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Lit Fest 2025
Audience: Craft Seminar clear filter
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Saturday, June 7
 

9:00am MDT

Art of Creative Research (V)
Saturday June 7, 2025 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Zoom
Register
Research is a fundamental part of long-form writing projects. Knowing where to find the information and how to access it is a key skill for writers across genres. Background information, facts, and anecdotes all make a story richer and more authoritative. Drawing from journalism and the oral history tradition, this class provides tools for writers working on essays, profiles, memoirs, or novels. We'll create a roadmap for our research and discuss how to prepare and conduct interviews to collect information professionally, responsibly, and ethically.
Speakers
avatar for Ladane Nasseri

Ladane Nasseri

Instructor
Ladane Nasseri is a journalist and writer. A former Middle East correspondent for Bloomberg News where she led Iran’s news coverage, Ladane has reported for a decade and a half from Tehran, Dubai, and Beirut. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, McSweeney’s, Businessweek... Read More →
Saturday June 7, 2025 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Zoom
  Fiction   Nonfiction/Memoir

9:00am MDT

Managing the Middle: How to Not Lose Readers Along the Way
Saturday June 7, 2025 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Lighthouse
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You’ve nailed your opening and you have a killer ending, but what about the middle? If you can’t hold your reader’s attention in the middle, they might not make it to that killer ending. In this class, we’ll examine how to maintain literary tensions to ensure your reader keeps turning the pages, focusing specifically on the concepts of conflicts, curiosities, and clocks. Please have in mind a novel or story you're working on or that you've read and admire for its ability to keep you reading. This class will be a mixture of lecture, discussion, and generative exercises.
Speakers
avatar for Kristin Koval

Kristin Koval

Instructor
Kristin Koval is a former lawyer who always wanted to be a writer but initially wandered down other paths. Her debut novel, Penitence, was named a Barnes & Noble Discover Pick for February 2025, a People Magazine Best Book of the Week, a Book of the Month Pick, an Indie Next, an Apple... Read More →
Saturday June 7, 2025 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Lighthouse 3870 York Street Denver, CO 80205
  Fiction   Nonfiction/Memoir   Dramatic Writing

9:00am MDT

When Everything Changed: Writing Your Marker Story (V)
Saturday June 7, 2025 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Zoom
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An accident. A cancer diagnosis. A bold decision. A life saved. A loved one lost. That moment when you saw yourself clearly. These are defining moments—marker moments because they make a mark in which nothing is the same afterward. Marker stories can be written in a variety of nonfiction formats: personal essay, memoir-in-essays, letter, speech, a story for stage or a recording. In this two-hour craft workshop, we’ll read and listen to excerpts from marker stories in each a variety of genres, unpack what makes them poignant and talk about how to get started on our own.
Speakers
avatar for Ellen Blum Barish

Ellen Blum Barish

Instructor
Ellen Blum Barish is the author of the spiritual memoir Seven Springs: A Memoir and the essay collection Views from the Home Office Window: On Motherhood, Family and Life. Her work explores themes of identity, family, and spirituality. You can find her essays and prose poems in Brevity... Read More →
Saturday June 7, 2025 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Zoom
  Nonfiction/Memoir

9:00am MDT

Oracle Poetry: Pushing the Veil Between the Spirit Realm and Our Writing (V)
Saturday June 7, 2025 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Lighthouse
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Using oracle cards as writing prompts, we’ll explore messages and clues from the universe through divinatory free writing, unlocking our truths with guided cards as our mentors. We’ll use various techniques to shape our raw writings into crafted poems until we find at least one fragment that resonates deeply. Through the power of words and the oracle's wisdom, we’ll push back the veil between this world and the realm of spirits, using our intuition and awareness as an alchemical process to embrace what arises from the unknown.

Various Oracle decks will be used during the workshop, so cards are not a requirement.
Speakers
avatar for Hillary Leftwich

Hillary Leftwich

Instructor
Hillary Leftwich is a neurodivergent, multimedia writer and the author of Ghosts Are Just Strangers Who Know How to Knock (CCM Press, 2019 and Agape Editions, 2023 new edition), Aura (Future Tense Books and Blackstone Audio Publishing, 2022), and Saint Dymphna’s Playbook (forthcoming... Read More →
Saturday June 7, 2025 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Lighthouse 3870 York Street Denver, CO 80205
  Poetry   Hybrid

1:30pm MDT

ChatGPT Is My Secretary (V)
Saturday June 7, 2025 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Zoom
Register
ChatGPT is awful. It’s a plagiarist, it lies and fabricates, it will run us out of our jobs… but it’s also free, exploitable, non-human labor! AI can be the answer to our harried dreams: a sometimes-reliable entity to perform research, consolidation, organization, and administrative tasks that would otherwise take us hours or months to do. What are the many ways a writer can use recent technologies to save ourselves valuable time and labor? How much can we trust it, and what are the ways we really shouldn’t? No technical knowledge needed; your instructor doesn’t have any, either.
Speakers
avatar for Erika Krouse

Erika Krouse

Instructor
Erika Krouse has taught at Lighthouse since 2008; she is a Book Project mentor and a winner of the Lighthouse Beacon Award. Erika's most recent collection of short stories, Save Me, Stranger, is out with Flatiron Books in January 2025. It has garnered starred reviews from Kirkus and... Read More →
Saturday June 7, 2025 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Zoom
  Fiction   Nonfiction/Memoir   Poetry   Hybrid   YA/Children's

1:30pm MDT

Scansion Blast
Saturday June 7, 2025 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse
Register
William Carlos Williams said, "A poem is a machine made out of words," and this is a course in mechanics. We'll look at a few of the different machines that poets have developed over the millennia—and why they still purr and hum—then use the late, great Robert Fitzgerald’s method to mark them up. This course is for anyone who wants to have a better understanding of the nuts and bolts of how metrical poems (and free verse, which is also a set of forms) actually work at the syllabic level. Bring pencils... and pliers.
Speakers
avatar for David Rothman

David Rothman

Instructor
David J. Rothman has taught at Lighthouse since 1998, winning the Beacon Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2012. He has published six volumes of poetry, including My Brother’s Keeper (Lithic Press, 2019) and The Elephant’s Chiropractor (Conundrum Press, 1998), both of which... Read More →
Saturday June 7, 2025 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse 3870 York Street Denver, CO 80205
  Poetry

4:00pm MDT

Everyday Objects, Luminous Things
Saturday June 7, 2025 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse
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In this workshop, we’ll consider several short works of fiction, specifically “Pet Milk” by Stuart Dybek and the lesser-known “I Have a Stapler” by Dom Leone, to see how a story can be built around and rise up from a common object or two—the staple that a can of baking cream might seem to be as well as the tabletop stapler which writers like us use every day to “staple things.” We’ll look for our own everyday objects that might be made to be luminous or charged with a sense of meaning and matter, heft and story.
Speakers
avatar for Peter Markus

Peter Markus

Instructor
Peter Markus is the author of the novel Bob, or Man on Boat, as well as the books of stories, We Make Mud and The Fish and the Not Fish, all three published by Dzanc Books. A recent book of poems, When Our Fathers Return to Us as Birds, was published in September of 2021 from Wayne... Read More →
Saturday June 7, 2025 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse 3870 York Street Denver, CO 80205
  Fiction

4:00pm MDT

Cultivate Your Metaphors
Saturday June 7, 2025 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse
Register
Metaphor is the art of drawing connections between things to create new meanings. In this workshop, we'll learn to identify the metaphors in our writing, explore ways to cultivate new associations, and generate new possibilities. Bring a draft of your writing—it will be your starting point for our journeys into the latent imagination.
Speakers
avatar for Teow Lim Goh

Teow Lim Goh

Instructor
Teow Lim Goh is the author of two poetry collections, Islanders (2016) and Faraway Places (2021), and an essay collection Western Journeys (2022). Her essays, poetry, and criticism have been featured in The Georgia Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Los Angeles Review of Books, PBS NewsHour... Read More →
Saturday June 7, 2025 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse 3870 York Street Denver, CO 80205
  Fiction   Nonfiction/Memoir   Poetry   Hybrid

4:00pm MDT

Learning Craft Techniques from Literature in Translation
Saturday June 7, 2025 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse
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Different languages and literary traditions invite and make possible the use of different craft techniques. Fortunately, the US literary landscape is gradually holding more space for works in translation, though they still comprise a small percentage of the market. In this course, we'll study craft techniques used in some very recent publications in translation and discuss what we can learn from both the authors and the translators to adopt into our own writing practices.
Speakers
avatar for Poupeh Missaghi

Poupeh Missaghi

Instructor
Poupeh Missaghi is a writer, translator, and editor. Her debut book trans(re)lating house one was published in 2020 and her second book Sound Museum was published in 2024 (Coffee House Press). Her most recent translation In the Streets of Tehran, a book of witness narratives, was... Read More →
Saturday June 7, 2025 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse 3870 York Street Denver, CO 80205
  Fiction   Nonfiction/Memoir   Poetry   Hybrid

4:00pm MDT

Rhyme: Crime or Sublime?
Saturday June 7, 2025 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse
Register
John Milton called rhyme "the invention of a barbarous age." But the closer we look, the more mysterious and fascinating it becomes. If we think of rhyme as the entire universe of similar sounds among words, we soon realize that rhyme includes not only "cat" and "bat," but also "cat" and "coat," along with "cat" and "hand"... and things just become more and more complex from there. Rhyme may be impossible to escape, and the real question is how to manage it. In this class, we'll explore the varieties of rhyme and how poets and even prose writers use it—or purposely avoid it—today. If you have the interest and the time / come learn about rhyme.
Speakers
avatar for David Rothman

David Rothman

Instructor
David J. Rothman has taught at Lighthouse since 1998, winning the Beacon Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2012. He has published six volumes of poetry, including My Brother’s Keeper (Lithic Press, 2019) and The Elephant’s Chiropractor (Conundrum Press, 1998), both of which... Read More →
Saturday June 7, 2025 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse 3870 York Street Denver, CO 80205
  Poetry

4:00pm MDT

How to Build Your Niche as a Poet (V)
Saturday June 7, 2025 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Zoom
Register
Discussing his background as a traveling Himalayan poet, our instructor shall share his efforts to build bridges across continents despite being from a small nation. The lecture will explore the unique Himalayan tradition of traveling saints and bards, who played a vital role in shaping the instructor’s world and helping him develop the resilience and inner spirituality needed to establish his niche as a poet. The lecture will turn to the universal, covering how to develop a unique voice, cultivate a clear identity, and position oneself within the literary world.
Speakers
avatar for Yuyutsu Sharma

Yuyutsu Sharma

Instructor
Yuyutsu Sharma is one of the few poets in the world who make their living with poetry. Named as “The world-renowned Himalayan poet,” (The Guardian) “One-Man Academy” (The Kathmandu Post) and “Himalayan Neruda” (Mike Graves), Yuyutsu is a vibrant force on the world poetry... Read More →
Saturday June 7, 2025 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Zoom
  Poetry   Hybrid   Publishing/Career
 
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