Kristina Marie Darling
June 15-27 2024
This workshop will begin with a discussion of your existing body of work. A multi-genre workshop, encompassing fiction, poetry, and nonfiction of all kinds, we will work to refine—and expand your sense of what is possible within—your current writing projects. This workshop is open to all experience levels, ranging from those who have just embarked on a poetry or prose manuscript to published writers. Projects of all scopes, from short stories and essays to full length books - are also welcome. This workshop will offer an opportunity to learn from an experienced instructor as well as colleagues whose work will challenge, delights and surprise you. We will also spend some time broadening our horizons. After all, every writer has a repertoire of literary forms in which they are comfortable writing. Our goal for the second part of the class will be to expand that repertoire of forms and techniques, offering tools that can be implemented in both short and long form writing projects. We will examine types of innovative writing that are seldom taught in creative writing classes, such as erasure, the prose poem, flash fiction, and "found forms" (like footnote poems, glossary poems, and other templates that are not germane to poetry). In addition to in-class writing exercises, and detailed discussions of new drafts, we will examine work by contemporary innovative writers (Jenny Boully, Kristy Bowen, Simone Muench, Yedda Morrison, and Ronald Johnson). These brief readings and sample texts will be provided in class. This segment of the workshop offers an opportunity to experiment, learn about new forms of writing, and see oneself as part of a community of working writers. We will also discuss the steps one takes to build an audience for a book prior to publication, strategies for effective pitches to publishers, and standard submissions procedures within the industry, in addition to offering personally tailored journal and publisher recommendations.