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.