
Writing With Gratitude:
A Generative Poetry Workshop
Alan Chazaro
Wednesday April 22nd
5 - 7pm PT over Zoom
​COST: $75
​
In an age of impending political doom, immigration raids, and ongoing oil wars, there’s no better moment than now to purposefully seek out the good around us. As poets, we are immersed in it all, and influenced by everything: the awful and the awe-inspiring; the hurt and the hope that follows; the insidious and the immaculate, alike. It takes time, space, and practice to sift through the noise and positively hone your energy. In this two-hour course, we’ll study how contemporary poets from various backgrounds have used the spectrum of emotion and experience — from rage to rebirth — to generate poems that are, ultimately, grounded in gratitude. Poets who have found joy despite, or perhaps because, of the times. From there, we’ll use writing prompts that will encourage us to do the same, while leaning on group discussions, brainstorms, and guiding examples to inform our sense of ideation, voice, and possibility. And we'll sit with everything that emerges in between.
About The Faculty: Alan Chazaro is the author of These Spaceships Weren't Built For Us (Tia Chucha Press, 2026), Notes from the Eastern Span of the Bay Bridge (Ghost City Press, 2021), Piñata Theory (Black Lawrence Press, 2020), and This Is Not a Frank Ocean Cover Album (Black Lawrence Press, 2019). He is a graduate of June Jordan’s Poetry for the People program at UC Berkeley and was selected as a Lawrence Ferlinghetti Poetry Fellow at the University of San Francisco. His work can be found in NPR, The Guardian, SLAM, GQ, L.A. Times, and more. Prior to becoming a traveling journalist and poet, he worked as a full-time educator for 12 years, with experience as a high school English teacher and graduate-level creative writing professor. He was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area as the son of Mexican immigrants, and is currently based in Veracruz.

Unlocking the Magic of 100-word Stories: A Generative Workshop with Kim Culbertson
Tuesday April 28th & Thursday April 30th
5 - 7pm PT over Zoom
​COST: $150
​
A 100-word story is what it sounds like: a full story in exactly 100 words (not including the title!). Each story has a distinct POV, characters, a setting, a conflict, and a story arc with a clear beginning, middle, and end. In this 2-day, immersive and generative workshop, Kim will share the magic of this small, bright form. Through close readings of example pieces and generative prompts, Kim will guide workshop participants in the practice of writing and revising 100-word stories as well as explore how practicing this form in an intentional way can build specificity in all the writing we do. At the end of this workshop, participants can plan to leave with 2-3 100-word stories ready for submission. Come practice with us!
​
About The Faculty: Kim holds an M.S. in Education, an MFA in Fiction, and has been teaching high school since 1997. She is the award-winning author of five YA novels. Her titles Catch a Falling Star; The Possibility of Now; and The Wonder of Us were Scholastic book club selections. She won the Northern California Book Award for YA fiction for Instructions for a Broken Heart as well as had The Possibility of Now named a Bank Street Best Book of the Year. Her first novel for adults, Other People’s Kids (Sibylline 2025) is about (surprise, surprise) teachers and was named a 2025 CALIBA Golden Poppy finalist for Fiction. In addition to teaching high school, Kim sits on the Writers Council for National Writing Project and works as a Fiction mentor with Dominican University of California’s MFA in Creative Writing. With 100-Word Stories: A Short Form for Expansive Writing (Heinemann 2023), Kim finally found a way to blend her two professional loves, teaching and writing, into one book. These small, bright things have transformed her classroom and her own writing. She loves sharing their potential with other teachers and writers. www.kimculbertson.com

Adding and Subtracting: The Art and Artifice of Arranging Oneself on the Page
with Deborah Taffa
Monday June 1st
5 - 7pm PT over Zoom
​COST: $75
​
As writers, we shape stories — but the stories we tell ourselves often shape us in return. This course invites participants to examine the narrative structures that influence both our creative work and lived experience. We’ll consider how personal and cultural narratives inform voice, form, and content — and how revising these inherited frameworks can open new imaginative possibilities. Through writing exercises, participants will deepen their sense of narrative agency and explore how language can unsettle, reframe, and remake. This is a space for writers to interrogate the stories that confine and discover those that compel.
About The Faculty: Deborah Taffa (Kwatsaán/Laguna Pueblo) directs the MFACW program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Her memoir Whiskey Tender was a 2024 National Book Award finalist. Named a Top 10 book of the year by The Atlantic and Time Magazine, the memoir also won a 2024 Southwest Book Prize, a 2025 International Latino Book Award, and the 2026 LULAC Book Award. A 2024 NEA fellow and 2022 winner of the PEN/Jean Stein Grant, Deborah has received fellowships from the Ellen Meloy Foundation, Tin House, the University of Iowa, Rona Jaffe, and other organizations.