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.

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.

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 her craft book The Situation and the Story, Vivian Gornick differentiates between what a work is about on its surface and what it is "about" more deeply; the themes and motivating questions that allow it to contribute to our understanding of others and ourselves. This class will focus on how to identify the relationship between situation and story in both fiction and nonfiction, offering strategies for clarifying that relationship in our own work and concrete tips on how to build in both elements at the level of the prose. Writers can expect to participate in large group discussion, short break-outs, and a writing exercise.

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.

Animals? Don’t they usually belong in children’s fiction or young adult classics? Talking animals? Now we’re in the realm of fantasy. But animals can add depth and character engagement in literary fiction, as well—as embodiments of the natural forces we generally consign to “setting,” or as mirrors to our humanity, or as companionship when a character is otherwise alone and inert in terms of action. In this seminar, we'll explore how to incorporate the animal world—with varying degrees of consciousness—into our stories by examining great literature and discussing our own relations with the rest of the kingdom.