From Empty Nest to Enchanted Forest

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Writing Grief Through Culture ($59/79)

How do writers talk about grief through a cultural lens? How does one's socio-economic class affect one's grief? What about immigration status? Sexuality? Birth order? In this talk, participants will analyze the craft of writing about grief through these various lenses with authors such as Michelle Zauner, T Kira Māhealani Madden, Maya Shanbhag Lang, and Lidia Yuknavitch to name a few. Participants will engage in several prompt writing exercises and leave the talk with new-found inspiration to explore their grief through various lenses.

Sarah Chaves is a Portuguese-American writer, editor, and educator based in Boston, MA. She has received support from PEN America, Bread Loaf, Fulbright, Key West Literary, Disquiet, and more. Her work has been featured in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Teen Vogue among others.

Where Writing and Design Meet ($25 suggested donation)

Some of the greatest lessons in writing often come from other mediums, such as visual arts. Camille Gomera-Tavarez, Pura Belpré Honor winning author and graphic designer discusses the ways visual arts and design have impacted her writing practice. Join her as she shares craft tips and don't forget to bring a pencil!

Camille Gomera-Tavarez is an Afro-Dominican authoress, designer, and creative from Clifton, New Jersey. She has a BFA in Graphic Design & Creative Writing from the Maryland Institute College of Art and is currently based in Philadelphia, PA. Her debut novel, High Spirits, is a short story collection for all ages that received multiple starred reviews, was a Center for the Study of Multicultural Children's Literature Best Book of 2022, an International Latino Book Award, and a 2023 Pura Belpré Honor winner. Her sophomore YA novel, The Girl, the Ring, & the Baseball Bat is set to be released in February 2024.

The Wonder of the Short Poem ($39/49)

If you tend to write long, narrative poems or find that you write to trim away, I invite you to explore the wonder and challenge of the short lyric with me. We will discuss short poetic forms such as the haiku and tanka, poems by Lucille Clifton, Carl Phillips, Salvatore Quasimodo, Bill Knott and others, as well as complete generative exercises. All levels of experience are welcome. Our aim will be to leave with a new short poem draft.

Angela Siew is a multilingual poet with a BA from Brown University and an MFA from Emerson College. She was most recently a Peter Taylor Fellow for the 2023 Kenyon Review Writers Workshop and has received support from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the City of Boston and the Community of Writers Poetry Workshop. Her work has been published in Salamander, Crab Orchard Review and Art New England, among others. A chapbook, Coming Home, will be published by Cut Bank (University of Montana) in 2024. A former private tutor and English language teacher, she has also taught overseas in Chile and Italy.  Learn more at angelasiew.com.

Friday Free Write with Joy Ladin: Making Ourselves Up as We Go Along: The Art of Saying "I" (FREE OR SUGGESTED DONATION $25)

In this workshop. we will explore the writerly nuts and bolts of creating first-person speakers, discussing and practicing techniques we find in brief but complex literary examples of some of the many ways to use our most intimately embraced and widely shared pronoun, “I.”

Joy Ladin has long worked at the tangled intersection of literature and identity. She has published ten books of poetry, including her latest collection, Shekhinah Speaks; National Jewish Book Award winner The Book of Anna; and Lambda Literary Award finalists Transmigration and Impersonation, which was reissued this in a revised edition. She is also the author of a memoir of gender transition, National Jewish Book Award finalist Through the Door of Life; and another work of creative non-fiction, Lambda Literary and Triangle Award finalist, The Soul of the Strange. Two new books – Family, a poetry collection, and Once Out of Nature, a collection of essays on the transformation of gender – are forthcoming from Persea in 2024. Her work has been recognized with a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Fulbright Scholarship, and an American Council of Learned Societies Research Fellowship,among other honors. A nationally recognized speaker on transgender issues, she has been featured on a number of NPR programs, including an “On Being” with Krista Tippett interview that has been rebroadcast several times. Episodes of her online conversation series, “Containing Multitudes,” are available at JewishLive.org/multitudes; her writing is available at joyladin.wordpress.com.

Opening Pages: Hook & Heft

How to Craft an Opening Chapter that Keeps Readers Reading ($99/149)

Readers don’t only judge books by their covers, they judge them on their first pages. Whether you're looking to appeal to an agent, editor, or reader, novel openings are key. Readers won’t keep reading “to get to the good stuff.” Those first critical pages must be your good stuff—or maybe your great stuff! In this workshop, we will focus on your novel's first pages. We will present a detailed “checklist” of what the opening of a novel needs to accomplish. Students will have the chance to present their first page in class for critique. Whether you have a completed manuscript or a work in progress, this workshop will help you identify what’s working and what needs to be further honed to strengthen your opening pages.

Lori Anne Goldstein is a creative writing instructor, manuscript consultant, and the author of four novels for young adults (Sources Say, Penguin Random House, 2020; Screen Queens, Penguin Random House, 2019; and the Becoming Jinn series (Macmillan, 2015, 2016). She credits her BA in journalism with giving her the skills and desire to devote herself to the extensive research that forms the core of her adult historical debut, Love, Theodosia, a Romeo and Juliet for Hamilton fans (out now in hardcover and paperback). She lives in the Boston area and can be found online at: www.lorigoldsteinbooks.com; Instagram: @lorigoldsteinbooks; Twitter: @loriagoldstein; Facebook: LoriGoldsteinAuthor.

Based on a Truish Story ($69/89)

KIRA ROCKWELL is a neurodivergent playwright and educator. She is an Artist Fellow in Dramatic Writing with the Mass Cultural Council, a Recipient of Judith Royer Excellence in Playwriting Award, Second place recipient of the Paula Vogel Playwriting Award, and more. Selected plays include OH TO BE PURE AGAIN (world premiere Actor's Express); THE TRAGIC ECSTASY OF GIRLHOOD (workshop premiere Boston Playwrights’ Theatre); and WITH MY EYES SHUT (published with Original Works). Her work has been developed with The Kennedy Center, National New Play Network, Great Plains Theatre Commons, among others. Commissions with Ensemble Studio Theatre, Actor's Express, and Moonbox Productions. She holds a BFA in Theatre Performance, and an MFA in Playwriting from Boston University. As an educator, Rockwell has taught at Brandeis University, Wheaton College, and centers across New England. Before graduate school, Rockwell worked at the intersection of mental health and arts education. Through a trauma-informed, healing-centered lens, she aims to nurture communal spaces that disrupt passivity and empower agency. www.kirarockwell.com

Brevity, Density, Power: Reading Short Stories by Women Writers ($39/49)

“In a rough way the short story writer is to the novelist as a cabinetmaker is to a house carpenter.” —Annie Proulx, author of The Shipping News and other books

In this workshop, writers will explore "The Home-coming," by Milly Jafta. We’ll examine and respond to the story’s language, rhythm, themes, structure, point of view, references to real events and other texts. We’ll ask: What do we expect from a short story? And what happens when writers flout those expectations? Participants will receive an audio file of the story, read by the instructor before the class. During class, we’ll revisit key portions aloud—tuning our ears to dialogue, cadence, silences and echoes—as we engage in discussion. Our conversations will welcome participants’ thoughts, questions, wild ideas, thoughtful challenges and respectful dissents as we learn from and with each other.  Anndee's introductory workshop is open to all to register one time - a more in depth series will follow in 2024 in which writers will poke into the “cabinets” of six exuberantly different writers from a range of cultures, vantage points, and storytelling traditions including:
• “The Story of an Hour,” by Kate Chopin
• “Everyday Use,” by Alice Walker
• “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried,” by Amy Hempel
• “The Shawl,” by Louise Erdrich

• “Chin,” by Gish Jen

• “The Thing Around Your Neck,” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Anndee Hochman is a journalist, essayist, storyteller and teaching artist. For more than 20 years, she has facilitated community-based literature discussions through People & Stories/Gente y Cuentos. She also guides writers of all ages and experience levels in crafting poetry, memoir and creative nonfiction. Her books include Everyday Acts & Small Subversions: Women Reinventing Family, Community and Home (The Eighth Mountain Press) and Anatomies: A Novella and Stories (Picador USA). She’s at work on a young adult novel titled My Plural Is People.

Your Memoir As Monologue Play Lab with Showcase


There’s beauty and meaning to mine from your life story, and this workshop will help you artistically express what you’ve overcome and achieved, and share your experience through the medium of theatre. You’ll present your monologue drafts, have them read by guest actors, and discuss revisions. Elements of dramatic structure will be discussed, including conflict, plot, subtext, voice, narrative, the importance of set-up, and collaboration as a process. Each writer will present her monologue, performed by an actor, in the final showcase online, free and open to the public. No experience required

Kelly DuMar is a poet, playwright and workshop facilitator from Boston. She’s author of four poetry collections, including jinx and heavenly calling, published by Lily Poetry Review Books, 2023. Her poems, plays and images are published widely. For decades Kelly has taught a variety of creative writing workshops, including play labs with showcases for the International Women’s Writing Guild and the Transformative Language Arts Network. Kelly produces the Featured Open Mic for the Journal of Expressive Writing. Reach her at kellydumar.com

Novel Planning Workshop 2024

Writing isn't only writing. Writing requires thinking. One of the biggest causes of "writer's block" is simply being stuck--not knowing where your story can and should go. One of the best solutions to avoid writer's block is to put in time up front to understand your characters and the story you wish to tell. In this lecture-driven course, students will participate in six in-depth, lecture-driven lessons on character, story beats, and world building. Each lesson will focus on a particular element of creating fiction. Students will learn how to create characters with fully fleshed out tangible and emotional journeys and will be presented with a customizable method for creating story beats. Previous students have followed the exercises in this course and by the end have fully developed outlines to use in writing their novel. The course is well-suited for beginner as well as intermediate writers. While designed for those just beginning their projects, it also can be useful for those stuck on how to revise a novel. This is fiction-focused, all categories and genres.

Lori Anne Goldstein is a creative writing instructor, manuscript consultant, and the author of four novels for young adults (Sources Say, Penguin Random House, 2020; Screen Queens, Penguin Random House, 2019; and the Becoming Jinn series (Macmillan, 2015, 2016). She credits her BA in journalism with giving her the skills and desire to devote herself to the extensive research that forms the core of her adult historical debut, Love, Theodosia, a Romeo and Juliet for Hamilton fans (out now in hardcover and paperback). She lives in the Boston area and can be found online at: www.lorigoldsteinbooks.com; Instagram: @lorigoldsteinbooks; Twitter: @loriagoldstein; Facebook: LoriGoldsteinAuthor.

Gateway to Memoir

Interested in writing memoir but not sure where to begin? Got a memoir in the works but could u

se some guidance? “Gateway to Memoir” is a foundational workshop that will show you the basics of the genre. We will spend four weeks discussing time in memoir, the ethics of writing memoir, establishing place and how to turn the people who populate your past into characters. The final two sessions will be reserved for workshopping writing submissions.

Minda Honey’s (she/her) essays on politics and relationships have appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Washington Post, the Guardian, the Oxford American, Teen Vogue, and Longreads.

Her work is featured in “Burn It Down: Women Writing About Anger”, “A Measure of Belonging: Writers of Color on the New American South”, and “Sex and the Single Woman: 24 Writers Reimagine Helen Gurley Brown's Cult Classic.”

She is the editor of Black Joy at Reckon — the newsletter has nearly 60K subscribers. She was the director of the BFA in Creative Writing program at Spalding University, a relationship advice columnist for LEO Weekly in Louisville, Kentucky, and founder of the capsule project, TAUNT, an alt-indie publication for Louisville that elevated the voices of the unaccounted during the height of the pandemic and ended in late 2021.

Her debut memoir, THE HEARTBREAK YEARS (Little A, October 2023), is a hilarious and intimate portrait of a Black woman finding who she is and who she wants to be, one bad date at a time.

WEEK ONE: Fundamentals of Playwriting: Review the necessary elements of the page for the stage. You will learn script format and craft vocabulary such as monologue, dialogue, stage directions, structure, arcs, etc.

WEEK TWO: Character and Dialogue: We'll talk about how to create dimensional characters. Ensembles. And even characters outside of traditional realism.

WEEK THREE: Structure/Plot: Structure is simply how a story is organized. Plot is what happens. This week will focus on those two distinctions. It will equip with techniques for both plot driven, and character driven writers, and even push you to write in the middle of that binary.

WEEK FOUR: Arcs, Beats, and Action: Most contemporary plays these days are limited to 10 minutes, 90 minutes, and 120 minute structures. You will learn which arcs and structures are best for the stories you want to tell, and how to pace each effectively.

WEEK FIVE: Theatricality: Lean intro writing for the stage, actors, designers, and what it means to write for a living, breathing audience.

Between Week 5 and Week 6: Individual one-on-one meetings with the instructor.

WEEK SIX: Revision Techniques: Best revision practices. Collaborating with actors, directors, designers, and theaters. Submission process. The road to production.

KIRA ROCKWELL is a neurodivergent playwright and educator. She is an Artist Fellow in Dramatic Writing with the Mass Cultural Council, a Recipient of Judith Royer Excellence in Playwriting Award, Second place recipient of the Paula Vogel Playwriting Award, and more. Selected plays include OH TO BE PURE AGAIN (world premiere Actor's Express); THE TRAGIC ECSTASY OF GIRLHOOD (workshop premiere Boston Playwrights’ Theatre); and WITH MY EYES SHUT (published with Original Works). Her work has been developed with The Kennedy Center, National New Play Network, Great Plains Theatre Commons, among others. Commissions with Ensemble Studio Theatre, Actor's Express, and Moonbox Productions. She holds a BFA in Theatre Performance, and an MFA in Playwriting from Boston University. As an educator, Rockwell has taught at Brandeis University, Wheaton College, and centers across New England. Before graduate school, Rockwell worked at the intersection of mental health and arts education. Through a trauma-informed, healing-centered lens, she aims to nurture communal spaces that disrupt passivity and empower agency. www.kirarockwell.com

The Powerful Art of Journaling

The art of journaling can help writers take note of fine details, increase cognitive processing, and improve memory. In this workshop, writers will explore methods and concepts in order to shift their journals and notebooks into a canvas and resource. We'll cover how to use journals to help you clear clutter, gain focus, record events for later use, process emotions, find your voice, and more.

Rebecca Evans is a memoirist, poet, and essayist. Her poems and essays are published in lit journals, like The Rumpus and Narratively. She co-hosts a radio show, Writer to Writer, on Radio Boise and lives in Idaho with sons and Newfoundlands and a squawky Calico cat. Her recent book, TANGLED BY BLOOD, a memoir in verse (Moon Tide Press, 2023), is available wherever fine books are sold.

In this 90 minute workshop, we will look at communication strategies re face and facework, while fusing theories with art and fashion … and ekphrastic writing! We will use all sorts of looks and colours to write to, the artists and authors we will include are Anne Sexton, Sokari Douglas Camp, Joy Gregory, Grace Weaver and Björk, a.o. You will receive a document with all the information we touch upon, with some extra face, art and fashion ideas to explore, in your own time!

Kate Copeland is a linguist and poet, teaching@the worldwide web, while housesitting@the world. She is curator-editor for The Ekphrastic Review and has done workshops for IWWG, as well as with Lisa Freedman. She volunteers at art festivals, and housing-insecurity projects.
Please find Kate’s poetry@TER, Wildfire Words, Erbacce, AltPoetry a.o.

Untangling the Difficult Narrative

Trauma writing – whether personal, cultural, or collective – can be more than catharsis. It can offer an opening, create awareness, and begin necessary conversation. Often, the difficult narrative is sought to help make sense of our experiences, to assign meaning to what is not easily expressed.

Through compassionate and gentle exploration–using empowerment and artistic tools–writers at all levels can access narrative that sometimes seems overwhelming or shameful. Through this process, we’ll learn to re-frame experiences into craft that feels true and meaningful.

Rebecca Evans is a memoirist, poet, and essayist. Her poems and essays are published in lit journals, like The Rumpus and Narratively. She co-hosts a radio show, Writer to Writer, on Radio Boise and lives in Idaho with sons and Newfoundlands and a squawky Calico cat. Her recent book, TANGLED BY BLOOD, a memoir in verse (Moon Tide Press, 2023), is available wherever fine books are sold.

Intermediate Playwriting

Every script, every new play is a theory. I don’t know if it’s going to work, which means a 

writer has to go in like a tailor, and listen to the actors and say, trim this more, or give her more. If it is perfectly tailored for the first cast it will be universal.” In this six-week course, you will get to sharpen your craft, learn revision techniques, and hear your work read aloud by professional actors. Each week, the instructor will share a short craft lesson, lead group discussions, facilitate breakout rooms, and guide you through writing exercises with skill focused prompts. There will be some outside assignments, including reading plays and short craft essays. The reading list will focus on work that push outside of traditional play structure, with notable works by Sharifa Yasmin, Hansol Jung, and Dave Harris. By week three, we will transition in

to workshop where you will have the opportunity to hear your work read aloud by professional actors and receive on-the-spot feedback. Using the Liz Lerman Critical Response Process, workshops will aim to nurture the growth of a play in early development. Your instructor will organize one-on-one meetings for extensive feedback, as well as individual time to dig into you as an artist. The course will culminate with a session focused on the business of playwriting. The instructor will share professional knowledge about the development of a new play, the submission process, artistic statements, and equip you with resources to take your theatre work to the next level. This class is intended for intermediate and advanced level playwrights who are familiar with the theatrical form

KIRA ROCKWELL is a neurodivergent playwright and educator. She is an Artist Fellow in Dramatic Writing with the Mass Cultural Council, a Recipient of Judith Royer Excellence in Playwriting Award, Second place recipient of the Paula Vogel Playwriting Award, and more. Selected plays include OH TO BE PURE AGAIN (world premiere Actor's Express); THE TRAGIC ECSTASY OF GIRLHOOD (workshop premiere Boston Playwrights’ Theatre); and WITH MY EYES SHUT (published with Original Works). Her work has been developed with The Kennedy Center, National New Play Network, Great Plains Theatre Commons, among others. Commissions with Ensemble Studio Theatre, Actor's Express, and Moonbox Productions. She holds a BFA in Theatre Performance, and an MFA in Playwriting from Boston University. As an educator, Rockwell has taught at Brandeis University, Wheaton College, and centers across New England. Before graduate school, Rockwell worked at the intersection of mental health and arts education. Through a trauma-informed, healing-centered lens, she aims to nurture communal spaces that disrupt passivity and empower agency. www.kirarockwell.com

Writing Life: Exploring Memoir and Personal Essay

Now more than ever, memoir and personal essay allows us to speak of our own experiences on our terms. Unlike autobiography or biography, which are often preoccupied with the facts of an event, or when things take place on a timeline, memoir can instead focus on the feelings and senses of a memory’s architecture, and the unique ways our memories connect to one another. In this generative six-week workshop, we will study and discuss techniques used by a variety of memoirists and poets who have written their own stories and experiences in interesting ways. Each student will also draft one piece in a form of their choice (prose or poetry) each week that experiments with sharing a memory or experience and receive weekly feedback from me and their classmates. At the close of the course, each student will have up to six new drafts that share or explore memory. Each student will also be encouraged to choose one draft they are most proud of to share with the class during our final Zoom session as part of a celebratory reading.

Lauren Brazeal Garza is a disabled author and Ph.D. candidate in literature at the University of Texas at Dallas with an MFA in writing from Bennington College. Her published poetry collections include Gutter (YesYes Books, 2018), a memoir-in-verse which chronicles her homelessness as a teenager. She has also published three chapbooks of poetry and flash fiction, most recently Santa Muerte Santa Muerte: I was Here Release Me (Tram Editions, 2023), which features fictional interviews with ghosts. Her work has appeared in Poetry Northwest, Waxwing, and Verse Daily among many other journals.

Research and Resonance

Research ca n deepen our writing across genres, delivering facts, words, metaphors, inspiration, and details to build characters, stories, arguments, and images. It can also help us to understand ourselves as part of a connected world. In this workshop, we will explore the generative power of looking something up, how to keep track of what we’ve learned, and how to use facts to enliven our writing.

Catharina Coenen teaches biology and writing at Allegheny College. She co-hosts IWWG’s virtual open mic series throughout the year. Her essays and poems have appeared in literary magazines, nominated for the Pushcart Prize, noted in Best American Essays, and featured in Best of the Net. More on her creative work can be found at https://sites.google.com/a/allegheny.edu/botany-for-storytellers/about-this-site/author.