Writing By Writers...

In this class, we’ll focus on how narrative and genre work together. Each class, you’ll write a similar narrative through a new genre, moving from Flash CNF to Prose Poem to Lineated Poem to Flash Fiction to a One Sentence Narrative. In each session, we’ll discuss how the genre works and what it can do for narrative, considering questions of form and content and where we draw what lines and whether or not we should. Ultimately, the idea is that by experimenting with genres beyond our comfort zones, we can unlock something essential about the narrative at hand, find a way to write it better and truer than before. 

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Allison Field Bell holds a PhD in Creative Writing and English Literature from the University of Utah and an MFA in Creative Writing from New Mexico State University. She is originally from Northern California, and she is the founder and lead instructor of Field Works Writing (fieldworkswriting.com). She has two full-length collections: Bodies of Other Women (fiction, Red Hen Press, forthcoming 2028) and All That Blue (poetry, Finishing Line Press, 2026). Allison also has three chapbooks: Stitch (flash fiction, Chestnut Review Chapbooks, forthcoming in the fall of 2026), Edge of the Sea (nonfiction, CutBank Books, 2025), and Without Woman or Body (poetry, Finishing Line Press, 2025). Find her at allisonfieldbell.com

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You’re years into a new book, and it’s just not working. But there’s something about it you can’t let go of. In this class, we’ll discuss how to unravel, resee, reclaim, and rebuild—all the while holding onto the heart of the manuscript. There’s an art to the overhaul. You’re not starting from scratch; you’re starting again. You’ll leave with energy for your project, a renewed dedication to your vision, and a step-by-step plan for moving forward. Optional: Submit up to 300 words about the overhaul you’re facing and what you would like help with.

 

Cynthia Newberry Martin is the author of three novels, The Art of Her Life, Love Like This, and Tidal Flats, winner of the Gold Medal in Literary Fiction at the 2020 Independent Publisher Book Awards and winner of the 14th Annual National Indie Excellence Award for Fiction. Her Substack features the How We Spend Our Days series, and her stories, essays, and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in Image Journal, Brevity, Gargoyle, and Contrary. She received her MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and has served as the Review Editor for Contrary and the Writing Life Editor for Hunger Mountain. She grew up in Atlanta and now splits her time between Columbus, Georgia; Provincetown, Massachusetts; and Baie-Saint-Paul, Canada.

 

Pressure is at the heart of any great story, but sometimes we instinctively protect our characters from experiencing it. In this class we’ll look at how to apply pressure to our characters through interiority, setting, dialogue, other characters, and plot, taking guidance from examples in popular movies, TV shows, and fairy tales. We’ll practice together with in-class exercises and you’ll leave with prompts for applying pressure in your own work. 

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Becky Mandelbaum is the author of THE BRIGHT SIDE SANCTUARY FOR ANIMALS, an Indie Next pick, and BAD KANSAS, which received the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, the High Plains Book Award for First Book, and was a Kansas Notable Book. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, One Story, The Sun, The Missouri Review, The Georgia Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Rumpus, Necessary Fiction, Hobart, Prairie Schooner, Electric Literature, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and has been featured on Medium. Arts organizations including Hedgebrook, Writing by Writers, The Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, Lighthouse Works, and the Washington Arts Commission have supported her work. She is the winner of a Pushcart Prize and was named a finalist for the Disquiet Literary Prize in Fiction, the Missouri Review Editor’s Prize in Fiction, the Nelson Algren Award, and the Joyland Open Border Fiction Prize. Originally from Kansas, she now lives in Bellingham, Washington.

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How to build compelling stories from the places we’ve been.

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Kim has made a habit of working her travels into her novels and flash fiction – see Instructions for a Broken Heart (which won the Northern California Book Award for YA) and The Wonder of Us, which The Horn Book Guide named a “Summer of Change” selection. In this workshop, she’ll provide examples of how to turn places you love and have been to into powerful stories as well as provide prompts for generative exercises for your WIP and original flash fiction and short stories. Bring your writerly passport!

Travel warning: this workshop will focus heavily on setting, character, and conflict! 

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Kim Culbertson is the author of the YA novels Songs for a Teenage Nomad (Sourcebooks 2010), Instructions for a Broken Heart (Sourcebooks 2011), which was named a Booklist Top Ten Romance Title for Youth: 2011 and also won the 2012 Northern California Book Award for YA Fiction, Catch a Falling Star (Scholastic 2014), The Possibility of Now (Scholastic 2016), which was named a Bank Street Best Children’s Book of the Year (2017 edition), and The Wonder of Us (Scholastic 2017). Much of her inspiration comes from her background teaching high school since 1997. In 2012, Kim wrote her eBook novella The Liberation of Max McTrue for her students, who, over the years, have taught her far more than she has taught them. Kim also works as a fiction mentor for the Dominican University MFA in Creative Writing. 100-word Stories: A Short Form for Expansive Writing (Heinemann 2023) was born from her two loves: teaching and storytelling. Her first novel for adults Other People’s Kids was published in fall of 2025 (Sibylline Press) and was named a finalist for the California Independent Booksellers Alliance (CALIBA) 2025 Golden Poppy Award in fiction. She lives in Northern California.

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As Milan Kundera wrote, “But is heaviness truly deplorable and lightness splendid? The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes [one] to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, take leave of the earth and [their] earthly being, and become only half-real, [their] movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?” We will use Kundera’s ideas as one of many lenses through which to write.

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We will explore the work of contemporary writers through reading short excerpts, notice what they’re doing and why, and discuss the effect those choices have on us as readers. We will then use writing exercises and prompts to write our own pieces of any genre, but focused mostly on fiction and memoir. Expect to leave with new writing starts, a refreshed toolbox of techniques and practices, and connections with other writers. Whether you are just getting started or have old projects that need inspiration, Unbearable Lightness seeks to offer the time, support and space to dive into this creative practice. This workshop is designed for writers of any experience level, beginners encouraged! 

Charlie J. Stephens is a nonbinary writer from the Pacific Northwest. Born in Oregon, they  reside on the southern coast where they own Sea Wolf Books. Their debut novel, “A Wounded Deer Leaps Highest” was published by Torrey House in 2024. It was long-listed for The Center For Fiction’s First Novel Prize and was a finalist for the Oregon Book Awards. It won the Leslie Feinberg Award in Trans and Gender-Variant Literature and the Bronze Foreword Indies Award in LGBTQ+ fiction. Their collection of short stories, “Annihilation for Beginners” was published by Buckman in early 2026. More at charliejstephenswriting.com.

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