The Virginia G. Piper
Center for Creative Writing

How do we approach the concept of the aural in our poetry? How does the creative process become a collective of both writing and hearing our own art? This course is designed to develop your creativity and fluency in identifying, writing, and reading toward an attuned awareness of beats, tone, voice, and sounds that find their way to the page; we will also discuss how these same utterances transform when read aloud by poet or reading audience.

Starting a novel is hard. Finishing a novel seems nearly impossible. And the middle, well, the middle is a thousand years long. But! But! There are things you can do to turn walls into doorways and keep you moving forward. Join award winning novelist, Ramona Ausubel, in a course on discussing strategies for survival in writing your novel and for keeping the process fun, inventive and full of life. This workshop consists of both moments of lecture and exercises, so be prepared to learn, talk, engage, and put your thoughts and ideas on the page!

We too often rely on a “good/bad” binary to shape our characters and considerations in our stories. How do our complexities as human beings find their way to the page? In this generative workshop, join poet, essayist, and cultural critic, Hanif Abdurraqib, on an exploration on empathy and the dynamics of character in popular culture. The group will use an empathy tree in which participants figure out which characters in popular culture they find empathetic or non-empathetic.