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A penchant for journeys and a fascination with strangers

Upcoming Courses

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Writing Motherhood

Thursdays: Mar 6 - Apr 3
8 - 10 p.m. EST

$400

How does a writer broach the topic of motherhood—an experience as large as life itself, and as personal as the deepest flesh of our physical selves? How do we write toward the ineffability of maternal love, transformation, rage, sacrifice, and ecstasy? This Masters’ Series course aspires to give you the conversations, community, craft, and courage needed to approach your work about every aspect of motherhood—conception, pregnancy, childbirth, postpartum, and caretaking.

Writing Grief

Saturdays: Apr 5 - May 3
12 - 2 p.m. EST

$400

We’re writing in a time of collective grief. There’s an ongoing health crisis, a deeply divided political climate, an aching planet, and through it all, each of us is moving deeply personal mountains that no one else can see. How do we show up to the page when we don’t want to get out of bed? How do we find language for the loss, the fear, the sadness, the gutpunch, the thing we can’t put down?

Modern Love Submission Workshop

Apr 5 - 6
12 - 3 p.m. EST

$510

The love story is hardly a modern genre. It’s captivated people for millennia, from Greek mythology to Hallmark movies. It’s no surprise, then, that The New York Times’ Modern Love column, which has been running for twenty years, is one of the paper’s most read columns, enjoyed by millions around the world. The submission process for Modern Love essays is straightforward, but publishing one isn’t quite as simple. The good news is that anyone—aspiring writers included—can publish a Modern Love essay, since acceptance hinges not on previous bylines but on the story itself.

Writing the Body

Mondays: May 5 - June 2
7 - 9 p.m. EST

$400

Death. Illness. Sex. Gender. Athletics. Aging. To write about these embodied experiences and spaces of physical culture, we cannot ignore or reduce the body. We must engage with it on the page, considering its complications and nuances and leaning into them rather than away. Writing the body is not just writing about the body, but it is also writing about the meaning of the body, and the ways it determines our experiences. How do we occupy our bodies, what do we do with them, how do we feel in them? What is the relationship between the body and the self? What skills, craft tools, literary instincts, and embodied practices can we use to support our body work as writers?

Writing the Experimental Essay

Tuesdays: May 6 - June 3
7:30 - 9:30 p.m. EST

$400

This class argues that the more we remember how crucial experiments are to the ways we work, the more vibrant and active we can be as artists. Experiments can shake you out of a rut, clarify your mission, and detach your work from harmful institutional expectations. And on top of that, they can be very, very cool.

Past Courses

2025

 

2024

 

  • WRITING FOOD with ALI FRANCIS
    featuring Bettina Makalintal, Mayukh Sen, Jaya Saxena, & Alicia Kennedy

  • WRITING THE MODERN LOVE ESSAY with LAVINIA SPALDING
    featuring Susan Yoon, Kevin Renn, Staceyann Chin, & Miya Lee

  • WRITING MOTHERHOOD with RACHEL YODER
    featuring Angela Garbes, Louisa Hall, Sabrina Orah Mark, & Erika Morillo

  • WRITING TRAUMA with MARGO STEINES
    featuring Stacey Ramsower, Athena Dixon, T Kira Māhealani Madden, & Lacy M. Johnson

  • WRITING THIS WARMING WORLD with MEERA SUBRAMANIAN
    featuring Emily Raboteau, Helen Macdonald, Elizabeth Rush, & J. Drew Lanham

 

2023

  • HYBRID MEMOIR with LILLY DANCYGER
    featuring Melissa Febos, Esmé Weijun Wang, Jeannie Vanasco, & Tyrese L. Colemen

  • WRITING THE BODY with MARGO STEINES
    & featuring Aisha Sabatini Sloan, Melissa Febos, Natalie Lima, & Leslie Jamison

2022