Lit Fest 2024: Full Schedule

Welcome to Lit Fest, eight days dedicated to you, our literary community.

9:00am MDT

Culturally Expansive Approaches to Plot and Story Structure

U.S. fiction and nonfiction writers have been trained to follow “universal” rules of story structure: The Aristotelian plot arc. Three-Act Structure. The Hero’s Journey. In recent years, diverse voices in prose writing and craft have called for expanding these norms. In this class for prose writers of all levels, we'll deconstruct both western and non-western story structures and storytelling conventions to better understand how our own work might draw from, and fit into, a literal world of stories. We’ll read stories and watch short films as examples, and experiment with both generative writing and restructuring. Bring an informal outline of a piece you’re working on (either short story, essay, or book), or I’ll provide you with sample outlines of other authors’ work to use for the exercises if you don’t have anything handy.

Speakers

Angie Chuang

Instructor

Angie Chuang is an associate professor of journalism at University of Colorado Boulder who writes and teaches a wide range of nonfiction forms. Her memoir, The Four Words for Home (Aquarius Press/Willow Books, 2014),won an Independents Publishers Award for Multicultural Nonfiction... Read More →

Friday June 7, 2024 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
315

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir

Type Craft Seminar

9:00am MDT

Narrative Strategy in Fiction and Memoir

Possibly, the biggest decision you’ll make, usually right at the start of your project, is who the narrator will be. “It’s Fred's story,” you’ll say, and you’ll start telling Fred's story in either first or third person. Along the way, though, you might discover that it’s someone else’s story. In this class, we'll examine the narrative choices we make in fiction and memoir and discuss a range of different options. This class will be a mixture of lecture, discussion, and in-class writing.

Speakers

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 7, 2024 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
216

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir

Type Craft Seminar

9:00am MDT

Tapping Into Your Weirdness (V)

George Saunders says, “Fiction at its best is not supposed to just be this flat, perfectly reflective mirror that presents a linear position of ‘life as it is.’ We should expect and enjoy some distortion in the baseline representation.” This craft seminar will be geared toward allowing that distortion—that weirdness—into your own writing. By close-reading examples of distorted realities, practicing written exercises, and sharing our results, we’ll address how and why “tapping into the weird” might be the best thing for your work at both the generative and revision stages. Come ready to get weird.

Speakers

Alexander Lumans

Instructor

Alexander Lumans was awarded a 2018 NEA Creative Writing Grant in Fiction. He was also awarded a fellowship to the 2015 Arctic Circle Residency and was the Spring 2014 Philip Roth Resident at Bucknell University. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The Paris Review, Electric... Read More →

Friday June 7, 2024 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Zoom

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Poetry Hybrid

Type Craft Seminar

9:00am MDT

Fiction for Nonfiction Writers

Learn from the instructor's mistakes! As a nonfiction writer writing for academic journals, blogs, and online magazines, the transition to fiction was far more challenging than he had expected. In this seminar, participants will explore some of the pitfalls specific to journalists, academics, and other nonfiction writers also striving to create fiction. Some topics include narration (aka, turning off that authoritative voice), show vs. tell (aka, it’s a story, not an essay), and interiority (aka, we don’t always say what we mean or mean what we say). We'll also complete a writing exercise if time allows.

Speakers

Andrew Hernandez

Instructor

Andrew Hernandez, PhD, is a writer and teacher. Born in the Chicagoland area, Hernandez’s work has taken him to Puerto Rico, New York, Mali, New Zealand, and now Colorado. A former Contributing Writer for Everyday Feminism magazine, his narrative nonfiction has also appeared in... Read More →

Friday June 7, 2024 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
304

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir

Type Craft Seminar

9:00am MDT

To Meander, Spiral, Explode

This generative class will explore the narrative structures of meandering, spiraling, and exploding by paying homage to Meander, Spiral, Explode by Jane Alison (no need to read/have). We'll employ divinatory poetics for prompts to get us started and to keep going; specifically, the instructor will use the art of bibliomancy, turning to The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig as the Muse (also no need to read/have). Come with an open mind! You might start something new or dive deeper into a work-in-progress. There’s no telling if you'll meander, spiral, or fracture, but you will come away with more knowledge about these structures.

Speakers

Sarah Elizabeth Schantz

Instructor

Sarah Elizabeth Schantz is primarily a fiction writer living on the outskirts of Boulder, Colorado in a Victorian-era farmhouse where her family is surrounded by open sky and century-old cottonwoods. She literally grew up in a bookstore with parents who worshipped all things literature... Read More →

Friday June 7, 2024 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
204

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Hybrid Poetry

Type Craft Seminar

9:00am MDT

Hey, I Can Be Fun! Reapproaching the Nonfiction Book Proposal

Does writing a nonfiction book proposal rub you as a daunting, dry, and restrictive task? What if crafting the proposal could be approached as the opposite—as an act of nuance, discovery, and creativity? In the instructor's experience, drafting a book proposal was an opportunity to step away from the frustrations of writing, play with structure, and infuse "pizzazz" (an actual component of the proposal) into an idea that might otherwise not have become a completed book. In this class, the instructor will share excerpts from her own proposal, and we’ll start working on the sections that can go into yours. Please come with a solid idea for a nonfiction book or memoir.

Speakers

Megan Nix

Instructor

Megan Nix’s medical memoir, Remedies for Sorrow: An Extraordinary Child, a Secret Kept from Pregnant Women, and a Mother’s Pursuit of the Truth, was published by Doubleday in 2023. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, the Washington Post, and Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction, where it won the Editor’s Prize. She holds an MFA in Nonfiction from the University of Alaska... Read More →

Friday June 7, 2024 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
215

Nonfiction/Memoir

Type Craft Seminar

9:00am MDT

Research As Writerly Practice: Nonfiction Writing from Inquiry and Fact (V)

Are you working on a nonfiction project? The myth of artistic genius often suggests that inspiration is mainlined from the heavens and that one's imagination is the only creative source. And yet, it's often an inquiry into the world outside of ourselves that offers the most potent inspiration. How can research serve as a generative practice and a portal to the written word? This seminar will support nonfiction writers in incorporating rich factual inquiry into current or future nonfiction projects, rendering research into luminous prose, and creating a research roadmap moving forward.

Speakers

Lauren Markham

Instructor

Lauren Markham is a writer based in California whose work has appeared in outlets such as Guernica, Harper's, The New York Times Magazine, Freeman's, Lithub, Best American Travel Writing, The New Republic, Narrative, The New York Review of Books, and VQR, where she is a contributing... Read More →

Friday June 7, 2024 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Zoom

Nonfiction/Memoir

Type Craft Seminar

9:00am MDT

Common Blindspots in Poetry Manuscript Development (and How to Overcome Them)

This poetry manuscript seminar explores ten common blindspots that keep our books from reaching their true potential. Learn strategies and best practices that help poets overcome these challenges.

Speakers

Radha Marcum

Instructor

Radha Marcum, MFA, won the 2023 Washington Prize for her forthcoming collection, Pine Soot Tendon Bone (2024). She was also awarded the New Mexico Book Award in 2018 for her first collection of poems, Bloodline (3: A Taos Press), about her grandfather's work building the first atomic... Read More →

Friday June 7, 2024 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
316

Poetry

Type Craft Seminar

9:00am MDT

Getting Published: Stories, Essays, Articles and Books

You've been polishing your writing, and now you're ready to submit it for publication. Just how do you do that? We'll delve into a quick overview of three different pathways to publication through literary journals, websites, magazines, and books. We'll discuss cover letters, query letters, and do's and don'ts for submissions. And we'll investigate ways of tracking your submissions and useful websites for researching publications. By the end of this class, you'll be armed with a thick-anti-rejection hide and a list of publications to submit your work to.

Speakers

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 →

Friday June 7, 2024 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Beacon Hall

Publishing/Career

Type Craft Seminar

12:00pm MDT

Lunchtime Business Panel: Agents 101

Have you ever wondered how an agent reads the slush pile? Are you querying to no avail? Or just curious about how it all works? Join four agents as they tell the candid story of what they do. They’ll share tips and strategies for successfully targeting and querying agents and give you insights into what not to do. Each agent will share one thing you absolutely must know; you’ll leave with an understanding of the inner workings of publishing and how you can best begin your publishing journey.

Speakers

Paige Terlip

Agent

Paige Terlip represents all categories of children’s books from picture books to young adult, as well as select adult fiction, including thrillers/psychological suspense, fantasy/sci-fi, horror, upmarket fiction, romance, and mysteries. Regardless of genre, she is seeking inclusive... Read More →

Mira Landry

Agent

Mira Landry is an Associate Literary Agent with Corvisiero Literary Agency. She’s dedicated to building writing and literary communities through events and educational programming, and co-hosts a podcast analyzing recently published books using Literary Forensics called Writers... Read More →

Rebecca Shaevitz

Agent

Rebecca Shaevitz is a literary agent at Verve Talent & Literary Agency, a full service Entertainment and Publishing agency with offices in New York and Los Angeles. On the nonfiction side, Rebecca specializes in narrative and platform-driven works, and on the fiction side she’s... Read More →

Renée Jarvis

Agent

Renée Jarvis is an agent at Triangle House Literary. Born and raised in New York City, she graduated from Brooklyn College with a BFA in Creative Writing. She previously worked as an assistant and agent at MacKenzie Wolf Literary and spent two years as a writing teacher at the non-profit... Read More →

Shana Kelly

Instructor

Shana Kelly started her career as a literary agent at the William Morris Agency in New York and London, where she sold foreign and British rights for the agency for ten years. Shana was the signing agent for many successful authors, including New York Times bestseller Curtis Sittenfeld... Read More →

Friday June 7, 2024 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
Beacon Hall

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Hybrid YA/Children's Publishing/Career

Type Lunchtime Business Panel

12:00pm MDT

Lunchtime Business Panel: Agents 101 (Livestream)

Speakers

Paige Terlip

Agent

Mira Landry

Agent

Rebecca Shaevitz

Agent

Renée Jarvis

Agent

Shana Kelly

Instructor

Friday June 7, 2024 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
Zoom

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Hybrid YA/Children's Publishing/Career

Type Lunchtime Business Panel

1:30pm MDT

I Love You, Jackass: Writing Complex Emotions

Evoking emotion is one of the biggest challenges we face as writers. We want our readers to cry, laugh, fear death, or feel alive the way we do while reading our favorite books. But how do you write emotionally without sounding sappy, sentimental, or—horrors!—melodramatic? The answer lies in complexity, in layering emotions to mimic our own complicated emotions. By invoking the interplay of emotional opposites, we’ll create new emotional writing and also look at examples from masters to guide us along. Open to all genres.

Speakers

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 recent memoir, Tell Me Everything: The Story of a Private Investigation, won the 2023 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime and the 2023 Colorado Book Award... Read More →

Friday June 7, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
316

All Genres

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

Writing Across Difference

“Can I write about that?” The question of cultural appropriation is a complicated one, and so too are its answers. We'll examine strategies for researching and portraying lives unlike our own that reflect social and historical context and the fullness of a character’s humanity. We'll work on writing exercises and discuss texts by Viet Thanh Nguyen, Toni Morrison, and Elaine Castillo, among others, who write responsibly and respectfully across race, age, gender, class, and other elements of identity.

Speakers

Vanessa Hua

Visiting Author

Vanessa Hua is the author of the national bestsellers A River of Stars and Forbidden City, as well as Deceit and Other Possibilities, a New York Times Editors Pick. A National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow, she has also received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award... Read More →

Friday June 7, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
204

All Genres

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

The Exquisite is in the Details

In this detail-oriented class, we'll examine three different types of detail crucial to the craft of creative writing—the concrete, the significant, and the specific—as well as how, when, and why to use them.

Speakers

Sarah Elizabeth Schantz

Instructor

Friday June 7, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
304

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Hybrid

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

Slaying the YA Novel (V)

What is the difference between writing for adults and young adults? The answer you often hear is voice. However, even after nailing voice, you still have to contend with a faster pace, engaging plot, and powerful character arc that will keep your audience riveted. In this session, we’ll get down to brass tacks and talk about the basics, from voice to story structure and worldbuilding in all genres.

Speakers

Olivia Chadha

Instructor

Olivia writes science fiction, fantasy, comic books, and literary novels for MG, YA, and adult audiences. She has a Ph.D. in literature and creative writing. The Balance of Fragile Things is her debut adult literary novel. Rise of the Red Hand, her YA debut, was awarded the Colorado... Read More →

Friday June 7, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Zoom

Fiction YA/Children's

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

Poetic Voice: Finding Your Zone of Unique Genius

Poets often receive the advice to "develop a voice uniquely yours." But what does that mean? And how should we interpret journal or book submission guidelines that say the editors are looking for "voices that stand out"? This class explores what goes into "poetic voice" and what you can do to find and write from your own zone of unique genius.

Speakers

Radha Marcum

Instructor

Friday June 7, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
315

Poetry

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

The Poetry of Play

As Diane Ackerman says, “The spirit of deep play is spontaneity, discovery, and being open to new challenges.” Playing with meaning, sound, punctuation, titles, cliches, and absurdities can provide both blissful relaxation and help sharpen poetic craft. In this class, we’ll enjoy a rollicking good time by responding to poetry’s call to do just that. Students will read a wide variety of playful poetry, then experiment with in-class writing prompts designed to awaken freedom and enjoyment.

Speakers

Joy Roulier Sawyer

Instructor

Joy Roulier Sawyer holds an MA from New York University, where she received the Herbert Rubin Award for Outstanding Creative Writing. The author of several nonfiction books, she's also published two poetry collections, Tongues of Men and Angels (White Violet Press), and Lifeguards... Read More →

Friday June 7, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
215

Poetry

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

Freelance Writing: Getting Started and Building your Career

How do you query editors to find those first jobs, and how do you make the first assignments lead to more? We'll discuss Neil Gaiman's rules for freelance writers, learn how to find venues open to new writers, study examples of query letters and write some of our own, and figure out how to establish yourself as a specialist so that eventually, editors will seek you out! The instructor 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

Jenny Shank

Instructor

Friday June 7, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
216

Publishing/Career

Type Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

A Good Title Is Hard to Find

A great title is the hulking stevedore of your work—it does the heavy lifting and makes your writing life easier. But finding that great title is another thing altogether. How do you boil down an entire novel, memoir, short story, essay, or even poem into a few puny words? In this class, we’ll look at different approaches for titles, look at examples and the elements that make titles great, and work on exercises that you can use immediately in your own work. Open to all genres.

Speakers

Erika Krouse

Instructor

Friday June 7, 2024 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
204

All Genres

Type Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

Draft a Short Story in Two Hours

In this generative seminar, we’ll outrun our inner critic by doing a series of exercises designed to leave each participant with the raw materials for a short story: compelling character, engaging narrative voice, and a palpable sense of conflict. We’ll borrow techniques from great storywriters, draw on our own experiences, and write past our inhibitions in a fun and supportive atmosphere. Appropriate for both seasoned and beginning writers.

Speakers

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 →

Friday June 7, 2024 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
216

Fiction

Type Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

Stealing from Suspense

What makes a story "unputdownable"? What keeps readers turning pages late into the night? We’ll examine the tools of the suspense writer and learn how we can use them to make our own stories more compelling, whether we’re working on a traditional mystery or a literary tour de force. We'll take inspiration from writers including Donna Tartt, Megan Giddings, Oyinkan Braithwaite, Shirley Jackson and others. Writers should come prepared to write.

Speakers

Tiffany Quay Tyson

Instructor

Tiffany Quay Tyson is the author of two novels, The Past is Never and Three Rivers. The Past is Never is the recipient of the Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction, the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, the 2019 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Fiction, and the 2019... Read More →

Friday June 7, 2024 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
304

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir

Type Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

Hopeful Monsters

In evolutionary biology, a “hopeful monster” is an aberrant organism flawed by the usual norms of its species but with the potential to be unexpectedly well-adapted to the world into which it is born. This term can help us to challenge received notions about what "good writing" should do and turn the workshop into a laboratory where we explore, reconsider, and give functional meaning to newness. Through the reading of texts by Amos Tutuola, Philip K. Dick, and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, we'll explore notions of malformation and mutation and interrogate the relationship between "structure" and "form." This talk will urge you to build completed pieces from your abandoned or unwanted works and spend time revisiting "monsters" and mistakes.

Speakers

Alexandra Kleeman

Visiting Author

Alexandra Kleeman is the author of the novel Something New Under the Sun, Intimations, a short story collection, and the novel You Too Can Have A Body Like Mine, which was awarded the 2016 Bard Fiction Prize and was a New York Times Editor’s Choice. In 2020, she was awarded the... Read More →

Friday June 7, 2024 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Beacon Hall

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Hybrid

Type Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

Hopeful Monsters (Livestream)

Speakers

Alexandra Kleeman

Visiting Author

Friday June 7, 2024 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Zoom

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Hybrid

Type Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

Inside Out: Turning Life into Compelling Nonfiction

In this generative seminar, we’ll explore different techniques that help us write about our past in a way that’s accessible or even entertaining to our readers. Where do we begin and how do we approach such a task? We’ll consider excerpts from works by great essayists and memoirists from the past fifty years, and try our hand at writing scenes and passages inspired by what we’ve learned.

Speakers

Sloane Crosley

Visiting Author

SLOANE CROSLEY is the author of The New York Times bestselling books Grief Is for People, How Did You Get This Number, and I Was Told There’d Be Cake (a 2009 finalist for The Thurber Prize for American Humor). She is also the author of Look Alive Out There (a 2019 finali... Read More →

Friday June 7, 2024 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
316

Nonfiction/Memoir

Type Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

The Art of Speculation

There are gaps in facts and reality, be it our private memories or the historical record. Speculation helps us interrogate these gaps and bring to light stories that have been hidden or suppressed. In this class, we'll discuss some examples, techniques, and ethical considerations around speculation in writing nonfiction, and consider how we access truth in the face of erasure. There will be plenty of time for discussion as well as playing with strategies to access your unspoken truths.

Speakers

Teow Lim Goh

Instructor

Teow Lim Goh is the author of two poetry collections, Islanders (2016) and Faraway Places (2021), and an essay collection Western Journeys (2022). Her essays, poetry, and criticism have been featured in The Georgia Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Los Angeles Review of Books, PBS NewsHour... Read More →

Friday June 7, 2024 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
315

Nonfiction/Memoir Hybrid

Type Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

Using Film Genre for Maximum Impact

Every screenwriter must reckon with genre at some stage of the game: pitching, marketing, or just writing the darn thing. We’ll discuss different genres and get to the bottom of those burning genre questions (what exactly is a dramedy, and why do executives hate them?). We’ll also talk about using genre to create structure, craft characters, and how to freshen up genre conventions while avoiding cliches.

Speakers

Jenny Taylor-Whitehorn

Instructor

Jenny Taylor-Whitehorn is an author and screenwriter who is still paying for her MFA in Screenwriting from UCLA, where she was awarded the James Pendleton Award, the Larry Thor Memorial Award, Oliver’s Prize, and was listed in the 2016 UCLA Screenwriter’s Showcase. Jenny has... Read More →

Friday June 7, 2024 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
316

Screenwriting

Type Craft Seminar

6:15pm MDT

Advanced Weekend Workshop Orientation

Writers taking workshops with Alexandra Kleeman, Vanessa Hua, Jane Hirshfield, and Sloan Crosley, join us on Friday evening for quick introductions to your instructor and fellow classmates and a tour of the Lit Fest campus. Stay for the New Fiction Showcase: Our Yesterdays, Today!

Friday June 7, 2024 6:15pm - 6:45pm MDT
Beacon Hall

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Poetry

Type Advanced Weekend Workshop

7:00pm MDT

New Fiction Showcase: Our Yesterdays, Today

The middle-of-nowhere Wisconsin in 1919; the Chinese countryside in 1917; the realm of the Scottish nobility in the 11th century: three new books immerse us in these sweeping histories, peopled with complicated characters, making the past feel present and alive. Join authors David Wroblewski (Familiaris), Wendy Chen (Their Divine Fires), and Joel Morris (All Our Yesterdays: a Novel of Lady MacBeth) to read from and celebrate their new novels, and share a thought or two about why yesterday matters today.

Speakers

David Wroblewski

Instructor

David Wroblewski is the author, most recently, of the novel Familiaris, his followup to the internationally bestselling The Story Of Edgar Sawtelle, an Oprah Book Club pick, Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, winner of the Colorado Book Award, Indie Choice Best Author Discovery award, and Midwest Bookseller Association's Choice award, in addition to being selected as one of the best books of the year by numerous... Read More →

Wendy Chen

Instructor

Wendy Chen is the author of the novel Their Divine Fires (Algonquin) and the poetry collection Unearthings (Tavern Books). She is the editor of Figure 1, associate editor-in-chief of Tupelo Quarterly, and prose editor of Tupelo Press. Her poetry translations of Song-dynasty... Read More →

Joel H. Morris

Panelist

Joel H. Morris is the author of All Our Yesterdays, his debut novel. He has worked most recently as an English teacher and, for the past twenty years, has taught language and literature. He is the recipient of a year-long Fulbright Research Scholarship for archival research in Germany... Read More →

Friday June 7, 2024 7:00pm - 8:00pm MDT
Beacon Hall

Fiction

Type Event

8:30am MDT

Advanced Weekend Fiction Intensive: Open Sesame with Vanessa Hua

The first ten pages of a book are an incantation, not only beguiling your readers but setting the spell that will carry your narrative through to the end. In this hands-on workshop, you’ll learn strategies to kick off an urgent central conflict, introduce captivating characters, and establish voice, tone, and setting. We’ll analyze successful beginnings and work on fun writing exercises designed to hone those elements. You’ll also workshop the first ten pages of your work-in progress, receiving supportive and constructive feedback. Suitable for all levels, whether you’re just starting your project or have already finished a draft. Students will leave with a clearer sense of theme and direction for their work, and the inspiration and tools necessary for revision. Accepted participants will submit up to 10 manuscript pages by May 10.

Speakers

Vanessa Hua

Visiting Author

Saturday June 8, 2024 8:30am - 12:00pm MDT
315

Fiction

Type Advanced Weekend Workshop

8:30am MDT

Advanced Weekend Nonfiction Intensive with Sloane Crosley

In writing personal narratives, how do we approach subjects about which we have mixed feelings—which is to say, how do we write about the majority of our past? How, especially, do we write about life’s sudden ruptures in a unifying and unique way, in a way that gestures toward the universal in addition to the individual? In a sense, this question applies to all personal writing, since it involves dramatizing a self that is often still shifting. But it can feel especially daunting to tackle material that haunts or even just irks us, and to create a story that readers actually want to immerse themselves in. Where do we begin? How do we gain purchase in our own story? In this generative workshop we’ll read essays and excerpts from memoirs that attempt to get at truths using the techniques of storytelling, humor, tone, and fiction-like pacing. We’ll consider excerpts from works by great authors of the past fifty years, including Zadie Smith, Hilary Mantel, Joan Didion and David Rakoff.

Speakers

Sloane Crosley

Visiting Author

Saturday June 8, 2024 8:30am - 12:00pm MDT
215

Nonfiction/Memoir

Type Advanced Weekend Workshop

8:30am MDT

Advanced Weekend Poetry Intensive with Jane Hirshfield

Poetry is pinnacle language that is not its own end. The most powerful poems are charged with thrilling words, but also with the work words do in our lives, the connections they make with realities beyond the page. Good poems will leave a person, whether writer or reader, changed. This weekend intensive will be primarily generative, engaged in making new poems in what may at times be new ways. The intention will be to offer participants an expanded repertory of process, freedom, and direction in the lifelong conversation with events, emotions, perplexities both interior and outer, that poetry allows us to enter in its own distinctive and entirely sui generis ways.

Speakers

Jane Hirshfield

Visiting Author

Jane Hirschfield's ten poetry books include the newly published The Asking: New & Selected Poems (September, 2023); Ledger (March, 2020), The Beauty, long-listed for the 2015 National Book Award; Given Sugar, Given Salt, a finalist for the 2001 National Book Critics Circle Award... Read More →

Saturday June 8, 2024 8:30am - 12:00pm MDT
304

Poetry

Type Advanced Weekend Workshop

9:00am MDT

Borrowing from the Greats: What Can Writers Learn from Other Artists?

For centuries, musicians, dancers, and visual artists have turned to the written word for inspiration. Here’s your chance to look back at them and cop a few lessons. What can musicians teach us about repetition and timing? What can painters teach us about economy and contrast? What can dancers teach us about gesture and pacing? In this seminar, we’ll look at how prose writers can find ideas, techniques, inspiration, and even form and structure possibilities from other artistic disciplines. Bring a few passages you’ve previously written that you’d like to play with, and together, we’ll give some of these tricks a tryout.

Speakers

Dino Enrique Piacentini

Instructor

Dino Enrique Piacentini grew up in Los Angeles, lived in San Francisco for twenty years, and has also, at various times, set down stakes in Houston, Oaxaca, Champaign, and Prague. His writing has been published in Gulf Coast, Confrontation, Pembroke, The Globe & Mail, The Atticus... Read More →

Saturday June 8, 2024 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
316

All Genres

Type Craft Seminar

9:00am MDT

Clocking In: How to Write about Jobs (V)

Mortician. Rodeo Clown. Stormchaser. We've all had unique jobs that dramatically affected the framework through which we experience the world. This holds doubly true for characters' perspectives. What are the differences in how a professional tarot reader examines an oak tree versus a microbiologist intern? In this seminar, we'll read and discuss examples of writers who write jobs that influence character development, voice, and language. And we’ll write about our characters’ jobs too. You'll soon discover how much your characters' jobs matter to the heart of their stories.

Speakers

Alexander Lumans

Instructor

Saturday June 8, 2024 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Zoom

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir

Type Craft Seminar

9:00am MDT

Writing the Minoritized Experience (V)

One of the burdens faced by writers from minoritized groups is the cultural emphasis on language that often falls short of evoking our individual lived experiences. Ready-to-hand terms like “systemic oppression” and “model minority” may define much of our experience but can also obscure our uniqueness, complexity, and individual humanity. In this seminar, we’ll use essays by Toni Morrison, Chang-rae Lee, James Baldwin, and others to explore the politics of craft and voice when writing the minoritized experience and engaging with sociopolitical themes of belonging and identity.

Speakers

Natalie Hodges

Instructor

Born and raised in Denver, Natalie Hodges has performed as a classical violinist throughout Colorado and in New York, Boston, Paris, and the Italian Piedmont, as well as at the Aspen Music Festival and the Stowe Tango Music Festival. Her first book, Uncommon Measure: A Journey Through... Read More →

Saturday June 8, 2024 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Zoom

Nonfiction/Memoir Hybrid Publishing/Career

Type Craft Seminar

9:00am MDT

Two-Day Intensive: The Unreliable Narrator—A Range of Reasons

Study the different types of the unreliable narrator and discover how unreliability is often the only way to assess the “truth.” While it could be argued that any first-person narration is unreliable, we’ll look at the intentional craft of unreliable characters and their impact on closeness in a story. While our intent is to create unreliable narrators, we won’t just write ones that deliberately skew or avoid the truth but also craft those who simply don’t know any better.

Speakers

Sarah Elizabeth Schantz

Instructor

Saturday June 8, 2024 9:00am - Sunday June 9, 2024 12:00pm MDT
216

Fiction

Type Two-Day Intensive

9:00am MDT

Two-Day Intensive: Building a Memoir

How can we build memoirs that accommodate the messiness of life—the uncertainty, guesses, and missed chances—in composed and legible shapes? How can we guide readers down trails where we ourselves still get lost? We'll study excerpts from contemporary memoirs with astonishing shapes and patterns and share lots of exercises to experiment with new narrative strategies. Together, we’ll find new forms for the stories of our lives.

Speakers

John Cotter

Instructor

John Cotter is the author of a memoir, Losing Music, forthcoming from Milkweed Editions, and Under the Small Lights, winner of the Miami University Press novella contest. His essays, theater pieces, and fiction have appeared, or will appear soon, in New England Review, Raritan, Georgia... Read More →

Saturday June 8, 2024 9:00am - Sunday June 9, 2024 12:00pm MDT
204

Nonfiction/Memoir

Type Two-Day Intensive

9:00am MDT

Two-Day Intensive: Funny Personal Essays (V)

Why do you laugh when you read? Because you relate? Because you’re surprised? Because life is an absurd farce? In this two-day intensive, we’ll discuss the many ways to make a reader laugh and how to turn an anecdote into an essay that’s funny and publishable. On day one we’ll gossip about the funny personal essays we read before class and what we can steal from them, and we’ll brainstorm essay topics and angles. We’ll also cover how to make a funny personal essay transcend the personal and how to isolate “the unusual thing” in our situations to carve out our stories. Day two you’ll bring in a crappy first draft that we’ll punch up with in-class writing assignments and nonreligious prayer.

Speakers

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 →

Saturday June 8, 2024 9:00am - Sunday June 9, 2024 12:00pm MDT
Zoom

Nonfiction/Memoir

Type Two-Day Intensive

10:00am MDT

Queer Creatives Brunch

It’s brunch! Come celebrate Lit Fest with food, cocktails, mocktails, and community building with your fellow LGBTQIA+ writers and creatives. After we eat, we'll have an informal info session where you can learn and ask questions about our annual Queer Creatives Fest.

Saturday June 8, 2024 10:00am - 11:30am MDT
Beacon Hall

All Genres

Type Event

12:00pm MDT

Lunchtime Business Panel: Debuts

Hear several debut authors with recent first book publications talk about their journeys from page one to page done. What’s it like to finish and publish a debut work in the contemporary literary landscape? What do published authors wish they knew when starting out? What mysteries still remain going forward? Discussion will also take on recent trends in publishing, what makes a stand-out debut, and what writers can learn from debuts that have blown up.

Speakers

Elizabeth DeMeo

Agent

Elizabeth DeMeo is an Editor at Tin House, where she acquires and edits books of fiction and literary nonfiction. Books she's edited have won the Pacific Northwest Book Award and CALIBA Golden Poppy Award; been short- or longlisted for the LA Times Book Prize, Carol Shields Prize... Read More →

Joel H. Morris

Panelist

Gina DeMillo Wagner

Instructor

Gina DeMillo Wagner is the author of Forces of Nature: A Memoir of Family, Loss, and Finding Home. Her writing has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Memoir Magazine, Modern Loss, Self, Outside, CRAFT Literary, and other publications. She is a Yaddo fellow... Read More →

Minda Honey

Instructor

Minda Honey’s (she/her) essays on politics and relationships have appeared in Harper’s Baazar, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Washington Post, the Guardian, the Oxford American, Teen Vogue, and Longreads.Her work is featured in “Burn It Down: Women Writing About Ange... Read More →

Christine Lai

Instructor

Christine is a novelist and essayist based in Vancouver, Canada. She holds a PhD in English literature from University College London in the U.K. Her debut novel, Landscapes, was published by Two Dollar Radio in September 2023, and was longlisted for the Republic of Consciousness... Read More →

Saturday June 8, 2024 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
Beacon Hall

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Hybrid Poetry Publishing/Career

Type Lunchtime Business Panel

12:00pm MDT

Lunchtime Business Panel: Debuts (Livestream)

Speakers

Elizabeth DeMeo

Agent

Joel H. Morris

Panelist

Gina DeMillo Wagner

Instructor

Minda Honey

Instructor

Christine Lai

Instructor

Saturday June 8, 2024 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
Zoom

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Hybrid Poetry Publishing/Career

Type Lunchtime Business Panel

1:00pm MDT

Two-Day Intensive: Modulation—Your Voice and How to Use It (V)

Your literary voice is like a fingerprint, individual to you alone—it has grown from what you’ve lived, what you’ve read, how you understand the world, and how you hope to shape the world on the page. In this intensive, we’ll steal from excellent examples, add layers and new tricks to your voice, and learn how to modulate your voice for pacing, mood, variety, and complexity. You’ll leave with an understanding of how your voice sets you apart and how you can use aspects of your voice for different effects on the page.

Speakers

William Haywood Henderson

Instructor

Saturday June 8, 2024 1:00pm - Sunday June 9, 2024 4:00pm MDT
Zoom

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Hybrid

Type Two-Day Intensive

1:00pm MDT

Two-Day Intensive: Two-Day Story/Essay

Ready, set, write! In this generative intensive, we’ll write a short story or essay over two days. Using targeted exercises and a few insider tricks, we’ll work on particular elements of short stories/essays (both traditional or nontraditional) to form new characters, settings, story arcs, dialogue, action, interiority, and more! Come with a basic story idea and leave with a complete(ish) story to continue perfecting on your own. Open to all short prose genres.

Speakers

Erika Krouse

Instructor

Saturday June 8, 2024 1:00pm - Sunday June 9, 2024 4:00pm MDT
304

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Hybrid YA/Children's

Type Two-Day Intensive

1:00pm MDT

Two-Day Intensive: Entryway into Speculative Nonfiction

Metaphor, speculation, and imaginative play can enliven your writing, help you examine your values, fascinations, imaginings, and capture the slippery quality of the individual writer’s passage through time and the sometimes surreal quality of existence. Over two days, we’ll focus on beginnings and endings within the speculative nonfiction form. The intensive will explore the elastic quality of the nonfiction form through the speculative, with goals of mapping the territories of inner worlds and the possibilities of the world we share.

Speakers

Anna Qu

Instructor

Anna Qu is a Chinese American writer. Her critically acclaimed debut memoir, Made In China: A Memoir of Love and Labor, was named a New York Times Editors’ Choice pick. Her work has appeared in Threepenny Review, Lumina, Kartika, Kweli, and Vol.1 Brooklyn, among others. She was... Read More →

Saturday June 8, 2024 1:00pm - Sunday June 9, 2024 4:00pm MDT
204

Nonfiction/Memoir

Type Two-Day Intensive

1:30pm MDT

Desire and Power

Desire is one of the fundamental elements of character-building in fiction, yet in too many workshop drafts, character desires lack urgency or are too easily fulfilled. In this seminar, we’ll not only discuss different ways to pump up the stakes, we’ll also consider the sparks that can fly when multiple characters have multiple, competing desires. How can tension be built through power dynamics? What are the ways that power might manifest? How might it be applied? And how and when might it shift so that your characters—and your reader—are kept on their toes?

Speakers

Dino Enrique Piacentini

Instructor

Saturday June 8, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
216

Fiction

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

The Burning Heart: Finding the Energy in Short Fiction (V)

Short story writer Rick Bass talks about the “burning heart of the story,” the place where the story quickens, where the energy seems to snap and ignite. In this class, we’ll learn to recognize the burning heart of a story and practice techniques to locate it. Bring the opening paragraph of a story to work with.

Speakers

Karen Auvinen

Instructor

Karen Auvinen (she/her/hers) is poet, mountain woman, life-long westerner, writer, and the author of the memoir Rough Beauty: Forty Seasons of Mountain Living, a finalist for the 2019 Colorado Book Award. Her body of work traverses the intersection of landscape and place, examining... Read More →

Saturday June 8, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Zoom

Fiction

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

The First Twenty Pages

The first twenty pages of your novel are the most essential. These pages orient readers and convince them to have confidence in your storytelling. You’re also establishing your novel’s narrative strategy (point of view, narrative distance, and other craft choices) and introducing the distinctive emotional register of your work. In this seminar, we’ll marvel at the many ways to begin a novel and learn how to create a contract with our readers to keep them reading. Appropriate for all levels, from writers drafting their first twenty pages to those further along, looking to land agents with a watertight writing sample.

Speakers

Andrea Bobotis

Instructor

Andrea Bobotis is the author of the debut novel The Last List of Miss Judith Kratt. A native of South Carolina, she holds a PhD in English literature from the University of Virginia, where she was honored with the All-University Graduate Teaching Award. Her fiction has received support... Read More →

Saturday June 8, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
316

Fiction

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

Sharpening Your Sentences

In this two-hour seminar we'll talk about ways to structure our sentences for maximum impact, how to trim adjectives without losing your meaning, how to make verbs do the work, and the ways punctuation can push a point home. There's music in good prose writing, as we know, and that music is what this class is all about.

Speakers

John Cotter

Instructor

Saturday June 8, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Beacon Hall

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Hybrid Poetry

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

Indigenous Language Identity and the Poetic Voice

The use of Indigenous language defines individual, cultural, and historical identity. How should Indigenous language be used alongside the English language as experimentation to look beyond the influences of colonialism? The poetic genre can be a liberating form of expression and tool for exploring the facets of Indigenous identity and experiences. We'll explore the use of poetry to develop and strengthen the voice to connect imagery, poetic devices, language relationships, history, and culture as insight to re-envision Indigenous identity. Writers can expect an in-class writing exercise or two.

Speakers

Crisosto Apache

Instructor

Crisosto Apache is from Mescalero, New Mexico, on the Mescalero Apache reservation. They are Mescalero Apache, Chiricahua Apache, and Diné (Navajo) of the Salt Clan, born for the Towering House Clan. They hold an MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts and are a professor... Read More →

Saturday June 8, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
215

Poetry

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

Advanced Weekend Fiction Intensive: Making it Work with Alexandra Kleeman

Every writer has a piece or two lingering in their drawer that they've set aside because it "doesn't work." But what is the difference between "not working" and "working differently"? In this workshop, we'll center difficult elements from our own pieces and ask what would happen if we were to revise in support of these features rather than against them. Participants will bring in a piece of writing that lingers unfinished or that you feel contains what you consider a "fatal flaw." Together, we'll work to see these pieces in a new light, ask what the elements that we are most concerned about can tell us about our stories and the craft of writing, and work toward salvaging, reclaiming, and completing these pieces. Accepted participants will submit up to 15 manuscript pages by May 13, and will have the opportunity to meet one-on-one with Alexandra during the week of class.

Speakers

Alexandra Kleeman

Visiting Author

Saturday June 8, 2024 1:30pm - 5:00pm MDT
315

Fiction

Type Advanced Weekend Workshop

4:00pm MDT

The Courage to Revise: Moving from 1st to 2nd Draft

Speakers

Gretchen Kurtz

Instructor

A poet by training, Gretchen Kurtz has spent the past 30 years as a food and travel writer, columnist, blogger, magazine editor and restaurant critic in Paris, New York and Denver. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Star Ledger, The Denver Post, 5280, and Westword, among... Read More →

Saturday June 8, 2024 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
304

Type Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

Image and Text: A Generative Craft Seminar

Photographs, illustrations, ekphrasis, comics, visual essays, documentary fiction; how do we create conversations between text and image that allow poems, fiction, and essays to travel across time, space, and genre? How can visual play and experimentation inspire our written work? This seminar will explore texts in a variety of genres that incorporate visual images into the space of their writing. We'll look at examples of these kinds of hybrid works from writers like Victoria Chang, Matthea Harvey, W.G. Sebald, and Michael Ondaatje. In response to these texts, you'll have the chance to experiment with your own visual/text hybrids that might include collages, photo essays, stencil poetry, and documentary flash fiction. You do not need to have any visual art experience/knowledge to participate in this seminar.

Speakers

Joanna Luloff

Instructor

Joanna Luloff’s short story collection, The Beach at Galle Road, was published by Algonquin Books in 2012. It was selected by Barnes & Noble as a Discover Great New Writers pick and won the Maria Thomas Fiction Prize from Peace Corps Writers. Her stories have appeared in several... Read More →

Saturday June 8, 2024 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
204

All Genres

Type Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

Switching Gears, Jumping Genres

Are you a poet trying to write a novel? Or a short story writer wanting to write a personal essay? Or a nonfiction writer with a collection of unfinished poems that nobody knows about? In this seminar, we’ll confront the hard lines that divide literary genres and make us feel like outsiders in the landscapes we’ve been dreaming about. Depending on the border you decide to cross, you’ll leave this session with a rough or near-complete draft of a piece of writing in a whole new genre.

Speakers

Nazli Koca

Instructor

Saturday June 8, 2024 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
215

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Hybrid Poetry Dramatic Writing

Type Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

Hysterical: A Voice Finding Seminar

Q: When is writing bad? A: When anyone could have written it.
Q: Has anyone ever called you “too much”? Have you ever been accused of being “dramatic”? A: Good. We’ll use that.
Having a “voice” and a writing “style” is like having a fingerprint. Readers should hear your voice in their heads. A speaker (or narrator or character) can’t be “just anyone,” and in writing, "too much" is exactly enough. In this once-in-a-lifetime seminar, we’ll cover every element of style and how you can use each one to sound like you on the page. We’ll also cover concrete ways to find your voice if you’ve lost it (we’ve all lost it at some point). We’ll read voicey examples and gossip about what to steal from them. And then we’ll brainstorm and do writing exercises to make your voice so distinctive that any reader could pick it out of a police lineup.

Speakers

Elissa Bassist

Instructor

Saturday June 8, 2024 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
216

Nonfiction/Memoir

Type Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

On Writing Through the Lens of Not, Don’t, No, Never

Kafka made the claim that “The positive is already given.” In this class, we'll explore any number of things that we don’t know, don’t want, don’t remember, and don’t think as a way of arriving at what we do know, do want, do remember, and do think; what, in short, we cannot turn away from, what is ours alone to say.

Speakers

Peter Markus

Instructor

Peter Markus is the author of the novel Bob, or Man on Boat, as well as the books of stories, We Make Mud and The Fish and the Not Fish, all three published by Dzanc Books. A forthcoming book of poems, When Our Fathers Return to Us as Birds, will be out in September of 2021 from Wayne... Read More →

Saturday June 8, 2024 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
316

Poetry

Type Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

Voice, Motivation, and Plot in KidLit

There was a time when literature for tweens focused on riding horses or finding lost pets and books for teens involved pining for a date for the summer dance. But today's tweens and teens are looking for books that help them navigate a complex and challenging world. In this session, we'll examine the way middle grade and YA novels tackle plot and character. Exercises in voice, motivation and plot will help you find your kidlit comfort zone—and pressure test your work-in-progress if you have a manuscript underway.

Speakers

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 + imagination are the best streaming service around. J.E. is an award-winning... Read More →

Saturday June 8, 2024 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
315

YA/Children's

Type Craft Seminar

5:30pm MDT

Anthology Release Celebration and Reading—We Can See Into Another Place: Mile-High Writers on Social Justice

Help Lighthouse faculty and contributors celebrate the publication of the new anthology, We Can See Into Another Place: Mile-High Writers on Social Justice.

Saturday June 8, 2024 5:30pm - 6:30pm MDT
Beacon Hall

Publishing/Career

Type Event

7:00pm MDT

Visiting Authors Reading and Conversation: Jane Hirshfield, Vanessa Hua, Alexandra Kleeman, Meghan O'Rourke

Hear your favorite visiting author perform their recent works. Shop at the Lit Fest pop-up bookshop operated by The Bookies and get your book signed afterward.

Saturday June 8, 2024 7:00pm - 8:15pm MDT
Beacon Hall

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Poetry

Type Event

7:00pm MDT

Visiting Authors Reading and Conversation: Jane Hirshfield, Vanessa Hua, Alexandra Kleeman, Meghan O'Rourke (L)

Hear your favorite visiting author perform their recent works. Shop at the Lit Fest pop-up bookshop operated by The Bookies and get your book signed afterward.

Saturday June 8, 2024 7:00pm - 8:15pm MDT
Zoom

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Poetry

Type Event

9:00am MDT

The Necessity of Darkness

This class discusses the idea that it is necessary for writers to confront and write about dark, disturbing, and shocking subject matter, not just for the sake of catharsis or the effect of horror or gratuitous shock value but because they exist and must be handled on their own terms. The darker side of life is just as real and important as the lighter and more joyous side. The class does not focus on the genre of horror per se but will focus on the more literary stories of writers like Brian Evenson and A.M. Home.

Speakers

Trent Hudley

Instructor

Trent Hudley is the author of the short story collection One of These Days, published by Veliz Books. He currently teaches creative writing courses at the Lighthouse Writer's Workshop in Denver, CO. He has recently been published The New Feathers Anthology, The Pandemic Press, The... Read More →

Sunday June 9, 2024 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
316

Fiction

Type Craft Seminar

9:00am MDT

Homing in: Uncovering the Arc your Memoir (V)

In this experiential class, we'll work to define arc and then narrow in on the scope of your memoir by evoking memory and key scenes. Plan to write a lot.

Speakers

Karen Auvinen

Instructor

Sunday June 9, 2024 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Zoom

Nonfiction/Memoir

Type Craft Seminar

12:00pm MDT

Lunchtime Business Panel: Contests, Residencies, and More—Ways to Get Out There

Book contests with publication as a prize are a major way that all kinds of books make it into print, especially story collections, poetry, unconventional memoirs, and hybrid books. Artist residencies can increase your writer profile and lead to new opportunities. From reading series to juried workshops, there are more ways than ever to get your writing in front of those who can help make a career. Hear from authors with diverse experience in the literary world on how achieving a writing career isn’t a straight line but a journey with lots of day trips, rest stops, and double-booking.

Speakers

Angie Chuang

Instructor

Jenny Shank

Instructor

Radha Marcum

Instructor

Jenee Skinner

Instructor

Jeneé Skinner is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She also went abroad to the University of Oxford to study Renaissance Literature and the Italian Renaissance. Her work has appeared in Kenyon Review, Catapult, Roxane Gay’s The Audacity, Missouri Review, and elsewhere... Read More →

Sunday June 9, 2024 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
Beacon Hall

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Hybrid Poetry Publishing/Career

Type Lunchtime Business Panel

12:00pm MDT

Lunchtime Business Panel: Contests, Residencies, and More—Ways to Get Out There (Livestream)

Speakers

Angie Chuang

Instructor

Jenny Shank

Instructor

Radha Marcum

Instructor

Jenee Skinner

Instructor

Sunday June 9, 2024 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
Zoom

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Hybrid Poetry Publishing/Career

Type Lunchtime Business Panel

1:30pm MDT

Milieu: The World of Your Story

Too often, early drafts read as if they are set in a generic nowhere-land with little-to-no history, few concrete details, and a fuzzy sense of the social system within which characters operate. In this seminar, we’ll consider the question of milieu—the physical, social, and historical world of stories. We’ll identify different elements that create a story’s milieu, discuss how milieu might affect characters’ perceptions and actions, and then play around with writing exercises that help you uncover and capitalize on the unique world of your own stories. Bring a project you’d like to work on.

Speakers

Dino Enrique Piacentini

Instructor

Sunday June 9, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
215

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

Birth of Style

We all know (sort of) what makes a good sentence, but where and when did that consensus emerge, and how has it changed? How is our idea of what makes “good writing” historically determined? How can we trace the history of the English language in every line we write today, and how would it improve our style if we did? In this class, we’ll tour the last 300 years of English prose writing—from lush romanticism to postwar minimalism to the witty urbanities of the fin de siècle—and we’ll emerge with a new sense of how time works on words (and how time is working on us).

Speakers

John Cotter

Instructor

Sunday June 9, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
216

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Poetry Hybrid

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

The Laundry Line (V)

In his writing workshops, author Michael Pollan talks about every piece of nonfiction needing a "laundry line": a main conceptual throughline that is strong yet flexible enough to hold the various vignettes and analyses that make up the piece. This craft seminar will provide an opportunity for writers to develop a sturdy laundry line for a current project. We’ll brainstorm pivotal moments in each piece’s structure and then craft our own laundry lines, all while discussing the difference between narrative and chronology, identifying thematic and emotional “turns” in a piece, braiding personal reflection with reportage and analysis, and much more.

Speakers

Natalie Hodges

Instructor

Sunday June 9, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Zoom

Nonfiction/Memoir

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

Lattice as Ladder

This seminar will focus on the way that certain early and usually intuitive decisions in writing a poem (grammatical voice, verb tense, tone, choice of form or structure) create specific invitations that guide and affect whatever will come next to the page. A haiku does different work than an elegy, even though both can embody profound emotion. A poem looking backward in time will carry a different set of possibilities than one looking into an imagined future. After exploring a set of model poems for some sense of how this happens, participants will write (perhaps more than once, depending on time) to an invitation lattice they've consciously chosen. Note: Each participant should bring one contemporary poem (by someone else; not over a page in length at most) they are currently thrilled by.

Speakers

Jane Hirshfield

Visiting Author

Sunday June 9, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Beacon Hall

Poetry

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

Lattice as Ladder (Livestream)

Speakers

Jane Hirshfield

Visiting Author

Sunday June 9, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Zoom

Poetry

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

Superhero Poetics (V)

Everyone has an origin story, and it can be real, fantastical, or a combination of both. Are you a superhero, villain, or observer of your own story? And if you could interview Batman or Superman, what answers would they give? In this craft talk, participants will learn to wear the “S” on their own chests as they explore and generate their own superhero myths through direct address, confessional poems, and persona. We'll discuss poems by Lucille Clifton, Terrance Hayes, and more.

Speakers

Cynthia Manick

Instructor

Cynthia Manick is the author of No Sweet Without Brine (Amistad-HarperCollins, 2023), which received 5 stars from Roxane Gay, was named among the “Best Poetry of the Last Year” by Ms. Magazine, and was selected as a New York Public Library Best Book of 2023. She is editor of The... Read More →

Sunday June 9, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Zoom

Poetry

Type Craft Seminar

5:00pm MDT

Advanced Weeklong Workshop Orientation

Writers taking workshops with Steve Almond, Emily Rapp Black, Mark Doty, Danielle Evans, Amitava Kumar, T Kira Māhealani Madden, Claire Messud, Beth Nguyen, Jenny Offill, Rowan Ricardo Phillips, and Maurice Carlos Ruffin, join us on Sunday afternoon for quick introductions to your instructor and fellow classmates and a tour of the Lit Fest campus. Stay for the Lit Fest Kickoff Party!

Sunday June 9, 2024 5:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Beacon Hall

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Poetry

Type Advanced Weeklong Workshop

6:00pm MDT

Lit Fest Kickoff Party

The kickoff party brings together participants and instructors for a night of celebration. Enjoy a surprise musical performance, dinner and drinks, and more!

Sunday June 9, 2024 6:00pm - 8:00pm MDT
Lighthouse HQ

All Genres

Type Event

9:00am MDT

Taking the Pandemic to the Page (V)

All of us have been touched—even changed—by the past several years. What are the stories we can tell about it, and what can we take away? How can we take these changes and reflect on them? In this class, we’ll look at writings that speak to the experience of this collective trauma. We’ll generate pieces of our own from the vantage point of four years later. If you’ve been wanting time to reflect on what the pandemic experience has meant for you, this will be an opportunity to get some thoughts to the page.

Speakers

Ellen Blum Barish

Instructor

Ellen Blum Barish’s essays have appeared in Brevity, Tablet, Literary Mama, Full Grown People, and have aired on Chicago Public Radio. She is founding editor and publisher of the literary publication Thread which earned three notables in Best American Essays. Ellen is the author... Read More →

Monday June 10, 2024 9:00am - Friday June 14, 2024 11:00am MDT
Zoom

All Genres

Type Craft Seminar

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Fiction Workshop: Fiction Worth Writing with Maurice Carlos Ruffin

Once we accept that perhaps we might get a book published, the pressure is on to spin a story that absorbs readers so fully, they miss their subway stop. How do we write stories that keep people turning pages and feel true to our artistic vision? In this generative workshop, we’ll use these questions to dig deeply into the elements of fiction, helping us recast our work in effective, organic ways. We’ll also focus on bringing joy back into the work and the writing, the best-known cure for writer’s block. Accepted participants will have the opportunity to meet one-on-one with Maurice during the week of class.

Speakers

Maurice Carlos Ruffin

Visiting Author

Maurice Carlos Ruffin’s most recent book is the story collection, The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You (One World, 2021), a New York Times Editor’s Choice, a finalist for the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, and longlisted for the Story Prize. His first book... Read More →

Monday June 10, 2024 9:00am - Friday June 14, 2024 11:30am MDT
TBA

Fiction

Type Advanced Weeklong Workshop

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Fiction Workshop: Finding the Subterranean Story with Danielle Evans

Often the process of drafting fiction is a process of uncovering what it is we actually mean to be writing about and bringing that thread to the surface in revision. At the same time, one of the great pleasures of reading is noting what suggestions or questions remain just beneath the text or come to the surface as surprise or revelation. In this workshop, we'll consider the “layers” of a story and the way that being attuned to what’s just underneath the obvious story can guide us toward structures and narrative arcs that serve the project. We'll negotiate the balance between what works best when illuminated and said directly and what works best when left to be discovered by the reader. Each workshop will open with a discussion of a published short story and a brief responsive writing exercise, then move to an in-depth discussion of work submitted by participants. Accepted participants will submit up to 15 manuscript pages by May 13, and will have the opportunity to meet one-on-one with Danielle during the week of class.

Speakers

Danielle Evans

Visiting Author

Danielle Evans is the author of the story collections The Office of Historical Corrections and Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self. Her first collection won the PEN American Robert W. Bingham Prize, the Hurston-Wright award for fiction, and the Paterson Prize for fiction; her... Read More →

Monday June 10, 2024 9:00am - Friday June 14, 2024 11:30am MDT
TBA

Fiction

Type Advanced Weeklong Workshop

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Fiction Workshop: How to Pay Attention with Jenny Offill

In this workshop, we'll explore the clarification and magnification of what Virginia Woolf once called "moments of being." We'll focus on the small, the habitual, the overlooked, and discuss how we as writers might transform these seemingly modest things with the force of our attention. Each class will feature discussion of an assigned short story followed by a student workshop. We'll discuss why a specific (and at times mysterious-seeming) choice has been made by a writer as well as expand our conversations to include larger philosophical questions prompted by these explorations of craft. Topics for discussion will include the science of attention, the uses of ritual and repetition, "the discipline of rightness" (as Wallace Stevens once described it), and emotional vs. literal autobiography. Accepted participants will submit up to 15 pages by May 13, and will have the opportunity to meet one-on-one with Jenny during the week of class.

Speakers

Jenny Offill

Visiting Author

Offill's 2020 novel, Weather, is the story of confronting, both directly and less so, looming climate catastrophe . The book was described as “emotional, planetary, and very turbulent, “ by the New York Times, “utterly exhilarating in its wit and intelligence” by the Boston... Read More →

Monday June 10, 2024 9:00am - Friday June 14, 2024 11:30am MDT
TBA

Fiction

Type Advanced Weeklong Workshop

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Fiction Workshop: Truth in Fiction with Claire Messud

When listening to music, we can hear a false note. So, too, when reading a work of fiction, we can feel it. In this workshop, we'll consider our manuscripts through the lens of 'fictional truth' (not the same as literal truth), asking how we might more closely approach it in our work. Accepted participants will submit up to 15 manuscript pages by May 13, and will have the opportunity to meet one-on-one with Claire during the week of class. Any additional external readings will be provided.

Speakers

Claire Messud

Visiting Author

Claire Messud is the author of six works of fiction. A recipient of a Guggenheim and Radcliffe Fellowships and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her family.

Monday June 10, 2024 9:00am - Friday June 14, 2024 11:30am MDT
TBA

Fiction

Type Advanced Weeklong Workshop

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Fiction Workshop: The BS Detector with Steve Almond

Writing is decision making, nothing more and nothing less. What word? Where to place the comma? How to shape the paragraph? Join Steve Almond for a workshop focused on improving the decisions you make in your writing. By looking critically and carefully at other people’s work, you’ll walk away with a better sense of how to improve your own. The idea is not to slow your rate of composition via compulsive revision, but to instead make better decisions in the first place and to recognize quickly when you haven’t. Accepted participants will submit short pieces of up to 15 pages by May 13, and will have the opportunity to meet one-on-one with Steve during the week of class.

Speakers

Steve Almond

Visiting Author

Steve Almond is the author of eleven books of fiction and nonfiction, including the New York Times bestsellers Candyfreak and Against Football, and the forthcoming Truth is the Arrow, Mercy is the Bow, a book on the writer's craft. After many failed efforts, his debut novel, All the... Read More →

Monday June 10, 2024 9:00am - Friday June 14, 2024 11:30am MDT
TBA

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir

Type Advanced Weeklong Workshop

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Prose Workshop: How to Be Authentic with Amitava Kumar

Whether writing fiction or nonfiction, the writer is always striving for authenticity, a sense of the real on the page. (William Maxwell: "After forty years, what I came to care about most was not style, but the breath of life.") This workshop will look at brief examples of fiction (Arundhati Roy, Sheila Heti, Zadie Smith, Claire Messud, Denis Johnson, Lydia Davis), memoir (Maggie Nelson, Annie Ernaux, Joy Williams), travel writing (Ryszard Kapuscinski, Ian Jack), journalism (Janet Malcolm, Svetlana Alexievich), mixed-genre writing (John Berger, Claudia Rankine, Carolyn Forche) to learn how to create in our writing a certain effect of solidity or at other times dazzling impermanence or instability and even doubt. There is no one way to be authentic, there is no single, fixed notion of authenticity: instead, the richness of literature, regardless of genre, is the ability to use language to portray the richness of life itself. Each workshop meeting will be devoted to 10-minute writing exercises, an hour of discussion about the readings for the day (10-15 pages), and the rest of the time to a close reading of any one workshop-participant's work. Open to nonfiction and fiction writers, accepted participants will submit up to 15 pages by May 13, and will have the opportunity to meet one-on-one with Amitava during the week of class.

Speakers

Amitava Kumar

Visiting Author

Amitava Kumar is a writer and journalist who has published several works of nonfiction and three novels. His most recent title, The Blue Book: A Writer's Journal, is a collection of drawings and journal entries. Kumar's writing has appeared in Granta, The New York Times, Harper’s... Read More →

Monday June 10, 2024 9:00am - Friday June 14, 2024 11:30am MDT
TBA

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir

Type Advanced Weeklong Workshop

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Nonfiction Workshop: Mapping the Memoir with Emily Rapp Black

Art is architecture; art is artificial; art is...? The biggest challenge for any writer of narrative is finding the map from beginning to end. This workshop is designed for writers working on a book-length memoir and wish to delve more deeply into issues of structure, style, and voice: these three craft points will be our focus, as these make up the net that holds a narrative together in a propulsive, engaging, immersive, and beautiful way. The goal of this workshop is to take your completed manuscript to the next level. We'll also discuss different avenues of publication. Accepted participants will submit up to 15 pages by May 13, and will have the opportunity to meet one-on-one with Emily during the week of class.

Speakers

Emily Rapp Black

Visiting Author

Emily Rapp Black is the author of four books of nonfiction: Poster Child; The Still Point of the Turning World, which was a New York Times bestseller, Editor's Choice, and a finalist for the PEN USA award; Sanctuary, a New York Times Editor's Choice; and Frida Kahlo and My Left Leg... Read More →

Monday June 10, 2024 9:00am - Friday June 14, 2024 11:30am MDT
TBA

Nonfiction/Memoir

Type Advanced Weeklong Workshop

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Nonfiction Workshop: Nonfiction Think Tank with Beth Nguyen

This nontraditional workshop serves as a kind of supportive think tank for writers of memoir, memoir-in-essays, essay collections, or any other form of nonfiction. We’ll explore everything from the writing process to key elements like structure, character, and perspective, and then delve into ethical concerns (how do we write about other people? What should we or shouldn’t we write?). Our mission will be to clarify our stories and emerge with a greater sense of focus, forward progress, and inspiration as we get back to them. Writing nonfiction creates its own particular concerns and tensions, and this workshop’s mission is to address those together so that we can also reap nonfiction’s many rewards. Accepted participants will submit up to 15 pages by May 13 and will have the opportunity to meet with Beth one-on-one during the week of class. During workshop, emphasis will be placed on verbal feedback and group discussion, and written feedback among participants will be optional.

Speakers

Beth Nguyen

Visiting Author

Beth Nguyen also goes by Bich Minh Nguyen. Her essay in The New Yorker explains why she has two names. Please call her Beth. She is the author of four books, most recently the memoir Owner of a Lonely Heart, published by Scribner in 2023. Owner of a Lonely Heart was a New York Times... Read More →

Monday June 10, 2024 9:00am - Friday June 14, 2024 11:30am MDT
TBA

Nonfiction/Memoir

Type Advanced Weeklong Workshop

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Nonfiction Workshop: The Self, The Selves, with T Kira Māhealani Madden

Our lived experiences, and our memories, are rarely understood through a tidy, "traditional" chronology. They seldom mirror a Western "hero’s journey;" and they shouldn’t have to. In this generative workshop, we'll investigate speculative structures, parallel realities, hypothetical What If’s? and honor every Self as Narrator in order to come closer to the story. We'll focus on compression, syntax, and identifying narrative heat and emotional potency in our memories, our selves, and all the selves we’ve been, discussing strategies one uses to render characters inspired by real people, and the compromises and thrills that come with that responsibility. Writers should be prepared to experiment, play, share, and offer first impression oral feedback. Writers will leave with new work every day. Accepted participants have the opportunity to meet one-on-one with T Kira during the week of class.

Speakers

T Kira Māhealani Madden

Visiting Author

T Kira Māhealani Madden is a hapa-Kanaka Maoli writer, photographer, and amateur magician. She is the Founding Editor of No Tokens, a magazine of literature and art, and has received fellowships from MacDowell, Hedgebrook, Tin House, DISQUIET, NYSCA/NYFA, and Yaddo. Her debut memoir... Read More →

Monday June 10, 2024 9:00am - Friday June 14, 2024 11:30am MDT
TBA

Nonfiction/Memoir

Type Advanced Weeklong Workshop

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Poetry Workshop: From Great Pain, a Formal Feeling with Rowan Ricardo Phillips

This workshop will focus primarily on poetic form. We'll explore not merely what these particular forms are but why, how and the often underdeveloped sense of when you may think to use them. This will involve our studying, in brief, the history of these forms, their strict and loose interpretations, and how your formal poems can thrive in the present instead of seeming beholden to, and sounding like they were written, in the past. This workshop is designed for advanced poets, regardless of past experience with formal poetry. Accepted participants will submit one poem by May 13, and will be expected to write a new poem in a new form for every workshop meeting. Participants will have the opportunity to meet one-on-one with Rowan during the week of class.

Speakers

Rowan Ricardo Phillips

Visiting Author

Rowan Ricardo Phillips is a multi-award winning poet, nonfiction writer, scholar, screenwriter, and translator. He is the author of The Ground, Heaven, Living Weapon, Silver, When Blackness Rhymes with Blackness, and The Circuit: A Tennis Odyssey. Phillips has been the recipient of... Read More →

Monday June 10, 2024 9:00am - Friday June 14, 2024 11:30am MDT
TBA

Poetry

Type Advanced Weeklong Workshop

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Poetry Workshop: Raising the Stakes with Mark Doty

Do you ever look at a poem you’ve written and sense that so much—the elusive but essential core of what you felt but couldn’t say—has been left out? This workshop is designed for experienced poets who would like to deepen, complicate, and enlarge their poems. We’ll read exemplary contemporary poems, engage in in- and out-of-class writing exercises, and cheer each other on in our quest to get more of the gorgeous mess of life onto the page. You will need a notebook or laptop, a willingness to experiment, and a degree of courage, which the group will help you find if need be. Each participant will submit up to four poems for review by May 13. Although all four poems may not be workshopped in class, there will be an opportunity to discuss them all in-depth during individual meetings with Mark to be scheduled the week of class.

Speakers

Mark Doty

Visiting Author

Mark Doty is the author of nine books of poetry, including Deep Lane (April 2015), Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems, which won the 2008 National Book Award, and My Alexandria, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the T.S. Eliot... Read More →

Monday June 10, 2024 9:00am - Friday June 14, 2024 11:30am MDT
TBA

Poetry

Type Advanced Weeklong Workshop

12:00pm MDT

Lunchtime Business Panel: Selling Your Book—The Query Letter, Elevator Pitch, and More

How do we turn the labors of our hearts into something that can be bought and sold? What happens when the book you've written isn't quite the book you can sell? How do you manage suggestions—in both fiction and nonfiction—that fly in the face of your original draft? Join publishing professionals and writers as they discuss the tools you need for submission (query, proposal, pitch), how to be successful in a competitive marketplace, and tips and tricks to cut down on rejections and make your work stand out.

Speakers

Marin Takikawa

Agent

Marin Takikawa is an associate agent and the audio rights coordinator at The Friedrich Agency. Born in Tokyo and raised in Singapore and NYC, she joined TFA in early 2021 after getting her start as an assistant to three agents at Foundry Literary + Media, following internships at... Read More →

Abby Walters

Agent

Abby Walters is a Literary Agent at leading publishing and entertainment agency Creative Artists Agency (CAA). Walters is based in the New York office and creates publishing opportunities across all agency departments. Some of her clients include Thao Thai, Honor Levy, Zoë Eisenberg... Read More →

Elissa Bassist

Instructor

Anna Qu

Instructor

Sarah Gerard

Instructor

Sarah Gerard is the author, most recently, of the novel True Love. Her essay collection Sunshine State was a New York Times Editors’ Choice, a finalist for the Southern Book Prize, and was longlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. Her novel Binary... Read More →

Jan Thomas

Instructor

Monday June 10, 2024 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
Beacon Hall

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Hybrid Poetry Publishing/Career

Type Lunchtime Business Panel

12:00pm MDT

Lunchtime Business Panel: Selling Your Book—The Query Letter, Elevator Pitch, and More (Livestream)

Speakers

Marin Takikawa

Agent

Abby Walters

Agent

Elissa Bassist

Instructor

Anna Qu

Instructor

Sarah Gerard

Instructor

Jan Thomas

Instructor

Monday June 10, 2024 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
Zoom

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Hybrid Poetry Publishing/Career

Type Lunchtime Business Panel

1:30pm MDT

(Re)Writing History: The Questions, Conundrums, Responsibilities, and Delights of Writing Fiction About the Past

"The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there," wrote L.P. Hartley. Peter Carey once described writing historical fiction as "a science fiction of the past," implying that creating the past in fiction is no less a matter of world-building than creating the future. Is deep historical research a boon or a confusing constraint? What do we owe to the historical record? To what extent are we free to invent?

Speakers

Claire Messud

Visiting Author

Monday June 10, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Beacon Hall

Fiction

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

(Re)Writing History: The Questions, Conundrums, Responsibilities, and Delights of Writing Fiction About the Past (Livestream)

Speakers

Claire Messud

Visiting Author

Monday June 10, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Zoom

Fiction

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

Funny Is the New Deep: How to Harness Your Comic Impulse

Contrary to popular belief, writing funny doesn’t mean sacrificing depth. In fact, for most literary writers, the comic impulse is inextricably linked to tragedy. It’s not a conscious effort to entertain the reader so much as an unconscious effort to face some tragic moment or realization. In this informal class, suitable for all genres, we’ll look at the work of Samantha Irby, Cathy Park Hong, Lorrie Moore, and others in an effort to learn how your sense of humor can become an instrument of truth and empower work. Yes, you are allowed to make people laugh—and break their hearts at the same time.

Speakers

Steve Almond

Visiting Author

Monday June 10, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
316

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

Subverting Expectations

The stories that linger in our minds long after reading tend to subvert the reader's expectations. We know the golden rule: the reader likes to know more than the main characters, but you also don't want to bore the reader. We'll examine successful passages where the writer seemed to be taking the story one way and then had the characters surprise themselves and the reader in a way that feels startling but authentic and so right that it could not have gone another way. We'll also do writing exercises to see how we can apply these techniques in our writing to push our characters and ourselves to surprising outcomes.

Speakers

Paula Younger

Instructor

Paula Younger received her MFA from the University of Virginia Creative Writing program, where she was awarded a Henry Hoyns Fellowship. She was also the Fiction Editor for Meridian and a Bronx Writers' Center Fellow. Her award-winning fiction has appeared in such literary journals... Read More →

Monday June 10, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
204

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Dramatic Writing

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

Getting the Kids In

Writing good adult characters in our stories is hard enough, but writing convincing children—capturing their unpredictable brains, whacky speech patterns, wild movements, emotional swings, alternatively psychotic and heart-achingly sweet behavior—is a special and delightful challenge. Join this father of a two-and-a-half-year-old boy in an examination of some well-drawn children in literature and a discussion of how to coax real and imaginary kids to life in our own work.

Speakers

Daniel Levine

Instructor

Daniel Levine is the author of the novel Hyde, a New York Times Editor's Choice and one of Washington Post's 5 Best Thrillers of 2014. He studied English Literature and Creative Writing at Brown University and received his MFA in Fiction from the University of Florida. He has taught... Read More →

Monday June 10, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
215

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Hybrid

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

Bad to the Bone: Writing Villains and Nefarious Characters

Ahab, Nurse Ratched, Kurtz, Professor Moriarty, Cruella DeVil, Voldemort, Satan...No matter the genre, a great villain is a key ingredient to a badass story. But what if you don’t know who your villain is, or if it’s even a person at all? This class will outline types of villains and tips for creating the best (yet worst) ones. We’ll explore adversarial “worth,” antagonist agency and power, alternative value systems and character motivations, and villainous codes, quests, and wounds. Prepare to get bad so your story can get good. Open to all prose writers.

Speakers

Erika Krouse

Instructor

Monday June 10, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
216

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Hybrid Dramatic Writing YA/Children's

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

Symbolism and Metaphor: They Aren't Just for Fiction (V)

So, do you think symbolism and metaphor are devices only fiction writers use? Everything humans do is symbolic. We create symbols, we use them, we misuse them. In this class, we’ll first take a deep dive into the symbolic and the metaphorical in our everyday lives. We’ll analyze several examples of literary nonfiction that use the same devices fiction writers employ. We’ll talk about ways nonfiction writers can both deepen and complicate their own narratives and, in the process, understand why and how they can be beneficial.

Speakers

Angelique Stevens

Instructor

Angelique Stevens lives in Upstate New York where she teaches creative writing, literature of genocide, and race literatures. Her nonfiction has been published or is forthcoming in Granta, LitHub, The New England Review, and a number of anthologies. Her essay “Ghost Bread,” which... Read More →

Monday June 10, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Zoom

Nonfiction/Memoir

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

Documentary Poetics: The Poetry of Politics, Testimony, and Witness

Documentary poetics engages in the art of documentation in order to, as Philip Metres argues, “testify to the often unheard voices of people struggling to survive in the face of unspeakable violence.” How, then, and in what ways can documentary poetry challenge our thinking or change the world? This craft class will investigate the history of documentary poetry in order to understand the means and motivations behind the genre. We'll analyze a diverse range of documentary poetry, including work by Don Mee Choi, Layli Long Soldier, Solmaz Sharif, and propose our own documentary poetics project.

Speakers

Wendy Chen

Instructor

Monday June 10, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
315

Poetry

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

Poetry from the Earth (V)

Poems not only connect us with the human community, but they can help us forge deeper bonds with the places we live and traverse, or what David Abram calls the “more-than-human species” all around us. Honing our attention and senses can help us bring more original and vibrant detail to the page, making the poem itself a place for the reader to enter and explore. We’ll experiment with prompts and approaches that bring greater presence to our poetry and lives while also considering the poetry of writers Pattiann Rogers, William Stafford, Joy Harjo, Linda Hogan, and others.

Speakers

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 →

Monday June 10, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Zoom

Poetry

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

Weeklong Screenwriting Seminar with Dean Bakopoulos

In this seminar, we’ll explore the craft of dramatic writing, specifically crafting your first original television pilot—an essential “calling card” for breaking into the industry. We'll discuss character arcs, narrative structure, dramatic escalation, conflict, and the construction of compelling scenes. We'll look for ways to preserve our literary voice and unique identity in a form often (mistakenly) considered formulaic. We’ll watch clips from some successful pilot episodes as illustrations whenever possible, and some outside viewing may be suggested (particularly the pilot episodes of Atlanta, Reservation Dogs, Insecure, Severance, The Curse, and Breaking Bad.) We’ll also talk about the art of adaptation—turning one of your own stories/novels (or somebody else’s) into a pilot script. Finally, we'll end with one generative exercise each session, designed to get you started on the first ten pages of your script and rough outline by the end of the week. While the course is geared towards creative writers interested in trying to write their first script, the principles taught in this class can easily apply to any narrative work—stories, novels, memoirs, essays, plays, etc.

Speakers

Dean Bakopoulos

Visiting Author

Dean Bakopoulos is the author of the novels Please Don't Come Back from the Moon (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), My American Unhappiness (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), and Summerlong (Ecco/HarperCollins). The winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship and NEA fellowships in both fiction and creative... Read More →

Monday June 10, 2024 1:30pm - Friday June 14, 2024 3:30pm MDT
304

Screenwriting

Type Advanced Weeklong Workshop

4:00pm MDT

Creating Art in Dark Times (V)

Some of the world’s greatest art has emerged in its bleakest hours. In this seminar, we’ll explore what causes fear and what we do to reinforce our creative fears, then devise strategies for overcoming them. Through writing prompts and discussion, participants will leave with some clear steps to take to overcome their fear and create meaningful works of art.

Speakers

R. Alan Brooks

Instructor

R. Alan Brooks teaches graphic novel writing at Regis University, and is the writer/creator of The Burning Metronome graphic novel, a supernatural murder mystery with social commentary. He also hosts the popular “MotherF**ker In A Cape” comics podcast, which focuses on marginalized... Read More →

Monday June 10, 2024 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Zoom

All Genres

Type Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

Writing About "Class"

Social class is everywhere, impacting where we live, what we believe, and how we move through the world. Yet, it’s not as often talked or written about. In this generative session, we’ll consider how it feels to live in America, regardless of where one falls on the social strata. We’ll look at how masterful writers from around the world have approached the subject of class and use prompts to generate new work.

Speakers

Amanda Rea

Instructor

Monday June 10, 2024 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
216

All Genres

Type Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

Fault Lines

Too often, we put trouble and tension on top of our story instead of letting it simmer below the surface, but the best tension comes from epic problems that have been there all along. We’ll examine strong fault lines in fiction and nonfiction and then create our own for solid and stable stories with some epic problems.

Speakers

Paula Younger

Instructor

Monday June 10, 2024 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
215

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Dramatic Writing

Type Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

Time Travel: Writing Flashback and Backstory

Every character has a past, and often a troubled one. But how (and where, and when) do you bring that past to the page without slowing the story down? Through lecture, discussion, examples, and exercises, we’ll study techniques for using backstory and flashback and create a question-driven past narrative that actually drives your story forward. Open to all genres

Speakers

Erika Krouse

Instructor

Monday June 10, 2024 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
304

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Hybrid Dramatic Writing YA/Children's

Type Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

Tackling the “S” Word: Writing Your Book’s Synopsis

A task that few writers savor is writing a synopsis for their novel or memoir. While the process might feel daunting (or even unpleasant), writing a one or two-page synopsis can be constructive, especially during revision. Why? Because even if no one ever asks you for it, your synopsis can help you spot structural issues, undeveloped characters, and plot holes in your narrative. In this seminar, we’ll look at the nuts and bolts of a synopsis, how to whittle our stories down to the basics, and what we can learn from synopsis development.

Speakers

Cynthia Swanson

Instructor

Cynthia Swanson writes literary suspense, often using historical settings. Cynthia’s debut novel, The Bookseller, was a New York Times best seller, an Indie Next selection, the winner of the 2016 WILLA Literary Award for Historical Fiction, and is translated into 18 languages. The... Read More →

Monday June 10, 2024 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
204

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Publishing/Career YA/Children's

Type Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

Poetry as Artivism: A Love Language for the Future (V)

In this seminar, we'll approach writing poetry as a practice of creative hope, aggressive optimism, and exploring radical visions of a liberated future. Offering poems and prompts that invite participants to identify and celebrate unexpected moments of joy, life, beauty, and/or celebration in the midst of hardship and/or mundanity, this class will include time to explore and write about your own inspirations.

Speakers

Suzi Q. Smith

Instructor

Suzi Q. Smith is an award-winning artist, organizer, and educator who lives in Denver, Colorado. She has created, curated, coached, and taught in Denver for over 20 years, managing the largest poetry festivals that Denver has seen to date. A TEDx speaker multiple times, Suzi has performed... Read More →

Monday June 10, 2024 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Zoom

Poetry

Type Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

The Art of Description

How is perception rendered into language? How do we go about the tricky business of representing the physical world on the page? Description isn’t there just to make a poem feel more vivid; it’s a way of revealing the self, characterizing the perceiver. In this seminar, we’ll look at a number of exemplary poems and practice with exercises designed to enrich sensory detail and get more of your individual way of knowing the world onto the page.

Speakers

Mark Doty

Visiting Author

Monday June 10, 2024 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
316

Poetry

Type Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

The Art of Description (Livestream)

Speakers

Mark Doty

Visiting Author

Monday June 10, 2024 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Zoom

Poetry

Type Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

Starting Your Screenplay from Scratch

Do you have an idea for a movie that’s been percolating for a while? Can you see your novel/memoir/short story on the big screen? Start here! In this seminar, we'll start the writing before you write your screenplay by using the three-act structure to outline your screenplay and get you started on a clear path to a finished script. We’ll start from the beginning, and students should expect to leave the class with a logline and the start of a working outline. Students familiar with the structure but want to start a new project are welcome!

Speakers

Jenny Taylor-Whitehorn

Instructor

Monday June 10, 2024 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
315

Screenwriting

Type Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

Two-Day Intensive: Deep Revision—Using the Revision Process to Fall in Love with Your Work Again (V)

It's easy to get stuck on a draft and not know where to go next—or even to despair that there's nowhere else to go. Revision, though, can be less of a dutiful task and more of an alchemical process of discovery that helps us bring our writing back to life and ourselves along with it. Through a combination of readings, exercises, and discussions, this course will offer insight and strategies toward revision that help writers better understand their own work and what they are trying to do—and that can help them fall back in love with their projects.

Speakers

Lauren Markham

Instructor

Monday June 10, 2024 4:00pm - Tuesday June 11, 2024 7:00pm MDT
Zoom

Nonfiction/Memoir

Type Two-Day Intensive

4:30pm MDT

Lit Fest Fellows Reading

Help us celebrate the exceptional talent among this year’s Lit Fest Fellowship finalists and winners.

Monday June 10, 2024 4:30pm - 6:00pm MDT
Beacon Hall

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Poetry

Type Event

6:00pm MDT

Writing in Color Happy Hour

Join us for a casual evening of drinks and community building. This happy hour is intended to be a space for writers of color to come together and connect over their passions and creative interests. Come make new connections as we gear up for the 2024 Writing in Color Fest! Drinks and light appetizers will be provided.

After the happy hour, Writing in Color will be hosting a Storytelling Through Jazz night with Dazzle Denver which you can register for here.

Monday June 10, 2024 6:00pm - 6:30pm MDT
Beacon Hall

All Genres

Type Event

6:30pm MDT

Writing in Color Presents: Storytelling Through Jazz with Dazzle

As writers, we’re constantly influenced by other art forms, and many of us find solace and inspiration in listening to music while we write. Music, just like our writing, tells a story and aims to bring listeners closer to the human experience. In collaboration with Dazzle Denver, join us for an evening of music-inspired readings with Lighthouse instructors and jazz performance by a BIPOC+-led trio from Dazzle.
This event is open to all who identify as BIPOC+ and to allies of BIPOC+ communities. Attendees who identify as BIPOC+ are welcome to join us for a Writing in Color happy hour before the performance.
Writing in Color is a program focused on building community for BIPOC writers, and includes monthly meet-ups that aim to connect writers of color with peers to share ideas, inspirations, new work, successes, challenges, and resources to foster a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive writing community in Colorado and beyond.
Producing unique musical experiences, Dazzle Denver provides the stages upon which artists share their craft, reflecting the beautiful diversity that Colorado has to offer. The roots lie in jazz, but expands to other genres, with a variety of national and international touring acts spicing up the calendar.

Monday June 10, 2024 6:30pm - 9:00pm MDT
Beacon Hall

All Genres

Type Event

9:00am MDT

What a Moment Holds: Essays that Capture a Spark (V)

Writer Abigail Thomas calls them "the shock of truth" or "moments that feel like body blows"—moments that happen in a flash that, when captured in an essay by a writer, can do the same for the reader. These can be moments of insight, understanding, or vision—“aha moments.” Often found in flash nonfiction, these moments can also be found in longer essays that lead up to it. In this seminar, we'll read sections of essays and memoir that illustrate transformative moments and discuss what makes them work or not.

Speakers

Ellen Blum Barish

Instructor

Tuesday June 11, 2024 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Zoom

Nonfiction/Memoir

Type Craft Seminar

12:00pm MDT

Lunchtime Business Panel: Literary Journals—The Inside Scoop

You’ve made your story, essay, or poem the best it can be, and now you’re ready to get it published in a literary journal. How do you catch the eye of an editor? Our panel of journal editors from Poetry, Copper Nickel, Colorado Review, Virginia Quarerly Review, and more will chat about the submission process, what they look for in a piece, and mistakes to avoid when you’re sending out your work. You’ll leave better informed and inspired to submit.

Speakers

Angela Flores

Editor

Angela Flores is a trans writer, editor, and Tin House scholar. Her work has appeared with Ploughshares, Academy of American Poets, and The Normal School. She currently serves as the assistant editor for Poetry magazine, and before joining Poetry, she served on the editorial board... Read More →

Allison Wright

Editor

Allison Wright is the executive editor and publisher of the Virginia Quarterly Review. Her writing has appeared in the Atlantic, the Guardian Saturday Magazine, CNN, VQR, Popular Mechanics, the Texas Observer, Literary Hub, and elsewhere. She teaches media ethics and journalism... Read More →

Alexander Lumans

Instructor

Jenny Wortman

Panelist

Jennifer Wortman is the author of the short story collection This. This. This. Is. Love. Love. Love (Split/Lip Press, 2019) and a recipient of a 2020 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship. Her fiction, essays, and poetry appear in TriQuarterly, Glimmer Train, Copper... Read More →

Dino Enrique Piacentini

Instructor

Harrison Fletcher

Instructor

Harrison Candelaria Fletcher is the author of the essay collection, Descanso for My Father, the memoir, Presentimiento: A Life in Dreams, and his newest, Finding Querencia: Essays from In Between. Recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, Autumn... Read More →

Tuesday June 11, 2024 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
Beacon Hall

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Hybrid Poetry Publishing/Career

Type Lunchtime Business Panel

12:00pm MDT

Lunchtime Business Panel: Literary Journals—The Inside Scoop (Livestream)

You’ve made your story, essay, or poem the best it can be, and now you’re ready to get it published in a literary journal. How do you catch the eye of an editor? Our panel of journal editors from Poetry, Colorado Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere, will chat about the submission process, what they look for in a piece, and mistakes to avoid when you’re sending out your work. You’ll leave better informed and inspired to submit.

Speakers

Angela Flores

Editor

Allison Wright

Editor

Alexander Lumans

Instructor

Jenny Wortman

Panelist

Dino Enrique Piacentini

Instructor

Harrison Fletcher

Instructor

Tuesday June 11, 2024 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
Zoom

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Hybrid Poetry Publishing/Career

Type Lunchtime Business Panel

1:30pm MDT

The Excavation and Animation of Historical Fiction

Of historical fiction, author Sabina Murray writes, “...I know what a historical fiction writer is until I am asked. I do not feel that I easily occupy that place—half-archeologist, half-Doctor Frankenstein—excavating and animating in the name of literature.” What kinds of resources (archives, oral histories, documents) can we excavate in order to animate our work? In this course, we'll examine the methodologies of writers of historical fiction (W.G. Sebald, Min Jin Lee) to incorporate these techniques into our own work.

Speakers

Wendy Chen

Instructor

Tuesday June 11, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
216

Fiction

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

Everything But Plot: Building Suspense on the Line Level

In this generative session, we'll engage in close readings of work in all genres and ask: what keeps us reading and moving forward? What delivers a chill? We'll investigate constructions of the line and the paragraph, asking after subtext and staging, POV and time shifts, dangling questions, and form. Come ready to experiment.

Speakers

T Kira Māhealani Madden

Visiting Author

Tuesday June 11, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Beacon Hall

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Hybrid

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

Everything But Plot: Building Suspense on the Line Level (Livestream)

Speakers

T Kira Māhealani Madden

Visiting Author

Tuesday June 11, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Zoom

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Hybrid

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

The Messy Middle

Your beginning rocks and has tons of forward momentum. You might even know what you want your ending to be. The problem, of course, is everything in the middle. Writing the “messy middle” can feel like trying to carry a king-sized mattress up twenty flights of stairs all alone. But you’re not alone! In this class, we’ll look at the most common messy-middle problems and how to identify them. Using strategic exercises, you’ll practice solid strategies to conquer and convert your messy middle into plot and prose that will propel you through your story. Open to all prose genres.

Speakers

Erika Krouse

Instructor

Tuesday June 11, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
204

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Hybrid Dramatic Writing

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

Nature Writing

What can we learn about writing and also about the world from nature writing? This craft seminar will present examples from some classic texts—Thoreau's Walden, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, and others—to inspire short writing exercises that help grasp what is urgent and beautiful about nature writing.

Speakers

Amitava Kumar

Visiting Author

Tuesday June 11, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
316

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Hybrid Poetry

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

Long Night's Journey into Day: Writing About Serious Illness (V)

Writing through and about serious illness can not only create powerful poems, memoirs, and fiction, but it can help us integrate and learn from our experiences as patients, survivors, and caregivers. We'll explore how and when to write about our experiences through innovative writing prompts, narrative medicine resources, and steady practices that steer us away from retriggering ourselves and toward insights, wholeness, and resilience. We’ll investigate approaches to widen our perspective and give us the appropriate distance to write powerful poetry and prose while also concentrating on original, vibrant, and enduring specifics in our writing.

Speakers

Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg

Instructor

Tuesday June 11, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Zoom

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Poetry Hybrid Dramatic Writing

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

How to Write a Book Proposal

This two-hour seminar will provide comprehensive instruction on how to research, write, and pitch a book proposal to an agent from an author who has submitted seven or eight of these things and scored book deals twice.

Speakers

Steve Knopper

Instructor

Steve Knopper is Billboard editor at large, former Rolling Stone contributing editor, and author of MJ: The Genius of Michael Jackson (Scribner, 2015) and Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Business in the Digital Age (Free Press, 2009). He has written... Read More →

Tuesday June 11, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
315

Nonfiction/Memoir Publishing/Career

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

Contemporary American Women Poets

Many living, breathing American women poets have written spectacular books in the last two years. Now, in its sixth edition, your instructor samples over three dozen poetry collections from large and small presses. This year, Evie Shockley, Jenny Xie, and Sharon Olds are in the running, plus a long list of new poets to come. Continuing a tradition, we'll explore the work of Joy Harjo as foremother. All are welcome.

Speakers

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 →

Tuesday June 11, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
215

Poetry

Type Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

Time Machine: Crafting Time in Fiction (V)

The ticking clock, the switchback, the speeding bullet—writers are the gods of time. In this fun, exercise-based seminar, we’ll go over the fundamentals of scene (showing) and summary (telling). We’ll explore what Madison Smartt Bell calls the “scenelett,” and Jane Allison calls “splicing sensory glimmers” in order to enliven summary. We’ll practice triggering flashbacks and returning readers safely to the present, and we’ll try an Alice Munro style flashforward.

Speakers

Clemintine Guirado

Instructor

Clemintine Guirado has published short stories in StoryQuartlerly, Best New American Voices, Rainbow Curve, Comet Magazine, and 580 Split. She was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Fiction at Stanford University and a Carl Djerassi Fiction Fellowship at the University of Wisconsin. She... Read More →

Tuesday June 11, 2024 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Zoom

Fiction

Type Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

In These Fleeting Moments: Building Dramatic Tension

What's a "ticking clock" in writing, and how does it add dramatic tension to your story? In this two-hour class, we'll examine how ticking clocks can work in everything from an action movie to a family drama and see how understanding this tool might help with your own writing. Expect some brief writing exercises and lots of discussion.

Speakers

R. Alan Brooks

Instructor

Tuesday June 11, 2024 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
315

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Dramatic Writing

Type Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

In Other Words: Narrative Styles

Sometimes we show, and sometimes we tell. Sometimes we’re interior, and sometimes we’re exterior. Sometimes, we describe, and sometimes we imply. But when do we use which styles, and why? In this class, we’ll explore six types of narrative styles: scene, exposition, description, interiority, dialogue, and “voiceyness.” We’ll talk about the assets and challenges of each style and explore techniques to use them to their best advantage in your writing. Writers can expect discussion, examples, and writing exercises. Open to all prose writers.

Speakers

Erika Krouse

Instructor

Tuesday June 11, 2024 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
216

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Hybrid YA/Children's

Type Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

Getting to the Finish Line

All writers, from beginners to professionals, go through periods when it seems impossible to complete a project, no matter how much we love it and want to see it out in the world. In this seminar, we’ll explore what holds us back, the reasons we have trouble focusing on our writing projects (even when we easily check other items off our “to-do” list), and how to prioritize writing with a goal toward project completion. We’ll also do some exercises to help you address your specific barriers and overcome them.

Speakers

Cynthia Swanson

Instructor

Tuesday June 11, 2024 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
304

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Poetry Hybrid Dramatic Writing Publishing/Career YA/Children's

Type Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

Memoir for the Anxious, Uncertain, or Scared Writer

This craft seminar aims to demystify the process of writing memoir. We'll talk about structure, perspective, ethical concerns, and more, including how to begin and how to continue.

Speakers

Beth Nguyen

Visiting Author

Tuesday June 11, 2024 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
316

Nonfiction/Memoir

Type Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

Romance Your Life (V)

So often, nonfiction is framed by trauma, but what’s so wrong with rose-colored glasses? Writers often talk about how humor can be used as a tool to tell hard stories, but leaning into the romantic can be, too. Romancing Your Life is a technique for showing your past self (and those that populated your life) some care, tenderness, and grace.

Speakers

Minda Honey

Instructor

Tuesday June 11, 2024 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Zoom

Nonfiction/Memoir

Type Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

A KidLit Publishing Practicum (V)

Come discover how to navigate the kidlit industry like a pro! Students will begin to chart a course toward their publishing goals via writing prompts and brainstorm exercises which will explore cultural sensitivity and authentic representation, in addition to querying agents; submitting solo; self-publishing; and marketing a title for children or tweens. "Lesser-known" paths to becoming a published author like IP work—plus the pros and cons of these types of book deals—will also be discussed.

Speakers

Rachel Werner

Instructor

Rachel Werner is the author of the picture books Floods (Capstone 2022), Moving and Grooving to Fillmore's Beat (Capstone 2023), and The Glam World Tour (Capstone 2024) as well as the nonfiction middle grade title Glow & Grow: A Brown Girl's Positive Body Guide (Free Spirit... Read More →

Tuesday June 11, 2024 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Zoom

YA/Children's

Type Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

Two-Day Intensive: Think Like A Gatekeeper—The Experience of Reading Your Screenplay/Pilot

The best way to get past those pesky Hollywood gatekeepers is to think like one! In this very prescriptive two-day intensive, students are invited to dive deep into the script reading process and focus on ways to improve the overall experience for someone else reading their script. Students will submit their first act (up to 30 pages) of their screenplay/pilot, receiving written instructor feedback on those pages; however, we’ll also conduct a cold table read of everyone’s first ten pages and break down how we can improve the overall experience to get you through the door.

Speakers

Jenny Taylor-Whitehorn

Instructor

Tuesday June 11, 2024 4:00pm - Wednesday June 12, 2024 7:00pm MDT
204

Screenwriting

Type Two-Day Intensive

4:30pm MDT

Poetry Collective Graduation and Celebration

Come and celebrate the hard work of the Poetry Collective graduates, hear some of their final work, and learn more about the year-long program.

Tuesday June 11, 2024 4:30pm - 6:00pm MDT
Beacon Hall

Poetry

Type Event

7:00pm MDT

Visiting Authors Reading with T Kira Māhealani Madden, Claire Messud, Jenny Offill, and Rowan Ricardo Phillips

Hear your favorite visiting author perform their recent works. Shop at the Lit Fest pop-up bookstore operated by The Bookies and get your book signed afterward.

Tuesday June 11, 2024 7:00pm - 8:15pm MDT
Beacon Hall

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Hybrid Poetry

Type Event

7:00pm MDT

Visiting Authors Reading with T Kira Māhealani Madden, Claire Messud, Jenny Offill, and Rowan Ricardo Phillips (Livestream)

Hear your favorite visiting author perform their recent works. Shop at the Lit Fest pop-up bookstore operated by The Bookies and get your book signed afterward.

Tuesday June 11, 2024 7:00pm - 8:15pm MDT
Zoom

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Hybrid Poetry

Type Event

9:00am MDT

Haiku as Mindfulness Practice (V)

Haiku is a contemplative poetry form inspired by Zen, which emphasizes impermanence and draws attention to phenomena that may go unnoticed. In this class, we’ll talk about the Haiku within the cultural context of Japan, where it was born, and its evolution and use by Western novelists and peacemakers alike. We’ll learn from masters of the form and try our hand at writing our own. This class explores Haiku tags as the answer to hashtags and is for anyone who wants to slow down time by capturing fleeting moments in their life. You'll leave the seminar ready to use this minimalistic form both as a creative tool and a daily mindfulness practice.

Speakers

Ladane Nasseri

Instructor

Ladane Nasseri is a journalist and writer. A former Middle East correspondent for Bloomberg News where she led Iran’s news coverage, Ladane has reported for a decade and a half from Tehran, Dubai, and Beirut. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, McSweeney’s, Businessweek... Read More →

Wednesday June 12, 2024 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Zoom

Nonfiction/Memoir Poetry

Type Craft Seminar

9:00am MDT

Children's Picture Books: Using Dummies/Storyboards (V)

Through examples, exercises, and hands-on activities, you’ll explore book dummies and storyboards and how they can improve your story's pacing and page turnability. To participate, you will need: A published picture book that is a “mentor” text for your own story and TWO copies of your COMPLETED picture book story formatted as follows: one copy single-sided in standard manuscript format (1" margins, double-spaced, 12pt font) and one copy single-sided, single-spaced with 2.5” left & right margins (this will look odd but is perfect for our purposes).

Speakers

Denise Vega

Instructor

Denise Vega is an author, writing coach, and “creative cheerleader,” exploring and supporting the many ways we pursue our dreams both through her books and in her interactions with the writers she works with in class and one-on-one. She is the award-winning author of seven books... Read More →

Wednesday June 12, 2024 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Zoom

YA/Children's

Type Craft Seminar

12:00pm MDT

Lunchtime Business Panel: State of the Industry

Publishing and television continue to be industries facing rapidly changing trends and challenges, so what does the landscape look like now? Join four industry experts as they discuss the latest industry news and what it means for authors and screenwriters, published and aspiring alike.

Speakers

Raluca Albu

Panelist

Raluca Albu is the communications director of the Authors Guild, the oldest and largest professional organization for published writers. They advocate for the legal rights of authors by supporting fair publishing and freelance writing contracts, copyright protection and free speech... Read More →

Kayla Lightner

Agent

Kayla is an agent at Ayesha Pande Literary. Before joining the APL team in 2020, Kayla started her career at Liza Dawson Associates. She also managed APL’s subsidiary rights department for two years before transitioning to full-time agent. Her client list includes multi-award-winning... Read More →

Amy Bishop-Wycisk

Agent

Amy Bishop-Wycisk (why-zick) joined Trellis Literary Management in 2023 after eight years with Dystel, Goderich & Bourret. She represents a wide-ranging list in fiction, nonfiction, and YA. Across the board, she has a special interest in underrepresented voices, especially from the... Read More →

Danielle Bukowski

Agent

Danielle Bukowski is a literary agent at Sterling Lord Literistic, representing award-winning, critically-acclaimed, nationally bestselling fiction and nonfiction.She is looking for literary fiction, upmarket fiction, nonfiction and SFF. She particularly wants to hear from writers... Read More →

Dean Bakopoulos

Visiting Author

Shana Kelly

Instructor

Wednesday June 12, 2024 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
Beacon Hall

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Hybrid Poetry Publishing/Career Screenwriting

Type Lunchtime Business Panel

12:00pm MDT

Lunchtime Business Panel: State of the Industry (Livestream)

Speakers

Raluca Albu

Panelist

Kayla Lightner

Agent

Amy Bishop-Wycisk

Agent

Danielle Bukowski

Agent

Dean Bakopoulos

Visiting Author

Shana Kelly

Instructor

Wednesday June 12, 2024 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
Zoom

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Hybrid Poetry Publishing/Career Screenwriting

Type Lunchtime Business Panel

1:30pm MDT

Get Out of Your Own Way (V)

Self-doubt and self-criticism are two of the biggest obstacles a writer can face at any stage of their career. We produce our best work when we write with abandon, without any fears or second-guessing. Learn how to shake your imposter syndrome and liberate your process in this class.

Speakers

Alyse Knorr

Instructor

Alyse Knorr is an assistant professor of English at Regis University and, since 2017, co-editor of Switchback Books. Her most recent book of poems, Mega-City Redux, won the 2016 Green Mountains Review Poetry Prize, selected by Olena Kalytiak Davis. She is also the author of the poetry... Read More →

Wednesday June 12, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Zoom

All Genres

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

Death and Life

We often think about the arc of characters’ lives in our prose, but what about their deaths? How can we purposefully, responsibly, and, of course, creatively write death in a way that enlivens our stories and adds meaning to our characters’ and readers’ lives? Examining examples from fiction and memoir, in this seminar, participants will consider how other characters’ deaths might impact our protagonists/antagonists, as well as how to craft interesting and meaningful deaths without unintentionally slipping into the melodramatic or overly relying upon the retrospective voice. We'll also complete a writing exercise if time allows.

Speakers

Andrew Hernandez

Instructor

Wednesday June 12, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
204

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

How to Make Plot Your Friend

Many writers (myself included!) want to believe that a gift for exciting language or narrative invention will be a substitute for a genuinely arresting plot. Alas, it’s not. Velocity, it turns out, isn’t the same as direction. It can take many years to unlock the secrets of plot. But it shouldn’t! Plot, as Aristotle wrote, consists in the “artful arrangement of incidents”—a chain of consequence that helps establish a feeling of rising action. We’ll examine the work of writers such as Cheryl Strayed, Megha Majumdar, and Jane Austen in an effort to make sure your next plot keeps the reader enthralled.

Speakers

Steve Almond

Visiting Author

Wednesday June 12, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
316

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

High Before the Low

One of the most powerful writing tools we tend to overlook is the high before the low. Many potent stories focus on a moment of high connection and joy before the moment of the largest low. The more you want to break the reader's (and your character's) heart, the bigger the high before the ultimate low needs to be. We'll examine powerful high and low moments from fiction and memoir and how they work together. Then, we'll tackle writing exercises to flesh out the high and low moments in our stories.

Speakers

Paula Younger

Instructor

Wednesday June 12, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
315

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Dramatic Writing

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

On Defamiliarization: A Lesson in 10 Sentences

“Art exists to help us recover the sensation of life; it exists to make us feel things, to make the stone stony again. The end of art is to give a sensation of the object seen, not as recognized.
Victor Shklovsky
In this craft seminar, we'll explore how to describe the world around us without resorting to commonplace imagery or received sentiments. Our intent will be to make the familiar unfamiliar through acts of careful attention. We'll look at the process of defamiliarization at both the sentence and the paragraph level, and then use these images and descriptions as springboards for our own writing.

Speakers

Jenny Offill

Visiting Author

Wednesday June 12, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Beacon Hall

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Hybrid

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

On Defamiliarization: A Lesson in 10 Sentences (Livestream)

Speakers

Jenny Offill

Visiting Author

Wednesday June 12, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Zoom

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Hybrid

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

I'll Follow You Into the Dark: Letting the Unknown Drive Your Personal Narrative

When it comes to personal essay and memoir, the idea of closure can be overrated. It's not always possible (or preferable) to achieve clarity or tie up loose ends in your story. So why not embrace the unknowns instead? Some of the best creative nonfiction puts the unknown (or unthought-known) in the driver's seat, using it as a tool to build tension, create emotional resonance, and engage the reader as a fellow detective. In this seminar, we'll make a case for stumbling in the dark. We'll explore how to let questions drive your narrative and embrace discomfort on the page, dig into relevant examples, and work through a few prompts.

Speakers

Gina DeMillo Wagner

Instructor

Wednesday June 12, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
215

Nonfiction/Memoir

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

When Life Doesn't Live Up to the Hype: Wringing Essays from Disappointment (V)

An essay is what's born out of the distance between our expectations and our reality and how we reconcile the two. In this class, we'll dissect essays that follow this path and construct our own work from our lives less-than-perfect moments.

Speakers

Minda Honey

Instructor

Wednesday June 12, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Zoom

Nonfiction/Memoir

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

Memory Fog: Getting Lost in Order to Write and Remember

Memory can be tricky and elusive. You can have an idea for a story arc, an image for a poem, or a telling line for the essay, but then it disappears like a vivid dream later in the day. However, what is lost can be found. In this multi-genre workshop, we'll look at short poems and prose by contemporary writers and discuss the process of incorporating reflection, authorial interruptions, flashbacks, and knowing when to leap. We'll also write and get a little lost by considering moments of question, rediscovery, and wandering with purpose.

Speakers

Juan J. Morales

Instructor

Juan J. Morales is the son of an Ecuadorian mother and Puerto Rican father. He is the author of three poetry collections, including The Handyman’s Guide to End Times, winner of the 2019 International Latino Book Award. Recent poems have appeared in Crazyhorse, The Laurel Review... Read More →

Wednesday June 12, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
216

Nonfiction/Memoir Poetry Hybrid

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

The Art of Self-Portraits (V)

What does it mean to be the cartographer of the self? To identify its multitudes when the body is a nesting doll of possibility? We show different sides of ourselves based on the choices we make. We also play different roles in our lifetime—sibling, friend, lover, worker, etc. In this seminar, participants will poetically document various “selves” through memory, sense, and voice. We'll look at the work of Lucille Clifton, Terrence Hayes, Brenda Shaughnessy, Vievee Francis, Ocean Vuong, and others who interrogate identity in various ways.

Speakers

Cynthia Manick

Instructor

Wednesday June 12, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Zoom

Poetry

Type Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

Time Machine II: Crafting Time in Fiction (V)

The ticking clock, slo-mo, the speeding bullet—readers don’t get invested unless they believe the clock is ticking—whether a bomb is under the table or a character simply wants to graduate from Clown College. In this fun, exercise-based seminar, we’ll cover the full craft menu of narrative hydraulics as described by Jane Alison: gap, summary, scene, dilation, and pause. Then, we’ll attempt each of these using Tobias Wolff’s famous “Bullet in the Brain” as a model. We’ll also explore the concept of “two boats,” as illustrated in the pulp novel “Dead Calm.”

Speakers

Clemintine Guirado

Instructor

Wednesday June 12, 2024 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Zoom

Fiction

Type Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

Deeper Character Descriptions

We often forget the importance of quick character descriptions. In our early drafts, we sometimes devote paragraphs describing our characters, even sliding into police-type descriptions: 6’4”, blonde, blue eyes. Yet, with all that description, we know nothing important about that character. But the best stories, novels, and essays have succinct descriptions that give us a strong sense of the character. We'll go through some examples of character descriptions in fiction and nonfiction, then do some exercises to find deeper descriptions of our characters that tell us more about who they are and help propel your story forward.

Speakers

Paula Younger

Instructor

Wednesday June 12, 2024 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
215

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Dramatic Writing

Type Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

Psychoanalysis and Literature

The world of the mind has forever mesmerized both psychoanalysts and writers. Both fields have been obsessed with understanding the human being, both as an individual/self and in relation to others. In this course we'll look at the intersections of the two disciplines and discuss how they approach questions of language, dreams, stream of consciousness, addressing trauma, and else. In class, we'll also partake in some exercises that use methods of psychoanalysis to generate writing.

Speakers

Poupeh Missaghi

Instructor

Poupeh Missaghi is a writer, a translator both into and out of Persian, Asymptote’s Iran editor-at-large, and an educator. Her debut novel trans(re)lating house one was published by Coffee House Press in February 2020. She holds a PhD in English and creative writing from the University... Read More →

Wednesday June 12, 2024 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
216

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Hybrid

Type Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

ABCs and 123s: Making the Personal Matter

We’ll explore strategies for integrating research into our own first-person writing to answer some burning questions about creative nonfiction. How do essayists use “real” experiences to make stories that move? How do they create context that matters, turn personal anecdotes into universally applicable meanings, and write fresh perspectives into experiences and topics that are age-old: culture, travel, death, or love? What is the best way to build context and to shape essays so that they have momentum and meaning? In other words, how do we make meaning?

Speakers

Emily Rapp Black

Visiting Author

Wednesday June 12, 2024 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Beacon Hall

Nonfiction/Memoir

Type Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

ABCs and 123s: Making the Personal Matter (Livestream)

Speakers

Emily Rapp Black

Visiting Author

Wednesday June 12, 2024 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Zoom

Nonfiction/Memoir

Type Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

The Craft of Interviewing

This course is all about how to make your story sing with dialogue, vignettes, and rich details provided by primary sources. We'll cover interview requests, how to talk to strangers, preparation, and, most crucially, how to ask the right questions and get the best info out of people—taught by a former Rolling Stone journalist who has interviewed thousands of sources over 30 years.

Speakers

Steve Knopper

Instructor

Wednesday June 12, 2024 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
315

Nonfiction/Memoir

Type Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

Truth or Dare: Writing Family Stories (V)

This class explores the twin desires to tell the truth about our lives and write about our families and loved ones who may not like what they see. How do we position ourselves so that we can honestly convey our experience? What strategies and stances can we develop so we can write open-heartedly the story we were given? Plan on vigorous discussion of a few examples and lots of time for Q&A.

Speakers

Karen Auvinen

Instructor

Wednesday June 12, 2024 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Zoom

Nonfiction/Memoir

Type Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

The Poem's End: A Discussion

In this seminar, we'll explore the various significances, textures, and possibilities at play in the endings of poems, delving into how they encapsulate deferred themes, evoke unresolved emotions, and leave unexpected impressions.

Speakers

Rowan Ricardo Phillips

Visiting Author

Wednesday June 12, 2024 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
316

Poetry

Type Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

The Poetic Line (V)

One of the most emphasized elements of the poetic form is the line. We'll consider the music in our writing, the context, the rhythm of our language, and how our own voices and aesthetics impact the way we open and close a line. We'll navigate texts from across genres to identify tools and approaches to create mood, movement, color, landscape, and tone through the art of the line. We'll talk enjambment, punctuation, using the page as a canvas, invitations, slammed doors, breadcrumbs, sheet music, and the “so what” of it all. Participants will write from prompts and then, depending on time, share some of their writing.

Speakers

Suzi Q. Smith

Instructor

Wednesday June 12, 2024 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Zoom

Poetry

Type Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

Two-Day Intensive: The Memory Palace—The Atlas and Architecture of Creative Nonfiction

We'll explore the benefits of drawing maps and blueprints to re-inhabit the places our creative nonfiction recaptures. We'll use this process to create prompts to generate new writing and to locate points of re-entry for revision (“renovations”). We'll navigate any memory holes that might reveal themselves and approach the tough choices we need to make in regard to these “forgotten” places. This intensive will focus on both exterior and interior places. You do not need to know how to “draw.” While participants could use this to start a new project, this class is best suited for writers with a work-in-progress.

Speakers

Sarah Elizabeth Schantz

Instructor

Wednesday June 12, 2024 4:00pm - Thursday June 13, 2024 7:00pm MDT
304

Nonfiction/Memoir

Type Two-Day Intensive

5:30pm MDT

Musical Story Hour

Our signature Story Hour returns: this year kick back in the floral courtyard next to Lighthouse HQ and listen to local singer/songwriters perform and then tell the story behind the song(s). Each piece will be paired with inspiring appetizers and drinks.

Wednesday June 12, 2024 5:30pm - 6:45pm MDT
Lighthouse HQ

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Hybrid Poetry

Type Event

7:00pm MDT

Visiting Author Reading with Dean Bakopoulos, Mark Doty, Maurice Carlos Ruffin, Amitava Kumar

Hear your favorite visiting author perform their recent works. Shop at the Lit Fest pop-up bookstore operated by The Bookies and get your book signed afterward.

Wednesday June 12, 2024 7:00pm - 8:15pm MDT
Beacon Hall

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Hybrid Poetry

Type Event

7:00pm MDT

Visiting Author Reading with Dean Bakopoulos, Mark Doty, Maurice Carlos Ruffin, Amitava Kumar (Livestream)

Hear your favorite visiting author perform their recent works. Shop at the Lit Fest pop-up bookstore operated by The Bookies and get your book signed afterward.

Wednesday June 12, 2024 7:00pm - 8:15pm MDT
Zoom

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Hybrid Poetry

Type Event

9:00am MDT

Art of Creative Research (V)

Research is a fundamental part of long-form writing projects. Knowing where to find the info and how to access it (whether through research or interviews) is a key skill for writers across genres. Background information, facts, anecdotes, and different perspectives all make a story richer and more authoritative. Drawing from journalism and the oral history tradition, this class provides tools for writers working on essays, profiles, memoirs, or novels. We'll create a road map for our research and discuss how to prepare and conduct interviews with relatives or strangers to collect information professionally, responsibly, and ethically.

Speakers

Ladane Nasseri

Instructor

Thursday June 13, 2024 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Zoom

Nonfiction/Memoir

Type Craft Seminar

12:00pm MDT

Lunchtime Business Panel: Online Landscape for Writers

Amidst the death throes of print media, the overnight rise and fall of legacy websites, trend-chasing on social media, and the proliferation of subscription-based newsletters, it’s as difficult as ever for authors to know where to put their energy and what to avoid. Join three writers and an agent for a conversation on the different ways of being online and how they can benefit you during different stages of your career, from learning about what agents are looking for to spreading the word about your work.

Speakers

Simone Stolzoff

Panelist

Simone Stolzoff is an author and journalist from San Francisco. A former design lead at the global innovation firm IDEO, his work has been featured in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, and various other publications. His debut book The Good Enough Job: R... Read More →

Mitzi Rapkin

Podcaster

Mitzi Rapkin is the host and producer of the literary podcast, First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing. This June marks the 11th anniversary of the show. First Draft features fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and essay writers. Rapkin and her guests explore literary craft, the decisions... Read More →

Robbie Crouch

Panelist

Robbie Couch writes young-adult fiction. If I See You Again Tomorrow, his New York Times bestselling third novel, has received starred reviews from Publisher's Weekly, Booklist, and the Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books. Robbie's debut, The Sky Blues, was a Barnes & Noble... Read More →

Courtney Maum

Panelist

Courtney is the author of five books, including the groundbreaking publishing guide that Vanity Fair recently named one of the ten best books for writers, Before and After the Book Deal and the memoir The Year of the Horses, chosen by The Today Show as the best read for mental health... Read More →

Erika Wurth

Erika T. Wurth’s publications include three novels, White Horse, Crazy Horse’s Girlfriend, and You Who Enter Here, two collections of poetry and a collection of short stories, Buckskin Cocaine. A writer of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, she teaches creative writing at Western... Read More →

R. Alan Brooks

Instructor

Thursday June 13, 2024 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
Beacon Hall

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Hybrid Poetry Publishing/Career

Type Lunchtime Business Panel

12:00pm MDT

Lunchtime Business Panel: Online Landscape for Writers (Livestream)

Speakers

Simone Stolzoff

Panelist

Mitzi Rapkin

Podcaster

Robbie Crouch

Panelist

Courtney Maum

Panelist

Erika Wurth

R. Alan Brooks

Instructor

Thursday June 13, 2024 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
Zoom

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Hybrid Poetry Publishing/Career

Type Lunchtime Business Panel

1:30pm MDT

Using Your Characters to Break Writers Block

Sometimes, we're stuck in the middle. We're at 40,000 words. We've hit our catalyst, but we're 30,000 words from hitting our climactic moment. By the time you hit 40,000 words, your characters should be alive and living on their own. This seminar will use discussion and generative exercises that push your characters to help break writer's block for you.

Speakers

Kase Johnstun

Instructor

Kase Johnstun lives and writes in Ogden, Utah. He was most recently named the 2021 Ogden Mayor’s Award Recipient for the Literary Arts. His forthcoming novel Cast Away will be published from Torrey House Press in 2024. Johnstun is the author of recently released Let The Wild Grasses... Read More →

Thursday June 13, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
204

Fiction

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

Characterization Through Contrast

In this craft seminar, we'll explore complex characterization through a series of brief readings and short writing exercises on developing character through contrast. We’ll consider various kinds of passing and performance: when does a character understand themselves to be putting on an act? What kinds of structural or personal relationships compel performance? What can a character’s performance for an external audience tell us about characters themselves, the settings they inhabit, and their potential narrative arcs?

Speakers

Danielle Evans

Visiting Author

Thursday June 13, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Beacon Hall

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

Characterization Through Contrast (Livestream)

Speakers

Danielle Evans

Visiting Author

Thursday June 13, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Zoom

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

How to Survive Writer's Block

Have you ever suffered with the Black Plague of writers? In this fast-paced and potentially incoherent class, we’ll get down to the nitty-gritty when it comes to writer’s block and ask a radical question: Is it possible to view moments, and even eras, of creative stasis as necessary and even essential to our artistic growth? (Gasp!). The answer, for the instructor, anyway, is a resounding YES. The question is how to move from anxiety and self-loathing to a posture of forgiveness and curiosity. This class is for anyone who’s ever struggled to keep going at the keyboard.

Speakers

Steve Almond

Visiting Author

Thursday June 13, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
316

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

Revising for Social Change (V)

Revision necessitates change, and change is everywhere in the writing process. It happens when we give ourselves space to grapple with a topic. It emerges in workshop when others contribute opposing views. It evolves because the world in which the piece was written has been fundamentally altered. Revision isn’t always about making things “better.” Sometimes, it's just about the complication of an idea. Sometimes, it’s about allowing for the complexity and the chaos. Revision is about grappling with the material, our audience, ourselves, and the world. This seminar will focus on the art of revision for social change.

Speakers

Angelique Stevens

Instructor

Thursday June 13, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Zoom

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Hybrid

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

Collaging the Draft

In this generative class, each participant will be given an envelope with fifteen magazine, news, book, art, and textile clippings. Step by step, you’ll learn how to collage a draft of a text taking form in their subconscious mind and translate the visual into the verbal through emotion, intuition, and stimulation.

Speakers

Nazli Koca

Instructor

Thursday June 13, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
215

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Hybrid Poetry Dramatic Writing

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

Writing Desire and Sexuality

Delving into the erotic is not an easy task for many writers. But as Audre Lorde notes, “The erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling.” In this course, we'll look at some works that directly address human desire and sexuality and discuss how their craft choices enable the writers to connect their audiences with an aspect of humanity that is more often oppressed and repressed than welcomed and embraced.

Speakers

Poupeh Missaghi

Instructor

Thursday June 13, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
315

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Poetry Hybrid

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

The Art of the Line Break (V)

How do you break lines in your poems? By instinct? By sound? By visuals? Do you break lines to add tension or to create distinct units of thought? We’ll examine several different philosophies around poetic line breaks and try out a variety of strategies to make your line breaks more powerful. We’ll read examples from several contemporary poets, walk through some generative and revision-based exercises, and take the time to share our new work with one another.

Speakers

Alyse Knorr

Instructor

Thursday June 13, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Zoom

Poetry

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

Children’s Picture Book Story vs Short Story (V)

Using published short stories and picture books, along with discussion and activities, we’ll explore the differences between the two forms and what writers need to consider when creating either short stories for magazines or picture book stories.

Speakers

Denise Vega

Instructor

Thursday June 13, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Zoom

YA/Children's

Type Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

Embracing the Shadow (V)

Whether you’re interested in writing outright horror or just exploring the darker recesses of society and self through your fiction, we’ll use the generative exercises in this class to deepen your access to and expression of the grotesque, the monstrous, the repressed, and the abject.

Speakers

Courtney E. Morgan

Instructor

Courtney E. Morgan received her MFA from the University of Colorado, Boulder, where she has also taught creative writing workshops for five years. Her collection of stories, The Seven Autopsies of Nora Hanneman, was a semifinalist for the FC2 Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize... Read More →

Thursday June 13, 2024 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Zoom

Fiction

Type Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

Time Machine III: Modeling Mary Gaitskill's Time Craft (V)

In this fun, exercise-based seminar, we'll model Mary Gaitskill's impressive timecraft. We'll look at her use of scenic summary or the "scenelette" and how she expertly weaves direct dialogue, summarized dialogue, scene, and flashback. Then, we’ll emulate her techniques.

Speakers

Clemintine Guirado

Instructor

Thursday June 13, 2024 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Zoom

Fiction

Type Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

The Devil Made Me Do It: Using Folktale Forms to Structure Your Writing

The oldest story forms provide potent templates for structuring new work. Learn about the elements of a classic devil story and how contemporary writers such as Emily St. John Mandel and Colson Whitehead have incorporated its charms. Study notable features of ghost stories and see how writers such as Jesmyn Ward and Silvia Moreno-Garcia have crafted haunting fiction. We'll examine several folk and fairytale forms and use these as guides toward writing own new classics.

Speakers

Jenny Shank

Instructor

Thursday June 13, 2024 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
216

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Hybrid

Type Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

Experimental Prose

What would happen if we refused to limit ourselves to what is considered the “right” way to tell a story? Let’s move beyond traditional and mainstream modes of narrative. Let’s allow ourselves to experiment with language and the page. Let’s start from a place of flexibility and fluidity rather than rigidity and fixed rules. We'll look at some models that go beyond definitions of genre and take risks in redefining the interrelationship of content and form. There will be prompts to invite participants to start their own experimentations.

Speakers

Poupeh Missaghi

Instructor

Thursday June 13, 2024 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
315

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Poetry Hybrid

Type Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

Writing with Images (V)

In Six Memos for the Next Millennium, Italo Calvino writes that “we can distinguish between two types of imaginative processes, one that begins with words and ends with the visual image, and another that begins with the visual image and ends with its verbal expression.” In this seminar, we’ll examine the imaginative process that begins with the visual (with a focus on painting and photography), and use images to enhance writing. We’ll consider the ways in which the images convey meaning, refract a character’s experiences, or reveal the limitations of language. And through writing exercises, we’ll attempt to incorporate the visual into our own writing. Participants are encouraged to bring images that inspire them; pictures will also be provided for the group writing sessions.

Speakers

Christine Lai

Instructor

Thursday June 13, 2024 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Zoom

Fiction Poetry

Type Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

The "I" Club: How to Write Using a Thrilling First Person (V)

This class is about memoiristic, essayistic, and journalistic use of the first person. Memoirists and essayists we'll study include, but are not limited to, Emmanuel Carrère, Eduardo Halfon, Jazmina Barrera, Gabriela Wiener, Cristina Rivera Garza, Patti Smith, and David Carr. We'll see how deep they can go using first person, and we'll investigate their techniques to develop our writing skills. Writing in the first person opens the door to honesty, vulnerability, and the need to appear real in the face of everything around us. We'll try to understand why it is the ultimate attitude of the writer.

Speakers

Javier Sinay

Instructor

Javier Sinay is a writer and journalist. His books include The Murders of Moises Ville (Restless Books, 2022–Nominated for Book of the Year, 2023 CrimeCon C.L.U.E. Awards/original title: Los crímenes de Moisés Ville), Camino al Este, Cuba Stone (in collaboration), and Sangre joven... Read More →

Thursday June 13, 2024 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Zoom

Nonfiction/Memoir

Type Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

Just Two Poems

In this class, we’ll experience the power of deep reading. Before class, you’ll be given two poems that serve as jumping-off points to explore and be inspired by master poets of exceptional craft. We’ll explore both the measured unfolding of a longer poem and the lyric compression of another. Exercises, experiments, and your own poems will follow.

Speakers

Lynn Wagner

Instructor

Thursday June 13, 2024 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
215

Poetry

Type Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

Creatures of Impulse: What Writers Can Learn From TV

This session will focus on the way popular TV series hook viewers, construct scenes, build characters, and structure episodes, and how this can easily be adapted to add energy to short stories, memoirs, novels, and even poems. We’ll likely use the pilot (first) episodes of Breaking Bad, Reservation Dogs, Atlanta, Severance, and Insecure as examples, so you may want to watch those in advance. A few clips will be shown as time allows.

Speakers

Dean Bakopoulos

Visiting Author

Thursday June 13, 2024 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
316

Screenwriting

Type Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

Two-Day Intensive: Experiments in Poetic Form

In this generative intensive, we’ll examine the relationship between content, voice, and form by discussing the structural elements of poetry, such as rhythm, meter, metaphor, rhyme, and repetition. We’ll read and experiment with forms, including the contrapuntal, pantoum, golden shovel, ekphrastic, and erasure. Assignments will be generative in nature; no feedback or reading will be assigned, though example poems will be read and discussed during our classes.

Speakers

Suzi Q. Smith

Instructor

Thursday June 13, 2024 4:00pm - Friday June 14, 2024 7:00pm MDT
204

Poetry

Type Two-Day Intensive

4:30pm MDT

First Draft Live: Literary Friendship, Craft, and the Writing Life

Join Mitzi Rapkin for a live recording of her podcast: First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing. us for a conversation between friends and fellow writers Claire Messud and Amitava Kumar as they discuss what literary friendship means, how fellow writers discuss craft and art through the lens of their personal connection, and how their friendship influences the creative work they each pursue. The conversation will be recorded as a special episode for First Draft, a literary podcast now in its 11th year of production, which now has more than 450 interviews in the archive.

Speakers

Amitava Kumar

Visiting Author

Claire Messud

Visiting Author

Mitzi Rapkin

Podcaster

Thursday June 13, 2024 4:30pm - 6:00pm MDT
Beacon Hall

All Genres

Type Event

7:00pm MDT

Visiting Authors Reading with Steve Almond, Emily Rapp Black, Danielle Evans, and Beth Nguyen

Hear your favorite visiting author perform their recent works. Shop at the Lit Fest pop-up bookstore operated by The Bookies and get your book signed afterward.

Thursday June 13, 2024 7:00pm - 8:15pm MDT
Beacon Hall

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Hybrid Poetry

Type Event

7:00pm MDT

Visiting Authors Reading with Steve Almond, Emily Rapp Black, Danielle Evans, and Beth Nguyen (Livestream)

Hear your favorite visiting author perform their recent works. Shop at the Lit Fest pop-up bookstore operated by The Bookies and get your book signed afterward.

Thursday June 13, 2024 7:00pm - 8:15pm MDT
Zoom

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Hybrid Poetry

Type Event

9:00am MDT

Letters to a Stranger (V)

Each of us is haunted, in both great and odd ways, by the people we meet. And it so often happens that the person is a total stranger—one who then unexpectedly changes us—that we never see again. But if you had the chance to speak to this stranger today, what would you say? This class, inspired by the anthology Letter to a Stranger, will guide you through the process of considering how a stranger has impacted you. Then, we’ll draft a letter to this stranger, a letter that will explore how they unknowingly redirected the river of your life.

Speakers

Alexander Lumans

Instructor

Friday June 14, 2024 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Zoom

Nonfiction/Memoir

Type Craft Seminar

12:00pm MDT

Lunchtime Business Panel: Perfect Pairing

As the publishing industry continues to change, the relationship between an author and her agent can make or break a career. Join authors Wendy Chen and Shelly Read and their agents, Sarah Bowlin and Sandra Bond, as they talk about how they’re navigating the choppy waters of publishing together.

Speakers

Sandra Bond

Agent

TV deprived growing up in the 60s, Sandra and her two siblings read books. Voraciously. The big event was going to the library once a week. As an adult, she wanted to be involved in the wondrous business of discovering and bringing stories to the world and, not a creative writer herself... Read More →

Shelley Read

Shelley Read's internationally bestselling debut novel, Go As A River, is being translated intoover thirty languages and has been optioned for film by Mazur Kaplan in partnership withFifth Season. An instant Sunday Times bestseller, Go As A River is also a 2023 AmazonEditor's Pick... Read More →

Sarah Bowlin

Agent

Sarah Bowlin is a senior agent at Aevitas Creative Management which she joined in 2017. Before becoming an agent, she was an editor of literary fiction and nonfiction at Riverhead Books and Henry Holt & Company where she edited the acclaimed writers Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Sheila Heti... Read More →

Wendy Chen

Instructor

Shana Kelly

Instructor

Friday June 14, 2024 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
Beacon Hall

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Hybrid Poetry Publishing/Career

Type Lunchtime Business Panel

12:00pm MDT

Lunchtime Business Panel: Perfect Pairing (Livestream)

Speakers

Sandra Bond

Agent

Shelley Read

Sarah Bowlin

Agent

Wendy Chen

Instructor

Shana Kelly

Instructor

Friday June 14, 2024 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
Zoom

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Hybrid Poetry Publishing/Career

Type Lunchtime Business Panel

1:30pm MDT

How to Wrangle a Cloud

This craft seminar will be a discussion of all the techniques and serendipities that go into bringing a story idea from the initial burst of inspiration to the finished product. We’ll cover how to find and develop good material in the face of uncertainty, time constraints, and a lack of confidence. Special emphasis will be placed on the writer's experience of joy while writing, and plenty of time will be available for questions and answers throughout the course of the seminar.

Speakers

Maurice Carlos Ruffin

Visiting Author

Friday June 14, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Beacon Hall

Fiction

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

Story in a Flurry

In this class, you’ll develop a set of story elements through quick writing exercises designed to break through your inner critic and put words on the page. We’ll work on focussed prompts that build on one another to generate interrelated narrative fragments, such as characters, setting, plot, beginning, and ending. At the end, you will have (hopefully!) the skeleton of a complete story draft. These exercises will help you break free some useful writing or ideas for future writing, but the focus on individual aspects of craft will also lead us to some insights into the nature of narrative itself.

Speakers

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, 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 14, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
216

Fiction

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

Two-Faced: The Art of Multiple Perspectives

Sometimes, there's one perfect perspective through which to tell a story, but other times, a story requires multiple angles to convey the whole picture. Multiple perspectives can open up a story's possibilities, showcase a writer's range, and build suspense and tension. However, they can also confuse or annoy the reader or slow the story's pacing if not incorporated with care. We'll study examples of multiple-perspective magic by Alice Munro, May-Lee Chai, Tommy Orange, and Yoon Choi and learn how to craft our own stories.

Speakers

Jenny Shank

Instructor

Friday June 14, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
316

Fiction

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

Collaborative Writing

What does it mean to write with another writer/artist, and how might this dynamic change your understanding of your own individual creative process? How do the conversations between the artists shape their shared artwork but also their other works? In this course, we'll look at a few examples of collaborative projects and discuss the possibilities and creative explorations they offer. Writers can expect exercises to initiate projects in collaboration.

Speakers

Poupeh Missaghi

Instructor

Friday June 14, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
315

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Poetry Hybrid

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

Evoking Our Haunts: On Persons, Places, and Finding Voice

A ghost is often created out of trauma or deep emotions—a haunting of place or person, seeking a witness to form and voice. In this seminar, we'll explore possibilities of homes for our ghosts, from sestina to erasure, lyric essays to prose poetry. What’s haunting you, and what can’t you seem to dispel? Together, let’s evoke our own powerful words to better understand what lingers beyond the veil and our own rituals for words.

Speakers

Hillary Leftwich

Instructor

Hillary Leftwich is the author of two books, Ghosts Are Just Strangers Who Know How to Knock (Agape Editions, 2023, new edition) and Aura (Future Tense Books and Blackstone Audio Publishing, 2022), and a collection of experimental forms TBA. She owns Alchemy Author Services and Writing... Read More →

Friday June 14, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
215

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Poetry Hybrid

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

Mining Memories (V)

Flannery O'Connor once said that anyone who lives to age 18 has enough stories to last them an entire lifetime. But how do we access all those memories for use in our writing, and how do we turn them from memory into art? This class explores techniques for retrieving old memories and employing them in our writing projects, both prose and verse.

Speakers

Alyse Knorr

Instructor

Friday June 14, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Zoom

Fiction Nonfiction/Memoir Poetry Hybrid

Type Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

Your First Page: Authenticity, Vulnerability, and Voice

In this class, we’ll examine five to ten first pages (250 words or less) to see how authors have created their voice through vulnerability, syntax, authenticity, and structure. It will be a great lesson in establishing a voice immediately.

Speakers

Kase Johnstun

Instructor

Friday June 14, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
204

Nonfiction/Memoir

Type Craft Seminar

4:30pm MDT

Lighthouse Faculty Showcase

Grab a refreshment and hear readings from recently published works by Lighthouse faculty members.

Friday June 14, 2024 4:30pm - 5:30pm MDT
Beacon Hall

All Genres

Type Event

4:30pm MDT

Lighthouse Faculty Showcase

Grab a refreshment and hear readings from recently published works by Lighthouse faculty members.

Friday June 14, 2024 4:30pm - 6:00pm MDT
Beacon Hall

All Genres

Type Event

6:00pm MDT

https://lighthousewriters.org/workshop/lit-fest-closing-party

Help us toast the closing of another year of Lit Fest with delicious food and drinks with new and old friends.

Friday June 14, 2024 6:00pm - 8:00pm MDT
Beacon Hall

All Genres

Type Event

Timezone
Filter By Date Lit Fest 2024 Jun 7 -14, 2024
June 2024
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June 2024
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