The workshop focuses on expanding the writer's word choice.  Poets often use a few words over and over.  One way to break this pattern is to use different words--ones that have not been used.  This workshop uses an exercise to generate new poems and as a tool that the students can take with them.
For beginners.

This workshop will discuss some of the guiding principles for writing plays. The workshop includes ways to develop character, creating dialogue and generating situations for scripts. While theatre is the focus of this workshop, the skills and techniques discussed can be applied to screenwriting and other forms of performance.

Fiction writers often have a hard time writing dialogue—take it from a playwright. Let's cram as many tips and strategies for constructing good and distinct dialogue for your characters into this hour as possible.

Pitchapalooza is American Idol for books (only kinder and gentler). Twenty writers will be selected at random to pitch their book. Each writer gets one minute—and only one minute! Dozens of writers have gone from talented amateurs to professionally published authors as a result of participating in Pitchapalooza, including Genn Albin, our KC winner who got a 3-book mid-6 figure deal with Farrar Straus & Giroux.   

At Pitchapalooza, judges will help you improve your pitch, not tell you how bad it is. Judges critique everything from idea to style to potential in the marketplace and much, much more. Authors come away with concrete advice as well as a greater understanding of the ins and outs of the publishing industry. Whether potential authors pitch themselves, or simply listen to trained professionals critique each presentation, Pitchapalooza is educational and entertaining for one and all. From Miami to Portland, from LA to NYC, and many stops along the way, Pitchapaloozas have consistently drawn standing-room-only crowds, press and blog coverage, and the kind of bookstore buzz reserved for celebrity authors.

At the end of Pitchapalooza, the judges will pick a winner. The winner receives an introduction to an agent or publisher appropriate for his/her book.

This Workshop is designed to engage participants with contemporary poets, many of whom are writers of color, and their different strategies to generate new work.  

The Workshop will be in two parts:

#1.  Participants will look at poems in the packet and discuss the work of those poets with whom they unfamiliar.

#2.  We will use vocabulary from two or three of the poems to generate new work.

We will use poems as catalyst for new works. Poems by Bojan Louis, Gregory Pardlo, Jennifer Bartlett, Marilyn Chin, Maureen Owen, Cheryl Boyce-Taylor, Sally Mao Wen, and  David Rivard may be included. Participants must be prepared to read and write, write and write.

At the end of this workshop, it is my hope that participants will have created poems that they feel good about and have learned about.
For advanced poets. 

This 90-minute session examines how to write, and how to pitch for publication, a nonfiction book. These are two very different skills, but are fast becoming equally important. The writing of a nonfiction book involves not only focus – the shape and organization of the subject – but the tricky task of scheduling and conducting interviews. And once all the research is done, the hard part really begins. As for selling your proposed book to an agent or publisher, that involves a lot of work, too, using different sets of muscles and skills. 

NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross TV critic David Bianculli has written nonfiction books on TV since 1992, generating hefty book proposals and lengthy interview lists in the process, talking to everyone from Mel Brooks to Ken Burns. He’ll go through the process of both writing and pitching, with tips and warnings regarding both, conduct a classroom exercise on outline organization, and leave lots of time for Q&A.

Bad news: There are business reasons for would-be journalists and non-fiction writers to turn back --- journalism jobs are scarce, publishers have trouble selling non-fiction. Good news: There are business reasons for those writers to turn to fiction. 1) Great stories have all the characteristics of fiction: character, plot, conflict. 2) Great stories have what distracted readers crave: velocity. 3) Consider Balzac, champion of realism, as a non-fiction writer of novels.

After 40 years as a journalist, I now write plays and novels. My play tells the little known story of the final years of Henri Matisse, the 2^nd most famous artist of the last century. My new novel is another little known story: the life-changing White House love affair of John F. Kennedy, the most famous President of the last century. Both exhaustively researched, both aimed at the literary and mass audience.

In this advanced level session, participants will share stories they might want to write as non-fiction, and we’ll discuss their viability as fiction.

Reading poetry out loud in front of real live people can be nerve-wracking, but its rewards are numerous: engaging with your readership, dynamic feedback on work, community-building. This workshop, aimed at intrepid readers, will provide techniques for reading and performing through tips, in-class exercises, and examples.

When resources are limited, content marketing is an effective way to attract readers to your books. With 1.32 billion daily users, Facebook is the world’s most widely used platform. As such, it’s a great place to find and engage with your target reader audience. For free! It can be a time-consuming proposition, but there are a lot of creative ways you can connect to potential readers for exactly zero dollars! And for those operating on a shoestring marketing budget, it’s a great place to create a foundation for your fandom.

Out of your Head: Writing Outside of your Experience

Award-winning novelist Colum McCann confronts the idea of working outside the realm of the immediate self.  McCann, whose novels have a far-ranging reach—from an intricate metaphorical look at 9/11, to the workings of the Irish peace process, to the portrait of a 1950's Romani poet—will discuss what it means to "write towards your obsessions."  He will discuss issues of expanding your imaginative reach and what it potentially means to the hot-topic issue of cultural appropriation.  

When you write a memoir, you have to choose from an overwhelming amount of memories to find the themes that focus your story. You begin with your passion and the joy of writing your story and then need to decide what to include and how to move from telling to showing.

Scenes are the engine of a story. Scenes invite bring readers into the now moment and allow them to walk in your shoes and experience life as you lived it. We’ll talk about the necessary elements in a scene and how you can use them to get the reader involved in your story.

We will begin with an exercise that helps you select your important moments and themes and move into writing a scene.

Comics have become so ubiquitous and so fashionable that it can be easy to  overlook what it (or should it be “they?”) actually is (or, maybe, “are”). In this workshop we will look at the components that make up comics and how they work together to create a unique, and deceptively complex, reading experience. Then we’ll talk about how to use that knowledge to tell the story you want to tell.

Marketing doesn’t have to be daunting. In this fun, fast-paced session, a marketing professional will demystify what it means to have an author brand, how it’s much more than a logo and web presence, and why it’s foundationally important to do the thinking behind what you want to stand for. We'll discuss how to apply archetypes to define your unique brand and the components of an author's brand framework. We'll also romp through some real-life examples to show the importance of consistency in visual branding. 

The rising popularity of podcasts has created a new golden age of audio drama. But the way these dramas are delivered and consumed – on demand, through headphones, and when you’re walking, driving, or cleaning the living room – has turned this old medium into something new. In this workshop we’ll talk about the limitations and opportunities created by telling a story only using sound, and how to take advantage of those when developing your story and writing your script.

When a story is slow, we sometimes think we need to make more things happen, but, really, what we need to do, is make more promises. Suspense equals worry, and it occurs in the quiet space between the promise of something dreadful (or wonderful) and its arrival (or failure to arrive). We'll talk about creating characters we care about and putting them in trouble. We'll talk about the closed door, Nolan's bug, Hitchcock's bomb, and Gorey's alphabet. About abstract adjectives, telling details, protecting the unknown (even as we reveal it), and why King calls horror "the art of disappointment." We'll talk, too, about deemphasizing the climax and sustaining apprehension beyond the last word. About getting under the reader's skin. About the story balloon (the pop, the fart, and, worst of all, the pinhole leak). About Creepypasta and The Dog’s Lick. We’ll talk about broken sharks, dented helmets, waxpaper boats, Sebastian Shaw, and that half-smile at the end of Psycho. Plus: cold duck, Giger’s Big Chap, and three ways to fire a rubber band.

Description coming soon.

Many authors find, counterintuitively, that plot is the most challenging part of creating fiction: it’s easy to make up the people, but hard to figure out what to do with them.  This is true even though plot is the most elemental part of storytelling, the thing we use when we relay gossip to our friends, tell our partners about our day, or explain the world to our children. This session will help writers find the tools they need to create compelling plot, exploring the mechanics of action.  We’ll examine how to build sympathy for characters and suspense about what’s going to happen to them next.  We’ll also find the connecting points between character, voice, and plot, and consider the way these crucial elements of fiction relate to one another. 

This workshop is aimed at intermediate or advanced writers of chapter books and novels for young people. In this workshop, we will collectively examine middle grade and YA novels that have historically done injustice to marginalized communities – as well as texts that have sought to represent our diverse worlds with greater sensitivity, solidarity, and accuracy. Simultaneously, this workshop will take the perspective that writing for young people is less about “teaching a good lesson” and more “telling a good story” – and that in fact, telling good stories involves representing our communities in all their rich diversity.

Writers will be asked to bring a “first page” of writing for young people, without their names on it. We will workshop these first pages aloud – gathering collective input on their openings, voice, world building and representation. We will also discuss practical matters such as querying agents, understanding market trends and seeking publication.

For intermediate and advanced writers.

Description coming soon.