This session will encourage writers to push past surface detail and into felt language. We'll look at how figurative tools like simile and metaphor turn familiar scenes into surprise and meaning. We will practice bending syntax through appositives and asyndeton, shaping rhythm and emphasis without adding clutter. We'll explore the sensorium of sensory experience to build immersive moments that readers can inhabit. Through lecture and short exercises, we'll translate observation into our own unique, imaginative voice. Leave with adaptable techniques for poems and short stories, plus a repeatable process for drafting lines that linger. This talk equips you to make language memorable.
JOHN McCARTHY is the author of Scared Violent Like Horses (Milkweed Editions, 2019), which was selected by Victoria Chang as the winner of the Jake Adam York Prize; and This Brutal Vanishing (Texas Review Press, forthcoming 2028). He is also the author of Ghost County (Midwestern Gothic Press, 2016), which was named a Best Book of Poetry in 2016 by The Chicago Review of Books; and the chapbook, The Wyeth Ekphrastics (Burnside Review, 2026), which won the Burnside Review Chapbook Prize. John’s poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including 32 Poems, Best New Poets, Cincinnati Review, Gettysburg Review, North American Review, Poetry Northwest, and Quarterly West. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Southern Illinois University Carbondale. He has received writing residencies from creative centers in Croatia, Ecuador, France, and Iceland. John is the Managing Editor for RHINO, and he teaches poetry in Northwestern University’s School of Professional Studies MFA program.
