems, stimulated by provided prompts, and will have the opportunity to share our work in an encouraging, inclusive, supportive environment. Participants will leave this workshop with more poems and prompts to keep the inspiration flowing after the course is completed.

This generative workshop will use the four-beat couplet form, inspired by the work of poet and librettist Ellen Goodman. In the first session, participants will select two or three words from a randomly generated list to create a four-beat line; the group will vote on their favorite, and that will become the first line of everyone's piece. The second, third, and fourth lines of the piece will be generated in the same way, after which point everyone will continue on individually, keeping to the four-beat couplet meter and making use of some of the other words from the original list (the more, the merrier). The second session will be devoted to feedback and discussion. This workshop will be limited to 14 participants.

In this generative fiction workshop's first session, we will collectively vote on and choose a first sentence for a short short story (options randomly mined from a published text). Then each writer will develop a potential second sentence, and the group will vote for their favorite; a third and fourth sentence will be added the same way. Once everyone has the same first four sentences, each participant will write their own story from there--with the stipulation that somewhere in the remainder of the piece, at least two of the sentences that came in as second-favorites must be incorporated. For the second session, we will bring our stories back to the group for reading and discussion. This workshop will be limited to 14 participants.

In this generative workshop, participants will be asked to excavate themselves and their characters to get at the core of who they are. Writing prompts will be paired with excerpts of work by established writers, including poet Airea Dee Matthews, poet and scholar Bhanu Khapil, and master writer Jamaica Kincaid. Writers can expect to leave with substantive explorations of what matters most to them and their characters. (Note: There is a second workshop of the same name. They are thematically connected, but attending the two in sequence is not required.)

Lists have made their way from ledgers, journals, and refrigerator doors into literature in a whole catalog of ways. This will be a generative poetry workshop that uses examples of the list as literary tool and form. We will get a feel for its powers by looking at different instances and schemes of the litany, series, register, inventory. How can poets develop their powers of description? How can poets deepen and broaden their sense of compression, fragmentation, and even discursiveness as lyric intimation?

Why are figures from myth so seductive for poets, and how do poems use them without sounding rusty and outdated? How can we responsibly and imaginatively use myth? In this generative poetry workshop, we’ll look at various model poems and discuss a few reasons why poets keep returning to myth. Then you will innovate a tale or two of your own with different writing exercises and prompts. It will help you think not just about myth, but allusion in general as a dynamic element of craft.

Survival is a perpetual act of storytelling, a composite assembly of memory and instinct that forms our perception of “the real,” of what is known. Creativity runs deeper than planning and outlining; it runs deeper than the known. The most electrifying images swim up to us from the dark unconscious. They obey no logic, they keep their own light. When we let the Unknown into our writing, we let the unconscious speak through us. This is a generative workshop for all, gleaned from exercises picked up over the years. With a series of writing prompts, participants can descend into an organically unfolding work by engaging the senses and the imagination.

There's nothing better than the feeling of euphoria at the peak of a great brainstorming session. In this workshop, you'll spend 3 hours (1 hour before lunch, then a break for lunch, reconvene for 2 more hours) doing just that via a series of idea “shells” designed to have you fill in the blanks and go to task on answering why. During the last hour of the workshop, you'll spend time with “novel structure shells” implementing ideas into what could be a full-length book.

This workshop will focus on adapting short stories into screenplays with a focus on dialogue. Questions that will be asked and discussed include: How does dialogue contribute to a short story? How can communication in a short story contribute to its adaptation into a screenplay? During the workshop, we will discuss examples of short stories and their film counterparts. Workshop participants will then write one scene based on a short story.

This workshop will focus on creating new short stories, including flash fiction, utilizing prompts and brainstorming strategies. The workshop will also include an approach of creating and/or clarifying goals and intentions regarding writing regarding revision. Questions that will be asked and discussed include: How can a writer build from an initial draft of a story and/or story idea? What are the goals of the writer regarding creating the short story and how can one revise work to align with one’s goals and intentions? During the workshop, participants will have the option of bringing their own short story excerpts that could be reviewed and discussed (the first two pages or the first page, double-spaced). In addition to the workshop, a 45-minute individual consultation (optional) would be scheduled and provided to review and discuss each participant’s short story, strategies for generating a story, and each writer’s creative and professional goals. This workshop is limited to 10 participants; 10-page maximum (double-spaced) for consultations.