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Lit Fest 2024
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Welcome to Lit Fest, eight days dedicated to you, our literary community.
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Sunday, June 9
 

9:00am MDT

The Necessity of Darkness
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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
avatar for Trent Hudley

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

9:00am MDT

Homing in: Uncovering the Arc your Memoir (V)
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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
avatar for Karen Auvinen

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 →

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

12:00pm MDT

Lunchtime Business Panel: Contests, Residencies, and More—Ways to Get Out There
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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
avatar for Angie Chuang

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 →
avatar for Jenny Shank

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 →
avatar for Radha Marcum

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 →
avatar for Jenee Skinner

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

12:00pm MDT

Lunchtime Business Panel: Contests, Residencies, and More—Ways to Get Out There (Livestream)
Register
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
avatar for Angie Chuang

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 →
avatar for Jenny Shank

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 →
avatar for Radha Marcum

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 →
avatar for Jenee Skinner

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
Zoom
  Fiction   Nonfiction/Memoir   Hybrid   Poetry   Publishing/Career

1:30pm MDT

Milieu: The World of Your Story
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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
avatar for Dino Enrique Piacentini

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 →

Sunday June 9, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
215
  Fiction   Nonfiction/Memoir

1:30pm MDT

Birth of Style
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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
avatar for John Cotter

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 →

Sunday June 9, 2024 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
216
  Fiction   Nonfiction/Memoir   Poetry   Hybrid

1:30pm MDT

The Laundry Line (V)
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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
avatar for Natalie Hodges

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 →

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

1:30pm MDT

Lattice as Ladder
Register
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
avatar for Jane Hirshfield

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 →

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

1:30pm MDT

Lattice as Ladder (Livestream)
Register
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
avatar for Jane Hirshfield

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 →

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

5:00pm MDT

Advanced Weeklong Workshop Orientation
Register
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

6:00pm MDT

Lit Fest Kickoff Party
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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
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