Current Classes and Workshops

Photograph of Laura Maher

Consider the Body: The Poetics of Disease and Health
Laura Maher
Date: Saturday, July 20, 2019, 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Type: Generative Workshop, Presentation, Workshop
Genre: Hybrid, Poetry
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Participants will consider the ways in which language shapes our understanding of our bodies and how it impacts our experiences of good health and illness. Through readings, conversations, and writing and movement exercises, we will explore how we describe our bodies and their functions (or dysfunctions), how medicine and healthcare systems describe our bodies and their functions, and how poetry regards both.
Image of Umeda Sky Building in Japan

Built Environments: The Craft of Formal Innovation
Saretta Morgan
Date: Tuesdays, July 23 - August 13, 2019, 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
Type: Generative Workshop, Workshop
Genre: Creative Nonfiction, Experimental, Fiction, Hybrid, Poetry
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We experience our lives through form. The layout of a house, the format of a letter, or the etiquette of public interaction. When these forms shift, we are forced to take notice. In this cross-genre writing studio, we will examine how language and narrative develop differently according to structural decisions crafted by the author. Participants will explore how voice, themes and images emerge through attention to life’s many architectures, and experiment with new narrative and poetic forms based on their own unique personal experiences and close readings of a range of texts.

There's No Place Like Home: Writing Big in Small Spaces
Tucker Leighty Phillips
Date: Saturday, July 27, 2019, 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
Type: Workshop, Generative Workshop
Genre: Fiction, Flash, Short Stories
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How do we create an expansive world from a limited setting? How do writers maintain narrative movement when they're confined to a single household? In this workshop, we will examine the works of Shirley Jackson, Marilynne Robinson, as well as scenes from films that engage with similar narrative structures in order to investigate how invention can operate in a compact space. Our class will dive into these stories, perform writing exercises, and achieve a better understanding of how constraints in storytelling can allow for a more substantial sense of freedom.

Building a Freelance Writing Career
Mark Athitakis
Date: Saturday, August 3, 2019, 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
Type: Presentation, Workshop, Generative Workshop
Genre: Business of Writing, Creative Nonfiction, Editing, Journalism, Marketing
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Looking to build or expand your freelance career? This workshop will guide you through the basics of freelance writing: finding your focus as a writer, identifying publications, crafting a pitch, connecting with editors, and building ongoing relationships. We'll talk about what to expect out of contracts, managing money, tips for improving your chances at making a sale, and how to find supportive groups that can encourage you to keep working. Please come prepared to write and discuss a story idea you'd like to pursue.

Advanced Fiction Workshop
James Sallis
Date: Mondays, September 16 - November 4, 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
Type: Workshop
Genre: Crime Fiction, Fantasy, Fiction, Genre Fiction, Mystery, Novels, Science Fiction, Short Stories
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The Piper Writers Studio hosts novelist and fiction writer James Sallis for an eight-week advanced fiction workshop for individuals who are actively working on a fiction project, are looking to publish, or have already published work. During this course, students will receive:

Writing the Forbidden; Writing the Unthinkable
Mary Sojourner
Date: Saturday, September 21, 2019, 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Type: Generative Workshop
Genre: Creative Nonfiction, Essays, Fiction, Hybrid
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Too often, the belief that something is forbidden or unthinkable forms a writer's impenetrable blocks. Contemporary culture and media might lull us into thinking that nothing is forbidden or unthinkable. Quite the opposite is true. Clearly, the forbidden and the unthinkable are different for each writer. This generative workshop is designed to enable participants to bring out that which they may have kept hidden. We will write into the material which we fear, the perhaps unexplored stories which, in fact, we long to write.

Energy and Poetry
Jake Skeets
Date: Saturday, October 5, 2019, 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Type: Lecture, Generative Workshop
Genre: American Indian Studies, Indigenous Studies, Poetry
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Charles Olson, in “Projective Verse,” states that poetry is energy transference from poet to poem to reader. This idea is one birthed from an understanding of land, place, and field. In this part lecture, part generative workshop, activities will focus on learning how place creates an energy that informs the composition of a poem. Participants will begin with a presentation on Diné-centered thought and life way models of art creation.

Beyond Narrative: Achieving Radical Authorship through Literary Collage
Piper J. Daniels
Date: Wednesdays, October 9 - 23, 2019, 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
Type: Generative Workshop
Genre: Creative Nonfiction, Experimental, Fiction, Hybrid, Mixed Genre, Poetry
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Walter Benjamin once said, “All great works of literature either dissolve a genre or invent one.” In this advanced three-week class, we’ll discover what is gained when we forego conventional expectations of content and form. Working in such mediums as personal essay, lyric essay, memoir, fiction, poetry, philosophy, mixed-media film, photography, song lyric, journal, dream, and anecdote, we’ll unearth our private obsessions and render our experiences accessible and relevant to a larger audience.