Off Campus Writers' Workshop

Rebecca Makkai - Can't Go Over It, Can't Go Under It

When
October 05, 2023
9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Location
ONSITE - 620 Lincoln Avenue, Winnetka, IL /REMOTE

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Sometimes, the best way is through. We'll talk about some unusual techniques for getting past creative roadblocks. Appropriate for anyone who's ever been stuck on anything.

Rebecca Makkai is the author of this year's New York Times bestselling I HAVE SOME QUESTIONS FOR YOU as well as four other works of fiction. Her last novel, THE GREAT BELIEVERS, was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and was the winner of the ALA Carnegie Medal and the LA Times Book Prize among other honors. A 2022 Guggenheim Fellow, Rebecca teaches graduate fiction writing at Middlebury College, Northwestern University, and UNR Tahoe, and serves as Artistic Director of StoryStudio Chicago.

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Julia Fine - Landscape and Worldbuilding

When
October 12, 2023
9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Location
ONSITE - 620 Lincoln Avenue, Winnetka, IL /REMOTE

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We often think of worldbuilding as the domain of genre writers, but even the most contemporary literary fiction requires a writer to conjure a totally new world.

In this class we'll look at worldbuilding as a necessary element of atmosphere and narrative architecture. How do we make the world of a project feel authentic and more expansive than what the reader sees on the page?

Julia Fine is the author of The Upstairs House, winner of the Chicago Review of Books Award for Fiction, and What Should Be Wild, which was shortlisted for the Bram Stoker Award for Superior First Novel. Her most recent novel, Maddalena and the Dark, came out with Flatiron in June 2023. She teaches writing in Chicago, where she lives with her family.

Julia will accept manuscripts for critique. Please see the Manuscripts scroll down on our website for details.

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Susanna Calkins - Red Herrings, Misdirection, and Other Ways to Deceive Your Readers

When
October 19, 2023
9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Location
ONSITE - 620 Lincoln Avenue, Winnetka, IL /REMOTE

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No matter what genre of fiction you are writing, there are many reasons why you may wish to deceive, distract, or mislead your reader. Whether you are trying to hide the identity of a criminal, keep a secret from being revealed, or simply unsettle your readers by sowing doubts, deception can play an important role in plot and character development. In this hands-on writing workshop, we will consider different forms of misdirection, drawn from popular literature, television and film, and consider unexpected ways to keep your readers guessing and surprised.

Susanna Calkins writes the award-winning Lucy Campion mysteries, set in 17th century England and the Speakeasy Mysteries set in 1920s Chicago. Her books have been nominated for the Anthony, Agatha, Mary Higgins Clark, Lefty, and Macavity awards. She holds a PhD in history and teaches at the college level. She lives in the Chicago area with her husband and two sons.

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Goldie Goldbloom - The God Head: Generating and presenting rich worlds and characters.

When
October 26, 2023
9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Location
ONSITE - 620 Lincoln Avenue, Winnetka, IL /REMOTE

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An overview of the type and extent of creativity, imagination, and detail required to develop the places and people who populate your work. Yes, even in nonfiction and memoir!

Goldie Goldbloom writes award-winning fiction, nonfiction and essays that have been translated into four languages. Most recently, she was awarded the Prix des Libraires Payot for her novel, On Division, and her short fiction was selected as one of the top ten stories in the international Best Small Fictions of 2023. She has received fellowships from the NEA, the Brown Foundation, Yaddo, and many other foundations. Goldie is the mother of eight children and lives in Chicago.

Goldie will accept two manuscript submissions for critique on a first come basis. Please see the Manuscripts scroll down for details.

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Diana Goetsch - ACTUALLY WRITING: The Outer, Inner, and Secret Practice

When
November 02, 2023
9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Location
REMOTE - ZOOM ONLY

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The barriers to becoming a successful writer can be formidable and elusive. Even among those blessed with talent and enthusiasm, very few become productive artists who write and publish book after book. Some spend years trying to “find their voice”—as though it were buried treasure—or waiting for a teacher or editor to anoint them. Many run aground after sailing through an MFA program. This craft session will be a clarifying inquiry into what it would take for anyone to actually write. While the artistic journey is unique for each individual, the fundamental conditions and practices aren’t. Specifically, there are three practices—which can be called “outer,” “inner,” and “secret”—all of which need to be in place if any writer is to succeed.

Diana will lay out each of these practices, offering illustrations and examples. There will be time for discussion, Q&A, and reflection. For each practice, participants will assess where they are, and where they may need to get to. Nobody can promise success; this is at least an opportunity to demystify the path, get real with yourself, and get going.

Diana Goetsch is a poet and nonfiction writer, author of eight collections of poems, the “Life in Transition” blog at The American Scholar, and the acclaimed memoir, This Body I Wore. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The Gettysburg Review, The Iowa Review, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Best American Poetry, and the Pushcart Prize anthology. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the New School, where she served as the Grace Paley Teaching Fellow. Goetsch has been on faculty for twenty-one years at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, and online at Paragraph Workspace where students from five continents have attended her webinars.

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Kelly McMasters - Food and Memory

When
November 09, 2023
9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Location
REMOTE - ZOOM ONLY

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Food is a writer’s magic wand for accessing sensory memory. From Proust’s famously transportive madeleines to Yiyun Li’s nostalgic Orange Crush, food can function on a writer’s page as a way to explore politics, nature, labor, gender, the body, community, faith, family, and more. Through short readings, generative exercises, and observation, we’ll work together to use food as a lens to build our worlds.

Kelly McMasters is an essayist, professor, and former bookshop owner. She is the author of The Leaving Season: A Memoir in Essays (W.W. Norton, 2023) and co-editor of the ABA bestselling Wanting: Women Writing About Desire (Catapult, 2023). Her first book, Welcome to Shirley: A Memoir from an Atomic Town, was listed as one of Oprah's top five summer memoirs and is the basis for the documentary film “The Atomic States of America,” a 2012 Sundance selection. The anthology she co-edited with Margot Kahn, This Is the Place: Women Writing About Home (Seal Press, 2017), was a New York Times Editor’s Choice. Her essays, reviews, and articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Paris Review Daily, Literary Hub, The American Scholar, River Teeth: A Journal of Narrative Nonfiction, Tin House, and more. Her writing has been supported by the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Katharine Bakeless Nason scholarship to the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers' Conference. She is an Associate Professor of English and Director of Publishing Studies at Hofstra University in NY.

Kelly will accept up to five manuscripts on a first come first served basis. Please see the Manuscript scroll down on our website for more information.

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Peter Orner - Deepen your Characters

When
November 16, 2023
9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Location
ONSITE - 620 Lincoln Avenue, Winnetka, IL /REMOTE

NOTE: Registration for Peter Orner's session has been disabled while we are working to resolve a date conflict. When his session has been rescheduled all prior registrants will be notified.

As authors, we need to truly see and listen to our characters. Using literary examples discussion and writing exercises we will examine how imagery, dialogue, construction, and form can reveal what can and can never be said.

Chicago-born Peter Orner is the author of Still No Word From You: Notes in the Margin, 2022, plus two novels published by Little, Brown: The Second Coming Of Mavala Shikongo, 2006 and Love And Shame And Love (2010), and three story collections also published by Little, Brown: Esther Stories (2001, 2013 with a foreword by Marilynne Robinson) Last Car Over The Sagamore Bridge (2013), and Maggie Brown & Others (2019). Peter’s essay collection/ memoir, Am I Alone Here?: Notes On Reading To Live And Living To Read(Catapult, 2016) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Peter's fiction and non-fiction has appeared in The New York Times, the Atlantic Monthly, Granta, The Paris Review, The New Yorker, McSweeney’s, The Southern Review, Ploughshares and many other publications; stories have been anthologized in Best American Stories and three times received a Pushcart Prize. Peter has been awarded the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, as well as a California Book Award, the Bard Fiction Prize, the Goldberg Prize for Jewish Writing, The Edward Lewis Wallant Award. Peter was a Fulbright U.S. Scholar in Namibia where he taught at the University of Namibia. Peter directs the Creative Writing Program at Dartmouth College.

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Lori Rader Day - Writing the White Whale

When
November 16, 2023
9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Location
ONSITE - 620 Lincoln Avenue, Winnetka, IL /REMOTE

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Award-winning crime novelist Lori Rader-Day once got a story idea that was too big, too unwieldy, too MUCH—a story she had to attack from every direction. If you have a story that obsesses you but darts away unfinished or a story feels as though it will swallow you whole, this session will help you make fishsticks of your elusive quarry, once and for all.

LIVE AT WINNETKA COMMUNITY HOUSE: The Book Stall is partnering with OCWW to deliver preordered copies of Rader-Day's new release The Death of Us . Have your book personally inscribed after the craft talk. Please include “pick up at Winnetka Community House OCWW event” in the comment box at check out. A limited number of extra copies will be available for purchase on site, as well as several of Ms. Rader-Day's previous titles.
Click here for more information and to pre-order your copy.

Lori Rader-Day is the Edgar Award-nominated and Agatha, Anthony, and Mary Higgins Clark award-winning author of Death at Greenway, The Lucky One, Under a Dark Sky, and others. Her latest book is The Death of Us (Harper Collins.) Lori lives in Chicago, where she co-chairs the Midwest Mystery Conference and teaches creative writing at Northwestern University. Visit LoriRaderDay.com.

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Juan Martinez - Dirty Tricks: Five Ways to Jumpstart Your Work

When
November 30, 2023
9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Location
ONSITE - 620 Lincoln Avenue, Winnetka, IL /REMOTE

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Good fiction hinges on the elements of craft, which take time and effort. But some elements of fiction are less mysterious, easier to pick up, and fun to throw in. We'll talk about five useful tricks that generate interesting, dramatically rich scenes, and we'll generate a series of quick, funny pieces that may develop into full stories. We'll also talk about how these tricks can be retrofitted into your existing drafts to make them more exciting.

Juan Martinez is the author of the novel Extended Stay (2023) and the story collection Best Worst American (2017). He lives near Chicago and is an associate professor at Northwestern University. His work has appeared in McSweeney's, Huizache, Ecotone, The Sunday Morning Transport, NIGHTMARE, NPR's Selected Shorts, Mississippi Review and elsewhere.

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L. Renee - Making Meaning from the Everyday

When
December 07, 2023
9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Location
REMOTE - ZOOM ONLY

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In this generative workshop, we'll focus on writing strategies to help us better use the experiences of our everyday lives—the ordinary stuff that some might even go so far as to say is boring and uninspiring—to write imaginative poems. Audre Lorde put it best: "Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest external horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives." We'll read and discuss model poems, respond to writing prompts, and leave time to share.

L. Renée is a poet and nonfiction writer who works as Assistant Director of Furious Flower Poetry Center and Assistant Professor of English at James Madison University. Nominated for Best New Poets, Best of the Net, and two Pushcart Prizes, her work has been published in Obsidian, Tin House Online, Poetry Northwest and elsewhere. A Cave Canem and Watering Hole Fellow, she won the 2022 Rattle Poetry Prize and Appalachian Review’s Denny C. Plattner Award. lreneepoems.com

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Publishing Panel

When
December 14, 2023
9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Location
REMOTE - ZOOM ONLY

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Publishing Panel - OCWW welcomes editors from the Birmingham Poetry Review, Kensington Publishing, Northwestern University Press, She Writes Press, and Spark Press to offer their insights and answer your questions on the pathways to publication.

Adam Vines is Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He is the author of five collections—the latest, Lures (LSU Press, 2022), and his poems have appeared in The Southern Review, Kenyon Review, and Poetry, among others. He is the Editor of Birmingham Poetry Review, which celebrates its 50^th issue this year. BPR received AWP’s 2020 Small Press Publisher Award, and poems from BPR are reprinted regularly on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily and appeared in the Best American Poetry anthology in 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2023 and in the Pushcart anthology in 2020.

Megan Stielstra is the author of three collections: Everyone Remain Calm, Once I Was Cool, and The Wrong Way to Save Your Life. Her work appears in Best American Essays, New York Times, The Believer, Tin House, and on National Public Radio. She teaches creative nonfiction at Northwestern University and is an editor-at-large at Northwestern University Press.

James Abbate is an Associate Editor at New York-based Kensington Publishing, the largest independent and family-owned publisher in the U.S. nation, based in New York. A graduate of SUNY Binghamton and Pace University, he has been working at Kensington for over a decade in both the editorial and sales departments. He actively acquires books in most genres, including the historical fiction, nonfiction (biography, memoir, pop science, music, culture, true crime), suspense, and thriller markets, with a particular emphasis on WWII fiction and nonfiction.

Brooke Warner is publisher of She Writes Press and SparkPress, president of Warner Coaching Inc., and author of Write On, Sisters!, Green-light Your Book, What's Your Book?, and three books on memoir. Brooke is a TEDx speaker, weekly podcaster (of Write-minded with co-host Grant Faulkner of NaNoWriMo), and the former Executive Editor of Seal Press. She writes a regular column for Publishers Weekly.

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Sandra Scofield - The Heart of Narrative: The Scene

When
December 21, 2023
9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Location
REMOTE - ZOOM ONLY

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The scene is the most vivid, immediate part of story, the place where the reader is most emotionally involved, the part that leaves the reader with a memory of the action. This class will review essential concepts about scene, with the intention of building writing muscle that will improve and sustain narrative writing. We will interrogate a short novel as a model.

Sandra Scofield is the author of twelve books, including fiction, creative nonfiction, and craft. She has taught for the Iowa Summer Writing Festival since 1993, and Lasell University's Solstice MFA Program since its 2006 inception. She is also an avid painter, traveler, and grandmother. Recently she opened the Pandora's box of her accumulated "starts" and "outlines" and "ideas" and hopes she can write really fast! Her new novel, Little Ships, will be published in January 2024.

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Nadine Kenney Johnstone - Micro-Memoir (Tiny True Stories)

When
January 04, 2024
9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Location
REMOTE - ZOOM ONLY

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We think our lives are interesting, but do readers? How do you make your true story resonate with an audience in 1000 words or less? In this workshop, led by memoirist and personal essayist, Nadine Kenney Johnstone, you will learn why it’s crucial for writers to write their truth and make readers care right away. Whether you're working on a full-length memoir or short essays, the techniques you'll learn in this class will help elevate your personal essays or short memoir scenes. This will be a generative class for writers of all levels and will include in-class writing.

Nadine Kenney Johnstone is an award-winning author and a holistic writing coach who helps women develop and publish their stories. Her latest book, Come Home to Your Heart, is an essay collection and guided journal that helps readers tap into their innate wisdom. Her articles and interviews have appeared in Cosmo, Authority, MindBodyGreen, HERE, Urban Wellness, Natural Awakenings, Yogi Approved, and more. Nadine is the podcast host of Heart of the Story, where she shares stories from the heart as well as interviews with today’s most impactful female writers. Pulling from her vast experience as a writing, meditation, and yoga nidra instructor, Nadine leads women’s workshops and retreats online and around the U.S.

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Heather Sellers - How to Write What Scares You (Without Scaring Away Your Readers)

When
January 11, 2024
9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Location
REMOTE - ZOOM ONLY

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When we are writing weighty, challenging subject matter—war, illness, trauma, terror, overcoming grief—it can be challenging to keep our readers with us. We seek to witness powerful events and speak our truth. But we must write poems, fiction, and memoir that transport and transform others. In this presentation, you’ll learn five simple practices that support powerful, memorable writing, no matter how intense and difficult the subject.

Heather Sellers is the author of a new textbook, How to Make Poems. Field Notes from the Flood Zone and The Present State of the Garden are her two most recent collections of poetry. Her textbook, The Practice of Creative Writing, is in its fourth edition, following two books on craft, Page After Page and Chapter After Chapter. Her collection of linked short stories is Georgia Under Water, and a memoir, You Don’t Look Like Anyone I Know, was featured in O, the Oprah Magazine and is an O Book-of-the Month club pick and Editor’s Choice at the New York Times. Recent essays appear in The New York Times, Reader’s Digest, Real Simple, Good Housekeeping, The Sun, and O, the Oprah Magazine. Her essay “Haywire” was selected for the Best American Essays by Leslie Jamison, and “Pedal, Pedal, Pedal” won a Pushcart Prize. She regularly speaks to audiences about prosopagnosia (face blindness), most recently at NASA. Sellers directs the writing program at the University of South Florida. Website: heathersellers.com

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Jeannie Vanasco - Tuning the Telling in Memoir

When
January 18, 2024
9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Location
REMOTE - ZOOM ONLY

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You do not need to be the world’s youngest surgeon/senator/CEO in order to write a memoir. You can write about your dog if you do it well. Memoir is all in the telling. Together, we’ll explore the possibilities of dramatic presentation—how you can take a seemingly small-stakes memory, and very little action, and methodically create the conditions for conflict. To accomplish this, we’ll study excerpts from contemporary memoirs and follow writing prompts inspired by each.

Jeannie Vanasco is the author of the memoirs Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl—which was named a New York Times Editors' Choice and a best book of 2019 by TIME, Esquire, Kirkus, among others—and The Glass Eye, which Poets & Writers called one of the five best literary nonfiction debuts of 2017. Her third book, A Silent Treatment, is forthcoming. Vanasco is an associate professor of English at Towson University where she teaches creative writing.

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Denny Bryce - Writing Dual/Multiple Timelines

When
January 25, 2024
9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Location
REMOTE - ZOOM ONLY

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In this workshop we will focus on exploring the various forms of dual (multiple) timeline fiction and include a review of techniques such as call and response, oral history, time, setting, location, and more. Participants should expect a workshop-style course and come prepared with a work in progress or story idea they’d like to explore as a dual or multiple timeline manuscript.

Denny S. Bryce is the award-winning author of historical fiction novels Wild Women and the Blues, In the Face of the Sun, and the upcoming The Other Princess: a novel of Queen Victoria’s Goddaughter (October 3, 2023), based on the life of Sarah Forbes Bonetta. A former professional dancer and public relations professional, Denny is an adjunct professor in the MFA program at Drexel University, a book critic for NPR, and a freelance writer whose work has been published in USA Today, Harper’s Bazaar, and FROLIC Media. She is a member of the Historical Novel Society, Women’s Fiction Writers Association, and Tall Poppy Writers. Originally from Chicago, she now resides in Savannah, Georgia, and can be found online at DennySBryce.com.

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Mary Robinette Kowal - Unlocking Story Structure Using the MICE Quotient

When
February 01, 2024
9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Location
REMOTE - ZOOM ONLY

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In this workshop, we learn about the simple organizational structure of the MICE Quotient. Pretty much every story, fictional or nonfictional, can be explained through this fairly simple organizational structure. Together we learn how to make this structure work for you when writing.

Mary Robinette Kowal is the author of The Spare Man, The Glamourist Histories series, Ghost Talkers, and The Lady Astronaut Universe. She is part of the award-winning podcast Writing Excuses and has received the Astounding Award for Best New Writer, four Hugo awards, the Nebula and Locus awards. Her stories appear in Asimov’s, Uncanny, and several Year’s Best anthologies. Mary Robinette, a professional puppeteer, also performs as a voice actor (SAG/AFTRA), recording fiction for authors including Seanan McGuire, Cory Doctorow, and John Scalzi. She lives in Nashville with her husband Rob and over a dozen manual typewriters. Visit maryrobinettekowal.com for more information.

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Suzanne Nugent - The Path to Production: Adapting Your Novel for Screen

When
February 08, 2024
9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Location
REMOTE - ZOOM ONLY

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In this session, we'll talk about how to navigate your novel’s path to production, identify key scenes in your script that make it marketable as a film or TV series, and ways to adapt your story for screen with integrity. Whether you’re inspired to write an adaptation yourself or want to sell rights to your book, learning about screenwriting and the development process is an empowering way to maintain your narrative voice throughout an adaptation.

Suzanne Nugent is a bestselling author and award-winning screenwriter. She was shortlisted for the Academy Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting and has received accolades from the Denver Film Festival and the San Francisco Writers Conference. She hosts the biweekly podcast Character Development, where innovators, authors, and artists talk about creative process and real-life character arcs. Through Adaptation Coaching, Suzanne empowers fellow authors to adapt their novels for screen with integrity.

Suzanne will accept manuscripts for critique on a first come basis. Please see the Manuscript scroll down on our website for more information

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Mary Otis - More Than a Feeling: Emotion in Fiction

When
February 15, 2024
9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Location
REMOTE - ZOOM ONLY

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Tolstoy said that art is the means by which emotion is transferred from one person's heart to another. But how does this happen? It has something to do with empathy, craft, and a writer's intention and availability. Humor, indirection, that which is left unsaid, precise image, and strong details all play a part. In this craft discussion, we'll look at the work of Amy Hempel, Alice Munro, Raymond Carver, and Wells Tower and explore how they illuminate and express emotion in their fiction. We’ll do a writing exercise to apply what we’ve discussed.

Mary Otis is author of Burst (Zibby Books) which won the 2023 Silver Medal in Literary Fiction from the Independent Book Publisher Awards and was a Good Morning America and New York Post “Best of Spring Books” pick. She also has published a short story collection, Yes, Yes, Cherries (Tin House). Her stories and essays have been published in Best New American Voices, Tin House, Electric Literature, McSweeney’s, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Review of Books Special Fiction Issue, and in many literary journals and numerous anthologies. Mary was a founding fiction professor in the UC Riverside Low-Residency MFA Program where she taught for twelve years. Originally from the Boston area, Mary lives in Los Angeles.

Mary Otis will accept manuscripts for critique. Please see the Manuscripts page for details

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Brian Turner - The Lyric Nature of Science

When
February 22, 2024
9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Location
REMOTE - ZOOM ONLY

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In this generative workshop, we’ll explore ways to create lyric prose and verse that is rooted in scientific discovery—from botany to biology, from the micro to the macro, from the life within to the life without. Brian will provide a packet of prose and poetry that includes examples of approaches from writers like Brian Doyle, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, J. Drew Lanham, Barry Lopez, Nickole Brown, and more. Please bring your preferred writing tools (notebook and pen, laptop, etc.) and your own inexhaustible curiosity.

Brian Turner has a memoir, My Life as a Foreign Country, and two collections of poetry, Here, Bullet and Phantom Noise, with The Wild Delight of Wild Things, The Goodbye World Poem, and The Dead Peasant’s Handbook due out from Alice James Books in Fall, 2023. He’s the editor of The Kiss and co-edited The Strangest of Theatres. He lives in Florida with his dog, Dene, the world’s sweetest golden retriever.

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Kate McKean - All About Literary Agents and Do You Need One?

When
February 29, 2024
9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Location
REMOTE - ZOOM ONLY

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You've probably heard you should get a literary agent if you want to publish a book. But why? What does an agent do (and what don't they do)? And how the heck do you get one? This session will discuss all that as well as the ever-confusing query letter. Come prepared with your own questions for the Q&A segment.

Kate McKean joined the Howard Morhaim Literary Agency in 2006 and became Vice President in 2011. She earned her master’s degree in fiction writing at the University of Southern Mississippi and began her publishing career at the University Press of Florida. She is proud to work with New York Times best selling authors in a wide variety of genres including Daniel M. Lavery’s Texts from Jane Eyre, Alix E. Harrow's THE Once and Future Witches, as well as the many-award winning graphic novel, The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen. In addition to working with clients, she is an adjunct professor at New York University and is the author of the forthcoming book WRITE ON: Publishing, Books, and Navigating the Creative Life (Atria, 2025).

Kate will accept 15 single page query letters on a first come first served basis. See the Manuscript drop down on our web page for more information.

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Steve Almond - How to Craft an Irresistible Narrator

When
March 07, 2024
9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Location
REMOTE - ZOOM ONLY

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Many a short story, essay, novel, and memoir have gone unpublished because the author fails to create a strong narrator, one who can act as a wise and entertaining guide to the reader. In this fast-paced-but-hopefully-coherent session, we’ll examine the work of Jane Austen, Joan Didion, Melissa Chadburn, and others in an effort to make sure your next narrator isn’t just strong, but irresistible. We’ll also try an in-class exercise to bring the lesson home.

Steve Almond is the author of a dozen books, including the New York Times bestsellers Candyfreak and Against Football. His new novel, All the Secrets of the World, has been optioned for television by 20th Century Fox. He’s the recipient of an NEA grant for 2022 and teaches at Harvard and Wesleyan. His stories and essays have been published in venues ranging from the Best American Short Stories and the Best American Mysteries to the New York Times Magazine. He lives outside Boston with his wife, his three children, and his anxiety.

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Kathleen Rooney - Getting Graphic: Using Visual and Sequential Art Techniques to Revolutionize Your Writing

When
March 14, 2024
9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Location
ONSITE - 620 Lincoln Avenue, Winnetka, IL /REMOTE

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The description would be something like "Even if you think you can't draw, you probably can." But even if you really can't, practicing the methods of graphic literature--using the techniques of visual art, including drawing and painting, but also erasure, collage, photography and digital illustration--can enhance your poems, stories, memoirs, and essays. In this workshop, we'll discuss how studying and making comics and narrative collages can help make writers in any genre better at honing their descriptive and storytelling skills, as well as creating character, setting, and above all voice. Above and beyond that, making graphic literature is fun, and pushing yourself into a new approach can open up your writing projects and practices in ways you never thought possible.

Kathleen Rooney is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press, as well as a founding member of Poems While You Wait. Her most recent books include the novels Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk (St. Martin’s Press, 2017) and Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey (Penguin, 2020). Her poetry collection Where Are the Snows won the 2021 X.J. Kennedy Prize and was published by Texas Review Press in fall of 2022. Her novel From Dust to Stardust, based on the life and work of silent movie star Colleen Moore, will be published by Lake Union in the fall of 2023. She lives in Chicago with her spouse, the writer Martin Seay, and teaches English and Creative Writing at DePaul University.

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Vu Tran - Is It What It Is?: The Bad and the Good In Cliché

When
March 21, 2024
9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Location
ONSITE - 620 Lincoln Avenue, Winnetka, IL /REMOTE

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What do we actually mean when we call something cliché, whether in life or in art? How do we recognize it, why exactly should it be avoided, and what, for that matter, is the antidote? Our answers to these questions are arguably themselves cliché or, at the very least, incomplete. In this craft class, we’ll reconsider our common notions of what makes anything cliché and delve into the unexpected ways that clichés can affect our thinking, our imagination, our storytelling, and our everyday interaction with the world. And as writers we’ll discuss how to avoid and also make use of them in our language, in our characters and plots, in any of our ideas, so that we’re working toward the kind of truthfulness and honesty that will resonate with our ideal reader, no matter the genre, no matter how original or familiar anyone might find our work.

Vu Tran's first novel, Dragonfish, was a New York Times Notable Book and a San Francisco Chronicle Best Books of the Year. His writing has also appeared in the O. Henry Prize Stories, the Best American Mystery Stories, Ploughshares, and Virginia Quarterly. He is the winner of a Whiting Award and an NEA Fellowship, and has also been a fellow at Bread Loaf, Sewanee, Yaddo, and MacDowell. Born in Vietnam and raised in Oklahoma, Vu received his MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and his PhD from the Black Mountain Institute in Las Vegas. He teaches at the University of Chicago, where he is an Associate Professor of Practice in English and Creative Writing.

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Michelle Hoover - Discover Your Ending

When
March 28, 2024
9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Location
REMOTE - ZOOM ONLY

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Your ending not only delivers your book’s most memorable moments but also its premise. Still, our energies tend to peter once we’ve reached the story’s climax. We’ll discuss the “unraveling” of your story, John Barth’s “Complexified Equilibrium,” Jessica Brody’s 5-point Finale, frame stories and other shapes (circles, figure eights, etc.), and character and story arcs. At the end of the session, you’ll discover new ideas for your ending and renewed energy to get it done.

Michelle Hoover has taught writing for more than 25 years and currently leads the GrubStreet Novel Incubator program, which she co-founded in 2011. Her students have signed 50+ book contracts. She is a 2014 NEA Fellow and has been a Writer-in-Residence at Brandeis University, a fellow at MacDowell, Bread Loaf, and Sewanee Writers Conferences, and a winner of the PEN/New England Discovery Award. Her debut, The Quickening, was a 2010 Massachusetts Book Award "Must Read," a finalist for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize, and one of Susan Straight's 1001 "Library of America" Novels featured in the L.A. Times. Her second novel, Bottomland, was the 2017 All Iowa Reads selection and a 2016 Mass Book "Must Read." She is the creator of The 7am Novelist, the popular podcast and webinar series for writers. She is a native of Iowa and lives in Cyprus and Boston.

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Dipika Mukherjee - Creating New Imagery from Old Memories: Writing about Journeys

When
April 04, 2024
9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Location
ONSITE - 620 Lincoln Avenue, Winnetka, IL /REMOTE

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The world has opened up after the pandemic, and we are traveling again, leaving the quotidian for new adventures. Travel gives us the opportunity for new ways of seeing and can lead to writing that shimmers on the page with sensual detail, while challenging our worldview and delighting the soul. In this workshop, we will draw from examples in fiction and nonfiction to examine images that transform a scene and lead the reader to unexpected places. Participants of all genres welcome in this generative workshop, where a series of short exercises will mine memories to create vivid and transportive writing.

Dipika Mukherjee is the author of the novels Shambala Junction and Ode to Broken Things, and the story collection, Rules of Desire. Her work is included in The Best Small Fictions 2019 and appears in World Literature Today, Asia Literary Review, Del Sol Review, and Chicago Quarterly Review, Newsweek, Los Angeles Review of Books, Hemispheres, Orion and more. Her poetry collection, Dialect of Distant Harbors, was published by CavanKerry Press in October 2022 and a collection of travel essays, Writer’s Postcards, has been accepted for publication by Penguin Random House (SEA). She teaches at the Graham School at University of Chicago and is core faculty at StoryStudio Chicago. She holds a PhD in English from Texas A&M University.

Dipika will accept manuscripts for critique. Please see the Manuscripts page for details.

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Amanda Goldblatt - Writing the Now: Literary Response to the Current Moment

When
April 11, 2024
9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Location
ONSITE - 620 Lincoln Avenue, Winnetka, IL /REMOTE

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We are living in historical times . . . We are always living in historical times, maybe, but it is hard to deny that the coalescence of what we’re living through now is anything less than exceptional. In this generative, cross-genre class, we’ll consider the ways we as writers might respond to the current moment, and all of the questions and possibilities surrounding that work. We’ll examine historical and contemporary examples of creative political response, reading and discussing work across genres about climate change and the pandemic. Writers will respond to writing prompts, share their work, and come away with a deeper understanding of what it means to make political art, personally.

Amanda Goldblatt's fiction and essays can be found at Guernica, Chicago Review, Fence, and elsewhere. She was a 2018 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow, and has worked with writers as a contingent instructor at several institutions, most recently Northeastern Illinois University. Her debut, Hard Mouth—an adventure novel about grief—was published by Counterpoint in 2019.

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Frances DePontes Peebles - Flashbacks that Propel a Story

When
April 18, 2024
9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Location
ONSITE - 620 Lincoln Avenue, Winnetka, IL /REMOTE

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“All memory is subversive,” says the writer Eduardo Galeano. In fiction, memory reveals itself as flashback. Diving into the past can “subvert” a typical narrative in great ways–providing context, creating layered characters, disrupting a conventional storyline, and adding depth. But flashbacks also risk weighing down a novel, killing its pacing, and feeling arbitrary. In this talk, we will get curious about flashbacks. When should flashbacks be inserted and why? How much memory is necessary? How can we write flashbacks that propel a story rather than paralyze it? The lecture will focus on novel writing, and will include readings, exercises, and ideas to get you thinking about how flashback can be a revelatory tool.

Frances de Pontes Peebles is the author of the award-winning novels The Seamstress and The Air You Breathe. She is a 2020 Creative Writing Fellow in Literature from The National Endowment for the Arts. A native of Pernambuco, Brazil, she holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her short stories have appeared in O. Henry Prize Stories, Zoetrope: All-Story, Missouri Review, Indiana Review, and Guernica. She teaches at StoryStudio and serves as Visiting Associate Professor of Fiction at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.

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Christina Clancy - Radical Revision

When
April 25, 2024
9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Location
ONSITE - 620 Lincoln Avenue, Winnetka, IL /REMOTE

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Sometimes writers tell stories in the same way, in the same style, and with the same voice. Often, we’re so comfortable with our storytelling voice that we can lose sight of what our story is really about. How can we break loose and revise in order to get at something new and important, or discover new ways of telling? This intensive workshop will provide you with exercises intended to move you out of your comfort zone, shake your story loose, and help you rethink how you can tell it.

Christina Clancy Hybrid is the author of Shoulder Season and The Second Home (St. Martin's Press). Her work has appeared in The Sun Magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and in various literary journals. She has a PhD in creative writing from UW-Milwaukee and lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

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Mary Anne Mohanraj - The Writer’s Life: Structures that Support Your Writing and Publication

When
May 02, 2024
9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Location
ONSITE - 620 Lincoln Avenue, Winnetka, IL /REMOTE

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The key to publication is often simple persistence, but the hectic pace of modern life often makes it challenging to write and submit on a regular basis. In this workshop, we'll discuss some of the barriers authors face and look at structures that can be put in place to better support a writing practice that will helps you not just survive, but thrive and publish.

Mary Anne Mohanraj is author of A Feast of Serendib, Bodies in Motion, The Stars Change, and thirteen other titles, including her forthcoming cancer memoir, Tornado. Other recent publications include stories for George R.R. Martin’s Wild Cards series, Perennial: A Garden Romance (Tincture), stories at Clarkesworld, Asimov’s, and Lightspeed, and an essay in Roxane Gay’s Unruly Bodies. Mohanraj founded Hugo-nominated and World Fantasy Award-winning speculative literature magazine Strange Horizons, and serves as Executive Director of both DesiLit and the Speculative Literature Foundation. She is Clinical Associate Professor of fiction and literature at the University of Illinois Chicago. Visit her at maryannemohanraj.com

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Charles Baxter: Dramatic Interventions: The Request Moment

When
May 09, 2024
9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Location
REMOTE - ZOOM ONLY

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Some years ago Charles wrote an essay about "the request moment" as a catalyst for stories. In that essay he argued that stories often begin when one character asks another to perform a particular action as a proof (of friendship, love, or personal identity) and to do it within a limited amount of time (i.e., please do it soon). In this talk, Charles would like to reconsider the request moment by paying particular attention to the ways that request moments can edge toward psychological violence and emotional blackmail. He also is interested in the characterizations of the person who asks (or demands), and, given those ingredients, what sorts of stories may result. In all cases, the request moment tends to increase the dramatic tension of the story by putting demands on the protagonist.

Charles Baxter is the author of the novels The Feast of Love (nominated for the National Book Award), First Light, Saul and Patsy, Shadow Play, The Soul Thief, and The Sun Collective, and the story collections Believers, Gryphon, Harmony of the World, A Relative Stranger, There’s Something I Want You to Do, and Through the Safety Net. His stories have appeared in several anthologies, including The Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and The O. Henry Prize Story Anthology. His craft books, The Art of Subtext, Burning Down the House, and Wonderlands, have provided insight and inspiration to writers everywhere. He has won the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story. Baxter lives in Minneapolis.

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Michael Zapata - Choosing Your Realities: Narrative Distance and POV

When
May 16, 2024
9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Location
ONSITE - 620 Lincoln Avenue, Winnetka, IL /REMOTE

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When we write fiction, we create realities. As such, the realities we experience on the page often have a great deal to do with point of view and its vast possibilities. How does a narrative mind work? In any given sentence, where is the language coming from? What IS omniscience, anyway? In this workshop, Michael Zapata (author of The Lost Book of Adana Moreau and founding editor of MAKE Literary Magazine) will guide writers through inquiries into narrative distance and POV, and discuss craft techniques and artful strategies found in cinematography, stream of consciousness, omniscience, and multiplicity, among others, to create works of fiction that both create and bend reality. The workshop will also include a writing exercise and a Q&A.

Michael Zapata is a founding editor of MAKE Literary Magazine and the author of the novel The Lost Book of Adana Moreau, winner of the 2020 Chicago Review of Books Award for Fiction, finalist for the 2020 Heartland Booksellers Award in Fiction, and a Best Book of the Year for NPR, the A.V. Club, Los Angeles Public Library, and BookPage, among others. He is on the faculty of StoryStudio Chicago and the MFA faculty of Northwestern University. As a public-school educator, he taught literature and writing in high schools servicing drop-out students. He currently lives in Chicago with his family.

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Dr. Alexis Pride - Writing the “Unlikeable” Character in Fiction

When
May 23, 2024
9:30 AM - 12:00 PM

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