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
Learning the craft of writing takes a lot of time. With so many demands on your energy you’d like to take some shortcuts. You want to take the fast track to becoming a better writer. This workshop is designed to help you do just that
Want to write into your family stories, but feel stuck at the foot of your family tree? During this holiday season, we’ll gather to find new ways to tell family stories, fill in the gaps in our ancestral narratives, and play with the voices of those who’ve come before us
Revision is the 99% perspiration of writing. And yet, important as it is, revision is often overlooked in writing workshops. It's an afterthought, a means to an end. In this course, we're going to give revision its fair due
“Zombies. Vampires. Aliens. Heroes and villains and criminals. Worlds of wonder and dark alleys full of terrors. If these elements catch fire in your imagination, you're in good company,” says instructor Jay Ridler
In this class we will focus on the tender excitement of getting started: we will learn to see the opportunity in the blank page. “We will get going with writing prompts from a variety of genres,” says instructor Leora Fridman, “and we’ll look beyond our notebooks and keyboards for inspiration
“Reading and writing poetry have long been occasions for self-exploration,” says instructor Brian Tierney. “Poems uncover and recover; they engage memory and personal history, bringing them back to life with new meanings and new understandings
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
“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
"The journey of recovery is the Hero’s Journey,” says instructor Alison Luterman. “We search for something outside ourselves, or we are chased by our own demons and run to escape. We go to Hell; we come back from Hell with some wisdom to offer the tribe