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Lit Fest 2025
Type: Dramatic Writing clear filter
Friday, June 6
 

9:00am MDT

Tuning In: Using Music and Playlists to Develop Character in Prose
Friday June 6, 2025 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Lighthouse
Register
In this seminar, we'll explore how writers use music to convey their characters' desires, contradictions, fears, aspirations, and aesthetic sensibilities. We’ll discuss practical tips on using music in written narratives to serve a similar function as soundtracks in film and help view and develop our characters through another medium. We’ll even touch on copyright issues and how to artfully avoid infringing on another artist’s material without compromising your own creative intentions. Please bring a list of songs that relate to your current project. All genres welcome!
Speakers
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Anthony D'Aries

Instructor
Friday June 6, 2025 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Lighthouse 3870 York Street Denver, CO 80205
  Fiction   Nonfiction/Memoir   Poetry   Hybrid   Dramatic Writing

1:30pm MDT

Welcome to the Sh*t Show: Your Inciting Incident
Friday June 6, 2025 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse
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The “inciting incident” is the narrative event that propels your whole story into forward motion. But what should the inciting incident be, and where? Does “inciting” also mean “exciting”? What makes it work, and what makes it flop? By exploring elements such as stakes and dramatic questions, we’ll look at ways to heighten that inciting incident to invite your reader into your protagonist’s lovable disaster. Open to all prose writers.
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 →
Friday June 6, 2025 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse 3870 York Street Denver, CO 80205
  Fiction   Nonfiction/Memoir   Hybrid   Dramatic Writing   YA/Children's

1:30pm MDT

Erasures, Lacunae, and Voids: Writing What's Not There
Friday June 6, 2025 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse
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Sometimes what's not in a piece of writing is just as crucial to making it tick as what's explicitly spelled out. The holes in our work can serve as invitations for readers to fall more deeply into the text and start creatively connecting the dots on their own. By breathing deliberate space into the page, we can write more engagingly—and in deeper, more active collaboration with our readers. This craft seminar will offer generative opportunities to play with withdrawal, opacity, and negative space as valuable creative techniques.
Speakers
avatar for Sasha Geffen

Sasha Geffen

Instructor
Sasha Geffen is the author of Glitter Up the Dark: How Pop Music Broke the Binary, an analysis of queerness and gender nonconformity in the past century of popular music. Their writing attends to the intersections of gender, pop culture, the body, and technology, and has been published... Read More →
Friday June 6, 2025 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse 3870 York Street Denver, CO 80205
  Fiction   Nonfiction/Memoir   Poetry   Hybrid   Dramatic Writing

4:00pm MDT

Dynamic Scenes
Friday June 6, 2025 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse
Register
Scenes are the engine that makes a story “go.” Right now you may be saying, yes, yes, I know how to write a scene, scenes are easy. But they’re really not, and many writers believe they’re writing a scene when they’re really writing summary or description or something else. So what's the difference between a dynamic scene that leaps off the page and a dull one that just lies there, snoring? In this class, we'll investigate scene-building techniques such as conflict-driven action, setting, situation, sensory language, dramatic pacing, surprise, tension, and suspense, so you can create that must-turn-the-page feeling.
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 →
Friday June 6, 2025 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse 3870 York Street Denver, CO 80205
  Fiction   Nonfiction/Memoir   Dramatic Writing   YA/Children's

4:00pm MDT

Write a Happy Story
Friday June 6, 2025 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse
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Dramatic stories tend to focus on negative events and bad things happening to all kinds of people. In this class, we'll flip the script and work through examples, exercises, and discussion to examine what it would mean to write a happy story, how to go about it, why we usually don't, and what happy story elements we can use to enrich our more typical, more unhappy stories.
Speakers
avatar for Nick Arvin

Nick Arvin

Instructor
Nick Arvin is the author of In the Electric Eden, Articles of War, and The Reconstructionist. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Wall Street Journal and has been honored with awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Library Association... Read More →
Friday June 6, 2025 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse 3870 York Street Denver, CO 80205
  Fiction   Nonfiction/Memoir   Dramatic Writing   YA/Children's

4:00pm MDT

Developing Writing Habits
Friday June 6, 2025 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse
Register
With jobs and family/personal responsibilities, sustaining a writing practice seems harder these days than ever before. We struggle to find the time and energy to find our way into our creative space. This course will offer prompts and habit-building techniques to help us sustain our writing practices, whether to exercise our muscles or to make it through long-term projects.
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 →
Friday June 6, 2025 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse 3870 York Street Denver, CO 80205
  Fiction   Nonfiction/Memoir   Poetry   Hybrid   Dramatic Writing   Publishing/Career   YA/Children's

4:00pm MDT

Vocational Poetics: Working, Writing, Calling Out
Friday June 6, 2025 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse
Register
Most of us aren't able to support ourselves materially through what we would consider our “calling” (an idea that doesn’t recognize the inequities and issues of access shaped by capitalism, racism, and ableism). Lacking a single “vocation,” we may cobble together our livelihood through many sources. Beyond the fantasy of a consistent work/life balance, this lecture considers the root of vocation: both the labor of writing and the “calling out.” Through what forms and technologies are we able to be heard?
Speakers
avatar for Cass Eddington

Cass Eddington

Instructor
Cass Eddington is a poet, teacher, and editor originally from Utah. They are the author of the chapbooks Vernal Hurt (Magnificent Field) and TRANSIT (Spiral Editions, forthcoming January 2023) with recent work in Annulet, Deluge, DREGINALD, La Vague. They are a PhD candidate in the... Read More →
Friday June 6, 2025 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse 3870 York Street Denver, CO 80205
  Fiction   Nonfiction/Memoir   Poetry   Hybrid   Dramatic Writing   Publishing/Career   YA/Children's
 
Saturday, June 7
 

9:00am MDT

Managing the Middle: How to Not Lose Readers Along the Way
Saturday June 7, 2025 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Lighthouse
Register
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

Two-Day Intensive: Breaking the Surface—Revision
Saturday June 7, 2025 9:00am - Sunday June 8, 2025 12:00pm MDT
Lighthouse
Register
You finish a draft—then what? The text can seem impenetrable, but you know you need to open it to new possibilities. You can change a word, add a comma, reorder the clauses, but you know (deep down) that you’re not yet getting at what you know needs to occur in order to dramatize your idea. Noodling around on the surface won’t suffice. In this intensive, we’ll break the surface of our drafts and discover the potential for meaningful change. Writers will come away with an expanded understanding of their texts.
Speakers
avatar for William Haywood Henderson

William Haywood Henderson

Instructor
William Haywood Henderson earned a BA in English from the University of California at Berkeley, an MA in creative writing from Brown University, and attended Stanford University as a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Creative Writing. He is the author of three novels: Native, The Rest of... Read More →
Saturday June 7, 2025 9:00am - Sunday June 8, 2025 12:00pm MDT
Lighthouse 3870 York Street Denver, CO 80205
  Fiction   Nonfiction/Memoir   Hybrid   Dramatic Writing   YA/Children's

9:00am MDT

Two-Day Intensive: Finish It! Perspective and Persistence (V)
Saturday June 7, 2025 9:00am - Sunday June 8, 2025 12:00pm MDT
Zoom
Register
Working on a long poem, story, essay, play, or book? What will it take to finish? Can we do it—or at least create an actionable plan to finish—in a weekend? This intensive will provide solutions and strategies in the form of planning sessions, readings, discussions, writing exercises, charts, and other resources. We’ll cover the role of editors and feedback; myths and benefits of breaks; how to bypass blocks, fears and resistances; and where planning meets plain old knuckling down. Any genre welcome. This may be most useful for work between midway and “almost there.” Let’s find our way to the finish line together.
Speakers
avatar for Khadijah Queen

Khadijah Queen

Instructor
Khadijah Queen is the author of five books and four chapbooks of innovative poetry. Her full length collections are Conduit (Black Goat/Akashic Books 2008), featured in Poets & Writers magazine's Debut Poets issue; Black Peculiar, winner of the 2010 Noemi Press book award and published... Read More →
Saturday June 7, 2025 9:00am - Sunday June 8, 2025 12:00pm MDT
Zoom
  Fiction   Nonfiction/Memoir   Poetry   Hybrid   Dramatic Writing   Publishing/Career   YA/Children's
 
Sunday, June 8
 

1:30pm MDT

Drama-rama: Conflict and Dramatic Questions
Sunday June 8, 2025 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse
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Sometimes in the effort to avoid melodrama, we avoid, well, drama. How can you create a conflict that matters to both you and your reader? We’ll discuss elements of compelling conflicts such as dilemma, inner and external struggle, conflicting codes and quests, dramatic questions, and thematic change. Come with a problem, and leave with a dramatic, story-generating conflict. Class will consist of discussion, readings, and in-class exercises.
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 →
Sunday June 8, 2025 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse 3870 York Street Denver, CO 80205
  Fiction   Nonfiction/Memoir   Hybrid   Dramatic Writing   YA/Children's
 
Tuesday, June 10
 

9:00am MDT

The Radical Four-Act Eastern Storytelling Structure (V)
Tuesday June 10, 2025 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Zoom
Register
Discussions in the West around diversity in the arts often focus on the identities of characters and creators. However, true diversity is about more than just plopping different faces into stories that are 100 percent Western in spirit; it can―and should―encompass diverse structures, themes, and values. The program explores how storytelling staples in the West, such as the three-act structure and themes of empowerment and change, are far from universal. It introduces viewers to the East Asian four-act story structure and explains how Eastern value systems such as collectivism can dictate form.
Speakers
avatar for Henry Lien

Henry Lien

Instructor
Henry Lien is a 2012 graduate of Clarion West Writers Workshop, Seattle. He is the author of the critically-acclaimed and award-winning Peasprout Chen middle grade fantasy series, which he began writing under the guidance of George R.R. Martin, Kelly Link, and Chuck Palahniuk at Clarion... Read More →
Tuesday June 10, 2025 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Zoom
  Fiction   Nonfiction/Memoir   Poetry   Dramatic Writing   YA/Children's

1:30pm MDT

Diving Into the Wreck—Finding Your Obsessions
Tuesday June 10, 2025 1:30pm - 2:30pm MDT
Lighthouse
Register
Denis Johnson said, “The stories of the fallen world lay inside us. That’s the interesting stuff.” At our best, we all write about that slice of experience and knowledge that haunts and obsesses us. Does it have to be dark or fallen? No. But it has to be true to the deepest corners of your consciousness. In this seminar, we’ll look at what you write about and why. We’ll find the richest avenues for you to pursue, to set you off from the pack.
Speakers
avatar for William Haywood Henderson

William Haywood Henderson

Instructor
William Haywood Henderson earned a BA in English from the University of California at Berkeley, an MA in creative writing from Brown University, and attended Stanford University as a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Creative Writing. He is the author of three novels: Native, The Rest of... Read More →
Tuesday June 10, 2025 1:30pm - 2:30pm MDT
Lighthouse 3870 York Street Denver, CO 80205
  Fiction   Nonfiction/Memoir   Poetry   Hybrid   Dramatic Writing

4:00pm MDT

Find Your Unique Style
Tuesday June 10, 2025 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse
Register
Your style is yours alone. Readers will return to your writing again and again because they like the way you shape consciousness on the page. In this seminar, we’ll dig into your style, decide on what sets you apart, then hone your unique voice. You’ll come away with a clear sense of your true self on the page.
Speakers
avatar for William Haywood Henderson

William Haywood Henderson

Instructor
William Haywood Henderson earned a BA in English from the University of California at Berkeley, an MA in creative writing from Brown University, and attended Stanford University as a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Creative Writing. He is the author of three novels: Native, The Rest of... Read More →
Tuesday June 10, 2025 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse 3870 York Street Denver, CO 80205
  Fiction   Nonfiction/Memoir   Poetry   Hybrid   Dramatic Writing   YA/Children's
 
Wednesday, June 11
 

9:00am MDT

Non-Linear Structures from Non-Western Storytelling (V)
Wednesday June 11, 2025 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Zoom
Register
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.
Speakers
avatar for Henry Lien

Henry Lien

Instructor
Henry Lien is a 2012 graduate of Clarion West Writers Workshop, Seattle. He is the author of the critically-acclaimed and award-winning Peasprout Chen middle grade fantasy series, which he began writing under the guidance of George R.R. Martin, Kelly Link, and Chuck Palahniuk at Clarion... Read More →
Wednesday June 11, 2025 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Zoom
  Fiction   Nonfiction/Memoir   Poetry   Dramatic Writing   YA/Children's

1:30pm MDT

Write Livelihood: Making a Living as a Writer (V)
Wednesday June 11, 2025 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Zoom
Register
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.
Speakers
avatar for Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg

Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg

Instructor
Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Ph.D, the 2009-13 Kansas Poet Laureate is the author of 24 books, including How Time Moves: New & Selected Poems; Miriam's Well, a novel; Needle in the Bone, a nonfiction book on the Holocaust; The Sky Begins At Your Feet: A Memoir on Cancer, Community, and... Read More →
Wednesday June 11, 2025 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Zoom
  Fiction   Nonfiction/Memoir   Poetry   Hybrid   Dramatic Writing
 
Thursday, June 12
 

1:30pm MDT

Imagination Station
Thursday June 12, 2025 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse
Register
Come with an open mind, leave with pages and pages (and pages) of fresh writing! In this generative class, our magical box of props, prompts, and writing activities will infuse your writing with new energy, sending you in exciting new directions. Exercises will be in 3-5 minute sprints, each inspired by a different source of inspiration to explore. Open to writers of all genres who are looking for inspiration and fun.
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 →
Thursday June 12, 2025 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse 3870 York Street Denver, CO 80205
  Fiction   Nonfiction/Memoir   Poetry   Hybrid   Dramatic Writing   YA/Children's

1:30pm MDT

Writing the Law
Thursday June 12, 2025 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse
Register
In this seminar, we'll infuse law into our fiction, memoir, or nonfiction, without sounding like an info dump cut from Law & Order. Explore nuances in courtroom scenes, and add social justice as a timestamp. Law is human conflict. Whether history, classic tales, speculative, or contemporary stories, we'll find strategies to imbue your work with intriguing legal dimensions while using prompts from films, nonfiction, and fiction.
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 →
Thursday June 12, 2025 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse 3870 York Street Denver, CO 80205
  Fiction   Nonfiction/Memoir   Dramatic Writing
 
Friday, June 13
 

1:30pm MDT

Details That Matter
Friday June 13, 2025 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse
Register
Is the sofa in your story gold or green? Does it matter? Yes, it actually does. In this seminar, we’ll work on creating specific details that add meaning and depth to your story. Specificity leads to subtext. Subtext leads to richness. The sofa is gold for a reason. Everybody wins!
Speakers
avatar for William Haywood Henderson

William Haywood Henderson

Instructor
William Haywood Henderson earned a BA in English from the University of California at Berkeley, an MA in creative writing from Brown University, and attended Stanford University as a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Creative Writing. He is the author of three novels: Native, The Rest of... Read More →
Friday June 13, 2025 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse 3870 York Street Denver, CO 80205
  Fiction   Nonfiction/Memoir   Poetry   Hybrid   Dramatic Writing
 
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