Nonfiction

The focus of the workshop is to encourage and guide experienced writers in creating, revising, and potentially publishing short, stand-alone works of memoir... more

Whether you’ve just returned from Paris or Sacramento or you’re dreaming of a trip, this class will help you transform your observations into vivid and lasting images. Katharine will provide tips on how to carefully observe and record your impressions of new places and cultures... more

Do you have a big idea for a book? A novel? A project that scares, excites, or intimidates you that speaks from your heart? In Dream Big, you'll learn and develop strategies to build the project that you want to write: fiction or non-fiction... more

To write our best, we must write from the heart. But finding which subjects mean the most to us can be difficult. Each week Jay Ridler will lead you through a series of fun, engaging, and effective exercises to help you discover and explore the deep and most compelling themes in your life... more

“Personal essay takes the messy unfiltered stuff of life and molds it into something of beauty, meaning, wisdom, and hopefully, a great story,” says instructor Gila Lyons... more

In this class you will plunge into the personal themes that make your real life stories uniquely yours. In the first half of this class, instructor Alison Luterman will give you writing exercises carefully designed to elicit the undertones and overtones that elevate events and anecdotes into the realm of art... more

Do you feel you have a story inside you, but you’re a little leery of getting thrown in the deep end? In this bi-monthly class, you’ll gently wade into the vast sea of memories and experiences you’ve been carrying around for your whole life... more

In this class we’ll focus on finding and shaping evocative stories from our own lives, stories that build from our specific and unique life events and move toward resonant, universal themes... more

This is a class for those who are familiar with the techniques and approaches Jay uses in helping writers find the stories and themes they care about the most: “plot talks” for digging deep into emotionally powerful material, playing with point of view and setting, compressing premises to get to the heart of the story... more

To write our best, we must write from the heart. But finding which subjects mean the most to us can be difficult. Each week Jay Ridler will lead you through a series of fun, engaging, and effective exercises to help you discover and explore the deep and most compelling themes in your life... more