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• Nadine Kenney Johnstone - Nonlinear: A Straightforward Approach to Complex Structures

  • When
    January 09, 2025
  •  
    9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
  • Location
    REMOTE - ZOOM ONLY

  Register

  Our brains don't recall stories in a linear fashion. Why should our prose? In this generative workshop, we'll study models from beloved writers like Abigail Thomas and Maggie Smith, who've used nonlinear structures in their books. You'll learn what makes readers engaged rather than confused and how to navigate nonlinear timelines in order to produce compelling narratives.

  Nadine Kenney Johnstone is a holistic writing coach who helps women develop and publish their stories. She has helped the writers in her community develop and publish countless books and hundreds of essays in places like The New York Times, Vogue, The Sun, The Boston Globe, Longreads, and more. Her infertility memoir, Of This Much I'm Sure, was named book of the year by the Chicago Writer's Association. Her latest book, Come Home to Your Heart, is an essay collection and guided journal that helps readers tap into their inner wisdom and fall back in love with themselves. Her articles and interviews have appeared in Cosmo, Authority, Good Grit, OnSite Journal, MindBodyGreen, HERE, Urban Wellness, Natural Awakenings, Chicago Magazine, and more. Nadine is the podcast host of Heart of the Story, where she shares stories from the heart as well as interviews with today’s top women writers. Pulling from her vast experience as a writing, meditation, and yoga nidra instructor, Nadine leads women’s workshops and retreats online and around the U.S.

  Follow Nadine on Instagram 

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• Joseph Scapellato - Language Workout

  • When
    January 16, 2025
  •  
    9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
  • Location
    REMOTE - ZOOM ONLY

  Register

  Have your sentences been feeling a little flimsy? Have your paragraphs been lagging and slogging, slogging and lagging? If so, you might be due for a language workout. This class will take you through a rigorous but playful back-to-the-basics study of language use in prose through discussion, examples of published prose, and a set of interactive exercises. The end goal is practicality—for you to leave the session with ideas, approaches, or passages that you can immediately apply to your current projects.

  Joseph Scapellato is the author of the novel, The Made-Up Man, and the story collection, Big Lonesome. He was born in the western suburbs of Chicago and earned his MFA in Fiction at New Mexico State University.  His fiction and nonfiction appear in Literary Hub, Electric Literature, North American Review, Kenyon Review Online, No Tokens, and other places.  Joseph teaches in the creative writing program at Bucknell University and lives in Lewisburg, PA, with his wife, daughter, and dog.

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• Jeannie Vanasco - Finding Form(s)

  • When
    January 23, 2025
  •  
    9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
  • Location
    REMOTE - ZOOM ONLY

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  In this generative session we'll experiment with some of the many forms your memoir may include: letters, notes, fragments, transcripts, and all of the above. We’ll follow prompts inspired by the nonfiction of Christina Sharpe, Jazmina Barrera, Kiese Laymon, E. J. Koh, Eleni Sikelianos, Aisha Sabatini Sloan, among others. This session prioritizes memoir, but the prompts can apply to any genre. 

  Jeannie Vanasco is the author of the memoirs Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl—which was named a New York Times Editors' Choice and a best book of 2019 by TIME, Esquire, Kirkus, among others—and The Glass Eye, which Poets & Writers called one of the five best literary nonfiction debuts of 2017. Her third book, A Silent Treatment, is forthcoming from Tin House. She lives in Baltimore and is an associate professor of English at Towson University. 

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• Michelle Hoover - Saving the Saggy Middle

  • When
    January 30, 2025
  •  
    9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
  • Location
    REMOTE - ZOOM ONLY

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  It’s not just about stomach crunches any more. Problems with the middle of your novel or memoir often have to do with problems in the early pages of your book: starting in the wrong place, lack of character development and specificity, stakes, motivation, fear of conflict, not thinking enough about cause and effect, and avoiding necessary scenes. We’ll talk about Philip Gerard’s idea of a story’s “signature,” George Saunders on escalation, the all-important “crucible,” the false victory or defeat, and what a midpoint really needs. At the end of the class, you’ll have more ideas for how to make your middle work and the tools you need to help you avoid that saggy middle in the future.

  Michelle Hoover has taught writing for more than 25 years and currently leads the GrubStreet Novel Incubator program, which she co-founded in 2011. Her students have signed 50+ book contracts. She is a 2014 NEA Fellow and has been a Writer-in-Residence at Brandeis University, a fellow at MacDowell, Bread Loaf, and Sewanee Writers Conferences, and a winner of the PEN/New England Discovery Award. Her debut, The Quickening, was a 2010 Massachusetts Book Award "Must Read," a finalist for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize, and one of Susan Straight's 1001 "Library of America" Novels featured in the L.A. Times. Her second novel, Bottomland, was the 2017 All Iowa Reads selection and a 2016 Mass Book "Must Read." She is the creator of The 7am Novelist, the popular podcast and webinar series for writers. She is a native of Iowa and lives in Cyprus and Boston.

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• Sarah Stone - Reliable/Unreliable Narrators (and Characters)

  • When
    February 06, 2025
  •  
    9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
  • Location
    REMOTE - ZOOM ONLY

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  The term “unreliable narrator” suggests that unreliability is a special category and that most narrators (and people) are clear-sighted, rational, and honest. Even a fairly casual consideration of an ordinary day, let alone a crisis, suggests otherwise; there’s substantial narrative interest in the everyday chaos of the “normal” human mind. This class will give us a chance to consider the craft strategies writers use to convey characters’ perceptions, misperceptions, rationalizations, and levels of awareness. How do we signal whether (and to what extent) the reader is to accept a narrator’s or character’s view of reality? How can we create narrative tension by depicting what one character sees that another doesn’t? How do we allow readers to understand what the characters haven’t yet discovered? We will read and write together, and our handout will include excerpts from Salman Rushdie and Grace Paley stories.

  Sarah Stone is the author of Hungry Ghost Theater, a finalist for the 38th annual Northern California Book Awards, and The True Sources of the Nile, and co-author, with Ron Nyren, of Deepening Fiction: A Practical Guide for Intermediate and Advanced Writers. She has taught for UC Berkeley, the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers, and Stanford Continuing Studies and has written for Korean public television, reported on human rights in Burundi, and looked after orphan chimpanzees at the Jane Goodall Institute. Her work has appeared in Image, Ploughshares, The Millions, Scoundrel Time, The Believer, 100 Word Story, CRAFT, Alta Journal online for the California Book Club, and elsewhere. Her new novel, Marriage to the Sea, is forthcoming from Four Way Books in 2026.

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• Adam Vines - Unorthodox Approaches to Ekphrasis

  • When
    February 13, 2025
  •  
    9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
  • Location
    REMOTE - ZOOM ONLY

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  Art is everywhere: in the bark patterns of sycamore and poplar trees, in peeling hydrangea limbs, in striations of sandstone, but also in the deckled pages and worn spine of a book, in the rusty-hairball carpet stain, and the overlapping residue that has built up in the bathtub from different bars of soap.  We will close-read images and write drafts inspired by subjects that do not fall within the confines of traditional genres of visual art, stretching the boundaries of influences and approaches commonly employed in ekphrasis.  We can also look to images that are overtly commodified —for instance, billboards, signage, cover art on food boxes, candy wrappers; national or state symbols like an old driver’s license, a state seal, a state flag. We can look at stamps, patches, a cast with scribbles on it, street art, biker-gang leathers, tattoos, a body scar, a stain on a Celotex ceiling tile, a flaw in a pattern on a salad plate, a still shot from a movie, a graphic novel or comic pane. Using prompts and other influences we'll compose will allow you to write from a true state of the uncomfortable unknown, which is the best place to be when starting a poem draft.

  Adam Vines is Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He is the author of five collections—the latest, Lures (LSU Press, 2022), and his poems have appeared in The Southern Review, Kenyon Review, and Poetry, among others. He is the Editor of Birmingham Poetry Review , which received AWP’s 2020 Small Press Publisher Award.  

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• Dean Bakopoulos - Revising Your Scenes: Slow Down, You Move Too Fast

  • When
    February 20, 2025
  •  
    9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
  • Location
    REMOTE - ZOOM ONLY

  Register

  Often we think of revision as a major rewrite, a complete starting over, a burning down of the proverbial house. In this session, we will examine how much of our revision can be accomplished by slowing down, taking leaps, and lingering on the transformative moments in our fiction. (Bring a stalled story or novel along with you, a printout if possible, so you can see where you've gone astray.)

  Dean Bakopoulos is an author from Detroit, Michigan. He is an assistant professor of English at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa. Dean’s third novel, Summerlong, was published by Ecco/HarperCollins in June 2015. He is currently at work on a nonfiction book called Undoing, as well as a screenplay and a television pilot. Dean’s first novel, Please Don’t Come Back from the Moon was a New York Times Notable Book; his screenplay adaptation of the novel is being developed for the screen by James Franco’s Rabbit Bandini productions; His second novel, My American Unhappiness, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, was named one of the year’s best novels by the Chicago Tribune. He received his BA from the University of Michigan and his MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In addition to teaching fiction and creative nonfiction workshops at Grinnell, Dean has taught creative writing at UW-Madison, Iowa State University, University of Iowa, and the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. The winner of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, Dean also reviews books for The New York Times Book Review and the San Francisco Chronicle.

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• Mary Kay Zuravleff - Building Literary Characters

  • When
    February 27, 2025
  •  
    9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
  • Location
    REMOTE - ZOOM ONLY

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  In this hands-on workshop we'll learn techniques for creating vivid and complex characters. We will complete exercises to strengthen your characters' first impressions and practice revealing character through action. We'll also examine character traits that help generate plot and resonate throughout your story or book.

  Mary Kay Zuravleff is the award-winning author of American Ending, chosen for Oprah's Spring Reading List and inspired by the fact that in 1908, her American-born grandmother lost her American citizenship for marrying her Russian-born grandfather. Her novel Man Alive! was a Washington Post Notable Book. She has taught at Johns Hopkins, George Mason, and American University graduate programs; workshops such as Chautauqua, Key West, and Interlochen. She lives in Washington, DC. 
  

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• Sarah Stern - The Prose Poem: A Perfect Contradiction

  • When
    March 06, 2025
  •  
    9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
  • Location
    REMOTE - ZOOM ONLY

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  Prose poems lack the usual features of a poem—line breaks and stanzas—but  still read as poetry. Or do they?  In this workshop, we will discuss how a prose poem manages to be a poem. We will read and discuss a variety of examples and look at the history of the form as well. You will have the opportunity to write your own prose poem and share it. Beginning, emerging and seasoned poets and prose writers are welcome to this interactive workshop. 

  Sarah Stern is the author of three poetry books—We Have Been Lucky in the Midst of Misfortune (Kelsay Books, Aldrich Press, 2018), But Today Is Different (Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2014), and Another Word For Love (Finishing Line Press, 2011). She is a five-time winner of the Bronx Council on the Arts BRIO Poetry Award, a recipient of two Pushcart Prize nominations, and several Poets & Writers Readings & Workshops Grants. Stern is an educator at Poets House and on the faculty of the New York Writers Workshop. She has taught poetry workshops at Poets House, the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan, the New York Public Library, CSAIR Adult Learning Institute, Hostos Community College, the Bronx Zoo, Edgar Allan Poe Visitor Center, and privately. Stern is the founder of SDGS Solutions, a communications and marketing consultancy. She has worked at universities, cultural centers, and think tanks. She graduated from Barnard College and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.  

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• Juan Martinez - Fast Talk: Four Easy Ways to Make Dialogue Pop

  • When
    March 13, 2025
  •  
    9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
  • Location
    ONSITE - 620 Lincoln Avenue, Winnetka, IL /REMOTE

  Register

  If you have sometimes struggled with writing dialogue, you're not alone. Vladimir Nabokov and Gabriel Garcia Marquez both famously railed against it, and they found ways to avoid writing talk-heavy scenes. That's a perfectly legitimate work-around. However, in this talk we'll discuss four easy ways to make dialogue work — to move scenes forward and to reveal complicated character dynamics, all while keeping your reader interested in what happens next.

  Juan Martinez is the author of the novel Extended Stay (2023) and the story collection Best Worst American (2017). He lives near Chicago and is an associate professor at Northwestern University. His work has appeared in McSweeney's, Huizache, Ecotone, The Sunday Morning Transport, NIGHTMARE, NPR's Selected Shorts, Mississippi Review and elsewhere. 

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• Audrey Niffenegger - Writing a Sequel

  • When
    March 20, 2025
  •  
    9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
  • Location
    ONSITE - 620 Lincoln Avenue, Winnetka, IL /REMOTE

  Register

  Readers clamor for a sequel after finishing a book they love. The opportunity is great, but so is the pressure. Audrey Niffeneger will share advice on honoring your original book and avoiding the pitfalls in order to keep the sequel fresh and alive. 

  Audrey Niffenegger is a writer and visual artist who lives in Chicago and London. Her novels The Time Traveler’s Wife and Her Fearful Symmetry were international bestsellers. She has also published graphic novels, including The Night Bookmobile and Raven Girl. The Time Traveler’s Wife is being adapted into an HBO TV series, and Ms. Niffenegger is working on a sequel, The Other Husband. She recently founded a new literary and book arts center, Artists Book House, in Chicago.

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• Lori Rader-Day - Popular Fiction: Character and Story

  • When
    March 27, 2025
  •  
    9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
  • Location
    ONSITE - 620 Lincoln Avenue, Winnetka, IL /REMOTE

  Register

  In popular fiction, character is just as important as in literary fiction—but one story may not be enough. In this session, we will discuss the unique demands of popular fiction and introduce the array of characters who populate stories that rely on discovery or suspense—some of them very shady, indeed. Who should lead the story? What do heroes and villains have in common? Who are the people required to build out your protagonist’s world and make readers believe— and worry?

  Lori Rader-Day is the Edgar Award-nominated and Agatha, Anthony, and Mary Higgins Clark award-winning author of The Death of Us, Death at Greenway, The Lucky One, Under a Dark Sky, and others. Lori lives in Chicago, where she co-chairs the crime fiction readers’ event Midwest Mystery Conference and teaches creative writing at Northwestern University. Her next novel, Wreck Your Heart, featuring a wannabe country singer, will be released from Minotaur/SMPG in winter 2026. Visit her at www.LoriRaderDay.com.

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• Taylor Byas - The Architecture of the Sestina

  • When
    April 03, 2025
  •  
    9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
  • Location
    ONSITE - 620 Lincoln Avenue, Winnetka, IL /REMOTE

  Register

  In this session, we'll talk about the challenges of the sestina form and how we might overcome them by thinking like architects/builders. When the sestina becomes a multi-roomed space, when we break the long and intimidating form into manageable parts, we enable ourselves to focus on each smaller part of the whole with a heightened attention to narrative, movement, and surprise. This is meant to be a generative workshop, in which students will leave the course with the beginnings of a sestina written. 

  Taylor Byas, Ph.D. (she/her) is a Black Chicago native currently living in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she is a Features Editor for The Rumpus, a Poetry Acquisitions Editor for Variant Literature, an Editorial Board Member for Beloit Poetry Journal, and an Editorial Advisor for Jackleg Press. She is the author of two chapbooks, her debut full-length, I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times, from Soft Skull Press, which won the 2023 Maya Angelou Book Award and the 2023 Chicago Review of Books Award in Poetry, and Resting Bitch Face, forthcoming in Fall of 2025. She is also a coeditor of The Southern Poetry Anthology, Vol X: Alabama from Texas Review Press, and of Poemhood: Our Black Revival, a YA anthology on Black folklore from HarperCollins.

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• Kathleen Rooney - Now I Know My ABCs: Using the Abecedarian Form to Transform a Project

  • When
    April 10, 2025
  •  
    9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
  • Location
    ONSITE - 620 Lincoln Avenue, Winnetka, IL /REMOTE

  Register

  From the moment we learn to read and write, we know that the alphabet is fundamental. Then these standard characters representing particular sounds in spoken language tend to disappear into the background as we go on to deal with bigger writerly concerns. But the alphabet is also fun and can be an illuminating and playful way to organize any literary project be it short or long. In this workshop, we’ll discuss how the abecedarian format can be applied across all genres to bring new ideas, themes, characters, and settings to light. By looking at—and experimenting with—the application of the alphabet in poems, memoirs, essays, and even fiction, we’ll discover how sometimes using a strict and familiar constraint can create freedom and take your work in a direction you wouldn't expect.

  Kathleen Rooney is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press, a nonprofit publisher of literary work in hybrid genres, and a founding member of Poems While You Wait, a team of poets and their typewriters who compose commissioned poetry on demand. She is the author of the novels Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk and Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey, and her latest poetry collection Where Are the Snows, winner of the XJ Kennedy Prize, was released in Fall of 2022 by Texas Review Press. Her latest novel, From Dust to Stardust, came out in September 2023, and her first children's book, Leaf Town Forever, co-written with her sister Beth Rooney, is forthcoming from University of Minnesota Press. She lives in Chicago and teaches at DePaul.

  Kathleen will judge a Three Paragraph Writing Contest. Please see the Manuscript and Contest Page on our website.

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• Frances de Pontes Peebles - The Shape of a Story: What is Plot and How do We Write It?

  • When
    April 17, 2025
  •  
    9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
  • Location
    ONSITE - 620 Lincoln Avenue, Winnetka, IL /REMOTE

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  In this lecture we will explore plot. Is it simply the unfolding of events? Is it driven by character or by the author? We will analyze different forms of plot, how plots vary among cultures, and how we can harness these variations and differences to create a plot that is organic to our own story.

  Frances de Pontes Peebles is the author of the award-winning novels The Seamstress and The Air You Breathe. She is a 2020 Creative Writing Fellow in Literature from The National Endowment for the Arts. A native of Pernambuco, Brazil, she holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her short stories have appeared in O. Henry Prize Stories, Zoetrope: All-Story, Missouri Review, Indiana Review, and Guernica. She teaches at StoryStudio and serves as Visiting Associate Professor of Fiction at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.

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• Goldie Goldbloom - Going Deep: How to Achieve Interiority

  • When
    April 24, 2025
  •  
    9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
  • Location
    ONSITE - 620 Lincoln Avenue, Winnetka, IL /REMOTE

  Register

  The most beloved characters of our time all have one trait in common: they let the reader experience their interior worlds, with all of the darkness, the strangeness, the confusion and the shame. It's not that the writers linger in these places (it would be breathtakingly challenging to read too much of it!) but these moments allow us to identify with the character and to be drawn ever deeper into the work. 

  Many writers use special techniques to indicate that such moments are approaching. We will be examining a variety of these methods and testing out which are most effective. Stand aside, John Gardner. We all need more information than was provided in your essay on psychic distance!

  Goldie Goldbloom is a writer, teacher and editor, author of four internationally award-winning books of fiction, most recently On Division (winner of the Prix des Libraires in France), and many articles, short stories and essays that have appeared around the world. For over fifteen years, she was on the faculty at Northwestern University and/ or the University of Chicago. She currently runs a developmental editing service for best-selling authors, celebrities and talented writers from all walks of life. She is the mother of eight children and an LGBTQ activist.

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• Steve Trumpeter - The Best American Short Stories: Learning from the BASS Anthology Winners

  • When
    May 01, 2025
  •  
    9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
  • Location
    ONSITE - 620 Lincoln Avenue, Winnetka, IL /REMOTE

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  Every year, the venerable Best American Short Stories series picks their top 20 pieces of short fiction that appeared in publications ranging from the smallest MFA-program lit mags to the white whale that is The New Yorker. In this session, writer Steve Trumpeter will discuss a few examples from recent editions and identify what makes those stories “the best” (for better or worse). In so doing, we’ll discover some strategies for making our own work unique and resonant and talk about what can help our stories stand out in the slush pile.

  Steve Trumpeter is a writer, artist, and musician from Chicago. His recent fiction has appeared in The Southern Review, Salamander, American Fiction, Chicago Quarterly Review and others. He was a finalist for the Chicago Tribune’s Nelson Algren Award and took 2nd place in Zoetrope: All-Story’s 2019 fiction contest. He teaches creative writing classes at StoryStudio Chicago.  Discover his stories, paintings, music, and more here.   

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• Heather Sellers - Micro Memoir: True Stories in Tight Packages

  • When
    May 08, 2025
  •  
    9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
  • Location
    REMOTE - ZOOM ONLY

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  A micro memoir is a true story that fits in a small space (a page or two). They are delicious to read, but devilishly difficult to write. Every word matters, as in a poem, and your story-telling skills must be on point—there’s nowhere to hide. In this content-rich class, we’ll examine the special techniques required by this form. We’ll share publishing tips. And, I’ll offer an in-class exercise to jump-start your new micro practice.

  Heather Sellers is the author of a new textbook, How to Make Poems. Field Notes from the Flood Zone and The Present State of the Garden are her two most recent collections of poetry. Her textbook, The Practice of Creative Writing, is in its fourth edition, following two books on craft, Page After Page and Chapter After Chapter. Her collection of linked short stories is Georgia Under Water, and a memoir, You Don’t Look Like Anyone I Know, was featured in O, the Oprah Magazine and is an O  Book-of-the Month club pick and Editor’s Choice at the New York Times. Recent essays appear in The New York Times, Reader’s Digest, Real Simple, Good Housekeeping, The Sun, and O, the Oprah Magazine. Her essay “Haywire” was selected for the Best American Essays by Leslie Jamison, and “Pedal, Pedal, Pedal” won a Pushcart Prize. She regularly speaks to audiences about prosopagnosia (face blindness), most recently at NASA. Sellers directs the writing program at the University of South Florida.  

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• Megan Stielstra - Let People Carry It: Publishing as Practice

  • When
    May 15, 2025
  •  
    9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
  • Location
    ONSITE - 620 Lincoln Avenue, Winnetka, IL /REMOTE

  Register

  “Once the work is done, it’s not yours anymore,” wrote Frank Chimero. “If the thing you make goes anywhere, it’s because other people carried it.” 

  The choice of if, when, and how to share our work with others is a deeply personal decision, both terrifying and exhilarating. How do you make that choice? And once it’s made, what do you… do?

  This session reframes publication as a vital and informative part of the writing practice, as opposed to rejection/acceptance roulette. How can our unique publication goals influence the rewriting process? How does the consideration of a wider audience take our work to the next level and when should we leave those (scary and often very loud) outside voices at the door? And how can we demystify the nuts-and-bolts of submitting—finding the right literary journals, writing a solid cover letter, connecting with editors—and get back to what we’re all here to do: carry each other’s stories.

  Megan Stielstra is the author of three collections: Everyone Remain Calm, Once I Was Cool, and The Wrong Way to Save Your Life. Her work appears in Best American Essays, New York Times, The Believer, Tin House, and on National Public Radio. She teaches creative nonfiction at Northwestern University and is an editor-at-large at Northwestern University Press.

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• Abby Geni - Writing a Novel-in-Stories

  • When
    May 22, 2025
  •  
    9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
  • Location
    ONSITE - 620 Lincoln Avenue, Winnetka, IL /REMOTE

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  You may be writing a novel and / or writing short stories. A third option of story is gaining popularity: the Novel in Stories. 

  We will look at literary examples to explore ways to deepen the interconnectedness of your novel-in-stories by focusing on recurring characters, themes, and timelines.

  Abby Geni is the author of The Wildlands, The Lightkeepers, The Last Animal, and a short story collection, The Body Farm. Her books have been translated into seven languages and have won the Barnes & Noble Discover Award and the Chicago Review of Books Awards, among other honors. Her short stories have won first place in the Glimmer Train Fiction Open and the Chautauqua Contest and have been published or are forthcoming in numerous journals, including The Missouri Review, Epoch, Ninth Letter, and New Stories from the Midwest. Geni is a faculty member at StoryStudio Chicago and frequently serves as Visiting Associate Professor of Fiction at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.

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• Magazine and Journal Editor Panel: Christine Maui Rice, Kira Tucker, John McCarthy, Laura Joyce Hubbard

  • When
    May 29, 2025
  •  
    9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
  • Location
    ONSITE - 620 Lincoln Avenue, Winnetka, IL /REMOTE

  Register

  PANELISTS:
  Christine Maui Rice 

  

  Christine’s novel, Swarm Theory, was called "a gripping work of Midwest Gothic" by NPR and won numerous awards. Christine was included in New City's Lit 50: Who Really Books in Chicago and named One of 30 Writers to Watch by Chicago's Guild Complex. Most recently, her short stories, essays, and interviews have appeared in Allium, Make Literary Magazine, The Rumpus, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, The Millions, Roanoke Review, The Literary Review, among others. Christine is the founder and editor of Hypertext Magazine and is an Assistant Professor of English at Valparaiso University. Her novel, based on the Flint water crisis, will be published in 2026.

  Kira Tucker  is a poet and artist from Memphis. The 2024-2025 Artist in Residence in Creative Writing at Northwestern, Kira is an Associate Agent with the Shipman Agency and the current Assistant Managing Editor for TriQuarterly. Their poems appear in The Iowa Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Jazz & Culture, and elsewhere. Kira is also at work on a hopeful debut collection—a poetic investigation spanning the mythos of the American Dream and the landscapes of our collective unconscious.

  John McCarthy is the author of Scared Violent Like Horses (Milkweed Editions, 2019), which won the Jake Adam York Prize; and Ghost County (Midwestern Gothic Press, 2016). His poems have appeared in 32 Poems, Best New Poets, Cincinnati Review, Gettysburg Review, North American Review, Pleiades, and Quarterly West, among others. John is the Managing Editor of RHINO.

  Laura Joyce Hubbard's nonfiction and poetry appear in Poetry, The Iowa Review, The Sewanee Review, the Chicago Tribune and elsewhere. Laura’s poetry manuscript was a recent semifinalist in Copper Nickel and Milkweed Edition’s Jake Adam York Prize. Writing awards include winner of The Iowa Review’s Veteran Writing Award, winner of the 2023 Porch Prize in Poetry, winner of the 2021 Nonfiction Contest at Southeast Review, and winner of the Individual Poem Prize (2021) and Essay Prize (2020) in the William Faulkner Pirate’s Alley Writing Competition. Her nonfiction was selected as a “Notable” in the Best American Essays 2022 and 2023 and won an AWP Intro Journal Award (2023). Laura’s work has been supported by the Ragdale Foundation, the Fine Arts Work Center, and the National Endowment for the Arts with a residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She is a veteran US Air Force pilot, a fiction editor for TriQuarterly, an MFA candidate at Northwestern University, and currently the inaugural Highland Park Poet Laureate.

  
  

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• Michael Zapata - Make a Mess NEW DATE

  • When
    June 05, 2025
  •  
    9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
  • Location
    ONSITE - 620 Lincoln Avenue, Winnetka, IL /REMOTE

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  Rescheduled!

  In a society so fully bent toward production at all costs, we should remember, as art critic David Sylvester once said, “Artists must be allowed to get into a mess.” As we consider how we might listen, slow down, and make a mess in support of our own work, we’ll take our inspiration from writers like Jon Fosse and Gayle Jones, who write as if it were an act of listening, and the painter Mark Bradford who said, “I pillage my own work. I tear it down and build it up in traces.” Guided analytical and inquiry-based discussions and writing activities will encourage writers to build a sustainable writing practice that embraces both their own artistic impulses and the material worlds in which they live. 

  Michael Zapata is a founding editor of MAKE Literary Magazine and the author of the novel The Lost Book of Adana Moreau, winner of the 2020 Chicago Review of Books Award for Fiction, finalist for the 2020 Heartland Booksellers Award in Fiction, and a Best Book of the Year for NPR, the A.V. Club, Los Angeles Public Library, and BookPage, among others. He is on the faculty of StoryStudio Chicago and the MFA faculty of Northwestern University. As a public-school educator, he taught literature and writing in high schools servicing drop-out students. He currently lives in Chicago with his family.

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• Test Event

  • When
    November 10, 2025
  •  
    9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
  • Location
    ONSITE - 620 Lincoln Avenue, Winnetka, IL /REMOTE

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