Current Offerings
RADICAL REVISION
A 3-Day Manuscript Intensive Workshop
October 23 – 26, Thursday – Sunday
Details & Registration
Writing in the Dark: THE WORKSHOP
July 7 - August 11
Tuesdays 6 – 8 PM Central
Details & Registration
Voice Printing
Every writer’s voice has its own unmistakable shape—learn how to recognize, deepen, and dynamize yours
A 3-Hour Craft Intensive on Zoom
Monday, March 30
12:30-3:30 PM Central
Details & Registration
Writing in the Dark: THE SCHOOL
with Jeannine Ouellette
2024-25 SCHOOL registration is closed, reach out to join our waitlist for the 2025-26 SCHOOL cohort
Writing in the Dark: THE SCHOOL is for writers of all levels who want to work hard with us to accelerate their craft in a focused, dedicated effort with live instruction. It’s a place where we practice attention, curiosity, playfulness, and surprise as a portal to profound revelations and transformations in our writing. Our approach is “inch wide, mile deep,” and we are wildly excited to see what can emerge in this slow-writing program for serious and joyful language-doers.
Details & Registration
Writing in the Dark: THE CAMP!
General Registration Open Now!
We hope to meet you by the lake at our 2025 summer camp for writers.
When
August 18 – 22, 2025
Where
Camp Wandawega, Elkhorn, WI
Details & Registration
Telling Hard Truths by Writing Hot Cold
A 3-Hour Craft Intensive on Zoom
October 30, 1-4 PM Central
Details & Registration
Past Offerings
how to write the story you’re afraid to write
with Arya Samuelson
a generative memoir coven designed for approaching hard truths with compassion
Wednesdays, April 10th - May 1st, 5:30-8pm Central, Virtual
Everybody has at least one – a story that you’ve always wanted to write, or that you’ve been trying all your life to write, or that you swore you’d never write. But we can’t force these tender, long-buried stories into revealing themselves. In this four-week generative memoir coven, we will approach our hardest truths with compassion, experimentation, and care for one another.
Workshop Details
writing in the dark
writing in the dark XVI
with Jeannine Ouellette
SOLD OUT!
potent survival strategies for creating during uncertain times
Thursdays, November 2 - December 14, 6-8pm Central, Virtual
WITD is a highly participatory, generative, collaborative & inventive space where you will be invited to (distracted into) leaving your burdens momentarily in order to engage with writing prompts that capture your imagination and take you to new places in your writing.
Workshop Details
scaffolding for your manuscript
with Jill Swenson
while you write and revise
Sundays, March 19 - April 30, 1-2:30pm Central, Virtual
These methods help you with character development, narrative structure, sense of time and place, pacing, identifying themes and threads, interesting juxtapositions, emergent metaphors and more. Only temporary, they are removed once they no longer serve any purpose.
Workshop Details
The Feeling of What Happens
with Jeannine Ouellette
June 27, 5:30-8:30, 3-hour live workshop on Zoom
(recording will be available to participants)
This generative workshop will teach writers how to make work that engages readers emotionally and makes them feel something. Writers will leave with one or more short “seedling” drafts and a toolkit of specific, concrete techniques and devices toward writing in a way that evokes visceral and emotional experiences for readers. Drawing from many sources including Donald Maass's book The Emotional Craft of Fiction, this workshop is for all genres and levels from beginner to advanced, with curriculum adapted from the course I taught last fall at Stillwater prison. I’m very excited to bring it to all of you!