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CLASSES & SEMINARS
Start your summer on the road! In this 4-week class, you’ll take a trip across various states and states of mind, reading essays about wandering the backroads, following familiar routes back home, traversing the distance of the desert, and more.. Each week, you’ll write your own roads—experimenting (300-800 words) with ways to essay your adventures, escapes, observations, searches, and discoveries. I’ll send you encouraging, thorough feedback each week, and on Saturdays, you’ll get to hear what’s working in your writing from your classmates, discuss the week’s readings, and learn effective craft elements for writing the road. A packet of the class readings and the Zoom link will be emailed to you one week before the class begins. Join us!
The class readings and Zoom link will be emailed to you one week before the class begins.
In this 4-week class, we’ll focus on the beauty and joys our younger selves experienced, the moments we’re grateful we had, our discoveries of crushes and loves and desires, our searches for freedom, and the ways we tried (and failed) to find our truest selves. We’ll read model essays by writers —and you’ll write experiments (350-800 words) each week and receive feedback from me. We’ll read work by Marcia Aldrich, Jo Ann Beard, William Bradley, Jill Christman, Steve Edwards, Kat Moore, Sandell Morse, Jamila Osman, Jericho Parms, Angelique Stevens, and more. The Zoom link and model essays will be emailed to you.
This 6-week course covers various essay forms—anaphoric, enumerated, one-sentence, triptych, and collage. We’ll meet each Saturday (beginning at 11:00 AM CST) for 2 hours, and each week, you’ll write an experiment (350-750 words) and receive feedback from me. During the last session, you will have the opportunity to share your favorite experiment with the group. We’ll read work by Steven Church, Isabel Cristo, Jacqueline Doyle, Jessica Franken, Kimberly Garza, Megan Harlan, Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, Cade Mason, Lishani Ramanayake, Vincent Scarpa, Lidia Yuknavitch, Elina Zhange, and more. Join us! The Zoom Link and course readings will be emailed to you upon registration.
In “One Art,” Elizabeth Bishop writes:
“The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.”
In “Writing About Things We Lose,” you’ll read model essays describing the loss of everyday experiences—of beloved objects, forgotten places, and more—to focus on how to think about loss in a way that brings us back to good memories, simpler times, and joy. And you’ll write your own!
Note: This is an independent study in June. Each Sunday, I’ll send you the model essays and my craft notes, and you’ll write an experiment (300-800 words) inspired by the readings and craft elements and send it to me by Wednesday. Then I’ll send you my feedback on Friday. At the end of this generative course, you’ll have drafts of four potential essays, along with my encouraging feedback for each one. When you enroll, I’ll send more details and instructions. Let’s go!
In this 90-minute seminar, you’ll learn how to create standout sentences, when and why to flash a fragment or two, and ways to elevate your prose with sentence variety, rhythm, lyricism, and emphasis. We’ll look at literary devices, punctuation marks, rhetorical devices, and other techniques for an immediate upgrade to your syntactical style. You’ll also have time to write or revise sentences of your own and share during this can’t miss seminar. Join us!
In this 2-hour seminar, we’ll look at ways various writers think about the concept of persona (the “I”) in their essays, and we’ll look at excerpts from essays to see how writers establish “to whom the thing happened,” as Virginia Woolf described the self in writing. You’ll do a persona inventory, followed by a discussion and Q&A. My goal is for you to leave inspired to return to essay drafts of your own to (re)shape the persona or to start new drafts knowing which persona the essay needs.
In this two-hour seminar, we’ll discuss ways to give your reader a strong impression and/or image of the people in your essays (including self-portraiture). I’ll share excerpts from essays, along with stills from films, to help you think about new ways to make people known to your reader. We’ll take a break while you experiment with writing (self) portraits and come back together for the chance to share your amazing portraiture.
In this ninety-minute seminar, we’ll look at the way essayists establish the When and Where (time and place) of their essay and their persona (narrator, the “I”)., as well as how to anticipate a reader’s questions by including context and other engaging details. We’ll look at the openings of essays to understand how writers ground the reader, and we’ll look at excerpts of essays to see how writers include necessary and clarfying context. I’ll also explain the occasions when certain details, namely time and place, may be omitted. You’ll have a chance to experiment with revising your existing essay openings and/or paragraphs. The Zoom link will be emailed to you a few days before the seminar.
A 2-hour seminar on how to begin essays—from first words to sentences to paragraphs. I’ll explain the importance of essay openings and show you some recurring patterns in openings from classical to contemporary essays During the seminar, you’ll write your own essay openings and have the opportunity to share with the group. Join us! I’ll send you the model essays and Zoom link several days before the seminar. Recording available if you’re unable to attend in person.