Writing Classes & Workshops 

Join us for a welcoming, in-person gathering for people who want to read, reflect, and write in community.

     We will begin with a poem and a short fiction or nonfiction selection, followed by conversation about what the writing is doing and how it works on the page.     

     Together, we’ll explore craft elements such as imagery, diction, metaphor, structure, and line or sentence movement in a way that is inviting and accessible to all.
     Participants will spend time writing from guided prompts designed to spark ideas and help the words flow. At the end, those who wish may share what they wrote or reflect on the writing experience.

     This is not a formal workshop or critique group, but an inspiring, low-pressure space to enjoy good writing and create some of your own.

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CHARLENE PIERCE is a poet, teaching artist, and founder and President of the Nebraska Poetry Society.

     A Pushcart Prize nominee and Best of the Net finalist, her work appears in Poetry Foundation, TriQuarterly, Whale Road Review, The Good Life Review, and 805 Lit + Art , and has been anthologized in Until There Are No Words Left and Misbehaving Nebraskans.

     The Poetry Foundation selected her to teach a poetry workshop, publish a craft essay, and give a public reading for the Forms & Features Series.

     She holds an MFA from Pacific University, where she was a Merit Scholar, and is passionate about helping poets deepen their craft while supporting their creative and professional development.

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No registration necessary. Bring your favorite writing tools and join us. Free parking is available in the east-side parking lot. Vis Major Brewing has food, mocktails and cocktails for purchase.

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FREE and open to the public

In this workshop, we'll read and write epistolary poems, which are a lesson in opposites: public/private, individual/collective; they also create closeness and intimacy yet cross great distances: geographical, chronological, emotional, and more.

     This tension is one of the gifts of poetry, its ability to allow conflicting ideas to coexist, especially when subject matter is vulnerable or difficult.

     The epistolary poem helps us document experience, preserve memory, and illuminate the cultural and historical forces that shape our lives.

     In this workshop, we’ll explore the opposing forces of the epistolary poem, write our own epistolary poems, and expand our ideas of what poems can do. 

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LISA LOW is the author of Replica (University of Wisconsin Press, 2026) and the chapbook Crown for the Girl Inside (YesYes Books, 2023).

     She is the recipient of a 2023 Pushcart Prize and the 2020 Gulf Coast Nonfiction Prize, and her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Ecotone, The Massachusetts Review, Poetry, The Southern Review, and elsewhere.

     Originally from Maryland, she lives in Chicago.

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After you register, you will receive an "admission ticket" with the zoom link information on it.

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$40 or FREE to Members

Annual Membership $40

Visual art allows us to delve headfirst into a new universe upon first glance and closer inspection, sometimes allowing us to see the world around us (and ourselves) with new eyes.

     Through dialogue and short writing exercises, we will explore the ways that ekphrastic poetry can allow us to explore and break borders of identities and the body, and how it can provide us with a new lens through which to understand ourselves and our poetics. 

 

KAY E. BANCROFT (they/them) is a writer, editor, educator, and artist based in Cincinnati, OH.

     Their debut poetry collection, Bloodroom, is out now from Sundress Publications. They hold an MFA in Poetry from Randolph College, and a BA from the University of Cincinnati.

     You can find their writing in Poet Lore, Pleiades Journal, RHINO Poetry, Passengers Journal, The Rumpus, & more. Explore more on their website.

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After you register, you will receive an "admission ticket" with the zoom link information on it.

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$40 or FREE to Members

Annual Membership $40

I’m interested in measuring the distances between poets, their subjects and audience as a way to examine a poet’s moral responsibility in all directions.

     Poems should be daring and take risks that push the boundaries of human understanding and empathy.

     But where is the edge of that boundary where a poet might misrepresent or understand the subjects they are hoping to be in healthy conversation with? This might not only happen in persona writing, but in any writing that seeks to touch subjects and subject matter that requires tender and careful handling in order to capture truth without enacting further harm.

     In this workshop, I hope to create dialogue on a poem’s success and potential mishandling of these topics, as a way for us to learn how to best handle these topics ourselves in our own work. How can we take risks and even unsettle the reader in the poem, while still respecting subjects and the audience? 

 

JOSHUA BURTON is a poet and educator from Houston, TX and he received his MFA in poetry at Syracuse University.

     His chapbook Fracture Anthology is out with Ethel Press, and his debut poetry collection Grace Engine is out with the University of Wisconsin Press.

     He is a Tin House Scholar, a 2023 Elizabeth George Foundation grant recipient, and a Writers' League of Texas Book Awards Discovery Prize Winner.

     He currently teaches English and Creative Writing at Awty International School in Houston.

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After you register, you will receive an "admission ticket" with the zoom link information on it.

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$40 or FREE to Members

Annual Membership $40

The 19th century was as long as they ever come, especially for the United States of America. Rosy-cheeked and restless after the revolutionary war, America's first centennial witnessed the most aggressive, aggrandized territorial expansion, violently displacing Indigenous communities for the sake of empire and land.

     To return to these texts, as a colonial descendant, is to reckon with the history of America, this fateful inheritance--to question the material circumstances that give birth to the philosophy of democracy in the first place.

     In this workshop, then, we'll use our unique position and perspective as writers to bring the voices of the past into the present - a kind of necromancy or possession -- to see what sort of offering will satisfy these voracious spirits, whether they can ever be put to rest.

     More specifically: attendees will be introduced to an array of primary historical documents from the 19th century--encompassing the Louisiana Purchase, cessions and treaties, Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, the Indian Peace Commission, and more--which, utilizing a documentary approach, they'll write into and through.

     Attendees will also learn more about the history and practice of documentary poetry -from Rukeyser, Reznikoff, and Pound all the way up to the proliferation of the presents. We'll also look to Walt Whitman--the quintessential American poet himself--as a kind of guiding light or foil for our own work.

     At the end of the workshop, students will leave with a clear idea, resources, and roadmap for a new, unique, and distinctive piece.

     Please note: while this workshops is focused on poetry, all genres are welcome. No familiarity or experience with historical documents is necessary as well.
 

JAKE FRIEDMAN (he/him) is a poet, editor, and culture worker currently based in Fort Collins, CO. He graduated from Colorado State University with his MFA in Poetry in 2025.

     He also received several small but meaningful honors--a University and College Prize from the Academy of American poets, multiple scholarships from the Community of Writers, a finalist for the Just Buffalo Poetry Fellowship, and a semi-finalist for the 92Y Discovery Contest.

     He is currently at work on a collection of documentary poems resurrecting a history of the American West. He also serves as the Co-Poet Laureate of Fort Collins, CO.

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After you register, you will receive an "admission ticket" with the zoom link information on it.

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$40 or FREE to Members

Annual Membership $40

Spend a morning exploring nature at Schramm Park and see where it takes your writing.

     As part of our Poetry in the Parks series and our partnership with Locus Poetica, we're heading outdoors to gain inspiration for our writing.

     We’ll begin with a guided hike led by an Outdoor Education Specialist, who will introduce us to the plants, animals, ecosystems, and other natural features of Schramm Park. Prefer not to hike? No problem. Participants are welcome to remain at the Education Center and explore the exhibits and surroundings at their own pace.

     Afterward, we’ll return indoors and spend time writing together, using what we’ve seen, heard, learned, and noticed as material for new poems. You don’t need to arrive with a poem—or even an idea. Just bring your curiosity and something to write with.

    This event is part of our partnership with Locus Poetica, a digital poetry archive created and maintained by Poetry in the Parks. Together, we’re helping build a collection of poems inspired by Nebraska parks and public spaces. Maybe you’ll be inspired enough to submit your work for consideration!​

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Rain or shine! This event will go on regardless of the weather. If conditions keep us from hiking outdoors, we’ll enjoy the Schramm Education Center and find plenty of inspiration inside.

 

The fee covers admission to the Schramm Education Center and the guided educational program. Writers of all experience levels and genres are welcome. 

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$10 per person

Scholarships are available

It is said that one's own name is the most sacred sound in any language.

     This workshop turns to poems by Seamus Heaney, Phillis Levin, and more to investigate the ways that a person's name might be dissected, rejected, reclaimed, or memorialized to powerful effect.

     Workshop includes guided readings as well as brief windows to write and to share (optional). 

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ERICA REID is the author of Ghost Man on Second, winner of the Donald Justice Poetry Prize (Autumn House Press). Erica’s poems appear in Rattle, Cherry Tree, Colorado Review, and more, and she is the recipient of a 2025 Pushcart Prize. Learn more on her website.

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After you register, you will receive an "admission ticket" with the zoom link information on it.

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$40 or FREE to Members

Annual Membership $40

Why might it be important to write about our increasingly digital world, and what are the consequences of trying to write around rather than with the internet? How can we describe and represent the digital world in poetry? What’s possible when we treat the internet as setting, character, or aesthetic influence in our work?

     We’ll work towards answers to these questions by studying the work of poets like Franny Choi, Tracy Fuad, Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, Ryann Stevenson, and Nick Montfort and responding to prompts about our own relationships to the internet, social media, AI, and digital spaces and technologies.

 

ELLIE BLACK is a poet, memoirist, editor, critic, screenwriter, performer, and educator. She received a PhD in English, Creative Writing Concentration and MFA in poetry from the University of Mississippi.

     She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor in English–Creative Writing at Hendrix College.

     Her debut poetry collection, REVELATOR, is the winner of the 2026 APR/Honickman First Book Prize.
     Her poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from The Adroit Journal, Bennington Review, The Common, Washington Square Review, Mississippi Review, Poetry Online, Black Warrior Review, Best New Poets, DIAGRAM, and elsewhere.

     A 2026 Gregory Djanikian Scholar and a finalist for the 2025 DISQUIET Prize in Poetry, she has also received awards and recognition from The Pinch, the C.D. Wright Women Writer's Conference, the Poets' Roundtable of Arkansas, the University of Mississippi, Hendrix College, and Split Lip Magazine.

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After you register, you will receive an "admission ticket" with the zoom link information on it.

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$40 or FREE to Members

Annual Membership $40

A writing workshop to focus on how to distill from prose into poetry, and how verse can inspire more expansive writing.
We will consider writing examples as prompts to generate our own work.

 

SHELLI ROTTSCHAFER lives in Louisville, Colorado and El Prado, New Mexico. She was raised in Michigan.  

     In 2005 she completed her doctorate in Spanish from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. For 18 years she taught as a Spanish Professor at a small college in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

     She also holds an MFA in Creative Writing with a concentration in Poetry and coursework in Nature Writing from Western Colorado University, Gunnison (2025).

     Her publications include:

A Year of New Mexico Poetry (Casa Urraca Press), The Meadow, The Literary Nest, Notes of Light and Dark: Southwestern Aubades and Nocturnes (Dos Gatos Press), Poetics: Journal (Bainbridge Island Press), Corvid Issue
Chamisa: A Journal of Literary, Performance and Visual Arts of the Greater Southwest, and Deep Wild. 

     Her forthcoming chapbook: Sorrel Summer Sky: Earth-Poems & Photography will be published with Finishing Line Press in 2027.

   Discover more of Shelli’s work on her website. 
 

After you register, you will receive an "admission ticket" with the zoom link information on it.

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$40 or FREE to Members

Annual Membership $40

SARA M SALA is a poet and professor whose work explores radical empathy, chronic illness, and increasingly, humor. 

     Her debut collection, Devil’s Lake (Tolsun 2020) won Distinguished Favorite for the Independent Press Awards. She is the founding director of Office Hours Poetry Workshop, and teaches writing at New York University.

     Despite the clear instructions on seed packets, she chooses to chaos garden for maximum joy.

     Her work appears in POETRY, BOMB, Columbia Journal, The Southampton Review, and others. Visit her on her website.

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After you register, you will receive an "admission ticket" with the zoom link information on it.

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$40 or FREE to Members

Annual Membership $40

Documentary poetry or docupoetry (as it is called) has no specific definition other than it is poetic writing that draws from the real world or from documents of real witnesses to a series of events. It is a case study of people, events, and places. There is always some research involved—especially if the testimony of witnesses is to be incorporated into the poetry.

     The work includes both the perspectives of witnesses and of that of the writer. It is an attempt to give voice to the marginalized and oppressed.

     We will look closely at specific works by three poets, Patricia Smith (Blood Dazzler), CD Wright (One Big Self),and  Layli Long Soldier (Whereas). If there is time, we shall consider Muriel Rukeyser’s Book of the Dead as this text is often quoted when the topic of docupoetics arises. 

     We will consider which issues/events each of these poets chose to write about and the style of writing they adopted to do so. For example, Patricia Smith makes excellent use of the persona poem structure as she retells stories of nursing home residents who became victims of Hurricane Katrina.

     After reading and discussing poems from these collections, participants will do some free writing on an event or series of events they feel called to bear witness to.

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JOANNE GODLEY is a thrice-nominated Pushcart and Best-of-Net poet, writer, and recent MFA graduate from Pacific University. She is a retired physician and public health specialist, and lives in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

     Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Crab Orchard Review, Decolonial Passage, The Kenyon Review Online, among others. She is an Anaphora Arts Fellow in poetry and fiction.

     How the Black Panthers Fell From the Sky, is a memoir-in-verse and Godley’s first poetry collection. It won the Naomi Long Madgett award for 2025 and has just been published by Broadside Lotus Press. 

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After you register, you will receive an "admission ticket" with the zoom link information on it.

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$40 or FREE to Members

Annual Membership $40

To paraphrase Lauren Russell in her book A Window that Can Neither Open Nor Close (Milkweed Multiverse series), obsessive-compulsive disorder is the "disease of not knowing what you know." The doubting disease. Brain lock. 

     Whatever you call it, there are loops, coils, structures, rooms that feel impossible to break out of. As poets with OCD and/or other forms of neurodivergence, what would happen if we were to "write" our brains? To translate them?

     What would happen if anyone with any brain-difference were to try and translate their experience through poetics? Sometimes, the poems might glue together in places. Perhaps they start to become a series, or a family, or a three-dimensional cube. Or maybe they spiral out, diverge from the center, if there even is a center at all.

     In this generative, exploratory workshop, all students are welcome to join in our discovery of what an "OCD poetics" might look like. We will discuss brilliant writers with OCD and other neurodivergences across genres, and perform a variety of reflective and generative prompts that encourage creativity even when there is doubt and difficulty. 

 

GRACE (GE) GILBERT (they/them) is a poet, writer and collage artist. they received their MFA in poetry from the University of Pittsburgh in 2022, where they now teach.

     They are the author of Holly (YesYes Books, 2026), a hybrid image and text book about the 1976 murder of their paternal grandmother, as well as three chapbooks.

     Recent work can be found in the Kenyon Review, Iowa Review, Drift, 2023 Best of the Net Anthology, Pleiades, Indiana Review, Ninth Letter, Adroit Journal, and elsewhere.

     They teach hybrid collage and poetics courses at Brooklyn Poets, Minnesota Center for Book Arts, Poet's House, and other institutions. They are passionate about making the hybrid arts accessible to all.

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After you register, you will receive an "admission ticket" with the zoom link information on it.

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$40 or FREE to Members

Annual Membership $40

Douglas Kearney uses “the dineffable” to describe feelings or experiences so intense that they can only be expressed through what seems like noise. “Dintelligibility” is the sense within that noise, one reader might recognize meaning, while another might dismiss that noise entirely.

     Kearney is thinking about Black expression and how it gets misunderstood (and misheard): for example, a shout might carry fear that a listener mistakes for anger.

     In conversation with Cindy Juyoung Ok, Kearney asks: “When is it signal and when it is noise, and to whom and in what contexts?” We’ll start there, reading visual poems and asking what their experiments do. Then, we’ll try a few ways to use the letter-sized page as a canvas for a visual poem of our own.

     We’ll work with repetition and interruption to put different kinds of language in each other’s way and see what happens. We’ll also practice observational critique: describing how we read a page to better understand our own craft choices.

     Writers of all experience levels are welcome. Bring paper and a pencil and, ideally, access to Microsoft Word or Apple Pages. No drawing skills or other special software are required to participate.

 

TARIK DOBBS is the author of Nazar Boy (2024), winner of the 2026 GLCA New Writers Award in Poetry, and Dearbornistan (forthcoming in 2028), both from Haymarket Books.

     A Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellow, Dobbs is assistant professor of English in creative writing-poetry at Southwest Minnesota State University and CEO of Poetry Online.

     He holds MFAs in creative writing from the University of Minnesota and in art, theory, and practice from Northwestern University.

      His visual poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Best of the Net, and Poetry magazine, among other places. 

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After you register, you will receive an "admission ticket" with the zoom link information on it.

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$40 or FREE to Members

Annual Membership $40

RACHEL TURNEY, Ed.D. is an educator and artist located in Denver, Colorado. Rachel is a reader for The Los Angeles Review and a poetry mentor for AWP. She runs the popular online reading series and press, Poetry (in Brief).

     Her debut book, Record Player Life (the b-side), is available with The Poetry Lighthouse. Learn more on her website. Follow her on Instagram: @turneytalks

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After you register, you will receive an "admission ticket" with the zoom link information on it.

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$40 or FREE to Members

Annual Membership $40

SARA DANIELE RIVERA is a Cuban Peruvian American artist, writer, translator, and educator. Her writing has appeared in The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext, Solstice, Waxwing, Speculative Fiction for Dreamers: A Latinx Anthology, and elsewhere.

     She was the winner of the 2018 Stephen Dunn Prize in Poetry (Solstice Magazine), and a 2022 Tin House resident. She is a co-translator of The Blinding Star: Selected Poems by Blanca Varela (Tolsun Books, 2021) and co-editor of Not Your Papi’s Utopia: Latinx Visions of Radical Hope (Mouthfeel Press, 2025).          Her debut book of poetry, The Blue Mimes (Graywolf Press, 2024), won the 2023 Academy of American Poets First Book Award. She lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

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After you register, you will receive an "admission ticket" with the zoom link information on it.

​

$40 or FREE to Members

Annual Membership $40