Saturday, September 19 @ 9:30-12:30pm ET

Hosted in-person in Northampton, MA

Our lives are always weaving between presence and memory, sensation and logic, thinking and dreaming — and so can our stories. In this craft-centered class, we'll play with braided essays as a form for embracing life's paradoxes and contradictions. We'll read braided essays by authors such as CJ Hauser, Lidia Yuknavitch, and Sabrina Imbler, studying how they create coherence out of the questioning. Through generative practices, we'll discover how to weave together threads of personal experience, history, science, and metaphor, spinning narratives richer in emotional truth than any single narrative could be. Come ready to write stories as compelling as you are.

Saturday, November 7 @ 1-4pm ET, on Zoom (with recording)

*Offered in partnership with WritingWorkshops.com

Dreaming of uninterrupted writing time in a cabin in the woods, a villa in Italy, or in your favorite city? Artist residencies offer writers what Virginia Woolf knew we needed: dedicated time, space, and freedom to dive deep into our work, along with the gift of artistic community. In this 3-hour online writing class, we'll explore the transformative world of artist residencies and how to open these doors for yourself. You'll learn what residencies are and why they can be pivotal for your creative practice, how to choose programs that resonate with your vision, and what makes an application truly shine. We'll discuss crafting compelling work samples, project plans, and artist statements that capture the essence of what you want to create. Whether you're applying for the first time or seeking fresh perspective, you'll leave this creative writing workshop inspired and ready to take the next step.

Saturday, November 14 @ 9:30-12:30pm ET on Zoom (with recording)

*Offered in partnership with Writers in Progress

We are always beginning again. We start with a line, and then the deeper we delve, the more a story’s beginning will shift and evolve beyond our first impulse. Whether you're just starting a memoir or reimagining your opening after years of working on it, this class will help you move beyond the conventional "hook" and open instead with the heart of your story. Rather than reaching for easy intrigue, we'll explore how the most powerful memoir openings work the way great film does — introducing readers immediately to a story's tone, texture, themes, and the central question the work may never fully untangle. When you open with the heart of your memoir, the hook takes care of itself. In this process-based workshop, we'll examine the beginnings and endings of works by authors such as Lidia Yuknavitch, Clarice Lispector, Terese Mailhot, and T Kira Madden — exploring how each opens with the crux of its deepest concerns. You can expect to leave with the starts of new stories and ideas for more, as well as an enlivened process for (re)finding your beginning — even when you're already careening toward the end.

Saturdays, December 5 & 12 - 1-4pm ET on Zoom (with recording)

*Offered in partnership with Hugo House

Long before we have words, our bodies hold stories in heat, sensation, spasms, tears, pleasure, and even numbness or dissociation. The twinge of a pinched nerve may take us back to the dinner rush in a hot kitchen at our first summer job. A flutter behind the sternum might recall the unexpected thrill of sleeping alone for the first time after the end of a ten-year relationship.

In the first session, we’ll use guided meditation and in-class writing to move below the analytical mind and into somatic memory — the stories stored in sensation rather than thought. You’ll discover new processes for connecting with embodied intuition and will leave with fresh writing and an assignment to carry into the week.

In the second session, we turn to craft. We’ll study how brilliant writers like Lidia Yuknavitch, Melissa Febos, and Kiese Laymon use the body as a narrative frame and structural device. Drawing inspiration from short readings and in-class writing, we’ll explore possibilities for building upon the story you began the previous week and incorporate the body as an organizing structure for larger projects.

You’ll leave having excavated something real from your body, and with the craft tools to shape it into a piece that holds its own weight.