Loading…
Lit Fest 2025
Venue: Lighthouse clear filter
arrow_back View All Dates
Wednesday, June 11
 

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Workshop
Wednesday June 11, 2025 9:00am - 11:30am MDT
Lighthouse
Register
Advanced weeklong workshops include those with Steve Almond, Ingrid Rojas Contreras, Eduardo Corral, Paul Harding, Mat Johnson, Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, Elizabeth McCracken, Eileen Myles, Helen Phillips, Tony Tulathimutte, and Matthew Zapruder.
Wednesday June 11, 2025 9:00am - 11:30am MDT
Lighthouse 3870 York Street Denver, CO 80205
  All Genres

12:00pm MDT

Lunchtime Business Panel: Book Launch, Behind the Scenes
Wednesday June 11, 2025 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
Lighthouse
Register
A book launch is thrilling, terrifying, heartwarming, stress-inducing, satisfying, exhausting—literally everything, everywhere, all at once. In this panel, authors with books scheduled to release near June 2025 break down how they prepared (or are preparing) for their launch, what they hoped/hope happens, what they know of how publishers evaluate launches, and more. Come prepared to take notes and ask questions.
Speakers
avatar for Gloria J. Browne-Marshall

Gloria J. Browne-Marshall

Instructor
Gloria J. Browne-Marshall is an Emmy Award-winning writer, a professor of Constitutional Law and Africa Studies at John Jay College (CUNY), civil rights attorney, and playwright. She is the author of She Took Justice: The Black Woman, Law, and Power; Race, Law, and American Society... Read More →
JT

Jan Thomas

Instructor
J.E. Thomas spent her early summers stuffing grocery bags with books at the local library, reading feverishly, then repeating the process week after week. So it's not surprising that she thinks books and imagination are the best streaming service around. J.E. is an award-winning writer... Read More →
avatar for Samantha Shea

Samantha Shea

Agent
After graduating from Colgate University, Samantha Shea joined Georges Borchardt, Inc. in 2010 and was made a Vice President in 2016. Her list includes literary fiction, memoir/narrative nonfiction, journalism, popular culture, essays, cultural criticism, and history. Samantha’s... Read More →
Wednesday June 11, 2025 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
Lighthouse 3870 York Street Denver, CO 80205
  Publishing/Career

1:30pm MDT

Novel Whispering: How To Finish a Novel
Wednesday June 11, 2025 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse
Register
Have a novel that you just can’t finish, or finish well? Considering writing a novel and want an insight to how to actually complete one? In this seminar, we'll identify hurdles in completing the process of novel creation and how to get over them. The event will provide participants with practical techniques to kickstart their manuscripts such applied story structuring, thematic tuning, character mirroring, and more.
Speakers
avatar for Mat Johnson

Mat Johnson

Visiting Author
Mat Johnson is a Philip H Knight Chair of Humanities at the University of Oregon. His publications included the novels Invisible Things and Pym, the nonfiction novella The Great Negro Plot, and the graphic novel Incognegro. Johnson is the recipient of the American Book Award, the... Read More →
Wednesday June 11, 2025 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse 3870 York Street Denver, CO 80205
  Fiction

1:30pm MDT

A Premise is Not a Promise: Thriving After the First Sentence
Wednesday June 11, 2025 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse
Register
You’ve gotten to the desk, opened the blank page, and written a new and stunning first sentence. Maybe it involves a crying yeti, or a forklift, or a forklift driven by a crying yeti. Regardless, your pen is fully prepped for sad cryptids and warehouse machinery. And there’s the problem. Sticking to a premise can force your writing down a single, limited path of telling. In this seminar we’ll learn how to treat any premise as an ever-branching path of rewarding surprise. By encouraging discovery and unexpected connections, we’ll become better equipped to thrive long after that first sentence.
Speakers
avatar for Alexander Lumans

Alexander Lumans

Instructor
Alexander Lumans was awarded a 2018 NEA Creative Writing Grant in Fiction. He received fellowships in 2015 and 2024 for expeditions with The Arctic Circle Residency and he was the Spring 2014 Philip Roth Resident at Bucknell University. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in... Read More →
Wednesday June 11, 2025 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse 3870 York Street Denver, CO 80205
  Fiction   Nonfiction/Memoir   Hybrid

1:30pm MDT

Close, Close (Close) Third Person
Wednesday June 11, 2025 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse
Register
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.
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 →
Wednesday June 11, 2025 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse 3870 York Street Denver, CO 80205
  Fiction   Nonfiction/Memoir   Poetry   Hybrid   YA/Children's

1:30pm MDT

How to Hook a Reader in Your First Ten Pages
Wednesday June 11, 2025 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse
Register
It doesn’t matter how good your book is overall if your first ten pages don’t hook the reader. Most agents request the first couple pages to see if they want to read the rest of the book, most readers in a bookstore will give the opening pages a try to decide if they want to buy your book, and the Look Inside button on Amazon allows readers to check out your opening pages. In this class, we’ll discuss a variety of ways to ensure your opening pages are effective. Open to fiction and memoir writers of all levels. Writers should bring their first ten pages either on their computer or printed out for their reference only (meaning, no copies to distribute, just a copy for themselves to make changes to and reference).
Speakers
avatar for Rachel Weaver

Rachel Weaver

Instructor
Rachel Weaver is the author of the novel Point of Direction, which Oprah Magazine named a "Top Ten Book to Pick Up Now". Point of Direction was chosen by the American Booksellers Association as a Top Ten Debut for Spring 2014, by IndieBound as an Indie Next List Pick, by Yoga Journal... Read More →
Wednesday June 11, 2025 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse 3870 York Street Denver, CO 80205
  Fiction   Nonfiction/Memoir   Hybrid

1:30pm MDT

Story as Scrapbook: Structuring Prose with Documents, Letters, Journal Entries, and Articles
Wednesday June 11, 2025 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse
Register
Sometimes the best way to create the big picture of your story is to incorporate artifacts that illuminate an aspect that straightforward narration alone can’t offer. We'll look at examples from fiction and nonfiction that include journal entries, letters, documents, reports, and other artifacts in books by Justin Torres, Alexander Sammartino, Tess Gunty, Eowyn Ivey, Maureen Staunton, and more and explore how and when to use scrapbooking technique to craft our stories.
Speakers
avatar for Jenny Shank

Jenny Shank

Instructor
Jenny Shank's short story collection, Mixed Company, won the George Garrett Fiction Prize and is a finalist for the Colorado Book Award (General Fiction). Jenny Shank's novel, The Ringer, won the High Plains Book Award in fiction, was a finalist for the Mountains & Plains Independent... Read More →
Wednesday June 11, 2025 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse 3870 York Street Denver, CO 80205
  Fiction   Nonfiction/Memoir   Hybrid

1:30pm MDT

10 Photos and a Dog
Wednesday June 11, 2025 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse
Register
In this craft talk, we'll discuss the relationship between poetry and photography. We'll go through a slide show of photos taken by the instructor and how that practice influences their poetry practice, and we'll ruminate a bit about how photography has influenced the history of writing. What’s the difference between writing and photography, since photography has existed. Anyone who wants to take part in the practice of the talk, please bring five photos you’ve taken or ones you feel taken by, not too complicated, and be ready to work with them in a hands-on fashion.
Speakers
avatar for Eileen Myles

Eileen Myles

Visiting Author
Widely renowned, poet, novelist, performer, and art journalist, Eileen Myles is a trailblazer whose decades of literary and artistic work, in the words of the New York Review of Books, “set a bar for openness, frankness, and variability few lives could ever match.” Myles is the... Read More →
Wednesday June 11, 2025 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse 3870 York Street Denver, CO 80205
  Hybrid

1:30pm MDT

Poems for Garden and Forest
Wednesday June 11, 2025 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse
Register
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.
Speakers
avatar for Lynn Wagner

Lynn Wagner

Instructor
Lynn Wagner is the author of No Blues This Raucous Song, which won the Slapering Hol Chapbook competition. She received an MFA from the University of Pittsburgh, where she won the Academy of American Poets prize. She has earned fellowships to the Virginia Center of the Creative Arts... Read More →
Wednesday June 11, 2025 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse 3870 York Street Denver, CO 80205
  Poetry

4:00pm MDT

Create a Moment, Create a World
Wednesday June 11, 2025 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse
Register
How can I evoke a world/situation/character/voice/emotion/idea swiftly and potently? These are questions that fiction writers are always asking, but flash fiction brings particular urgency to them. Participants will explore samples of flash fiction and then experiment with the form themselves. We’ll consider questions such as: How can a piece achieve arc and resonance in such a short space? How does one attain the precision of language essential to this form? What can this form offer the reader in lieu of the satisfaction of a longer narrative? How can the lessons learned by trying our hands at flash fiction be applied to longer works?
Speakers
avatar for Helen Phillips

Helen Phillips

Visiting Author
Helen Phillips is the author of six books, including, most recently, the novel Hum, a New York Times Editors’ Choice. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, and the Italo Calvino Prize in Fabulist Fiction. Her novel... Read More →
Wednesday June 11, 2025 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse 3870 York Street Denver, CO 80205
  Fiction

4:00pm MDT

Fiction Stuckshop
Wednesday June 11, 2025 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse
Register
As writers we often hear about books supposedly written in one brilliant, continuous burst. But what if some stories don't burst so much as they dribble? What if some novels resist and evade, or just wander out into a field and collapse? In this workshop we’ll attempt to resurrect promising pieces of fiction that have somehow gotten stuck. We’ll experiment with techniques that have gotten fellow writers out of similar jams, and try to “re-see”our own work as well as our barriers to it. Come willing to write and experiment.
Speakers
avatar for Amanda Rea

Amanda Rea

Instructor
Amanda Rea's stories and essays have appeared in Harper's, Best American Mystery Stories, One Story, American Short Fiction, Freeman’s, The Missouri Review, The Kenyon Review, The Sun, Electric Literature's Recommended Reading, Indiana Review, Iowa Review, New South, Lit Hub, and... Read More →
Wednesday June 11, 2025 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse 3870 York Street Denver, CO 80205
  Fiction

4:00pm MDT

Freelance Writing: Getting Started and Building your Career
Wednesday June 11, 2025 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse
Register
How do you query editors at websites, magazines, and newspapers to achieve your first assignment, and what habits can help the first one lead to more? We'll discuss ground rules for freelance writers, learn how to find venues open to new writers, study examples of query letters and write our own. We'll discuss useful resources for freelancers, including newsletters and websites that list venues open to pitches, and share info about pay rates and writer’s guidelines. Jenny has been a freelance writer of essays and articles about books, music, sports, and travel for decades, and looks forward to addressing the particular interests of each student.
Speakers
avatar for Jenny Shank

Jenny Shank

Instructor
Jenny Shank's short story collection, Mixed Company, won the George Garrett Fiction Prize and is a finalist for the Colorado Book Award (General Fiction). Jenny Shank's novel, The Ringer, won the High Plains Book Award in fiction, was a finalist for the Mountains & Plains Independent... Read More →
Wednesday June 11, 2025 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse 3870 York Street Denver, CO 80205
  Fiction   Nonfiction/Memoir   Hybrid   Publishing/Career

4:00pm MDT

Endings: How to Wrap Things Up
Wednesday June 11, 2025 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse
Register
Very often, writers get to the two-third or three-quarter mark in a work and bog down, sometimes abandoning it to move on to something shinier. Why does this happen? It's a place at which we move from raising questions for the reader to needing to answer them. This change in mode requires a different set of tools than the beginning of a story, while needing to appear part of a seamless whole. In this workshop, we'll look at how to wrap up loose ends, decide which things we can leave dangling, and what elements make a strong closing sentence.
Speakers
avatar for Mary Robinette Kowal

Mary Robinette Kowal

Instructor
Mary Robinette Kowal is the author of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus award winning alternate history novel The Calculating Stars, the first book in the Lady Astronaut series which continues in 2025 with The Martian Contingency. She is also the author of The Glamourist Histories series, Ghost... Read More →
Wednesday June 11, 2025 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse 3870 York Street Denver, CO 80205
  Fiction   Nonfiction/Memoir   Hybrid   YA/Children's

4:00pm MDT

Up Front: Exploring and Making Poem Titles
Wednesday June 11, 2025 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse
Register
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.
Speakers
avatar for Lynn Wagner

Lynn Wagner

Instructor
Lynn Wagner is the author of No Blues This Raucous Song, which won the Slapering Hol Chapbook competition. She received an MFA from the University of Pittsburgh, where she won the Academy of American Poets prize. She has earned fellowships to the Virginia Center of the Creative Arts... Read More →
Wednesday June 11, 2025 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse 3870 York Street Denver, CO 80205
  Poetry

4:00pm MDT

Two-Day Intensive: Comedic Memoir
Wednesday June 11, 2025 4:00pm - Thursday June 12, 2025 7:00pm MDT
Lighthouse
Register
You don’t have to be a celebrity comedian to write a funny memoir. You don’t have to be born with a sense of humor or have had anything funny happen to you. A memoirist must make a meal out of their experience, however minor, however unfunny–that’s the job we’ll learn to do. There are many types of comedy and many comedic tools, and we’ll talk about how to use them all to write 200+ pages. We’ll refer to a few perfect comedic memoirs as examples. In this lecture-style class, students will brainstorm and receive informative handouts and inspirational assignments.
Speakers
avatar for Elissa Bassist

Elissa Bassist

Instructor
Elissa Bassist is the editor of the “Funny Women” column on The Rumpus and author of the tragicomic memoir Hysterical, a semifinalist for The Thurber Prize for American Humor. As a founding contributor to The Rumpus, she’s written cultural and personal criticism since the website... Read More →
Wednesday June 11, 2025 4:00pm - Thursday June 12, 2025 7:00pm MDT
Lighthouse 3870 York Street Denver, CO 80205
  Nonfiction/Memoir

4:30pm MDT

The Book Project Showcase
Wednesday June 11, 2025 4:30pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse
Come meet our very successful Book Project authors Nini Berndt, Gloria Browne-Marshall, Jan Thomas, and Jenny Dandy read from their work and talk about writing their books. Stick around for book signings and Q&A from William Haywood Henderson and others from the Book Project!
Speakers
avatar for Gloria J. Browne-Marshall

Gloria J. Browne-Marshall

Instructor
Gloria J. Browne-Marshall is an Emmy Award-winning writer, a professor of Constitutional Law and Africa Studies at John Jay College (CUNY), civil rights attorney, and playwright. She is the author of She Took Justice: The Black Woman, Law, and Power; Race, Law, and American Society... Read More →

Wednesday June 11, 2025 4:30pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse 3870 York Street Denver, CO 80205
  Fiction   Nonfiction/Memoir   Hybrid

7:00pm MDT

Writing in Color Trivia Night with Black People Know Things
Wednesday June 11, 2025 7:00pm - 9:00pm MDT
Lighthouse
Register
Love trivia? Looking for new writer friends? Join us for a night of BIPOC-centered trivia hosted by Black People Know Things! This event is open to all with the aim of highlighting BIPOC+* culture and providing writers of color an opportunity to connect.
*BIPOC+ includes but is not limited to African, Indigenous, Native, Latinx, Asian, Pacific Islander, Arab, and Multiracial heritage.
Speakers
MI
Wednesday June 11, 2025 7:00pm - 9:00pm MDT
Lighthouse 3870 York Street Denver, CO 80205
  All Genres
 
Share Modal

Share this link via

Or copy link

Filter sessions
Apply filters to sessions.
Filtered by Date - 
Clear filter
Friday, June 6
Saturday, June 7
Sunday, June 8
Monday, June 9
Tuesday, June 10
Wednesday, June 11
Thursday, June 12
Friday, June 13
Lighthouse
Zoom
  • All Genres
  • Dramatic Writing
  • Fiction
  • Hybrid
  • Nonfiction/Memoir
  • Poetry
  • Publishing/Career
  • YA/Children's
  • Audience
  • Advanced Workshop
  • Craft Seminar
  • Event
  • Lunchtime Business Panel
  • Two-Day Intensive