Writing Classes & Workshops 

"To believe you are magnificent. And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent. Enough labor for one human life." —Czeslaw Milosz
     With Milosz’s immortal wisdom as our lodestar, we will take a tour through autobiographical poems ancient and modern, studying the ways personal poems capture self and other, place and purpose, sound and sense, framing the self as both mirror and window, at once magnificent and minute.

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TODD ROBINSON affectionately known to acolytes as "Toddfather," is a poet and educator based in Omaha. He is the author of Mass for Shut-Ins (Backwaters Press, 2018) and Note at Heart Rock (Main Street Rag Publishing, 2012).

     His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in such epic venues as Prairie Schooner, Flyway—Journal of Writing and Environment, Kestrel, North American Review, Sugar House Review, Cortland Review, Natural Bridge, Superstition Review, Weber: The Contemporary West, Chiron Review, A Dozen Nothing, and many others.

     Recipient of the 2011-2012 Thompson Learning Community’s Outstanding Faculty Award, he has conducted writing workshops with The Seven Doctors Project, The Naturalist School, Nebraska Warrior Writers, Nebraska Writers Collective, and the CÚRAM center for research in medical devices. He is founder and host of the Kaneko Art Museum’s Bibliophilia reading series, which is currently on a long pandemic pause.

     He earned a B.A. and M.A. from Creighton University, and a Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He serves as vice president on the board of directors of Big Feels Lab.

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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

Although one of the most famous writers of the sonnet was Shakespeare, the form has existed since the 13th century. In this history-meets-poetry workshop, participants will explore classic and contemporary sonnets, from poets like Petrarch, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Terrance Hayes, and Nicole Tallman.

     We’ll look at the way that poets use the sonnet form to address the issues of their time and how this “little song” has evolved over its long existence.

     Participants will walk away with a broad understanding of the Sonnet, the way its conventions both draw on and continually inspire other forms of poetry, and ways to try writing their own “little songs.”​

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ALISON LUBAR is a queer biracial Nikkei poet and educator who teaches literature to teenagers, writing to adults, and yoga to all ages.

     They’re the author of two full-length poetry books, The Other Tree, winner of Harbor Editions’ 2023 Laureate Prize, and METAMOURPHOSIS (fifth wheel press, 2024), four chapbooks, Philosophers Know Nothing About Love (Thirty West, 2022), queer feast (Bottlecap Press, 2022), sweet euphemism (Mouthfeel Press, 2023), and It Skips a Generation (Stanchion, 2023), and a forthcoming microchap, American Kintsugi (Bull City Press, 2026).

     Alison is also a board member for Philadelphia’s Blue Stoop. Find out 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

What objects do you hold sacred? A ring, a key, a house, or a text? This generative workshop assumes that objects hold energy and power in our lives.

     Consider the torah, dressed in velvet and draped in silver, for which an entire congregation stands, this sacred text that a rabbi will only touch with a pointer (yad). Consider the menorah, the candles, and the glorious lights of Chanukah, the radiant inner lives of these objects, what they see, say, and can reveal to us.

     This workshop will focus on uses of imagery—all sensory information—to explore sacred objects in our lives and honor their magic and mystery.  

     Authors studied may include Bert Meyers, Gertrude Stein, Alicia Ostriker, Lucie Brock-Broido, and others. We will spend time together reading, writing, and sharing.
 

HADARA BAR-NADAV is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, the Lucille Medwick Award from the Poetry Society of America, a fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, and other honors.

     She is the author of five books of poetry, most recently The Animal Is Chemical (Four Way Books, 2024), awarded the Levis Prize in Poetry, selected by Jericho Brown. Her other books are The New Nudity (Saturnalia Books, 2017); Lullaby (with Exit Sign) (Saturnalia Books, 2013), awarded the Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize; The Frame Called Ruin (New Issues, 2012), Editor’s Selection/Runner Up for the Green Rose Prize; and A Glass of Milk to Kiss Goodnight (Margie/Intuit House, 2007), awarded the Margie Book Prize.

     She is also the author of two chapbooks, Fountain and Furnace (Tupelo Press, 2015), awarded the Sunken Garden Poetry Prize, and Show Me Yours (Laurel Review/Green Tower Press 2010), awarded the Midwest Poets Series Prize.

     In addition, she is co-author with Michelle Boisseau of the best-selling textbook Writing Poems, 8th ed. (Pearson, 2011).

     Her poetry has appeared in the American Poetry Review, The Believer, The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. A current reader for POETRY, she is a Professor of English and teaches in the MFA program at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

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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

How can we truly unearth the depths and sensations at the core of our memories to generate new poems? How can we talk about the unspeakable or the things that we have not quite been able to write into.

     This workshop will focus on working with writers to find different ways of excavating the self and leaning into the work that can come through this experience. We'll also explore work by writers like Joy Harjo, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Porsha Olaywiola, and others.

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TATIANA JOHNSON-BORIA (she/her) is the author of Nocturne in Joy (2023), winner of the 2024 Julia Ward Howe Book Prize in Poetry.

     As an educator, artist, facilitator, and mother; she uses her writing practice to dismantle racism, reckon with trauma, cultivate healing, and to explore the complex magic of mothering.

     She has received fellowships and awards from Tin House, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, MacDowell, the Brother Thomas Fellowship, and St. Botolph Club Foundation, among others.

     Tatiana is a 2017 Pushcart Prize nominee, teaches at GrubStreet, and has been on faculty at Emerson College, among other institutions.

     Her work appears or is forthcoming in The Academy of American Poets, Ploughshares, Kenyon Review Online, and more. She is represented by Lauren Scovel at Laura Gross Literary.

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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

Writers will consider the complexities of grief, mourning, and the celebrations of life and legacy in our inherently and increasingly violent world, by engaging in accessible somatic exercises, poetry reading, and a generative writing prompt.​

     Through guided somatic exercises, poetry reading, and writing, participants will explore how individuals and communities process loss and resilience in an increasingly violent world. By engaging both body and language, the workshop encourages reflection on how art helps us bear witness, heal, and honor memory. Participants will consider how poetry can transform private sorrow into shared understanding, revealing the enduring human need to find meaning, connection, and hope through creative expression.

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M. MICK POWELL is a queer Black Cabo Verdean femme, poet, artist, Aries, and the author of DEAD GIRL CAMEO (One World Books, 2025) and the chapbook threesome in the last Toyota Celica & other circus tricks, winner of the 2023 Host Publications Chapbook Prize.

     An assistant professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Connecticut, mick enjoys chasing waterfalls and being in love.

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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

Desire is one of the oldest subjects of human art, not just romantic desire but the deep longing to be seen, understood, and connected.

     In this workshop, we’ll explore how poetry gives voice to that yearning and how language becomes a bridge between isolation and intimacy.

     Through discussion and guided writing, participants will consider what it means to reach for another person, to be known, and to find meaning through connection.

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ALY ACEVEDO is a Puerto Rican and Vietnamese poet, educator and speaker living in the Kansas City area.

     Her debut collection, My Dear Cult Leader (Button Poetry, 2026), examines the long shadows of a toxic relationship and the aftermath of sexual assault, weaving personal history with persona poems that explore power, trauma and reclamation.

     Her writing has been featured in Frontier Poetry, TRASH MAG, Ink and Marrow, Anti-Heroin Chic and elsewhere.      She lives with her husband, two cats and dog. Find her on Instagram at @_AlyAcevedo_.

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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

Understanding how the music of our world moves us and it’s necessity to sustain continual momentum on the page, we develop and define the practice of audio-based lyric line, develop continuity, and establish firm tracks essential to freely create long form poetry steeped in sound.

     Here, we gather to generate movement, mesmerization, in memorable line propelled with intentionality through rhythm, tone, and sincere sonic delivery. Identifying genre implications, explore and employ multiple musical influences and improvisations while in process and in preparation for publication, production, performance.

     Investigating individual and collective experiences with past, present and what’s next reaches into what moves us, prepares us to implement lead lines and create incredible orchestrations as architectural structure for the long form to hold true. 

​     If you are into long poems, or ever wondered what it takes to work your way into long form, this is for you. 

​     All levels welcome. 
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ALLISON ADELE HEDGE COKE is a  Distinguished Professor University of California Riverside (2016–) and teaches for the Department of Creative Writing and the School of Medicine, where she directs the DE In Medical Health and Humanities.

     Hedge Coke was recently awarded the Thomas Wolfe Prize (& Lecture), UNC/Thomas Wolfe Society, the AWP George Garrett Award and was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters. She served as the 2022 Mellon Dean's Professor at UCR and the 2020 Dan & Maggie Inouye Chair in Democratic Ideals at the University of Hawai’i Mānoa, and was a Fulbright Scholar in Montenegro (2019).

     She formerly held the Paul & Clarice Reynolds Chair (University of Nebraska 2007-2012) and taught for the University of Nebraska MFA Program from 2007-2016, was a Visiting Distinguished Writer (University of Hawai’i Mānoa, 2014-15), an NEH Visiting Distinguished Chair (Hartwick College 2004), and was a Visiting Artist-Writer (University of Central Oklahoma 2012-2014).

     Hedge Coke also directed UCR Writers Week, the Sandhill Crane Retreat in Nebraska, and Along the Chaparral, memorializing the enshrined.

     Her books include: The Year of the Rat, Dog Road Woman; Rock, Ghost, Willow, Deer; Off-Season City Pipe; Blood Run; Streaming, Burn, Ahani, Sing, Effigies I, II, & III and the recent Look at This Blue (Coffee House Press, 2022).

     Look at This Blue was 2022 finalist for for The National Book Award for Poetry, 2023 finalist for the ASLE Prize and the CLMP Firecracker Award and won the 2022-2023 Emory Elliott Award. She authored the play, Icicles, and as a filmmaker has created 38 doc shorts and one feature doc.

     She came from working in fields, waters, and factories. Hedge Coke teaches poetry, poetics, writing, performance, literature,environmental writing, and cultural theory and philosophy, including Death & Dying (and denying), Narrative Medicine, The Epic, and critical theory.
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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