Upcoming Classes
Building Your Story: Constructing Effective Scenes with Leah Hampton
- January 20th – February 24th in Google Classroom
- Deadline to register: January 16th
- Registration: $200
Perfect for: new writers, experienced short story writers/novelists looking for feedback on drafted work
Class description. Scenes are the essential building blocks of any story. Through dialogue, interactions, and small, carefully rendered moments, we establish conflict, reveal our characters’ personalities and the worlds they live in, and compel the reader to keep turning the page. In this course we will study, discuss, and write short scenes together, with the end goal of building towards a larger piece.
The class includes one-on-one conversations with the instructor plus short weekly assignments. This is a flexible, results-oriented adventure: Writers who have a short story or novel in progress can work on scenes for their existing work, and writers who want to experiment or get a fresh start can build a new project from scratch.
About the teacher. Leah Hampton is a fiction writer whose debut short story collection, F*ckface and Other Stories, will be released by Henry Holt in May 2020. She holds an MFA from the University of Texas, where she was a fellow at the Michener Center for Writers. Her work has appeared in Electric Literature, storySouth, Ecotone, and elsewhere. She makes her home in the Blue Ridge Mountains and is currently a Phillip Roth Fellow at the Stadler Center for Poetry and Literary Arts at Bucknell University.
Did you know? You can give a class to a loved one! Simply enter your payment info and select “gift option.”
Forging a Compass to Craft Fearless Poems with Arhm Choi Wild
- DATE CHANGE: in Google Classroom
- Registration: $200
Perfect for: new poets, experienced poets looking to build personal manifesto into their poetry
Class description. Who do you write to? For? About? Around? With? What permission do you need to write the story that’s been haunting you? How does the idea of an audience impact the ways we write? What would we write if we had the permission to name and claim ourselves in all our mess and trying, to tell our stories in the exact ways they demand to be told? How could we make room for expansive change and new possibilities with the sheer honesty and vulnerability of our work?
In this generative workshop, we’ll explore these questions by reading a variety of writers’ “compass” poems that guide us into the central territory of a writer’s work, whether that is found in the first poem of a writer’s collection or a seminal piece that a body of poems continually point and talk back to. Participants will leave this workshop with feedback on five of their original poems, and hopefully a clearer manifesto on the politics/poetics of their writing as well as a heightened sense of permission to set loose the poems that only they could write.
About the teacher. Arhm Choi Wild is a Kundiman fellow from Ann Arbor, Michigan, who holds a MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College. Arhm was a finalist for the Jake Adam York Prize in 2019 and will have a poetry collection published by Write Bloody in 2020. Their work has been published in the anthology Daring to Repair by Wising Up Press and in the magazines Barrow Street, The Massachusetts Review, Split this Rock, Foglifter, Lantern Review, F(r)iction, and others. They have worked as a teacher in New York City for the last six years, and have competed in poetry slams and performed across the country, including at Brave New Voices, the New York City Poetry Festival, the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, and the Bowery Poetry Club.
Registration & Payment
- Early Bird Registration: $150 (ends January 5)
- Registration: $200
Register for a class now. Prefer cash or check? Select deferred payment in the registration form and send cash or check made out to Adirondack Center for Writing, P.O. Box 956, Saranac Lake, New York 12983. Want to give now and get the benefits? Join the family!
About
Each season welcomes a new batch of talented teachers and developing writers from all over the world. The Adirondack Center for Writing’s online classes are easy for you to participate in from your own computer. All you need to participate is a web browser — there’s no technical software involved, so you can work whenever is convenient for you.
Interactive readings, resources, and assignments are the heart of each class. Every student will receive personal feedback from the instructor on their weekly assignments. We welcome any level of writer to join the online writing classes, and offer courses for a variety of genres. Visit the FAQ page for more info about the online writing classes.
Student Testimonials
“I was a teacher for thirty years, and I can tell you that Julia Shipley knows her stuff and is willing to share her knowledge. She works to better student writing. She’s efficient, friendly and enthusiastic.”
“I have taken 8 online courses from One Story, Grub Street, and Gotham City. Julia Shipley’s preparation and presentation were the most thorough of all.”
“The class was the perfect amount of challenge, stimulation and fun.”
“I loved this course. It forced me to work at my edge. Jessica Hendry Nelson gave detailed feedback. I took risks and learned a lot.”
Previously Offered Courses
The Adirondack Center for Writing has offered a series of online writing workshops with an amazing group of teachers, including the following:
- Writing Young Adult Fiction with Chris Tebbetts
- The Personal Essay with Annie Stoltie
- Memoir Writing with Mary Sanders Shartle
- Limbs & Language: Writing Poetry with Mahogany L. Browne
- The Unconventional Memoir with Jessica Hendry Nelson
- Fiction Bootcamp with Gary Lee Miller
- Lightning in a Bottle: Writing the Nature Flash with Julia Shipley
- Make It Sing: Writing Poetry Out of the Everyday with José Olivarez
- Essays from Personal Experience with Carrie Laben
- The Promise of a Good Story: Writing Middle Grade and Young Adult Novels with Chris Tebbetts
- Essay Associated: Experiments in Creative Nonfiction with Jessica Hendry Nelson
- Shazam: The Superpower of Shortform (Sequel to Lightning in a Bottle: Reading and Writing the Nature Flash) with Julia Shipley
- (re)Making Memory: Writing Poetry with Desiree C. Bailey
- Seeding Your Sequoias: Writing Tiny but Mighty Prose with Julia Shipley
