October 18-23
2026 Classes
“Gorgeous setting, inspiring place to work and learn! My workshop leader was amazing, a fabulous teacher as well as an inspiring writer.”
~2022 workshop participant
Workshops
*Please note that Chris La Tray’s class is now full, but we are taking applications for his wait-list.
Rescuing Yourself
Jamie Ford
In this generative fiction workshop, we’ll use prompts that send you back in time to meet a younger version of yourself. Through guided writing, you’ll explore what it means to step into the past—offering perspective, compassion, or even the words you once needed to hear. The goal isn’t just to rewrite history, but to uncover new stories, unexpected insights, and fresh emotional truths that can reshape the way you write in the present.
Rewilding the Work
Chris La Tray
In lives too often devoted to safety and convenience, too many of our spirits are withering. Too much of our writing is dying too, friends, the same death and debilitation of convenience and attention-theft that our bodies are. Glossy and clean and neat around the edges when it should be muddy and a little smelly and bleeding from being dragged through the brambles. Just like our bodies after a vigorous trip out and back! It is never too late to pull ourselves back from the brink, then, and that is what this workshop will attempt to do. In the same way we think of rewilding as a change in lifestyle, we will attempt that evolution – or return – on the page.
As part of this workshop there will be short readings for discussion, writing prompts, and a concerted effort to, if not generate new writing, at least perhaps tweak a muscle or two that might influence the direction future writing may take. The following quote from the late Irish poet Derek Mahon sums things up nicely, particularly if you replace “poetry” for whatever writing it is you prefer to engage with.
“I was talking recently to a very nice young woman who seemed to be coming from the current literary orthodoxy. She used two phrases of her students – one was about ‘giving them permission to write’ and the other was about ‘creating a warm space for them to write.’ Now, poetry written with permission in warm spaces, there’s far too much of that – and that is the voice of community. What interests me is forbidden poetry written by solitaires in the cold, written by solitaires in the open, which is where the human soul really is. That for me is where poetry really is.” — Derek Mahon
Writing Down Your Demons: A Generative Poetry Workshop
Deborah Miranda
“…if you look into the origins of the word [demon], you’ll see that it comes from daemon, from the Latin word for ‘spirit,’ which derives from the Greek daimon, ‘divine power’ or ‘genius’” (poet Kim Addonizio). But how can we speak of divine power or beauty when our world rocks with loss, grief, chaos, fear, and turmoil?
Thich Nhat Hanh says that the work of meditation is to transform “compost into flowers”; that is also the work of poetry. This generative workshop will help you to re-see your demons as a form of poetic compost.
Writing poetry is a way for us to name, explore and re-shape our demons and use them to grow something beautiful, powerful, and healing. Through in-class writing exercises, reading and discussing sample poems, as well as the plain old blood, sweat and tears of revision, this generative workshop is structured to inspire as well as provide you with new tools to continue the work on your own afterwards. Please bring your favorite writing utensils, colored pencils/pens, and a copy of Lynda Barry’s book One! Hundred! Demons! I’ll provide a small anthology of “demon” poems.
Building a Fictional World: Writing the Relationship Between Place, Environment & Story
Diane Wilson
This class will focus on understanding the fictional world you are creating by exploring some of the elements that are often embedded within deeper contextual layers: place or setting, and environment, and their relationship to story.
Setting is often described as an element in a writer’s story, a tool that helps the reader visualize the place where the characters live. And yet, as humans, we are profoundly shaped by the land we come from, the water we live near, the plants and animals who share the earth with us, and the horizon that greets us each day. Along with discussion of select readings such as “Solar Storms” by Linda Hogan, writers will explore their relationship to place and environment through focused writing exercises, and extend that visualization to their stories. This class will also discuss Camille Dungy’s essay, “Is All Writing Environmental Writing,” and the broader implications for literature.