Writing Classes & Workshops 

By now you've heard writers—especially poets and lyric essayists—suggest that you should let your content inform your form as often as you've heard them say show don't tell, though as it is with most things, both are easier said than done. The former requires us to write from the body while letting go—a feat not easily mastered by any writer and complicated even more by difficult content. Often what we need most is permission and imaginative examples. This workshop will provide you with both. 

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LISA FAY COUTLEY is the author of HOST (Wisconsin Poetry Series, 2024), tether (Black Lawrence Press, 2020), Errata (Southern Illinois University, 2015), winner of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition, In the Carnival of Breathing (BLP, 2011), winner of the Black River Chapbook Competition, Small Girl: Micromemoirs (Harbor Editions, 2024), and she is the editor of In the Tempered Dark: Contemporary Poets Transcending Elegy (BLP, 2023).

     Her poetry has been awarded an NEA Fellowship, an Academy of American Poets Levis Prize, chosen by Dana Levin, and the 2021 Gulf Coast Poetry Prize, selected by Natalie Diaz. 

     Recent prose & poetry appears in the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, Barrelhouse, Brevity, North American Review, The Massachusetts Review, and on The Slowdown. She is an Associate Professor of Poetry & CNF in the Writer’s Workshop at UNO.

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

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$35 or FREE to Members

Annual Membership $35

In this workshop, we'll explore how hybrid poetry serves as a powerful tool for self-exploration and expression.

     By engaging with the fluid and transformative nature of hybrid forms, we’ll delve into how our identities, shaped by the intersections of various influences, can be authentically reflected in our writing.
We will examine how hybrid poems, which blend elements of narrative, memoir, and cultural commentary, allow us to navigate the complexities of our inner and outer worlds.

     Participants will have the opportunity to create works that capture the richness of their experiences, exploring themes of identity, place, and the self in all its dimensions.
     This workshop invites writers to move beyond traditional forms, using hybrid poetry as a way to express the multifaceted nature of their authentic selves.

     Whether you’re experienced in poetry or new to this form, this workshop will provide a supportive space to explore the connections between our lived experiences and our creative expressions.

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MK CHAVEZ is a writer and educator whose work explores mixed-race identity, social justice, environmental resilience, horror cinema, magic, ritual, and the creative process. 
     As founder of the Ouroboros Writing Lab, MK Chavez provides a nurturing space for writers to grow. The Lab offers workshops designed to expand creative boundaries and individual and group creative coaching. 
     Chavez’s work is recognized with the Pen Josephine Miles Award, San Francisco Foundation/Nomadic Press Literary Award, and the Ruth Weiss Maverick Award. Chavez’s publications include Dear Animal, Mothermorphosis, the lyric essay chapbook A Brief History of the Selfie, and Virgin Eyes. Recent work can be found as part of the art installation Manifest Differently.

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

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$35 or FREE to Members

Annual Membership $35

As poet Mary Ruefle says, “I did not always know authors were ordinary people living ordinary lives.” What do we lose when we fail to celebrate — or worse, ignore! — the wondrous details of ordinary life?

     This generative workshop makes space for that celebration through conversation, example poems, and dedicated writing time with prompts to help capture the details of our own glorious dailiness.

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ERICA REID's debut collection "Ghost Man on Second" won the 2023 Donald Justice Poetry Prize and was published by Autumn House Press earlier this year. Erica’s poems appear in Rattle, Cherry Tree, Colorado Review, and more. ericareidpoet.com

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

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$35 or FREE to Members

Annual Membership $35

In "The Archaeology of Knowledge," Michel Foucault writes, “The frontiers of a book are never clear-cut: beyond the title, the first lines, and the last full stop, beyond its internal configuration and its autonomous forms, it is caught up in a system of references to other books, other texts, other sentences: it is a node within a network.”

     In this generative writing class, we will begin with a word or phrase, line or lines from another book of poetry. After mapping out ideas, feelings, rhythms, syntaxes and words we associate with the line or lines we have brought in, we will start work on our own poems.

     (Throughout, we will engage in mini-breaks that can be incorporated into people’s everyday writing rituals in the future, to spur our creativity and collaboration as a workshop).

     The lines we begin with may be embedded in the poem we write, or turn out to serve as the seed, scaffold or prompt. The process of building a poem in conversation with other poets and poetry, is one that will hopefully prove to be a rewarding approach for you to take in your writing practice moving forward.

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JULIA GUEZ is a writer and translator based in the city of Houston. "The Certain Body" (Four Way Books, 2022) is her second collection of poetry, written while she was recovering from COVID in the spring of 2020. Guez holds degrees from Rice and Columbia.

     To date, she has received a handful of recognitions for her work, including the Discovery / Boston Review Poetry Prize, a Fulbright Fellowship and a translation fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

     Her work has appeared in POETRY, The Guardian, BOMB, Kenyon Review and The Brooklyn Rail. For the last decade, she has worked with Teach For America, New York; Guez has taught creative writing at NYU and Rutgers and in workshops across the country.

     With her wife, Elizabeth, she has three sons.

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

​

$35 or FREE to Members

Annual Membership $35