Sat + Sun, 9:30am - 2pm, Aug 29 - 30

Whether you're simply looking for a late summer poetry tuneup or want to check out the Poets Studio experience prior to applying by September 10, Poet Studio's summer session is open to all poets. Poets Studio is based on the idea that focusing on goals is the key to lasting growth as a poet. It is designed to give form and focus to your poetry writing. Poets Studio Summer Session is a blast -- you'll get to write new poems, revise old ones, and learn ways of making poetry you can use for years. Open to all poets.

Tuesdays, 7-8:30pm (Pacific Time), Sep 8 - Oct 13 | ZOOM

In this generative workshop we will reimagine our losses and bring light to the shadows. This creative exploration provides moments of great joy and connection. It is so satisfying to interrupt the stubborn "arrangements" in our psyches that are not serving us well. Writing consciously about grief has the potential to stir greater compassion for ourselves and others. You can expect to discover new threads in your work that inspire and energize fresh creative commitments and old dormant intentions.

Tuesdays, 10 - 11:30am, Sep 15 - Oct 20,

Start your day with short stories! (or Spend your lunch break with short stories!) Read five short stories. Write and workshop one. Over six weeks, we’ll explore how varied the short story form can be, focusing on craft elements and writing techniques. We’ll learn about creating characters, building plot, developing setting, exploring theme and symbol, and writing sentences that sing. Participants will write one short story in this workshop, receiving peer and instructor feedback in a supportive environment to help them revise.

Wednesdays, 6:30 - 8pm, Sep 16 - Oct 21  

Have you written and rewritten the first chapter of your novel but have trouble continuing? In this class, you will study your novel's opening pages while free-writing and daydreaming toward a detailed outline that will lead to your finished work. You’ll also have the opportunity to critique the opening pages of your classmates' novels, read the opening pages of other writers’ novels, and review the elements of fiction writing. 

Thursdays, 11am - 12:30pm, Sep 17 - Oct 22

What makes a great personal essay? What makes reading some essays feel like we’ve learned not only about the author’s experiences, but about ourselves and the world around us? In this class, we’ll read and discuss a few classic and contemporary personal essays, work on original essay prompts, and share our own work. Students can either bring a work in progress that they'd like to workshop, or become inspired to begin writing a new one. By the end, we’ll have a greater appreciation of the craft of personal essays, and a better understanding of how to look beyond ourselves and make our personal essays less personal and more universal. 

Mondays, 10 - 11:30am, Sep 21 - Oct 26

Using prompts, short readings, and discussion, this generative nonfiction workshop will focus on mining our personal histories and crafting them into the form they deserve. We’ll also explore the ways we sometimes get in the way of our own stories — and how to use that to break through and write around the blocks. CNF, personal essays, journaling...all are welcome. Open to all writers.  

Mondays, 12 - 1:30pm, Sep 21 - Oct 26

This workshop is intended for students who seek accountability in the form of a supportive community to share and receive feedback on their works in progress. Whether you are writing a memoir, essay or a piece that’s still taking shape, this Nonfiction workshop offers deadlines, camaraderie and support as you move forward with your work. 

Tuesdays, 5:30 - 7pm, Sep 22 - Oct 27 | ZOOM

Using prompts, short readings, and discussion, this generative nonfiction workshop will focus on mining our personal histories and crafting them into the form they deserve. We’ll also explore the ways we sometimes get in the way of our own stories — and how to use that to break through and write around the blocks. CNF, personal essays, journaling...all are welcome. Open to all writers. Zoom link provided prior to workshop. 

Wednesdays, 10 - 11:30am, Sep 23 - Oct 28 | ZOOM

"Attention is a limited resource, so pay attention to where you pay attention." ~ Howard Rheingold

Writing in the age of distraction and dire news often requires a Herculean effort to stay focused. What does it mean to reclaim our attention and what kind of revolutions can we mount with a pen, a notebook and renewed focus?  In this workshop we’ll pay attention to what we pay attention to, retool our writing practices and cultivate the concentration needed to do deep work. Each week you’ll be offered one Reading and one Action to complete, as well as a writing prompt. In class you’ll have a chance to report your observations and experience.

Mondays, 10:30am - 12pm (Pacific Time), Oct 5 - Nov 9 | ZOOM

In this generative workshop we will explore how the image works in different kinds of poems. From deep images, to leaping images, to controlling images. With poets such as Garrett Hongo, Dorianne Laux, Lucille Clifton, Larry Levis and others as our guides we will write our own image driven poems while deepening and strengthening our relationship to poetry and to language itself. Open to all poets.

Tuesdays, 4 - 6pm (Pacific Time), Oct 6 - Nov 3 | ZOOM

Minimum words, maximum impact. Flash nonfiction, simply put, is true-to-life writing defined by extreme compression. It's saying what you've got to say using as few words, and as much beauty, as possible. An endlessly accessible, playful, potent form, flash nonfiction is evermore popular; from Brevity to Barren, The Forge to The Sun, legions of journals are publishing great flash. This class is open to all writers, whether you're new to flash or finishing your first collection. Over five weeks, students will read stellar flash, begin new pieces, workshop works-in-progress, and move toward submitting work for publication. | Maximum: 16 writers. Open to all writers.

Thursdays, 6:30 - 8pm (Pacific Time), Oct 8 - Nov 12 | ZOOM

Place shapes us before we have words for it. This workshop looks at how poets have written about landscape, region, and the ground they know, or have lost, with a keen eye for detail, earned veracity, and vitality. Over six weeks we will read poets for whom place is sacred ground: Heaney on the Irish bog, Jeffers on the California coast, Forché on Central America torn by war. We will look how the physical world enters into the poem and what it carries when it does, paying particular attention to what arises in times of conflict. Writers will bring their own landscapes to the table and develop new ways of translating the signals they carry to the page. 

Thursdays, 5:30 - 7pm, Oct 15 - Nov 19

In this generative workshop, we will read and write poems that grapple with the experience of fatherhood. Reading with a particular focus on 21st century poetry, we will explore how the subject has become a rallying call for a wide range of American poets, from Terrance Hayes and Li-Young Lee to Edward Hirsch, Blas Falconer and Kevin Young, and we will look to these poems to actively chart and inspire our own. Blending close reading with in-class writing exercises and workshops, this one-of-a-kind course is aimed at father-poets of all experience levels and ages, from those on the doorstep of fatherhood to those with empty nests and a deep well of memories to draw from.  

Mondays, 10:30am - 12pm (Pacific Time), Nov 16 - Dec 21 | ZOOM

Oregon poet William Stafford once remarked that poetry is "just talk, with a little luck in it.” In this generative workshop we will explore a plainspoken poetry, the poetry that does not yell "Here I am! Look at me!" but instead relies on its own steady and local music, and a little luck. With poets such as Matsuo Basho, Kobayashi Issa, Jane Kenyon, Harryette Mullen, Marie Howe, and William Stafford as our guides we will write our way into new poems and a lot of luck. Open to all poets.

Mondays, 10:30am - 12pm (Pacific Time), Nov 16 - Dec 21 | ZOOM

Oregon poet William Stafford once remarked that poetry is "just talk, with a little luck in it.” In this generative workshop we will explore a plainspoken poetry, the poetry that does not yell "Here I am! Look at me!" but instead relies on its own steady and local music, and a little luck. With poets such as Matsuo Basho, Kobayashi Issa, Jane Kenyon, Harryette Mullen, Marie Howe, and William Stafford as our guides we will write our way into new poems and a lot of luck. Open to all poets.

Elevate Your Manuscript with David Biespiel

Are you wanting to send out your poetry manuscript to contests and publishing houses? Feel close, not sure it's ready, want one last look? Or maybe it's you want to know if you're on the right path? Open to reordering, cutting, finding gaps that need to be filled? Start the new year with a fresh take on your poetry manuscript. Get attention to the whole book. Together, one-on-one, we'll consult, reflect, and strategize. These one-on-one manuscript consultations include: two (2) one-hour Zoom or in-person meetings, a close reading and hand-made marks poem by poem on your manuscript, notes and feedback for you to use to guide your next steps.