Advanced Poetry Workshop
Have you taken poetry workshops at VisArts? Do you feel ready to deepen your craft? Work with other experienced writers to study, learn new forms and critique your classmates' work.
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ONSITE: Intermediate Poetry
This workshop is for students who have some experience writing poetry and are looking to dig deeper into their writing practice. In this poetry workshop, we'll read published poems (written by contemporary and historical poets), and we'll use this work to inspire our own creative writing work. We'll write poems, and we'll spend time discussing […]
read moreONSITE: Speculative Worlds: Science Fiction + Fantasy Short Story Writing
Got ideas for a science fiction or fantasy story but aren’t sure how to approach it? Have you wanted to try exploring these imaginative genres but need a push to get started? Looking for like-minded folks with whom to share work and explore ideas? If you answered yes to any of those questions, this is […]
read moreONSITE: Writing is Magic: A Creative Exploration
Whether you're currently working on a literary project or trying to get inspiration, this generative workshop will serve as a gentle and fun way to push yourself creatively. Through prompts, mini-lectures, readings, supportive discussion, group members will work towards realizing their prose visions.
read moreONSITE: POV as Worldbuilding: Short Fiction Workshop (Only offered once a year)
Beyond the fundamentals of point-of-view considerations in fiction, we will take a methodical approach to POV experimentation in our work. We'll study how the limitations of each POV can actually result in a fully fleshed-out story. You will come away with several short pieces or one longer.
read moreONSITE: Short Story Fiction Writing
Explore short story fiction writing by studying narrative craft elements like story, plot, character, scene, structure, archetypal patterns and dialogue. We’ll examine professionally published pieces and your own work. By the end of the course, you’ll be ready to begin a story based on a word or an idea. You’ll also understand how to evaluate […]
read moreONSITE: Out of Order: Writing Nonlinear Narratives
In this generative workshop, students of multiple creative writing genres will explore nonlinear storytelling and learn how and when to effectively use this more experimental narrative style. Students will read and discuss short texts and media in class to explore storytelling using a nonlinear framework, including short films, poems, essays, and short fiction. These will […]
read moreONSITE: The Creative Spark
Clarissa Pinkola Estes writes about el duende, “the goblin wind,” that can breathe the creative spark into fire. The goal of this creative writing class is to fan your ideas and inspirations into flame. We’ll use timed writing, dream journals, guided imagery, Active Imagination, and anything else we can think of to get in touch […]
read moreONSITE: Writing the Memoir
Thomas Larson writes that “memoir is most successful when it is not the ‘story of a life,’ but a focused part of that life—a dozen summers spent working on a grandfather’s farm, a long relationship with a dying relative, the first year of law school.” You’ll work with writing prompts and timed writing exercises, and […]
read moreONSITE: Deep Dive: Writing Images
Dive deep into the realm of images to discover new possibilities for your poetry and prose. In this workshop, we'll tap into memory, imagination, description, observation, and discovery, through a number of playful, strange, and thought-provoking writing activities. These exercises will inspire new work and offer fresh ways of looking at your works in progress, […]
read moreONSITE: Writing Poetry
Explore the fundamental elements of poetry, through the reading and writing of poems. We'll read and discuss poems written by other people, then write poems of our own, with special attention to elements of line, image, and syntax. Students will learn how close readings of other poems may inspire their own work, and how they […]
read moreONSITE: Confessional Poetry Writing
This class will focus on confessional style poetry. We will look at examples for inspiration as well as write in a workshop style class.Poets like Sylvia Plath will be helpful in guiding us to look inward and explore some themes for our writing, including personal growth, grief, beauty, and the spiritual. Be prepared to leave […]
read moreONLINE: Writing + Cats
Some of the world’s best-known writers have adored cats, and that adoration has shown up in their writing. sharing about the influence of their feline friends on their literary We will talk about the influence cats can have on how we approach our creative writing and explore how we can use cats to help us […]
read moreONLINE: Writing + Photography
In this introductory class, we will take some basic principles of photography and apply them to our work as writers. We will take photos; do some writing; learn to crop and edit both our images and our words; talk about the similarities between the two art forms; and how our exploration of one can feed […]
read moreONLINE: Facing the Blank Page
In this 2-hour generative session, we will practice managing our doubts when they interfere with our creative process. Together, we will allow ourselves to write in ways that are brave and embarrassing, confusing and important, strange and exciting. We will create a set of strategies we can use the next time we face a blank […]
read moreONLINE: The Tough Stuff: Healing Through Writing
This class is for the conversations that still need to happen. We’ll talk about the barriers that keep us from writing what we need to write. We’ll also examine works by Chanel Miller, Jeannette Walls, and Layli Long Soldier to take lessons from the ways in which they make difficult topics easier to access. Students […]
read moreONLINE: Submitting Writing to Literary Journals
Sending writing to literary journals can be an intimidating process. In this two-hour class, we'll take a step-by-step approach to sending our writing out to journal editors. Learn directly from Samantha Steiner, MFA, a writer with 50+ publications including fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. In addition to her work in the world of book publishing, Steiner […]
read moreRVA Poetry Fest: Persona Poems
Want to imagine the world beyond your own experience? To wonder about what you might find in the consciousness of a historical figure, an animal, a lamp, a well-loved book, a pen lost behind the refrigerator? Come explore these ideas via "persona poems," a style of poem that asks us to attempt the difficult but […]
read moreRVA Poetry Fest: Three Japanese Forms: Then, Now, And Yet to Come
In this 90-minute workshop students will first go back to ancient Japan and see the beginnings of three poetic forms: the haiku, the waka, and the haibun. Students will then see how these forms have developed over time and how they could be used in the future. Participants will go home with a packet of […]
read moreRVA Poetry Fest: The Impact of Spoken-word, Poetry Slam, and Digital Era
Inaugural poet laureate and National Poetry Slam Champion Douglas Powell/Roscoe Burnems will discuss poetry and the impact of spoken-word and navigating the digital world in this form of storytelling. Participants will also engage in a writing workshop centered trajectory of poetic storytelling and understanding emotional checkpoints in performance poetry
read moreRVA Poetry Fest: Zine-making with Lyall Harris: “Where I’m From”
In this 90-minute workshop (ages 13+), we will use prompts gleaned from the poem "Where I'm From" to write our own inspired version, which will find physical form in a simple zine structure. Lyall is an ambassador for this project, an initiative of Virginia Center for the Book.
read moreRVA Poetry Fest: Poetry Comics
Comics are the magical bridge from text to image. Working from prompts, we will combine drawings and words to make something greater than the sum of its parts. No previous experience necessary, just a willingness to experiment!
read moreONSITE: The Magic of Fiction Writing
Whether you're currently working on a fiction project or trying to get inspiration, this generative workshop will serve as a gentle and fun way to push yourself creatively. Through prompts, readings, and supportive discussion, group members will work towards realizing their visions. We will read out loud from our own work and also from interviews […]
read moreONSITE: Writing the Shadow
Explore the dark self, what Carl Jung called the “shadow” part of our psyche. Sometimes we see it in our dreams, sometimes it appears in dark imaginings. We’ll learn what the shadow can add to our creative writing by experimenting with timed writing, dream journals, guided imagery and Active Imagination.
read moreONLINE: The Tough Stuff: Healing Through Writing
This class is for the conversations that still need to happen. We’ll talk about the barriers that keep us from writing what we need to write. We’ll also examine works by Chanel Miller, Jeannette Walls, and Layli Long Soldier to take lessons from the ways in which they make difficult topics easier to access. Students […]
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