upcoming classes & events
In this eight-week class for prose writers, we’ll dive into how scenes work and what they accomplish, exploring how scenes develop characters, seed tension, establish place and time, facilitate flashbacks, soften research, and build deeper themes in a story/essay.
Our most powerful stories can be the most brutal to write, leaving us frustrated, traumatized, and stuck. What gets in the way? How can we push forward without damaging our mental and physical health? In this 8-week nonfiction class online through Catapult, we’ll build a craft toolbox for unlocking urgent stories that have so far resisted telling.
In this 12-hour weekend intensive at Seattle’s Hugo House, writers explore what it means to write “crazy,” from the quiet stutterings of mental illness to the way violence echoes in us. Beginning with an overview of how physiological trauma and shame interact with our writing, this class will explore personal exposure, self-characterization, wild syntax, and the danger of melodrama.
Writing can be healing. But writing can also re-traumatize, making it difficult to tell the stories that shape us. In this two-day nonfiction intensive in New York City, we’ll gain an understanding of how the physiological processes of trauma interact with a writing practice, explore craft challenges specific to trauma, and practice owning on the page our complicated, contradictory selves.
Strategically publishing essays can generate interest in a book project, helping writers land an agent, sign a book deal or sell books. In this 10-week online class, we’ll compare the memoir openings of established authors with their short-form works in order to build (and place) our own strong excerpts from memoirs-in-progress.
Stories of illness can be hard to write and even harder to read—and yet these stories are essential to our understanding of what it means to be human. In this 10-week online workshop through Creative Nonfiction, writers will craft nonfiction narratives that explore the experience of illness.
Writing can be healing. But writing can also re-traumatize, making it difficult to tell the stories that shape us. In this one-day intensive, writers learn how the physiological processes of trauma and shame interact with a writing practice, use writing activities adapted from clinical practice to sidestep trauma writing stumbling blocks, and dive into the craft choices that help us tell the most powerful versions of these difficult yet necessary stories.
In this six-week class, writers explore what it means to write “crazy,” from the quiet stutterings of mental illness to the way violence echos in us. Beginning with an overview of how physiological trauma and shame interact with our writing, this class will explore personal exposure, self-characterization, wild syntax, and the danger of melodrama.
How do we write sex? And if we don't, why not? In this five-week nonfiction workshop at Tucson Hop Shop, participants will consider the role of the sex scene in storytelling, explore the relationship between sensuality and lyricism, discuss the politics and ethics of writing sex, and write out of the unique terrain of their own bodies.
Our most powerful stories can be the most brutal to write, leaving us frustrated, traumatized, and stuck. What gets in the way? How can we push forward without damaging our mental and physical health? In this 8-week nonfiction class online through Catapult, we’ll build a craft toolbox for unlocking urgent stories that have so far resisted telling.
**This class is sadly cancelled. ** How can crowdfunding launch, advance, and sustain writing careers? In this three-hour class, writers learn the differences between platforms and explore how to build strong campaigns, the emotional tangle of asking for money, the pressure of being accountable to an audience, and the ways crowdfunding can bolster literary community.
How do we make meaning from our sexual experiences? What do our personal stories have to offer the world, and what is the best way to share them? In this bawdy and introspective 12-hour intensive at Hugo House, writers will work to build strong connective tissue between their own sexual stories and larger questions about sex that our culture is grappling with.
There are many ways the world speaks to us, and oracle cards are one of them. In this 2-hour evening workshop, join me at The Ninth House to write where your attention is requested.
Writing can be healing. But writing can also re-traumatize, making it difficult to tell the stories that shape us. In this weekend intensive, writers gain an understanding of how the physiological processes of trauma interact with a writing practice, considering craft challenges like the fragmentation of memory, engaging dramatic material without melodrama, elevating a deeply personal story into a universal inquiry, and owning on the page our complicated, contradictory selves.
There are many ways the world speaks to us, and oracle cards are one of them. In this 2-hour evening workshop, join me at The Ninth House to write where your attention is requested.
There are many ways the world speaks to us, and oracle cards are one of them. In this 2-hour evening workshop, join me at The Ninth House to write where your attention is requested.
There is a great temptation to airbrush ourselves on the page, and yet this leaves us not only less trustworthy on the page, but less interesting. In this evening nonfiction seminar, students will explore how the contradictions in their personalities—the gaps between dirty laundry and grace—are the most interesting space. Hosted by Sublette County Public Library in Pinedale, Wyoming.
What stories does a body have to tell? In this 3-hour workshop at Teton County Library, we’ll use the powerful anthology Beautiful Flesh: A Body of Essays to unlock the stories folded into our limbs and organs, considering how different forms and voices allow us to make meaning from our corporeal histories, and writing to prompts that help us excavate and illuminate the stories we contain.
How do we make meaning from our sexual experiences? What do our personal stories have to offer the world, and what is the best way to share them? In this bawdy, smart, and introspective 10-hour weekend intensive, writers will work towards a personal essay about an aspect of their sexual experience, learning to build strong connective tissue between individual sexual stories and the larger questions about sex that our culture is grappling with.
There are many ways the world speaks to us, and oracle cards are one of them. In this 2-hour evening workshop, join me at The Ninth House to write where your attention is requested.
Writing can be healing. But writing can also re-traumatize, making it difficult to tell the stories that shape us. In this weekend intensive, writers gain an understanding of how the physiological processes of trauma interact with a writing practice, considering how writers manage craft challenges like the fragmentation of memory, engaging dramatic material without melodrama, elevating a deeply personal story into a universal inquiry, and owning on the page our complicated, contradictory selves. Hosted by Hugo House in Seattle.
How do we best tell our stories of illness? In this private 12-hour class in downtown Seattle, writers will consider how different revision strategies can showcase, enrich, or tighten the stories they have to tell. Writers will workshop an essay of their own, provide feedback to peers, and discuss Lauren Slater's Prozac Diary.
In this two-day intensive, we'll commit to bringing to light nuanced, thoughtful explorations of the grey space between sex and sex crimes. Letting the #MeToo movement inform our space, here we'll wrestle with sex's inherent uncertainties; here we'll examine our own complicated desires concerning power; here we'll pen the events that, with a slight twist, could have ended up so differently.
There is a great temptation to airbrush ourselves on the page, and yet this leaves us not only less trustworthy on the page, but less interesting. In this nonfiction seminar, students will explore how the contradictions in their personalities—the gaps between dirty laundry and grace—are the most interesting space. Hosted by the University of Arizona Poetry Center in Tucson.
The problems of modern illness are the craft problems of illness narratives. In this 2-day workshop at Hugo House in downtown Seattle, we’ll use published illness writing as our launching pad for exploring how to successfully manage the chronology, scope, and language of modern illness experiences.
What stories does a body have to tell? In this two-day workshop, we’ll use the anthology Beautiful Flesh: A Body of Essays to unlock the stories folded into our limbs and organs, considering how different forms and voices allow us to make meaning from our corporeal histories. On January 14, we'll share our work at a public reading in Tucson Hop Shop's sunny beer garden: a body we have written together.
Join Kati and co-contributor Sarah Viren as they help launch Beautiful Flesh: A Body of Essays at Tucson's Antigone Books. Culled from some of the nation's best literary journals, each essay in the anthology explores a different body part.
Writing can be healing. But writing can also re-traumatize, making it difficult to tell the stories that make us who we are. In this workshop at The Examined Life Conference in Iowa City, IA, participants will explore how what an embodied, trauma-sensitive pedagogy has to offer the creative writing workshop.
In this Examined Life Conference one-day workshop at the Carver College of Medicine, we’ll use published illness writing as our launching pad for exploring how to successfully manage the chronology and scope of modern illness experiences on the page.
Whether you think it contributes to the breakdown of sexual morals or is just a tool for sexual release, everyone seems to have an opinion about pornography. But rarely do we see nonfiction writers engaging the subject through rich memoir or thoughtful essaying. In this weekend intensive, we’ll read some of the rare literary works on the subject, identifying the craft challenges and social barriers to writing about porn well, and generating lots of our own material.
In a sex-negative culture, it can feel unsafe to share essays about sex in workshop-- but it's never been more important to write and publish these stories. NSFW (Not Safe For Workshop) is a sex-positive space to receive ongoing feedback about your work.
CANCELLED DUE TO LOW ENROLLMENT. “Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and the kingdom of the sick,” writes Susan Sontag. In this six-week class, writers will craft personal nonfiction narratives that explore the experience of illness or injury.
Join Kati and other contributors to How We Speak To One Another: An Essay Daily Reader at Tucson Festival of Books to discuss the essay as a multifaceted literary genre. More information forthcoming.
"If you can't talk about something, you can't think about something," writer Eula Biss told Krista Tippett. Join me in late February, as alumni of my classes-- writers of sex, illness, and trauma-- read together for the first time on the patio at Tucson Hop Shop.
How do we make meaning from our sexual experiences? What do our personal stories have to offer the world, and what is the best way to share them? In this bawdy, smart, & introspective seven-week class, participants will craft a personal essay about an aspect of their sexual experience. Beyond simply telling the narrative of what happened, we will work to build strong connective tissue between individual sexual stories and the larger questions about sex with which our culture is grappling.
What is the best way to tell a given story? How can we press form to enlarge, deepen or propel the stories we tell? In this introductory prose course, we’ll read across the creative nonfiction spectrum, exploring how the same story might be told in different ways. Through in-class writing, lively conversation, and independent revision, participants in this class will excavate, chisel, and transform their own stories, dynamically seeking the form their personal narratives want to take. THIS CLASS IS CURRENTLY FULL. Join the waitlist through the University of Arizona Poetry Center.
How have our bodies been silenced--in medical offices, in our private lives, and on the page? And what might it look like to embrace our sexualities wholeheartedly? Join writer, sexologist, and Narrative Medicine professor Kati Standefer for a short reading and interactive conversation about sex positivity and negativity, how she teaches sex writing, and her work training medical students to respond to the stories patients tell about their bodies.
