Lit Fest 2025

Western storytelling traditions decree that a linear structure (along with the three act structure, the hero’s journey, and a rising self-esteem arc) are mandatory features of any satisfying story. This program challenges that assumption by exploring non-linear structures, specifically cyclic and nested structures, using examples from non-Western stories and films.
Writers will come to understand how these non-linear structures allow for thematic stacking, embracing of moral complexity, and a synthesis between form and content to explode the idea that a straight line is the best way to tell every story.

How do we support our writing habit without wearing ourselves out in our day jobs so much that it’s hard to write? Let’s talk about off-the-beaten path possibilities for Right Livelihood (the Buddhist term for work that serves the world) for writers, including translating what we know as writers into helping others grow their creativity, day jobs that don’t have anything necessarily to do with writing, cobbling together freelance work with enough time to write, or rearranging our time in our current work-life balance. We’ll also do writing prompts together to conserve with our callings and brainstorm possibilities and next steps.

In this class, we'll talk about "close third person" point of view, and how to really embody a character’s innermost psyche and motivations. How can you heighten emotion in your writing through the closest point of view possible? In this class, we'll discuss the particular demands of close third POV by exploring elements such as free indirect discourse, the perception layer, psychic distance, "head-hopping," interiority, and embodied physical action.

Let’s write poems inspired by the world around us! Excerpting DH Lawrence’s Birds, Beasts and Flowers! and poems in Camille Dungy’s anthology Black Nature, we’ll write poems of creatures, plants and places. As Dungy herself writes in “Language,” nature can be a key to the cipher: “The way the high hawk’s key unlocks the throat / Of the sky and the coyote’s yip knocks / it shut.” Bring your bats, ants, tomatoes and daffodils, and we'll go wild.

Poets have long known that rhyme is an effective tool that can enhance the overall meaning and impact of a poem. When used well, rhyme not only brings together unexpected words, but can also make a poem more ear-pleasing and creates a kind of expectation and aural satisfaction. Is rhyme a thing of the past, is the pendulum due to swing in the other direction; or might there be room for a variety of types of rhyme applicable to contemporary poetry? In this course, we’ll consider these and other questions.

Usually, the title is the first thing you read of the poem on the page. In this class we’ll explore at least five different ways to make a poem title and escape the uninspiring addition of an appendage or the mere label. Using models from Thomas Lux, Yusef Komanaaka, Wallace Stevens, Mary Ruefle and more we will play approaches to create context, clarify focus and subvert meaning.

Bring two poems you have written but may be unsure about as well as any stray titles you may have.