Lit Fest 2024: Full Schedule

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

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

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

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 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
216

Publishing/Career

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

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

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 →

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

Fiction

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

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 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
216

Fiction

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

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 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
216

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

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

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

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 →

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

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

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

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

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 →

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

Fiction

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

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

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

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

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

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