This writing workshop is designed for any writer concerned with notions of homeland, both real and the imagined.  This course will focus on helping writers utilize setting in ways that push, expand, and further the idea of place. The goal of this class is to provide students with the tools needed to create a fully realized and immersive fictional world that thrums with the breath of life.

Bodies inhabit landscapes, are part of the landscape, and often the traditions and behaviors of specifically-identified bodies define the landscape. From Hesiod to Patricia Smith to Billy-Rae Belcourt to Ocean Vuong, we’ll interrogate what it means to be a body, to belong, to be scrutinized geographies, and to inhabit the late-capitalist American landscape. Our poems will excavate and attempt to envision what it means to be stewards of the land while also playing a role in the presumed purveyance of justice.

This discussion-based class explores how food writing can be a gateway to better understanding of history, culture, and ourselves. We will talk about why writing about food is important, the history and types of food writing, resources for conducting research and, more importantly, how this work connects us to our history and the world around us. Come prepared to discuss some pre-assigned reading and your ideas for a food-related essay you are interested in writing.

In an experience designed for fans of films like Blade Runner, Ex Machina, and Solaris, this discussion-based class will inspect how sci-fi authors depict the mind and mental identity and the way in which these depictions reflect our conceptions of humanity. We’ll work together to answer questions about human and post-human identities and the technologies that can alter perceptions of both as seen in fiction by Philip K. Dick, Stanislaw Lem, Mary Shelley, and others.

For students who took Tina’s “Go Small or Go Home” microfiction workshop, and for anyone who wants to experience writing microfiction. We’ll look at masters of short-form writing, as well as prose poems and narrative poets, who bring us to the action quickly and hold us there with carefully honed, emotive language and images that resonate. Students will leave with four drafts of stories and plenty of ideas to generate new pieces.   Tina Barry’s writing appears in numerous publications…

In each session of this class, we will examine two short stories, focusing on what distinguishes them from other examples of the form—the literary style, message, theme, characters or something else? As a group, we will try to determine what aspects contribute to the story’s critical acclaim. Then, we’ll document our reasons for determining whenever a story is overrated! All stories are linked below, and available through online search. June 12: Margaret Atwood’s “Stone Mattress,” – “New Yorker,” 12/19/11 &…