What do we offer?
Each fall, we offer 8 week classes in Foundations of Fiction, Foundations of Poetry, and Foundations of Nonfiction (Essay, Memoir, or Journalistic Writing). Each spring we offer 8 week classes in intermediate and advanced topics, and our summer 8 week offerings are designed to be generative or allow writers to try a brand new form like screenwriting, novel writing, or using archives to create poems. Throughout the year we offer shorter classes (4 week, weekend intensives, and 3 hour) on various forms and topics of writing craft and the writing life.
Our Code of Conduct
Blue Stoop strives to create an environment that is anti-racist and free of other forms of bias and discrimination, where all people can learn the craft of writing and bring their whole selves to the classroom. Harassment or disrespect of community members on the basis of race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, or disability is unacceptable and will not be tolerated. Read our full code of conduct here.
Jackie Domenus--Queering the Narrative
Registration is rolling until April 15 at 11:59PM EST. No application is required (except for financial aid— Applications for financial aid are due April 10 at 5PM EST).
$65 w/financial aid available to residents of Greater Philadelphia (Bucks, Camden, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia Counties)
3 hour class: Monday, April 22, 2024 6-9PM EST
Often times, people feel that in order to write about themselves, their story has to have a clear beginning, middle, and ending, all wrapped up with a pretty bow. But for most of us queer and trans folks, our stories aren’t so linear, so traditional. In Queering the Narrative, we’ll explore the ways in which LGBTQ+ folks can experiment with creative nonfiction in non-traditional forms. These sorts of essays are referred to as “borrowed form” or “hermit crab”, because they adapt to an already existing form: a travel itinerary, a dating profile, a eulogy. Maybe you want to write about your relationship with your body or your gender, but it makes more sense as a grocery list or divorce papers. Maybe you’re ready to tell the story of your “coming out” as a “how to” guide or a recipe. In this workshop, participants will read and engage with short-form examples of non-traditional essays/memoir by queer and trans folks, generate a list of form examples, and begin drafting their own borrowed form essays.
Jackie Domenus (they/she) is a queer writer from New Jersey. Their first book, NO OFFENSE: A MEMOIR IN ESSAYS, will be published with ELJ Editions in 2025. A 2021 Tin House Winter Workshop graduate, their work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Normal School, The Offing, Pidgeonholes, Foglifter Journal, and elsewhere. Jackie serves as a publishing assistant at Guernica Magazine. You can find her on Twitter @jackiedwrites.
Angel Edwards--Corporeal Translations: Poetic Possibilities in the Body
Registration is rolling until April 16 at 11:59PM EST. No application is required (except for financial aid— Applications for financial aid are due April 11 at 5PM EST).
$250 w/financial aid available to residents of Greater Philadelphia (Bucks, Camden, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia Counties)
4 week class: Tuesdays 6-8PM EST, April 23, 2024- May 14, 2024
Students will examine how movement, performance, and dance enrich the poet's capacities as a writer. We will work with media (writing, performance, moving performance, etc) that utilize dance and corporeal translations to bring narrative worlds forward. This workshop is for anyone who wants to practice active embodied writing, for writers who crave a deeper relationship to their body in motion but struggle with direction, and also movement artists who struggle to write about their practice or struggle to write in general. Participants will complete one written work and one movement practice that is derivative from our time together in this workshop.
ANGEL SHANEL EDWARDS (they/them) is a blackqueerandtrans first-generation Jamaican and Philly-rooted artist. They utilize the creative modalities of movement, poetics, filmmaking, and photography to witness and re/member blackness as it moves through daily life, love, intimacy, and transitions [*gendered and otherwise]. angel is being moved and led by the cartographies of black life. They have learned from and worked alongside of many artists from around the world: Makini m Poe, Kameelah Rasheed, Yuchen Chang, Yolanda Wisher, Arielle Julia Brown, Marguerite Hemmings, Ishmael Houston Jones, and Jonathan Gonzalez, to name a few. These artists have shaped and informed the work they put into the world.
Ashley Bach--Rethinking Narrative Structure
Registration is rolling until April 24 at 11:59PM EST. No application is required (except for financial aid— Applications for financial aid are due April 19 at 5PM EST).
$65 w/financial aid available to residents of Greater Philadelphia (Bucks, Camden, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia Counties)
3 hour class: Wednesday, May 1, 2024 6-9PM EST
In “Rethinking Narrative Structure” we will analyze the concept of narrative structure as well as its paradigms as a way to develop your own narrative structures, honing and amplifying your narrative voice. Once we understand structural models, we will examine stories that experiment with form and examine how structural models apply to an experimental text., writing a flash piece that tells a story in another form of writing. You will leave this class with a thorough understanding of not just the paradigms of narrative structures, but also an understanding of why we worry about structure at all. You will have your own paradigm and your own experimental work.
Ashley Bach holds an MFA from Temple University. She works as an editorial assistant in Philadelphia. Her writing has been featured in HAD, Drunk Monkeys, Mauldin House, Feels Blind Literary, and elsewhere.
R.S. Powers--Flashy Fictions: Short-Short Forms That Pack a Punch
Registration is rolling until April 26 at 11:59PM EST. No application is required (except for financial aid— Applications for financial aid are due April 21 at 5PM EST).
$250 w/financial aid available to residents of Greater Philadelphia (Bucks, Camden, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia Counties)
4 week class: Fridays 6-8PM EST, May 3, 2024- May 24, 2024
What does it take to pack an entire narrative into just 250 to 1,000 words? How can a singularly brief, fragmented, and/or vignette-driven form encapsulate all the fundamental storytelling components of character, setting, conflict, voice, and more in only one to three pages? And what can you do to make sure your short-short pieces stand out as unique?
In this class we’ll explore the varied traditions, practices, and inner-workings of multiple short-short fiction forms (including flash, sudden, micro, sequenced vignettes, etc.) through assigned craft readings, a wide range of published stories, in-class and at-home generative exercises, and in-depth peer workshops. Beyond creating standalone pieces, concentrating on perfecting short-short forms is a great way to master the perfect fiction sentence, and is especially useful for focusing on pivotal parts of larger projects.
Our primary focus will be working with every element required for creating engrossing, memorable, and especially impactful pieces of flash fiction. We’ll go over the best writing practices and methods for generating and editing flash, and students will write, revise, and prepare to pitch for the possible publication of at least two original pieces. We’ll also be studying the work of contemporary and canonical authors from all over the world as well as lit journals that regularly publish exemplary flash.
R.S. Powers’s stories and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in The Baffler, Wigleaf, Orca, Glimmer Train, Sou'wester, Grist, Juked, JMWW, World Literature Today, X-R-A-Y, Bending Genres, Speculative Nonfiction, THE BOILER, The Hunger, the podcast Micro, Able Muse, and other journals. They are a professor of writing at the University of Delaware.
Doriana Diaz--Bookmaking & Collaging
Registration is rolling until March 31 at 11:59PM EST. No application is required (except for financial aid— Applications for financial aid are due March 29 at 5PM EST).
$250 w/financial aid available to residents of Greater Philadelphia (Bucks, Camden, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia Counties)
4 week class: Wednesdays 5-7PM EST, April 3-April 24, 2024 IN PERSON @ 6135 Germantown Avenue
This series of classes delve into the practices of bookmaking and collaging as a ritual. Throughout the exploration of these practices, students will learn how to build their own journals. Each week we will focus on a different method of bookmaking. We will implement and enhance the practice as individuals as well as a collective. The theme of this series is cultivating your own utopia. We will experiment with visuals that curate our ideologies around joy, glory, Black paradise, and more. Through discussion and artmaking, students will leave this course confident in the methods of bookmaking and collaging as a ritual for resistance as well as the ability to be able to make their own journals moving forward in their writing journeys.
Doriana Diaz is a multidimensional artist, archivist, and memory worker rooted in Philadelphia's soulful rhythms. She has hosted a wide array of collage and bookmaking workshops around the city in spaces like The Parkway Central Library, Harriett's Bookshop, Express Newark, The African American Museum, and Bok Bar. Her work explores loss, memory, fantasy, utopia, formation and identity through the archival documentations of visual imagery. Her collage work entitled 'A Declaration of Joy in Motion; Friday Night Voodoo' was chosen as the 1-year anniversary poster for Rachel Cargel's Loveland Foundation in 2021. This honor was in partnership with The Loveland Foundation and The Akron Museum of Art. She is also one of the 2023 recipients of the Black Music City grant where her collage work will be funded by REC Philly, WXPN, and WRTI 90.1 to explore her project entitled ‘Sisters in Rhythm, A House of Our Own’ cataloging and memorializing the work of Sister Sledge and The Supremes through visual storytelling. She believes art has DNA, Her work is an exploration of cultural agency, archival documentation, and rhythms of resistance and expansion.
Kristen Martin--Everyone’s a Critic
Registration is rolling until March 18 at 11:59PM EST. No application is required (except for financial aid— Applications for financial aid are due March 13 at 5PM EST).
$250 w/financial aid available to residents of Greater Philadelphia (Bucks, Camden, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia Counties)
4 week class: Mondays 6-8PM EST, March 25, 2024- April 15, 2024
The internet has democratized cultural criticism—now anyone has the ability to rate movies on Rotten Tomatoes, restaurants on Yelp, and books on Goodreads. What is the role of the professional critic in this landscape? In “A Critic’s Manifesto” for The New Yorker, Daniel Mendelsohn writes of reading criticism in that very magazine as a teenager as an education “more important than the one I was getting in school.” He writes, “I thought of these writers above all as teachers, and like all good teachers they taught by example; the example that they set, week after week, was to recreate on the page the drama of how they had arrived at their judgments.” Those meaningful judgments consist of two key elements: knowledge and taste. In this course, we will read and write cultural criticism that combines knowledge and taste, that analyzes and interprets everything from a meal to a novel. Our models may range from Hanif Abdurraqib on music, to Parul Sehgal on books, to Inkoo Kang on television, and Jennifer Wilson on Film. Students will pitch, write, and workshop a review.
Kristen Martin (she/her) is a writer and cultural critic. Her debut narrative nonfiction book THE SUN WON'T COME OUT TOMORROW will be published by Bold Type Books. Her writing has been published in The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, NPR, The Atlantic, The New Republic, and elsewhere. She received an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia University, and is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and the Università degli Scienze Gastronomiche in Italy, where she was a Fulbright-Casten Family Scholar. She has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, New York University, Columbia University, and CUNY Baruch College, as well as for the Philadelphia literary community Blue Stoop. She lives in Philadelphia.
Justin Clarel--Writing the Pandemic Present
Registration is rolling until March 10 at 11:59PM EST. No application is required (except for financial aid— Applications for financial aid are due March 5 at 5PM EST).
$250 w/financial aid available to residents of Greater Philadelphia (Bucks, Camden, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia Counties)
4 week class: Sundays 12-2PM EST, March 17- April 7, 2024
Though much of the world has tried to move on, the devastating COVID-19 pandemic continues to shape our lives. This 4-week generative workshop focuses on writing the pandemic present. Open to writers of all genres interested in exploring the impact of the ongoing pandemic on their writing, this course is a supportive space for those still taking significant safety precautions. Through prompts for processing the pandemic, strategies for creating during crisis, and related readings, we will build a community of writers committed to meeting our present moment.
Justin Clarel is a Black queer writer, performer, and educator creating and uplifting vibrant stories for a better world. Their work focuses on Black LGBTQ characters, chosen families, and healing. Justin has directed and produced original theatre projects focused on Black stories, including *Rage to Heal* in the 2017 Cohen New Works Festival, *Saved You a Plate* in the Painted Bride’s 2019 Solstice Series, *Queer Cheer: A Winter Holigay Special*, and *non-linear: works-in-progress by black lgbtq artists*. Justin has performed as part of Ars Nova’s ANT Fest, OUTsider Festival, Philly Fringe, NYC Sketchfest, Dixon Place HOT! Festival, and more. They are one-fourth of the sketch comedy team The Rhubarbs and have created sketch shows with Mural Outrage and Philly Improv Theater. Justin founded The Starfruit Project, a platform highlighting creativity for healing and growth. Justin’s poetry and prose are published in *Black Youth Project*, *TAYO Literary Magazine, cavity*, *MELANINzine*, and several print anthologies. They are a 2022 Strides Collective Emerging Playwright, a 2022 Hurston/Wright Summer Screenwriting Fellow, and a two-time VONA Alum in Comedy and Screenwriting. Justin was also a 2020-2021 Core Playwright with InterAct Theatre Company, a 2020 Leeway Foundation Art and Change Grantee, and a 2016 recipient of the Acts of Greatness LGBTQ Youth Community Award. Originally from South Jersey, Justin holds an AB in Sociology from Princeton University. They are passionate about musical theatre, mangoes, and memoirs. Keep up with their adventures at theeclarel.com and @theeclarel.
Sham-e-Ali Nayeem--Cultivating Home
Registration is rolling until March 2 at 11:59PM EST. No application is required (except for financial aid— Applications for financial aid are due February 26 at 5 PM EST).
$65 w/financial aid available to residents of Greater Philadelphia (Bucks, Camden, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia Counties)
3 hour class: Saturday March 9, 1-4PM EST
Bring your ancestral and imagined homes to life through deep remembrance, listening, dreaming of worlds without exile, and recreating spaces that feel safe for your body and spirit in this one-day poetry workshop.
Sham-e-Ali Nayeem is a multidisciplinary artist, poet, musician and recovering social justice lawyer with Hyderabadi Muslim roots. She is the author of the poetry collection, City of Pearls (Upset Press, 2019), and has released two musical albums; City of Pearls (2019) and Moti Ka Sheher (2023) featuring self composed musical interpretations from her book. Her work explores grief and loss, ancestral transmissions, international solidarities and space to imagine. Sham-e-Ali is the recipient of the 2022 Leeway Transformation Award, the 2016 Loft Literary Center Spoken Word Immersion Fellowship, and the 1997 echoing green fellowship.
Writing in Place-- Nonfiction w/ Joseph Earl Thomas
Application is required to participate in this class, and is open until Friday, January 26 at 11:59PM EST.
$400 w/financial aid available. Classes are open to residents of Greater Philadelphia only (Bucks, Camden, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia Counties)
8 week class: Mondays 6-8PM EST, February 26-April 15 (optional make up date April 22)
Joseph Earl Thomas is a writer from Frankford whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in VQR, N+1, Gulf Coast, The Offing, and The Kenyon Review. He has an MFA in prose from The University of Notre Dame and is a doctoral candidate in English at the University of Pennsylvania. An excerpt of his memoir, Sink, won the 2020 Chautauqua Janus Prize and he has received fellowships from Fulbright, VONA, Tin House, Kimbilio, & Breadloaf, though he is now the Anisfield-Wolf Fellow at the CSU Poetry Center. He’s writing the novel God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer, and a collection of stories: Leviathan Beach, among other oddities. He is also an associate faculty member at The Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, as well as Director of Programs at Blue Stoop, a literary hub for Philly writers.
Writing in Place is a multi-genre storytelling project in which participants are encouraged to explore issues of identity, community history, and personal culture through the lens of their residence—new or lifelong—within the city of Philadelphia. The writing of selected participants will be published, along with the work of other writers, in an edition of APIARY literary magazine in hard copy and digital media.
The project will conduct three 8-week writing instruction classes that focus on development of craft in poetry (with Gabriel Ramirez), fiction (with Camille Acker), and creative nonfiction (with Joseph Earl Thomas); two workshops in small press and online publishing, including sessions where participants learn to prepare and revise their work for publication; and the opportunity to see their work published in APIARY, a respected publication devoted to Philadelphia writers.
8 week classes will be held online, and publishing workshops will be held in-person at Head & the Hand Books.
Writing in Place-- Fiction w/ Camille Acker
Application is required to participate in this class, and is open until Friday, January 26 at 11:59PM EST.
$400 w/financial aid available. Classes open to residents of Greater Philadelphia only (Bucks, Camden, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia Counties)
8 week class: Wednesdays 6-8PM EST, February 21- April 10 (optional make up date April 17)
Camille Acker is the author of the critically acclaimed short story collection Training School for Negro Girls published by The Feminist Press. She grew up in Washington, D.C and holds a B.A. in English from Howard University and an M.F.A in Creative Writing from New Mexico State University. Her writing has received support from the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Tin House, and Millay Colony for the Arts, among others. As a creative writing teacher, she has advised and mentored students across the United States including at New Mexico State University, Tin House Writers Workshop, University of the Arts, Chicago Writers Studio, and Blue Stoop in Philadelphia. She was a recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship in 2020 and was named a 2022 Fellow by the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. Her work has been published in The New York Times Book Review, Publishers Weekly, Electric Literature, as an Audible Original, and is in the anthology On Girlhood: 15 Stories From the Well-Read Black Girl Library. She has two books under contract with Random House and lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Writing in Place is a multi-genre storytelling project in which participants are encouraged to explore issues of identity, community history, and personal culture through the lens of their residence—new or lifelong—within the city of Philadelphia. The writing of selected participants will be published, along with the work of other writers, in an edition of APIARY literary magazine in hard copy and digital media.
The project will conduct three 8-week writing instruction classes that focus on development of craft in poetry (with Gabriel Ramirez), fiction (with Camille Acker), and creative nonfiction (with Joseph Earl Thomas); two workshops in small press and online publishing, including sessions where participants learn to prepare and revise their work for publication; and the opportunity to see their work published in APIARY, a respected publication devoted to Philadelphia writers.
8 week classes will be held online, and publishing workshops will be held in-person at Head & the Hand Books.
Writing in Place-- Poetry w/ Gabriel Ramirez (Home Sounds Like)
Application is required to participate in this class, and is open until Friday, January 26 at 11:59PM EST.
$400 w/financial aid available. Classes open to residents of Greater Philadelphia only (Bucks, Camden, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia Counties)
8 week class: Tuesdays 6-8PM EST, February 20- April 9 (optional make up date April 16)
Writing in Place—Poetry: Home Sounds Like w/ Gabriel Ramirez
We will be leaning into our truest of voices. Writing how we talk. No hiding. No tricks. You don't have to be poetic. You are poetic. Do you want to whisper? Scream? Laugh? You adjust the volume. Just don't be fake about it.
Gabriel Ramirez is a Queer Afro-Caribbean writer, performer and educator. A 2023 Gregory Djanikian Scholar in Poetry at Adroit Journal. Gabriel has received fellowships from the Palm Beach Poetry Festival, The Conversation Literary Arts Festival, CantoMundo, Miami Book Fair, a graduate fellow at The Watering Hole, and a participant in the Callaloo Writer’s Workshops. You can find his work in publications like POETRY magazine, Muzzle Magazine, Split This Rock, BOMB, and Acentos Review. Learn more about Gabriel Ramirez @RamirezPoet and RamirezPoet.com.
Writing in Place is a multi-genre storytelling project in which participants are encouraged to explore issues of identity, community history, and personal culture through the lens of their residence—new or lifelong—within the city of Philadelphia. The writing of selected participants will be published, along with the work of other writers, in an edition of APIARY literary magazine in hard copy and digital media.
The project will conduct three 8-week writing instruction classes that focus on development of craft in poetry (with Gabriel Ramirez), fiction (with Camille Acker), and creative nonfiction (with Joseph Earl Thomas); two workshops in small press and online publishing, including sessions where participants learn to prepare and revise their work for publication; and the opportunity to see their work published in APIARY, a respected publication devoted to Philadelphia writers.
8 week classes will be held online, and publishing workshops will be held in-person at Head & the Hand Books.
Rebecca Spiegel & Scott Gloden--Portrait of the Artist
Registration is rolling until February 12 at 11:59PM EST. No application is required (except for financial aid— Applications for financial aid are due February 7 at 5PM EST).
$400 w/financial aid available to residents of Greater Philadelphia (Bucks, Camden, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia Counties)
8 week class: Mondays 7-9PM EST, February 19, 2024- April 8, 2024 IN PERSON at The Head and the Hand Bookstore (2230 Frankford Ave)
This multi-genre workshop is for anyone who would like to explore and/or better define their influences, interests, and identities as a writer. The course will employ a workshop model created by Matthew Vollmer and Beejay Silcox in which the focus is on collaboration and dialogue, “intrigue rather than critique, and [...] raw material and process rather than finished product.” Students will walk away from this class having received formal and informal feedback connected to their own writing, and having had the opportunity to reflect on the art/artists that their work is in conversation with.
Rebecca Spiegel teaches writing in Philadelphia, where she lives with her family. She received her MFA from the University of North Carolina Wilmington, and her first book, Without Her, is forthcoming from Milkweed Editions (fall 2024).
Scott Gloden is the author of The Great American Everything (Hub City). His stories have appeared in American Short Fiction, the Chicago Tribune, and StoryQuarterly. He works on homeless and housing initiatives.
Sham-e-Ali Nayeem--Cultivating Home
Registration is rolling until November 25 at 11:59PM EST. No application is required (except for financial aid— Applications for financial aid are due November 21 at 5PM EST).
$65 w/financial aid available to residents of Greater Philadelphia (Bucks, Camden, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia Counties)
3 hour class: Saturday December 2, 1-4PM EST
Bring your ancestral and imagined homes to life through deep remembrance, listening, dreaming of worlds without exile, and recreating spaces that feel safe for your body and spirit in this one-day poetry workshop.
Sham-e-Ali Nayeem is a multidisciplinary artist, poet, musician and recovering social justice lawyer with Hyderabadi Muslim roots. She is the author of the poetry collection, City of Pearls (Upset Press, 2019), and has released two musical albums; City of Pearls (2019) and Moti Ka Sheher (2023) featuring self composed musical interpretations from her book. Her work explores grief and loss, ancestral transmissions, international solidarities and space to imagine. Sham-e-Ali is the recipient of the 2022 Leeway Transformation Award, the 2016 Loft Literary Center Spoken Word Immersion Fellowship, and the 1997 echoing green fellowship.
Edythe Rodriguez--Boomboxes in the Rain: Reviving the Love Poem Through R&B
Registration is rolling until November 21 at 11:59PM EST. No application is required (except for financial aid— Applications for financial aid are due November 17 at 5PM EST).
$250 w/financial aid available to residents of Greater Philadelphia (Bucks, Camden, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia Counties)
4 week class: Tuesdays 6-9PM EST, 11/28, 12/5, 12/12, 12/19
We’ll be using this 4-week workshop to prove that love poetry isn’t dead. Not yet. We’re studying the work of Jill Scott, Afaa M. Weaver, Beyoncé, Lucille Clifton, Floetry, Gil-Scot Heron and more. We’re studying the poetry of lyrics and musicality in the written word. The love-driven politic and the politic of love. We’re reminding the pleasurable interior of our lives that it is worth writing about. The line between the genres and concepts are already paper thin; we’re blurring them even further.
Edythe Rodriguez is an Upper Darby poet and copywriter, hardcore Bustelo drinker and non-violent Beyhive member. She studied creative writing and Africology at Temple University and also graduated from ONE School, an advertising portfolio program for the new generation of Black creatives. Edythe is the winner of the 2022 Button Poetry Chapbook Contest, the 2022 Sandy Crimmins Poetry Prize from Philadelphia Stories and the 2021 Margaret Reid Prize from Winning Writers. Edythe has received fellowships from PEN America, The Hurston/Wright Foundation, The Watering Hole, Brooklyn Poets and elsewhere. Her work is published in Obsidian, The Offing, Torch Literary Arts and elsewhere. Edythe’s debut chapbook We, the Spirits is forthcoming from Button Poetry and you can follow her work at www.edytherodriguez.com.
Dilruba Ahmed--Supersize Me: Exploring the Double Sonnet
Registration is rolling until November 2 at 11:59PM EST. No application is required (except for financial aid— Applications for financial aid are due October 29 at 5PM EST).
$65 w/financial aid available to residents of Greater Philadelphia (Bucks, Camden, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia Counties)
3 hour class: Thursday November 9 6-9PM EST
The double sonnet: a familiar structure with more spacious accommodations. Join us for a 3-hour class in which we’ll unpack key features of this supersized poetic form. What are the new opportunities afforded by the luxuries of space and time across the double sonnet? What are the challenges? How is our encounter with the volta impacted? After discussing a variety of class examples, we’ll experiment with composing our own double sonnets together.
Dilruba Ahmed is the author of Bring Now the Angels (Pitt Poetry Series, 2020), with poems featured in New York Times Magazine, The Slowdown, and Poetry Unbound with Pádraig Ó Tuama. Her debut book of poetry, Dhaka Dust (Graywolf Press), won the Bakeless Prize. Her poems have appeared in Kenyon Review, New England Review, and Ploughshares. Her poems have also been anthologized in The Best American Poetry 2019 (Scribner), Halal If You Hear Me (Haymarket Books), Literature: The Human Experience (Bedford/St. Martin’s) and elsewhere. Ahmed is the recipient of The Florida Review’s Editors’ Award, a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Memorial Prize, and the Katharine Bakeless Nason Fellowship in Poetry awarded by the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. She holds degrees from the University of Pittsburgh and Warren Wilson College’s MFA Program for Writers. She has taught with Chatham University’s MFA Program, Hugo House in Seattle, and workshops across the U.S. In January 2021, Ahmed joined the faculty at Warren Wilson College’s MFA Program for Writers. Classes & consultations: https://www.dilrubaahmed.com/writing-lab
Anndee Hochman--The Sum of Its Parts: Reading and Writing for Craft Across Genres
Registration is rolling until October 15 at 11:59PM EST. No application is required (except for financial aid— Applications for financial aid are due October 11 at 5PM EST).
$400 w/financial aid available to residents of Greater Philadelphia (Bucks, Camden, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia Counties)
8 week class: Sundays 4-6PM EST, 10/22, 10/29, 11/5, 11/12, 11/19, 11/26, 12/3, 12/10 (optional makeup date 12/17)
A poem, short story or memoir can be a lament or a rant, a flight of nostalgia or a deep dive into another world. It can make us laugh, weep and remember. But it is also, always, a made thing, crafted and revised, the result of deliberate (and sometimes subconscious) choices on the part of its creator. In this class, we’ll read an eclectic range of material—some poetry, some short fiction, some brief memoir—with our focus tuned to those choices. How do writers use tone, verb tense, sentence/line length, word choice, pacing, figurative language and other tools in the literary tool box to create meaningful, resonant work? What are the “rules” of each genre; what happens when they’re broken? Then we’ll try out those tools, writing to emulate, respond to (or resist!) those model texts. You’ll leave this class with the skills to read more deeply and write more intentionally.
Anndee Hochman is a journalist, essayist, storyteller and teaching artist. Her column, “The Parent Trip,” appears weekly in The Philadelphia Inquirer, and her work has also been published in WebMD, Poets & Writers, Broad Street Review and numerous journals and anthologies, including the recently-published Stained: An Anthology of Writing About Menstruation. Anndee is also a seven-time winner of Moth Story Slams. Her books include Anatomies: A Novella and Stories (Picador USA) and Everyday Acts & Small Subversions: Women Reinventing Family, Community and Home (The Eighth Mountain Press). More at www.anndeehochman.com
Arthur Tarley--Approach Your MFA Application with Confidence
Registration is rolling until October 14 at 11:59PM EST. No application is required (except for financial aid— Applications for financial aid are due October 10 at 5PM EST).
$65 w/financial aid available to residents of Greater Philadelphia (Bucks, Camden, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia Counties)
3 hour class: Saturday October 21 11AM-2PM EST
In this class, we’ll discuss strategies and tools you can use to put together your best writing sample, map out and craft a strong personal statement, and obtain fitting letters of recommendation for creative writing MFA applications. We will also discuss some of the key differences between MFA programs and key considerations you may want to think about as you take the jump towards applications. This session is good for anyone applying for MFAs, thinking about applying, or didn’t think about applying until you read this class listing — what we discuss in the class can help you decide if applying for an MFA is right for you (now, or maybe even in the future).
Arthur Tarley is a writer originally from Queens, NY. He will be pursuing an MFA in Fiction at Temple University this fall. Arthur is attending the 2023 Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference. He attended the 2022 Kenyon Review Writers’ Workshop in Speculative Fiction. Arthur’s fiction can be found in The Dillydoun Review, High Shelf Press, Coffin Bell Journal, and elsewhere, and his essays are in Vox and Current Affairs. His work, including his novel-in-progress, tends to be speculative, dark, funny, and anti-capitalist. Follow Arthur on Twitter @arthurtarley, on IG @arthur.tarley, and subscribe to his goofy substack https://arthurtarley.substack.com/subscribe.
Minda Honey--Romancing Your Life (Nonfiction
Registration is rolling until October 6 at 11:59PM EST. No application is required (except for financial aid— Applications for financial aid are due October 2 at 5PM EST).
$65 w/financial aid available to residents of Greater Philadelphia (Bucks, Camden, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia Counties)
3 hour class: Monday October 16 6-9PM EST
So often nonfiction is framed by trauma, but what’s so wrong with rose-colored glasses…? Writers often talk about how humor can be used as a tool to tell hard stories, and I believe leaning into the romantic can be too. If you’re applying a romantic lens to your work you might:
Ask yourself what conventions of the romance genre you can borrow to apply to your life?
Consider which details you’ll use to build your world for your reader and develop your characters.
Figure out where that line between romanticizing your past and over indulging in fantasy is — this will help you avoid “purple prose” or unintentionally present yourself as an unreliable narrator (it’s important that you come off as “in on the joke”)
Romancing Your Life is a technique for showing your past self (and those that populated your life) some care, tenderness, and grace.
Minda Honey has a series of essays for Longreads on dating and politics and her writing has been featured in The Los Angeles Review of Books, the Washington Post, The Guardian, the Oxford American, Teen Vogue, and she was Louisville’s local relationship advice columnist for 3.5 years at LEO Weekly. Her essays are also in “Burn It Down: Women Writing About Anger” by Seal Press and the Hub City Press collection, “A Measure of Belonging: Writers of Color on the New American South.” Her memoir, The Heartbreak Years, about dating as a woman of color in Southern California, is forthcoming from Little A October 2023 (Pre-order it now). She is represented by Kayla Lightner at Ayesha Pande Literary. She is the founder of the capsule project, TAUNT, an alt-indie publication for Louisville that elevated the voices of the unaccounted during the height of the pandemic and ended in late 2021.
Krys Malcolm Belc--Foundations of Nonfiction
Registration is rolling until September 28 at 11:59PM EST. No application is required (except for financial aid— Applications for financial aid are due September 24 at 5PM EST).
$400 w/financial aid available to residents of Greater Philadelphia (Bucks, Camden, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia Counties)
8 week class: Thursdays 6-8PM EST, 10/5, 10/12, 10/19, 10/26, 11/2, 11/9, 11/16, 11/30 (skipping 11/23 in observance of national holiday).
In this fun, generative, supportive class, writers will get to learn about and try different aspects of creative nonfiction writing. In the first few weeks, we will read a wide range of writing by authors such as Wesley Morris, Carmen Maria Machado, Eula Biss, and Jenny Boully, and will discuss types of nonfiction such as flash essay, lyric essay, and cultural criticism. In the second half of the course, writers will have an opportunity to workshop a longer piece of writing and to receive rigorous feedback from the instructor and from peers.
Krys Malcolm Belc is the author of the memoir The Natural Mother of the Child: A Memoir of Nonbinary Parenthood (Counterpoint, 2021) and the flash nonfiction chapbook In Transit (The Cupboard Pamphlet). His essays on queer and trans family life have been featured in Granta, Guernica, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. Krys is the memoir editor of Split Lip Magazine. Krys has lived most of his adult life in Philadelphia with his partner and their four children, but for now he is the 2023-2025 Edelstein-Keller Writer in Residence Fellow at the University of Minnesota.
Ariel Delgado Dixon--Foundations of Fiction
CLASS IS FILLED!
Registration is rolling until September 25 at 11:59PM EST. No application is required (except for financial aid— Applications for financial aid are due September 21 at 5PM EST).
$400 w/financial aid available to residents of Greater Philadelphia (Bucks, Camden, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia Counties)
8 week class: Mondays 6-8PM EST 10/2, 10/9, 10/16, 10/23, 10/30, 11/6, 11/13, 11/20 (optional makeup date 11/27)
Great fiction is fashioned from an alchemy of craft knowledge and creative experimentation. In this course, students will acquire practical tools for writing fiction, while unpacking and exploring new ways to think about character, desire, structure, and contradiction. If some aspects of craft may illuminate your narrative, other craft rules are better off broken. Through generative exercises, multimodal prompts, short readings, and discussion, writers will consider what makes a story “work”—both technically, and artistically.
Ariel Delgado Dixon is the author of the novel Don’t Say We Didn’t Warn You (Random House, 2022) and the forthcoming novel, Sourland. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in O: The Oprah Magazine, Kenyon Review, Mississippi Review, Idaho Review, LitHub, and elsewhere. She has received support from Yaddo, the Hemingway Writer-in-Residence Program in Ketchum, Idaho, and most recently served as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Oberlin College. She lives in Philadelphia and works in farming.
Sham-e-Ali Nayeem: Foundations of Poetry
Registration is rolling until September 20 at 11:59PM EST. No application is required (except for financial aid— Applications for financial aid are due September 16 at 5PM EST).
$400 w/financial aid available to residents of Greater Philadelphia (Bucks, Camden, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia Counties)
8 week class: Wednesdays 6-8PM EST, 9/27, 10/4, 10/11, 10/18, 10/25, 11/1, 11/8, 11/15 (optional makeup date 11/22)
In this course students will learn to "read like a writer," while grappling with the work of accomplished poets. Through diverse readings, students will examine craft strategies at work in both formal and free verse poems.. Students will discuss strategies for conveying the literal meaning of a poem (e.g., through sensory description and clear, compelling language) and the concealed meaning of a text (e.g., through metaphor, imagery, meter, irony, and shifts in diction and syntax). Students will also explore the space of mystery in the poetic realm. By the end of the course, students will have generated new material, shaped and revised draft poems, and significantly grown as writers by experimenting with various aspects of craft.
Sham-e-Ali Nayeem is a multidisciplinary artist, poet, musician and recovering social justice lawyer with Hyderabadi Muslim roots. She is the author of the poetry collection, City of Pearls (Upset Press, 2019), and has released two musical albums; City of Pearls (2019) and Moti Ka Sheher (2023) featuring self composed musical interpretations from her book. Her work explores grief and loss, ancestral transmissions, international solidarities and space to imagine. Sham-e-Ali is the recipient of the 2022 Leeway Transformation Award, the 2016 Loft Literary Center Spoken Word Immersion Fellowship, and the 1997 echoing green fellowship.
Kristen Martin--Foundations of Journalistic Writing
Registration is rolling until September 19 at 11:59PM EST. No application is required (except for financial aid— Applications for financial aid are due September 15 at 5PM EST).
$400 w/financial aid available to residents of Greater Philadelphia (Bucks, Camden, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia Counties)
8 week class: Tuesdays 6-8PM EST, 9/26, 10/3, 10/10, 10/17, 10/24, 10/31, 11/7, 11/14 (optional make up date 11/21)
In this eight-week course, we will explore journalism from straight news to narrative longform and hone skills like developing news judgment, finding stories, interviewing, reporting, researching, and understanding audiences. For models, we will read from a wide range of newspapers, magazines, and websites. We may consider reporting and journalistic storytelling from writers like Rachel Aviv, Pamela Colloff, Hannah Dreier, Mitchell S. Jackson, and Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah. In addition to in-class writing exercises along the way, students will write and workshop drafts of a straight news article and a feature.
Kristen Martin (she/her) is a writer and cultural critic. Her debut narrative nonfiction book American Orphan is forthcoming from Bold Type Books. Her writing has been published in The New York Times Magazine, NPR, The Atlantic, The New Republic, Lapham’s Quarterly, The Baffler, and elsewhere. She received an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia University, and has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, New York University, Columbia University, and CUNY Baruch College. She lives in Philadelphia.
Enoch the Poet--The Body as a Space
Registration is rolling until September 17 at 11:59PM EST. No application is required (except for financial aid— Applications for financial aid are due September 13 at 5PM EST).
$250 w/financial aid available to residents of Greater Philadelphia (Bucks, Camden, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia Counties)
4 week class: Sundays 11AM-1PM EST 9/24, 10/1, 10/8, 10/15
“The Body as a Space” is a creative writing workshop series created by Enoch that was born from months of intensive therapy to identify and unpack the traumatic experiences living in his body. Centered on the polymerization of poetry and mental health education, these workshops conceptualize the body as various environments in order to identify and deepen our understanding of self, our connection to our body's and the information they are trying to communicate to us daily. Although the creative medium used is poetry, participants do not have to be a poet in order to attend the workshops, the only requirement is openness and a desire to engage with what takes up real estate in your body.
Enoch is a poet, author, trauma-informed teaching artist and creator and writer for manga series Immortal Dark. He was born and raised on the Northside of Wilmington, DE. As a mental health advocate and someone living with bi-polar disorder, his work examines the process of healing and the ways that trauma and mental health move through a family, as well as the outside forces that affect or have affected these developments. His goal is to create written works, curriculum, and platforms that deepen our emotional understanding and its cyclical relation to the conditions acting on the Black mind, body, and spirit. Enoch is the 2017 Philadelphia Fuze Grand Slam Champion and the author of two poetry collections, “The Guide to Drowning” released in 2017 and “Burned at the Roots” released in 2020. Enoch operates as the Executive Publisher and Founder of Black Minds Publishing, LLC, a national publications platform centered around the personal and professional growth of artists and creatives of the Black diaspora.
Shanisha B--Monetizing Your Writing Through Newsletters
Registration is rolling until August 7 at 11:59PM EST. No application is required (except for financial aid— Applications for financial aid are due August 2 at 5PM EST).
$250 w/financial aid available to residents of Greater Philadelphia (Bucks, Camden, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia Counties)
Weekend Intensive: Saturday August 12 and Sunday August 13 2PM-6PM EST
This seminar class will explore the ins and outs of what makes a good newsletter tick. It will showcase how developed writers from any background garner an audience organically and with ease. It will uncover the secrets to creating and managing content over time and examine several different newsletter topics and newsletter hosting platforms. This class is for any student wanting deeper knowledge on how to start a newsletter or how they can amplify their own for fun or for profit. Students will gain keys to insight on technological mechanics and management as well as writing content specific newsletters that can result in profit.
Shanisha Branch received her Master of Fine Arts at Old Dominion University in May 2021. While there, she studied and composed creative nonfiction and poetry that discussed the black experience which is cumulated in her thesis named On Being Seen. Shanisha’s poems: “Ode to the Afro” and “Strength of a Black Woman” were accepted into the Poetry on the Pavement contest where they are displayed on sidewalks throughout Norfolk, Virginia during. She currently lives in Portsmouth, VA where she teaches high school English at I.C. Norcom. She also writes a biweekly newsletter called The Honest Virgin on substack where she discusses womanhood, agency and sexuality. You can find her on Instagram & Twitter @thehonestvirginxo
Raina Leon--Play and Writing the Self
Registration is rolling until August 3 at 11:59PM EST. No application is required (except for financial aid— Applications for financial aid are due July 31 at 5PM EST).
$65 w/financial aid available to residents of Greater Philadelphia (Bucks, Camden, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia Counties)
3-hour class: Saturday August 5 12PM-3PM EST
A cross-genre workshop in which we will use various experimental techniques to shake loose and play, to lead you into a new seeing and love of the self. If you were like me as a child, you thought that if the wind blew just hard enough and if you held your arms out strong at just the right angle, you would be able to fly. You knew your body for the wonders and possibilities of it! In this workshop, we imagine the moment of first identifying our belly buttons. We reclaim what others may have teased - a curved back, a lisp, an differently shaped nail - as beautiful. We are beautiful and worthy of delight. Our unique qualities are natural and in tune with the miraculous mundane of the natural world. This is a cross-genre workshop in which we will use various experimental techniques to shake loose and play, drawing on readings from writers like Bettina Judd, Sonya Renee Taylor, and Laurie Ann Guerrero among others. Movement based meditation, online magnet poetry, random word generators, collage techniques, and more will lead you into a new seeing and love of the self.
Raina J. León, PhD is Black, Afro-Boricua, and from Philadelphia (Lenni Lenape ancestral lands). She is a mother, daughter, sister, madrina, comadre, partner, poet, writer, and teacher educator. She believes in collective action and community work, the profound power of holding space for the telling of our stories, and the liberatory practice of humanizing education. She seeks out communities of care and craft and is a member of the Carolina African American Writers Collective, Cave Canem, CantoMundo, Macondo. She is the author of black god mother this body, Canticle of Idols, Boogeyman Dawn, sombra : (dis)locate, and the chapbooks, profeta without refuge and Areyto to Atabey: Essays on the Mother(ing) Self. She publishes across forms in visual art, poetry, nonfiction, fiction, and scholarly work. She has received fellowships and residencies with the Obsidian Foundation, Community of Writers, Montana Artists Refuge, Macdowell, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center, the Tyrone Guthrie Center in Annamaghkerrig, Ireland and Ragdale, among others. She is a founding editor of The Acentos Review, an online quarterly, international journal devoted to the promotion and publication of Latinx arts. She supports poets and writers at the Stonecoast MFA at the University of Southern Maine. She is additionally a digital archivist, emerging visual artist, writing coach, and curriculum developer.
Raina Leon-- Entry to the Literary World
Registration is rolling until July 26 at 11:59PM EST. No application is required (except for financial aid— Applications for financial aid are due July 21 at 5PM EST).
$250 w/financial aid available to residents of Greater Philadelphia (Bucks, Camden, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia Counties)
4 week class: Mondays 6-8PM EST, 7/31, 8/7, 8/14, 8/21 (with optional make up date on 8/28)
This program interrogates what it means to live as a writer, which includes incorporating a daily practice of writing and learning to read the literary world. We will explore elements of a writer’s portfolio like the bio, artist statement, project proposal, writing samples, and submission cover letter. Within the writing community that we establish together, we will assemble and offer feedback on submission packets. We will write, submit, praise and challenge one another in the craft, support one another in social media (if one chooses to explore social media) and learn strategies for getting our work from the page to the world where it belongs.
This program is designed for students who have a significant body of work and a strong interest in continuing their growth in the writing profession through publishing, fellowships, residencies, and/or an MFA or alternative writing program. You do not need to have an MFA or the intention to enroll in an MFA for this program. All writers are welcome, whether you have 10 poems, 3 short stories, or a new book! To clarify, this program will NOT include editing or formal workshopping. Instead, this program is focused on moving work that is polished and completed to the final stages of publication or other arenas in the writing profession.
Raina J. León, PhD is Black, Afro-Boricua, and from Philadelphia (Lenni Lenape ancestral lands). She is a mother, daughter, sister, madrina, comadre, partner, poet, writer, and teacher educator. She believes in collective action and community work, the profound power of holding space for the telling of our stories, and the liberatory practice of humanizing education. She seeks out communities of care and craft and is a member of the Carolina African American Writers Collective, Cave Canem, CantoMundo, Macondo. She is the author of black god mother this body, Canticle of Idols, Boogeyman Dawn, sombra : (dis)locate, and the chapbooks, profeta without refuge and Areyto to Atabey: Essays on the Mother(ing) Self. She publishes across forms in visual art, poetry, nonfiction, fiction, and scholarly work. She has received fellowships and residencies with the Obsidian Foundation, Community of Writers, Montana Artists Refuge, Macdowell, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center, the Tyrone Guthrie Center in Annamaghkerrig, Ireland and Ragdale, among others. She is a founding editor of The Acentos Review, an online quarterly, international journal devoted to the promotion and publication of Latinx arts. She educates our present and future agitators/educators as a full professor of education at Saint Mary’s College of California, only the third Black person (all Black women) and the first Afro-Latina to achieve that rank there. She supports poets and writers at the Stonecoast MFA at the University of Southern Maine. She is additionally a digital archivist, emerging visual artist, writing coach, and curriculum developer.
Emily Jon Tobias--Small Press Publishing as a Debut Author
Registration is rolling until July 27 at 11:59PM EST. No application is required (except for financial aid— Applications for financial aid are due July 24 at 5PM EST).
$65 w/financial aid available to residents of Greater Philadelphia (Bucks, Camden, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia Counties)
3-hour class: Saturday July 29 1PM-4PM EST
In this course, I will share my successes and failures along the journey to find a home for my debut story collection, MONARCH. I will share details that can only come with experience including, but not limited to, writing query letters (agents vs. presses), tracking submissions, the research process, fees, red flags, green flags, how to best navigate technology with productive, simple tools, and, perhaps most importantly, how to handle the emotional pressure of rejection after rejection. With this course, I intend to share experience and methods that aren't offered in traditional academic settings. My hope is to engage in an honest, forthcoming dialogue about the pressures and joys of the small press publishing experience itself.
Emily Jon Tobias is an American author and poet with her debut story collection, MONARCH, forthcoming by Black Lawrence Press in May, 2024. She is an award-winning writer whose work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, along with other honorable mentions, and has been featured in various literary journals and magazines. Midwestern-raised, she now lives and writes on the coast of Southern California where she is at work on her debut novel and other projects. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in Writing from Pacific University Oregon.
Marc Anthony Richardson--Visceral Writing
Registration is rolling until July 6 at 11:59PM EST. No application is required (except for financial aid— Applications for financial aid are due July 1 at 5PM EST).
$400 w/financial aid available to residents of Greater Philadelphia (Bucks, Camden, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia Counties)
8 week class: Tuesdays 6-8PM EST, 7/11, 7/18, 7/25, 8/1, 8/8, 8/15, 8/22, 8/29 (with optional make up date on 9/5)
In this fiction writing workshop, we will try to transcend our reading and writing preferences to be apprenticed by visceral, avant-garde literature and one film—aesthetic achievements centered around objective life, subjective reality, and ecstatic confession! Most of the works that affect us deeply are the ones that might have wearied us or even greatly disturbed us. But in time, upon further reflection, we find them rather informative—or even illuminating! We will write new weekly writing and discuss the weekly reading (and one film). You will challenge your self-censorship in a safe and supportive environment and read weekly what you write to develop your observational and listening skills in determining the effects of the spoken word. The books and the film we will be studying may challenge you aesthetically and emotionally, so you will be encouraged to experiment, to write aesthetically and emotionally––you will emote!
We will not be analyzing the plot or the symbolism of a work per se, but looking at its aesthetic quality, pondering how it was created as writers ourselves, not as literary critics. Your main goal is to learn from them, to be apprenticed by them, and to practice, apply, and play around with some of what you learn from them in your creative writing. You will be in a supportive space, so don’t be afraid to open up. Vulnerability is strength. All great art comes from it.
Marc Anthony Richardson is the author of Messiahs and Year of the Rat, winner of an American Book Award and a Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize. His forthcoming novel, The Serpent Will Eat Whatever is in the Belly of the Beast, won a Creative Capital Award and a Sachs Program Grant for Arts Innovation. He also received grants or residencies from PEN America, the Hurston/Wright Foundation, Art Omi, and the Vermont Studio Center. His work has appeared in Conjunctions, Callaloo, Black Warrior Review, Western Humanities Review, and the anthology, Who Will Speak for America? In 2022, he was an Andrew W. Mellon Scholar-in-Residence at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa.
Hannah Kaplan--Intuitive Comics (IN-PERSON)
Registration is rolling until June 26 at 11:59PM EST. No application is required (except for financial aid— Applications for financial aid are due June 21 at 5PM EST).
$400 w/financial aid available to residents of Greater Philadelphia (Bucks, Camden, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia Counties)
8 week class: Mondays 6-8PM EST 7/3, 7/10, 7/17, 7/24, 7/31, 8/7, 8/14, 8/21 (w/ optional make up date of 8/28)
This class will be hosted in person at The Head and the Hand Bookstore (2230 Frankford Ave Philadelphia, PA 19125) Students may be asked to bring a laptop or tablet to use on specific class days, and will be notified in advance by the instructor.
In this class we will create and workshop new comics. Much of the class time will be spent working from prompts and sharing feedback on each others' work. We will create comics based on students’ day to day lives, and also use tools such as automatic writing, bibliomancy, and other intuitive arts to prompt new ideas. We will use speed in both writing and drawing to generate work and develop confidence in students’ ability to create narrative comics. We will read and discuss comics from a diverse group of artists with varied styles. In the latter half of the workshop, we will take some time to discuss some self-publishing tools, and use work generated in class to create a final zine.
The main aim of the course will be to grow as storytellers, rather than to improve drawing technique. Great comics can be made at any drawing level; that being said, ideally students who take this class will be comfortable with (and enjoy!) drawing. Students don’t need to have experience making comics, but those who do have some experience and want to grow their practice will also benefit from the course.
Hannah Kaplan is an Artist/writer/cartoonist living in west Philadelphia. She has an MFA from the Center for Cartoon Studies. She has been creating and self-publishing comics for over 12 years.
Eshani Surya--Speak Up: Finding the Voice in Your Fiction
Registration is rolling until June 24 at 11:59PM EST. No application is required (except for financial aid— Applications for financial aid are due June 19 at 5PM EST).
$400 w/financial aid available to residents of Greater Philadelphia (Bucks, Camden, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia Counties)
8 week class: Thursdays 6-8PM EST 6/29, 7/6, 7/13, 7/20. 7/27, 8/3, 8/10, 8/17 (w/ optional make up date of 8/24)
In this class, we will focus on authorial voice and characters' voices in fiction. In the first five sessions we will take a generative and craft-focused look at: how authors use craft to build a unique tone in their work, how to employ first person, how to write in second person, how to grow as third person POV writer, and how to enhance the dialogue in participants' fiction. Participants will then be encouraged to expand one of the exercises they worked on in class; in the last three sessions they will workshop these exercises as a group, focusing primarily on voice, but also on other aspects of the work. The workshop model will be Writer Led, meaning that we will focus on the goals and motivations behind the stories, and will provide ample space for discussion between the writer and their colleagues.
Eshani Surya is the author of RAVISHING, forthcoming from Roxane Gay Books/Grove Atlantic in 2024. Her short stories and essays have appeared in The Rumpus, DIAGRAM, [PANK], Catapult, and Joyland, among others. Eshani is a 2022 Asian Women Writer’s Workshop mentee, a 2022 Kenyon Review Writer’s Workshop scholarship recipient, and a 2021 Mae Fellowship recipient. She also works as the Programs and Operations Coordinator at Blue Stoop, a literary non-profit in Philadelphia. Find her online at http://eshani-surya.com
Zainab Karim--Personal Essay Writing (CNF)
Registration is rolling until June 23 at 11:59PM EST. No application is required (except for financial aid— Applications for financial aid are due June 18 at 5PM EST).
$400 w/financial aid available to residents of Greater Philadelphia (Bucks, Camden, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia Counties)
8 week class: Wednesdays 6-8PM EST, 6/28, 7/5, 7/12, 7/19, 7/26, 8/2, 8/9, 8/16 (with optional make up date on 8/23)
Through the theory-driven book, Salt Fat Acid Heat, author, teacher and chef Samin Nosrat offers practical mechanics of food science. These four elements combined allow each dish to possess its own unique taste profile. In reading this book, I found that these elements can be used to guide a writer in understanding how to craft their personal essay to present a unique profile as well. This class offers students the practical tools to understand their personal essay's Salt(enhances the writing), Fat(amplifies the texture of writing), Acid( balances the writing), Heat(determines the course of the writing).
Zainab Khadijah Karim is an Assistant Professor of English at National-Louis University and a published writer. She’s written for Ebony/Jet Magazine, MadameNoire, Revelist, and other online writing platforms. During the summer of 2021, she created and edited a series called Shape of Pleasure, which featured personal essays and poetry that explored how Black women centered pleasure in their lives. This anthology was influenced by Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good by adrienne maree brown. She is currently working on research that centers the power of anger and feminism through her substack The Mad Feminist.
Dilruba Ahmed--As Stones From a Necklace: The Ghazal
Registration is rolling until June 25 at 11:59PM EST. No application is required (except for financial aid— Applications for financial aid are due June 22 at 5PM EST).
$65 w/financial aid available to residents of Greater Philadelphia (Bucks, Camden, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia Counties)
3-hour class: Tuesday June 27 6PM-9PM EST
In the words of Shadab Zeest Hashmi, the resilient and intricate ghazal “forges an affinity between high- and low-brow concerns, between the sacred and the profane, the intellectual and the spiritual…” Agha Shahid Ali wrote of this ancient and versatile poetic form that we “should at any time be able to pluck a couplet like a stone from a necklace and it should continue to shine in that vivid isolation, though it would have a different luster among and with the other stones.” This 3-hour workshop will explore the ghazal’s key formal elements, and examine how those elements work together to create resistance to linearity as well as movement by repetition and surprise. Using a wide range of poetic examples, we’ll investigate the ghazal’s incorporation of the “beloved” in many different forms (lover, revolution, the Divine); its embrace of grief, ecstasy, and longing; and the traditional themes of love, heartbreak, wine, and devotion. After a close look at contemporary ghazals written in English, we’ll try a variety of writing experiments to help us compose our own couplets that might “shine” in “vivid isolation” and take on a “different luster” when strung together.
Dilruba Ahmed is the author of Bring Now the Angels (Pitt Poetry Series, 2020), with poems featured in New York Times Magazine, The Slowdown, and Poetry Unbound with Pádraig Ó Tuama. Her debut book of poetry, Dhaka Dust (Graywolf Press), won the Bakeless Prize. Her poems have appeared in Kenyon Review, New England Review, Ploughshares, & Virginia Quarterly Review. Her poems have also been anthologized in The Best American Poetry 2019 (Scribner), Halal If You Hear Me (Haymarket Books), Literature: The Human Experience (Bedford/St. Martin’s) and elsewhere. Ahmed is the recipient of The Florida Review’s Editors’ Award, a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Memorial Prize, and the Katharine Bakeless Nason Fellowship in Poetry awarded by the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. She holds degrees from the University of Pittsburgh and Warren Wilson College’s MFA Program for Writers. She has taught with Chatham University’s MFA Program, Hugo House in Seattle, and workshops across the U.S. In January 2021, Ahmed joined the faculty at Warren Wilson College’s MFA Program for Writers. Classes & consultations: https://www.dilrubaahmed.com/writing-lab
Leigh Gallagher--Applying and Getting into Residencies (IN PERSON)
Registration is rolling until June 19 at 11:59PM EST. No application is required (except for financial aid— Applications for financial aid are due June 14 at 5PM EST).
$250 w/financial aid available to residents of Greater Philadelphia (Bucks, Camden, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia Counties)
Weekend Intensive: Saturday June 24 and Sunday June 25 12PM-4PM EST
This class will be held in person at The Head and the Hand Bookstore (2230 Frankford Ave Philadelphia, PA 19125)
"Applying (and Getting in) to Residencies" leads writers through every step of the writing residency application process. Are you interested in pursuing writing residencies but not sure where to begin? Or maybe past rejections have discouraged you from putting yourself out there again? This two day intensive is intended to help writers across genres navigate the enormous landscape of residency opportunities, with an emphasis on the fully-funded.
Day One will focus on information: we’ll look through residency databases, decode application language, learn how work is evaluated by juries, and discuss the pros and cons of various program models (Two weeks with your whole family, or three months alone? International or nearby?).
Day Two will focus closely on application materials: whether you’re a poet or a memoirist, we’ll talk best practices for choosing manuscript samples, look closely at model artist statements and project statements, and begin brainstorming materials of our own.
By weekend's end, writers will have the seeds of their own application materials, a short-list of ideal programs, and a toolbox of practical skills ready to use in pursuit of adjacent opportunities, like grant or MFA applications.
Please note: Students should bring their own laptop or tablet for in-class use.
Leigh N. Gallagher is a fiction writer, educator, and editor. She’s the author of Who You Might Be (Holt, 2022), a novel she might not have finished if it weren’t for the support of multiple writing residencies. As a past fellow at the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico, the Ox-Bow School of Art, the Lighthouse Works, Marble House Project, and several others, she’s a big advocate of the cross-disciplinary residency model, and in the last ten years has served on seven different residency selection committees.
Alex Hanesworth & Clare Boyle-- Introduction to Podcasting
Registration is rolling until June 15 at 11:59PM EST. No application is required (except for financial aid— Applications for financial aid are due June 10 at 5PM EST).
$400 w/financial aid available to residents of Greater Philadelphia (Bucks, Camden, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia Counties)
8 week class: Tuesdays 6-8PM EST, 6/20, 6/27, 7/4, 7/11, 7/18, 7/25, 8/1, 8/8 (with optional make up date on 8/15)
Learn and embark on the audio storytelling process from start to finish! This course is for anyone interested. Beginners will learn the fundamentals of podcast creation, while mid-level practitioners will hone their skills and narrative voices. Students will walk away from the course having produced a five to ten minute audio story or a ten to twenty minute structured interview. Conversations about how to navigate the power dynamics and social structures shaping audio stories will be woven throughout the course. Discussions will be grounded in Third Coast’s “All Stories are Stories about Power” panel, our own experiences co-creating stories, and bluelight academy's power mapping and consent frameworks.
Topics will include: What is a podcast? | Pitching and Finding Stories | Effective Interviewing and Recording | Introduction to Software Editing | Crafting a Narrative Arc & Scripting your Story | Sound Design: Exploiting the Audio Medium | And more!
Clare Boyle (they/he) is telling stories about trans histories and futures, grief, harm reduction, and people generally f*cking sh!t up towards the more liberatory. Alongside their writing and editing practices, Clare works in harm reduction and is passionate about offering people within justice movements the tools to share their own stories. They live in Philadelphia and are especially proud of being from the Midwest.
Alex Hanesworth (they/them) is a radio maker interested in the liberatory potential of memory work, place-based storytelling, oral history, queer history and community archives. They work in museums, currently as the digital media specialist for the Undocumented Organizing Collecting Initiative. In the past, they have made audio tours for the RISD Museum, worked as a curatorial assistant for the Center for Restorative History, taught queer oral history for the Providence Public Library and gave tours for the Wharton Esherick Museum. They currently live in West Philadelphia with their little dog, Luca.