Creative Writing Classes

I offer generative classes that help writers tap into the liberating power of constraints, the complexities of aliveness, and creative practices that encourage lifelong learning, risk-taking, and artistic expression. My classes are always convened live and mainly offered online, which allows us to gather from around the world in a common space.

My upcoming classes and workshops include:

• Gardens & Ghosts: Cultivating New Writing in the Pastoral and Necropastoral | Co-led by Jessica Gigot and me! Saturdays, Jan 3, Jan 10, & Jan 17, 2026 ~ 10 to 11:30 a.m. PT | Online - sold out!
  Where the Pastoral sings the fertile virtues and romance of rural life, including its grief, the Necropastoral revels in the sensuous, spoiled, and spectral ruins wrought by industrial greed and civilizational anxiety: Each mode serves as a foil for the other. How do we decipher entanglements between human and more-than-human creatures, both alive and dead, who share the ecotone of such strange meetings? In this generative writing series, we’ll explore how these mirrored approaches to nature and place-based writing are conjoined by the verdant imagination. $115 for the series (plus sales tax for WA residents).

• Creative Renewal: Recharge Your Writing Life | Thursdays, Feb 5 to 26, 2026 from 5 to 7 p.m. PT | Hugo House (online)
  A mix of strategic reflection and generative writing in community, this class will help writers deepen self-knowledge and craft artistic habits that nourish. This class is a good fit for writers who want to reimagine their creative life as part of disentangling artistic expression from capitalist production. Each session will offer prompts for reflection and simple practices that unite body, heart, and intellect. We’ll transform intentions into actions and end with a generative session of writing constraints that invite experimentation and play.

• Close Reading (& Writing): “Some Day, I’ll Love…” | Sat, February 14 from 1 to 3 p.m. Pacific | Online
  Frank O’Hara’s small-but-mighty poem “Katy” contains a line that’s proven surprisingly fertile: Some day, I’ll love Frank O’Hara. Roger Reeves adapted it (“Some day, I’ll love Roger Reeves”), which sparked poems by Ocean Vuong, Leila Chatti, and many others. In this way, “Katy” has become an ancestor poem. Its children and grandchildren inspire us to explore tenderness and to reckon with how we write about—or, maybe, shy away from—love (particularly self-love), sentiment, and sentimentality on the page. We’ll read and discuss the O’Hara-Reeves-Vuong-Chatti gene line and where love fits into our creative practices, then we’ll try our hand at writing into this lineage. $40 (plus sales tax for WA residents). Registration opens January 2026.

• Spring Writing Circle: Bones to Flesh ~ Writing and Revising Essays | March 2026 | Online
  Writing circles are intimate creative cohorts designed to spark new writing and convivial critical discussion. This series is a mix of generative writing, critical reading, and self-revision. Writers will come away with well considered essay drafts and honed revision skills that extend beyond the pieces we create and share together. For this offering, expect to read and write both inside and outside of class for three to four focused weeks. Registration opens February 2026.

• Oulipian Experiments in Generative Writing | June 29 to 30, 2026 | In Person ~ Sitka Center for Art & Ecology
  Formed in France in 1960 by poet Raymond Queneau and mathematician François Le Lionnais, the members of OuLiPo (Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle / Workshop for Potential Literature) found inspiration at the intersection of creative constraints and the freedom to break form. This workshop offers generative writing exercises designed to free the mind and creative spirit so that we may shape and release new and unexpected literary creatures into the world.

  We’ll explore the history of Oulipo and a range of constraints and nontraditional forms with a spirit of experimentation through readings and generative prompts. Attendees will leave this hands-on workshop with a portfolio of new starts that include lipograms, palindromes, anaphora, erasure, “found” texts, intaglio portraits, sestinas, and other constraint-based writing. As a collective, we will drink mightily from the Oulipo spirit of playful postures and endless outcomes to create the strange, the haunted, and the inspired. We will attempt new structures and patterns, which writers may shape and develop in any way they enjoy. Together we will become, as Queneau described, “rats who construct the labyrinth from which they plan to escape.” Registration opens February 2026.

• Finishing School: Writing in Community | Online
  Sometimes, to get writing done, we need camaraderie—and a calendar appointment. Finishing School is a space to work on individual projects in community. Think of it as a supportive virtual cafe or an accountability date. We show up, say a warm hello and share what we’re working on, and get crackin’. Finishing School is my gratis offering to the community of writers who join my writing circles each year.
  

• Sales tax for Washington residents: Beginning October 1, 2025, a new Washington state law (ESSB 5814) requires sales tax to be collected on live and recorded classes and workshops taught by cultural organizations and freelance educators. Sales tax for online classes will be calculated based on the student’s billing location. (If you live outside of Washington state, no sales tax is applied.) As a small business owner, I truly appreciate your patience and continued support as I navigate this unexpected impact to our creative ecosystem. Note: This new tax does not apply to one-on-one coaching or editorial consulting services.