This year marks the 15th anniversary of Lit Fest, our two-week celebration of literature that features advanced workshops, weekend intensives, craft seminars, business panels, salons and readings, agent consultations, parties, and more.
The full schedule of events for the festival will be announced in early April. For now, writers can apply to advanced weeklong and weekend workshops with the following visiting authors: Hanif Abdurraqib, Steve Almond, Jami Attenberg, Emily Rapp Black, Robin Black, Sarah M. Broom, Garth Greenwell, Jane Hirshfield, Lacy M. Johnson, Kenneth Lin, Peter Orner, Wendy C. Ortiz, Morgan Parker, Ariana Reines, Akhil Sharma, Francesca Sloane, Justin Torres, and Thomas Chatterton Williams. These advanced weeklong and weekend courses are available by application only, and are limited to 10 students each (12 for poetry). Priority application deadline is March 14, 2020. For a closer look at course descriptions by genre, read on below.
Fiction
Advanced Weekend Intensive: Grand Entrances with Jami Attenberg
Dates: Saturday, June 6 to Sunday, June 7; 8:30 AM to 12:30 PM
Course Description: Sometimes all it takes is a great first sentence to convince a reader to spend the next three hundred pages with your book. We’ll look at texts that have compelling beginnings, ones which instantly hook the reader with their irresistible plots, addictive voices, and instantly fascinating characters. Additionally, a talk on stake-building will be given. In critiques we’ll examine the first fifteen-twenty pages of students’ work, focusing on grabbing the attention of the reader, agent, or editor – and keeping them interested. Accepted participants will submit up to 20 pages by noon (MST) on May 8. Apply here.
About the Instructor: Jami Attenberg is the author of several novels, including The Middlesteins, All Grown Up, and All This Could Be Yours. Learn more about Jami here.
Advanced Weeklong Workshop: A Nontraditional Workshop with Robin Black
Dates: Monday, June 8 to Friday, June 12; 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM
Course Description: In this workshop, instead of discussing participants’ stories individually, each session will be structured around particular points of craft. In the context of exploring these points, we'll examine their implications for each story or novel passage. Our points of focus will likely include beginnings and endings; choices of point of view and tense; creating and effectively using secondary characters; reading your own work for revision; etc. The final list of topics will ultimately be determined by the submissions themselves. This workshop’s subject-matter-based approach has the benefit of putting the emphasis on lessons that reach beyond an individual work, while removing the ego and the vulnerability of traditional workshops. The whole question of whether the group likes or doesn't like any given piece will be off the table. The goal is less to find a game plan for improving individual pieces—though that will almost certainly be a side benefit—than to deepen every participant’s understanding of a variety of craft issues. This workshop is recommended for both short fiction writers and novelists. Creative nonfiction writers are also welcome to apply. Accepted participants will submit up to 25 pages by noon (MST) on May 11 and will have the opportunity to schedule a meeting with Black during the week of class. Apply here.
About the Instructor: Robin Black is the author of several books, including If I loved you, I would tell you this, Life Drawing and Crash Course: Essays from Where Writing and Life Collide. Learn more about Robin here.
Advanced Weeklong Workshop: Creating Indelible Moments with Peter Orner
Dates: Monday, June 8 to Friday, June 12; 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM
Course Description: Sometimes it’s the indelible moments that make all the difference. What makes certain moments, big or small, stick, for years, in a reader’s mind? Leopold Bloom on the toilet in Ulysses. Or when a woman gets stuck in a window (on a dare) while bombs are dropping on London in Muriel Spark’s novel, Girls of Slender Means. Or a moment when two kids, on a whim, begin trashing a house in Munro's "Vandals." We’ll focus on how to lend gravity to seemingly small instances, the pins in the machinery of the novel, in order to give your story those moments that lodge in a reader’s mind. Accepted participants will submit up to 20 pages by noon (MST) on May 11, and will have the opportunity to schedule a meeting with Orner during the week of class. Apply here.
About the Instructor: Peter Orner is the author of several books, including Love and Shame and Love, Esther Stories, and Maggie Brown & Others. Learn more about Peter here.
Advanced Weekend Intensive: A Tolerance for Ambiguity with Justin Torres
Dates: Saturday, June 13 to Sunday, June 14; 8:30 AM to 12:30 PM
Course Description: Gloria Anzaldúa announced the arrival of the new New Mestiza consciousness thusly: “She learns to juggle cultures. She has a plural personality, she operates in a pluralistic mode—nothing is thrust out, the good, the bad, and the ugly, nothing rejected, nothing abandoned. Not only does she sustain contradictions, she turns the ambivalence into something else.” What might this mean for our purposes as fiction writers, what is this 'something else' ambivalence might be morphed into? How does Anzaldúa’s point on the necessity of pluralistic thought when ‘reading’ culture echo Keats’ idea of the importance of negative capability in literature, “The capacity to be in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason”? For Keats, the greatest writers were capable of this, and to that end, the purpose of this workshop will not be so much to fix your stories, but to keep them from becoming too fixed. As we workshop pieces we'll constantly be on the lookout for opportunities to deepen the negative capability of the work itself. Accepted participants will submit up to 15 pages by noon (MST) on May 15. Apply here.
About the Instructor: Justin Torres is the author of We the Animals. Learn more about Justin here.
Advanced Weeklong Workshop: Style in Fiction with Garth Greenwell
Dates: Monday, June 15 to Friday, June 19; 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM
Course Description: “Style” is something writers talk about a great deal, but often without a clear sense of what it means. In this workshop we’ll try to be as concrete as possible, examining the elements that make up style in order to see how they’re used to create something distinctive and, hopefully, unforgettable. We’ll look at a number of examples of published work with strong and compelling style, and I’ll offer exercises to encourage you to experiment with the techniques we discuss. In workshopping student writing, we’ll pay special attention to stylistic elements, while also considering other aspects of craft to give holistic and helpful feedback. Accepted participants will submit up to 20 pages by noon (MST) on May 18 and will have the opportunity to schedule a meeting with Greenwell during the week of class. Apply here.
About the Instructor: Garth Greenwell is the author of What Belongs to You and Cleanness. Learn more about Garth here.
Advanced Weeklong Workshop: Acting as Writing with Sheila Heti
Dates: Monday, June 15 to Friday, June 19; 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM
Course Description: What is the relationship between acting and writing? Can one learn to become a better writer by becoming a better actor? What can the art of acting teach us about writing character and story? This will be a participatory, generative workshop though no one will have to do any acting in front of anyone else in any sort of embarrassing way, unless they choose to. Acting can be done on the page or in one's head. You can be shy and still comfortably take this class. Time will be reserved for sharing and feedback, though the focus of this workshop will be on producing our own original work. Participants will leave the workshop with multiple drafts to develop, and will have the opportunity to schedule a meeting with Heti during the week of class. Apply here.
About the Instructor: Sheila Heti is the author of eight books, including How Should a Person Be? and Motherhood. Learn more about Sheila here.
Advanced Weeklong Workshop: Varieties of Plotting with Akhil Sharma
Dates: Monday, June 15 to Friday, June 19; 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM
Course Description: The most difficult issue for most developing writers is plotting. One way to think about plot is causation: A causes B, B causes C, C causes D. Another equally valid way to think of it is a rational organization of the passage of time. We'll be looking at both. We'll do this through examining our manuscripts, craft talks, and reading and discussing some of Chekhov's short stories. For the workshop, please bring along Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. Accepted participants will submit up to 20 pages by noon (MST) on May 18 and will have the opportunity to schedule a meeting with Sharma during the week of class. Apply here.
About the Instructor: Akhil Sharma is the author of Family Life, An Obedient Father, and A Life of Adventure and Delight. Learn more about Akhil here.
Nonfiction
Advanced Weekend Short Prose Intensive: BS Detector with Steve Almond
Dates: Saturday, June 6 to Sunday, June 7; 8:30 AM to 12:30 PM
Course Description: Writing is decision making, nothing more and nothing less. What word? Where to place the comma? How to shape the paragraph? Join Steve Almond for a workshop focused on improving the decisions you make in your writing. By looking critically and carefully at other people’s work, you’ll walk away with a better sense of how to improve your own. The idea is not to slow your rate of composition via compulsive revision, but to instead make better decisions in the first place and to recognize quickly when you haven’t. Accepted participants will submit short pieces of up to 4,000 words by noon (MST) on May 8. Apply here.
About the Instructor: Steve Almond is the author of several books, including Candyfreak, Against Football, and William Stoner and the Battle for the Inner Life. Learn more about Steve here.
Advanced Weekend Intensive: Body Stories with Wendy C. Ortiz
Dates: Saturday, June 6 to Sunday, June 7; 8:30 AM to 12:30 PM
Course Description: This workshop will explore nonfiction as a vehicle for experimentation, meaning, and change. Using the body (literally and metaphorically) we’ll explore the myriad ways of describing the body as it comes into contact with other people, physical structures (such as “home”), streets, cities and natural settings, states, territory, and ultimately, the earth as a whole, in order to describe the everyday as well as the ineffable. We’ll investigate a variety of concrete examples of how other writers have done so, including brief excerpts from zines, chapbooks, literary journals, storytelling in legal scholarship, and more traditional modes. Workshop participants will have opportunities to experiment and practice with nonfiction strategies that push the boundaries of the genre. Accepted participants will submit short pieces of up to 5,000 words by noon (MST) on May 8. Apply here.
About the Instructor: Wendy C. Ortiz is the author of several books, including Excavation: A Memoir and Bruja. Learn more about Wendy here.
Advanced Weeklong Workshop: The Archive as Story Builder with Sarah M. Broom
Dates: Monday, June 8 to Friday, June 12; 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM
Course Description: In this class, we’ll consider the use of documents, photographs, images, memories, objects, sounds, and more, in the layering and development of creative nonfiction stories. Participants will also discuss matters related to structure, voice, narrative build, setting, and character development, especially in relationship to their own drafts, and how their personal archives can contribute richness to these elements. Through a combination of workshop, discussions, and in-class writing exercises, writers will leave with a set of tools with which to continue their projects and tackle revision. Writers accepted into the class are encouraged to read Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life and Vivian Gornick’s Situation & Story and submit one chapter or essay of no more than 20 double-spaced pages by noon (MST) on May 11 and will have the opportunity to schedule a meeting with Broom during the week of class. Apply here.
About the Instructor: Sarah M. Broom is the author of The Yellow House. Learn more about Sarah here.
Advanced Weeklong Workshop: We Tell Each Other Stories in Order to Live with Thomas Chatterton Williams
Dates: Monday, June 8 to Friday, June 12; 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM
Course Description: “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” That’s the opening line of Joan Didion's canonical autobiographical essay, "The White Album.” For the purposes of this class, though, we may tweak it slightly: we tell each other stories in order to live. This is the small miracle of writing: when we skillfully express our own struggles, victories, insights, and observations, we create meaning, purpose, and fellowship within an unseen, unknown reader. The truth is that everyone has highly compelling and revelatory memories, but the trick to powerful, compelling memoir is to figure out which of these to emphasize or downplay in service of an immersive narrative arc. This workshop will focus on strategies of first-person nonfiction. Through a combination of free-writing exercises, readings, and discussions covering a variety of examples, we will think critically about structure, pacing, scene-setting, dialogue, and, perhaps above all, taste and judgment. These are the tools we have at our disposal to shape the inchoate jumbles of our life experiences into streamlined stories. For those who would like to, we will also talk about pitching. Accepted participants will submit up to 20 pages by noon (MST) on May 11 and will have the opportunity to schedule a meeting with Williams during the week of class. Apply here.
About the Instructor: Thomas Chatterton Williams is the author of Losing My Cool and Self-Portrait in Black and White. Learn more about Thomas here.
Advanced Weekend Intensive: How to Tell the Truth with Lacy M. Johnson
Dates: Saturday, June 13 to Sunday, June 14; 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM
Course Description: The best memoirs and personal essays don’t simply relate the events of a writer’s life from start to finish, but instead dramatize a journey of the mind, using a writer’s personal experience as a lens through which to bring some aspect of human experience into focus. But memory is a shifting and unreliable thing, and the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and the lives we’ve lived often deviate from corroborating evidence. In this intensive we’ll tackle this ethical and creative challenge, as well as the challenges of navigating other people’s memories (which may differ in important ways from our own), and how to overcome the fear many of us encounter when we commit to telling the truth. Accepted participants will submit complete essays or excerpts from longer works of up to 4,000 words by noon (MST) on May 15. Apply here.
About the Instructor: Lacy M. Johnson is the author of several books, including The Reckonings, The Other Side and Tresspass: A Memoir. Learn more about Lacy here.
Advanced Weeklong Workshop: Writing Into Hybrid Forms with Hanif Abdurraqib
Dates: Monday, June 15 to Friday, June 19; 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM
Course Description: In this class, we’ll consider the flexibility of creative nonfiction. How do we transcend genre to create something artistic and true? If writers bring other forms—poetry, fiction, dramatic writing—into their nonfiction, what are the ways to build meaning and create patterns or braids of narrative? Through a combination of workshops, discussions, and in-class writings, participants in this workshop will leave with a dynamic understanding of where to go next with their work. This course is ideal for those writing toward hybridity, but also to writers of more traditional nonfiction. Accepted participants will submit chapters or essays of up to 20 pages (double-spaced) by noon MST on May 18 and will have the opportunity to schedule a meeting with Abdurraqib during the week of class. Apply here.
About the Instructor: Hanif Abdurraqib is the author of several books, including They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, A Fortune for Your Disaster, and Go Ahead in the Rain. Learn more about Hanif here.
Advanced Weeklong Workshop: Mapping the Memoir with Emily Rapp Black
Dates: Monday, June 15 to Friday, June 19; 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM
Course Description: Art is architecture; art is artificial; art is...? The biggest challenge for any writer of narrative is finding the map from beginning to end. This course is designed for students who are writing a book-length memoir and wish to delve more deeply into issues of structure, style, and voice: these three craft points will be our focus, as these make up the net that holds a narrative together in a propulsive, engaging, immersive, and beautiful way. The goal of this course is to take your completed manuscript to the next level. We will also discuss different avenues of publication. Accepted participants will submit up to 20 pages by noon (MST) on May 18 and will have the opportunity to schedule a meeting with Black during the week of class. Apply here.
About the Instructor: Emily Rapp Black is the author of Poster Child: A Memoir and The Still Point of the Turning World. Learn more about Emily here.
Poetry
Advanced Weeklong Workshop: Invitations, Inventions, Inventories, and Turnstiles with Jane Hirshfield
Dates: Monday, June 8 to Friday, June 12; 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM
Course Description: Over the course of this generative workshop, we’ll explore the palette energies of thought, feeling, curiosity, fearlessness, connection, music, and some central strategies of language by which poems enter the world and find new expansions of leap, engagement, and meaning. The goal is to experiment, to come away from the week with a set of poem-starts (or finished poems) that will open into new paths of writing. You'll also try modes of making that might not have been otherwise found, yet lead to what are distinctly and irreplaceably your own words, intimate to this very moment of your own life. Bring five poems (not by you, no longer than one page at most) that take your breath away; a notebook or laptop for writing; the desire for reinvention and fresh discovery. Accepted participants will submit 1-2 poems by noon (MST) on May 11 and will have the opportunity to schedule a meeting with Hirshfield during the week of class. Apply here.
About the Instructor: Jane Hirshfield the author of nine collections of poetry, including The Beauty, Come, Thief and After. Learn more about Jane here.
Advanced Weekend Intensive: Declarations with Morgan Parker
Dates: Saturday, June 13 to Sunday, June 14; 8:30 AM to 12:30 PM
Course Description: The power of a poem can come from many sources. This intensive will focus on declaring that power; harnessing the sometimes ragged, sometimes razor-sharp ambition of your voice into a semi-controlled environment, the poem. We’ll draw from an assortment of poems and art forms, histories and critiques, and through a mix of in-class exercises and discussions, aim to activate them in service of our voice. Accepted participants will submit 1-2 poems by noon (MST) on May 15. Apply here.
About the Instructor: Morgan Parker the author of several books, including Magical Negro and There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé. Learn more about Morgan here.
Advanced Weeklong Workshop: Love Lab with Ariana Reines
Dates: Monday, June 15 to Friday, June 19; 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM
Course Description: In this workshop we'll learn how to seduce without lying, how to praise without cliché, and how to write longing without becoming a boring wastoid...at least not on paper! We'll do this by cutting into the genre of love poetry from three angles: Desire, Exaltation, and Despair. We'll study a range of poems, from Archilochus & Sappho to Michael Ondaatje, Bernadette Mayer, Uche Nduka, Julian Talamantez Brolaski, Simone White, Sir Philip Sidney & more, alongside verse from sacred traditions—very often its own kind of love poetry—Hafez, Herbert, and the Song of Songs. Accepted participants will submit up to three poems by noon (MST) on May 18 and will have the opportunity to schedule a meeting with Reines during the week of class. Apply here.
About the Instructor: Ariana Reines the author of several books, including A Sand Book. Learn more about Ariana here.
Dramatic Writing
Advanced Weeklong Workshop: The First Act, the One Act, or the Pilot with Kenneth Lin
Dates: Monday, June 8 to Friday, June 12; 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM
Course Description: This weeklong workshop will aim at hitting that crucial first note: as viewers, we know a TV show has to hook us early if it’s going to hook us at all. Otherwise we just find something else that does. We’ll work through our scripts with an eye on the moving parts–establishing a narrative, introducing killer characters, and honing your voice. The goal will be for writers to leave the week with specific ideas about how to hone their material and continue on with focus and energy. Meetings will include table reads, exercises, and discussions of the business of plays, film, and TV. Accepted participants will submit a first act or pilot by noon (MST) on May 11 and will have the opportunity to schedule a meeting with Lin during the week of class. Apply here.
About the Instructor: Kenneth Lin is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter whose plays have been performed throughout the world and whose TV credits include "House of Cards" and "Sweetbitter." Learn more about Kenneth here.
Advanced Weekend Intensive: Kill Your Darlings and Write Better Ones with Francesca Sloane
Dates: Saturday, June 13 to Sunday, June 14; 8:30 AM to 12:30 PM
Course Description: The pulse of every good TV show is characters that crawl inside your heart and wreck it. A good character is someone we root for, a great character is one that we become so invested in that we can’t NOT watch to see what they’re going to do next. When they’re destroyed, we’re destroyed, and that's a satisfying television experience! By workshopping teasers and first acts, we’ll ensure that we’re setting up characters worthy of that love. This involves setting up the entire world around them, hooking them in the first five pages, finding motivations that matter, and conveying a tone and texture for the world you’re creating. We’ll discuss tangible ways to craft real, organic characters that breathe life into your script from the second we meet them. We’ll be working with Emmy winner, "Fleabag", available on Amazon Prime. The script will be provided. Accepted participants will submit their first 15 pages by noon (MST) on May 15. Apply here.
About the Instructor: Francesca Sloane is a screenwriter whose TV credits include "Atlanta" and "Seven Seconds." Learn more about Francesca here.
Fellowships and Awards
The Lit Fest 2020 Fellowship for Emerging Writers covers the full cost of tuition for an advanced weeklong or weekend workshop. Lighthouse will be awarding four fellowships for Lit Fest 2020 to advanced writers of fiction (1), poetry (1), dramatic writing (1), and creative nonfiction (1) who haven’t yet published a book-length work and who wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford a weeklong or weekend workshop. A panel comprised of faculty and Lit Fest 2020 fellowship judges Jericho Brown (Poetry), Daniel Goldfarb (Dramatic Writing), T Kira Madden (Nonfiction), Rebecca Makkai (Fiction) will review each fellowship application, looking for talent, promise, and originality. The panel’s final decisions will also consider the applicant’s financial need. Apply here. (Note: There is no separate application for fellowships; to be considered, fill out the applicable section in your application for the advanced workshops.)
The Lit Fest 2020 Veterans Writing Award award covers the cost of tuition for 1-3 combat veterans to attend an advanced weeklong or weekend workshop at Lit Fest. Thanks to a grant from Prevent & Prevail, we're also able to offer a travel stipend of up to $1,000 for weeklong courses. All too often, military service is a traumatic experience that vets must endure by themselves. By writing and sharing their stories, we hope veterans gain power over their experiences and readers gain a new, fuller understanding of those stories. A panel comprised of faculty and Lit Fest 2020 Veterans Writing Award judge Brian Turner will review each application, looking for talent, promise, and originality. Apply here. (Note: There is no separate application for fellowships; to be considered, fill out the applicable section in your application for the advanced workshops.)
For more information, visit lighthousewriters.org/litfest.
