Upcoming Fall & Winter Workshops & Courses

Short Story Mornings

September 15 - October 20 (6 sessions) | 10-11:30 am PT | in person at The Attic Institute in Portland, Oregon

Start your day 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. 

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Writing with the Seasons: Fall

October 3 | 10-noon PT | in person at Literary Arts in Portland, Oregon

Does what you write or how you write it change with the seasons? In these quarterly gatherings we’ll meet to be inspired by the turn of the world. From autumn leaves to springtime flowers, rain and snow and sun, we’ll consider nature’s shifts and how we can incorporate them into our writing practice. We’ll also reflect on the impact of climate change on our seasonal rhythms and on our writing. Through brief readings, writing prompts, and generative exercises, we’ll welcome in and attune our writing to the time of year.

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Roots in Old Stories: Writing with Folklore, Mythology, and Fairy Tales

October 29 - December 10, 2026 (no class Nov 26) Thursdays (8 sessions) | 6-8pm| in person with Literary Arts in Portland, Oregon

Folkloric writing can take many forms. From the overtly fantastical to the strangely realistic, the old tales are flexible. They shift over times and tellers. Their presence in our work can move from obvious to subtle. In this course, we’ll study writing that engages with folklore in a wide variety of ways: speculative memoir that tangles with witch tales, poems that draw on botanical lore, short story fairy tale retellings, mythic poetry and fiction, and more. Through discussion, reflection, and generative writing exercises, we’ll consider how we use old stories and lore in our own work. Suitable for writers at all stages, you can use this course to start a new project or continue work on an ongoing one. Prose writers, poets, and all writers between are welcome.

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Reviving Old Fiction: A Revisioning Workshop

November 3 - December 8 (6 sessions) | 10-11:30 am PT | in person at The Attic Institute in Portland, Oregon

Have you set your novel aside for years but it keeps tugging you back to it? Keep thinking about a short story that’s been sitting in your drafts folder for a decade? This course is dedicated to reviving old works through deep re-visioning. We’ll strive to identify what it is about the work that keeps calling you back to it and thinking outside of the piece’s original shape to find the form that truly tells it. This may mean radically changing the story’s structure or even taking what resonates–the characters, a setting, an event–and placing it in an entirely different premise. This course isn’t for putting a bit of polish on the sentences before submitting the story. It’s for taking the work apart, rewriting it, and putting it all together in a different shape. This course will focus on participant’s projects through frequent discussion and workshopping up to 20 pages each.

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Writing with Nature Magic

October 24 | 2-5 pm CT | online with The Loft

Do you write with the moon? Align your pages with the movements of the seasons? Seek words through communion with trees? Light candles and prepare teas for inspiration? Then you might use nature magic in your writing practice.

In this class, we’ll explore many methods for bringing nature-based magic into our creative routines. Through astrology, divination, seasonal cycles, and other earth-based traditions, we’ll create rituals to connect with inspiration, align writing rhythms with the movements of nature, revise with spells, and much more. This is a generative writing class for all experience levels and genres aimed at creating and deepening new work and writing practices.

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Writing with Plants, Animals, and Ecosystems

January 16- February 20 | 10am-noon PT | online with Writing Workshops

Do you write with your cat in your lap or your dog sitting next to you? Do you enjoy writing under trees or in gardens? Many of us write in partnership with the more-than-human beings that surround us, whether or not we fully realize it. In this generative online writing class, we'll embrace the ways that plants, animals, and ecosystems influence our writing practices — considering how our work shifts and grows around these influences.

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Past Courses

CREATIVE WRITING

Writing with Plants, Animals, and Ecosystems | Writing Workshops

Performing Your Work | Literary Arts

The First 10 Pages | The Loft

Writing with Tarot | Literary Arts

Nature Writing | Salem Public Library

Novel Support | Literary Arts

Your Novel’s First Pages | Literary Arts

Natures of Narrative Structure: Seeking Your Novel’s Shape | The Loft

Writing with the Seasons | Literary Arts

Intermediate Fiction | Linfield University

Speculative Memoir Workshop | Deschutes Public Library

Experiments in Narrative Structure Workshop | Portland Book Festival

Writing Feminist Fairy Tales | The Loft

Advanced Creative Writing | Fiction | Portland Community College

Beginning Creative Writing | Fiction | Portland Community College

Beginning Creative Writing | Prose | University of Washington

LITERATURE, COMPOSITION & RESEARCH

Northwest Literature | Portland Community College

College Writing – Environmental Writing | Portland Community College

Film as Art | Portland Community College

College Writing – Feminist Literature | Portland Community College

Writing with Research | hybrid, online, and f2f | Portland Community College

College Writing | hybrid course | Portland Community College

College Writing | University of Washington

World Literature – Fairy Tales | online | Renton Technical College

College Writing and Writing with Research | online and f2f | Renton Technical College

Technical Writing | Renton Technical College