Deeper engagement with conference faculty
Beyond panels, craft talks, and the rest of the regular conference schedule, the Desert Nights, Rising Stars Writers Conference features a number of advanced workshops that provide individuals with opportunities for deeper learning, closer feedback, and more personalized relationships with conference faculty.
By participating in advanced workshops, writers form tight-knit bonds with each other and become part of an intimate cohort ahead of the larger activities. Each workshop takes place the day before the conference (Thursday) and is about three hours long.
Advanced workshops are open to the public with a $25 discount for conference attendees. (Please note: advanced workshops are not included in the conference registration. Discount codes will be sent to attendees upon registration.)
To learn more about advanced workshops, keep reading.
You can also view past advanced workshops, meet our faculty, view the schedule, or find upcoming classes and workshops through the Piper Writers Studio.
Instead of only turning to Trans, Non-binary, and Queer+ (TNBQ+) writing to learn something about being TNBQ+, in this generative, experiential workshop, we’ll push further to consider and practice a variety of craft choices while immersing ourselves in the vast brilliance of TNBQ+ poetry. Come to read, write, and build community. And expect to be challenged and filled with delight.
In this generative poetry writing workshop, we will attempt to enter the creative space by removing ourselves from the written work, thus allowing the poetic image to speak for itself. In this way, we can get outside our drives for individual gain and into areas of articulation that may help us discover something that binds us together.
Join New York Times bestselling author, Tracey Baptiste for an in-depth workshop designed to generate deeper characters, find their unique voice, discover what their motivations are within the story, and see how they interact with other story characters. Designed for writers who are having difficulty with a current draft, or connecting to their characters in a way that enhances the plot.
How can we encourage our work to unspool in unpredictable, organic ways? To welcome what surprises and disturbs us? To harness wildness without domesticating its energies? To embrace what we only dimly perceive? In Cultivating Chaos, we'll discuss strategies for coaxing the strange, ineluctable, jagged-edged power of the wonderfully, dangerously unexpected into making a lasting, vivid difference in our writing.
What does an image do? How do images move or surprise us? In this writing workshop, we will examine how images shift, transform, and ultimately, move a reader. We will take our “go-to” images and explode them, looking at etymology, mythology, context and association. Finally, through writing prompts & workshop, we will read, write, and workshop poems that use recurring imagery to create tension and surprise.
