Small, intimate in-person workshops at the writers conference are designed for talented writers looking to take their writing to the next level. Our workshop faculty   are some of the best in the industry. These workshops will be hosted in person . 

July 6-10, 2022 workshop sessions consist of 5 morning workshops meetings over 5 days.

Workshop Schedule:

Day 1 - 2 hours

Day 2 - 3 hours

Day 3 - 3 hours

Day 4 - 3 hours

Day 5 - 3 hours.  

Of course, with your workshop you also have access to all afternoon and evening programming. This includes all lectures, readings and panels with our guests and faculty. 

• Fiction

  Frederic Tuten - The Short Story: I love fiction of all kinds. I have no belief in the hierarchy of fiction. For me, there is only good or poor writing, interesting or uninteresting work. Every writer has, because they want to be writers, a genuine spark. The point is how to bring that spark into a flame I will read and edit your work carefully and as constructively as possible and try to bring to fruition the intent of your writing. I expect you to treat your fellow-writers’ work with the same consideration. Of course, I know that we will have lively, passionate and helpful discussions and that we will all come out the better writers for it. So much for procedure, the rest is the unknown, mysterious chemistry of the workshop. In particular, our workshop will concentrate on short stories—flash or long exposure. I shall be sending you a reading list of a variety of stories, some of which we shall consider in class. But the focus is, finally, and always your work. 

  Azareen Van Der Vliet Oloomi - Voice & Style: The Art of the Novel: In this workshop we will conduct close readings of highly stylized novels that use the intimacy of voice to deliver an aesthetic and political punch.  We will read work by Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Roberto Bolaño, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Tommy Orange, Louise Erdrich, Garth Greenwell, and Valeria Luiselli among others. We will focus on how to develop a propulsive voice and style that engages readers and ask how we can use language to reach for the sublime. We will also develop tools for bringing the plot and structure of our novels into alignment with our diction, pacing, and tone. Our goal is to achieve greater clarity about the architecture of formally ambitious novels and the interdependence of the various elements of fiction.

• Nonfiction/Memoir

  Melissa Bank   - Write Your Head Off :   In this workshop, you’ll actually be writing in class, and, however impossible or scary that may sound, it will be great—hard work, but really fun. In as much as you’ll be writing about your own life, this is a memoir workshop, but we’re not going to concern ourselves with the rules or rigors of that genre.  In fact, we’re going to behave as if there aren’t any rules at all.  As such, the class should be just as useful for writers of fiction. Basically, it'll go like this: I’ll give you a prompt, a suggestion meant to spark something or get you started; you’ll write for a short time; and you’ll share your work with the class (or not).  Meanwhile, I’ll be trying to help you identify what’s unique and exciting in your work, as well as what may be getting in your way. If everything works the way it’s supposed to be, you’ll leave Southampton with a fistful of stories started, and the will and inspiration to do the writing you’re meant to do. 

  Matthew Klam - Be Obsessed - A Workshop for Creative Writers: Mary McCarthy said, “We all live in suspense, from day to day, from hour to hour; in other words, we are the hero of our own story.” In this workshop we'll examine structure in the way a carpenter might study a beautiful house. We'll look at half page essays and eyewitness accounts, longform journalism, chapters of books, comics, sections of plays, and whatever else inspires us. We’ll read Allison Bechdel, Kiese Laymon, Jo Ann Beard, Mary Gaitskill, and Tessa Hadley, as well as Baldwin, Tolstoy, Chekhov, and many others. We’ll discuss writing that is confessional, disruptive, funny, intimate, and intense; we’ll read paragraphs made of lists, pages of pure dialogue, stories born of hard won observation, inheritance, experience, and psychological insight. We’ll workshop your stories in a helpful, constructive manner, and explore the motive behind your fixations, and why you’re hooked on this particular person, feeling, or memory. 

  Beth Nguyen - Memoir: Whether you’re writing a memoir, memoir-essays, or something in between, this workshop will help you navigate the process. We will talk about structure, ethical concerns (how do we know what we should write? how do we write about other people?), perspective, and more, aiming to find a sense of direction and understanding, all within a supportive environment geared toward discussion, openness, and inspiration. Participants can submit a first chapter or beginning pages of a longer work, or a stand-alone piece.   

• Poetry

  Billy Collins - The Progress of a Poem: Simple as it may sound, this workshop will focus on the poem’s transit from its beginning, through its middle to its end.  It’s my way of making sure we don’t leave anything out.  We will observe how the poem launches itself, how it finds a reason to continue, and how it finally discovers a place to settle.  We will always keep the reader in mind making sure that the opening doesn’t ask too much, that the middle includes guidance, and that the end is ideally where the reader doesn’t need to hear anymore and you don’t need to say anymore.  We will look at models of poetic maneuvers including how a poem can liberate itself by changing directions, and other tactics that can brighten a poem and maintain a reader’s interest as well as your own.

  Dawn Lundy Martin - Risk and the Art of Poetry: In this generative workshop the focus is on writing new poems that push the boundaries of what you already know about the poem, what you already believe the poem to be. Using constraints and prompts developed by me,  workshop participants will write a new poem every day and bring that poem into  workshop for discussion. Risk is a key factor in any compelling art form; and, as the impetus for this  workshop, it is the injection that pushes us outside of our comfort zones and into new discoveries about what’s possible in our own poetry. 

• Generative

  Melissa Bank  - Write Your Head Off :In this workshop, you’ll actually be writing in class, and, however impossible or scary that may sound, it will be great—hard work, but really fun. In as much as you’ll be writing about your own life, this is a memoir workshop, but we’re not going to concern ourselves with the rules or rigors of that genre.  In fact, we’re going to behave as if there aren’t any rules at all.  As such, the class should be just as useful for writers of fiction. Basically, it'll go like this: I’ll give you a prompt, a suggestion meant to spark something or get you started; you’ll write for a short time; and you’ll share your work with the class (or not).  Meanwhile, I’ll be trying to help you identify what’s unique and exciting in your work, as well as what may be getting in your way. If everything works the way it’s supposed to be, you’ll leave Southampton with a fistful of stories started, and the will and inspiration to do the writing you’re meant to do. 

  Dawn Lundy Martin - Risk and the Art of Poetry: In this generative workshop the focus is on writing new poems that push the boundaries of what you already know about the poem, what you already believe the poem to be. Using constraints and prompts developed by me, workshop participants will write a new poem every day and bring that poem into workshop for discussion. Risk is a key factor in any compelling art form; and, as the impetus for this workshop, it is the injection that pushes us outside of our comfort zones and into new discoveries about what’s possible in our own poetry. 

• Children's Literature

  Lesa Cline-Ransome- Picture Book: 

  Padma Venkatraman- Middle Grade & Young Adult: 

 

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