Craft Class Taken with a Workshop - Fall 2025

A Rigorous Method for Serious Students

Learning to read prose and poetry as a writer is a necessity for students who are serious about their work. In the Writers Studio Craft Class teachers and celebrated authors guide students in identifying techniques at play in contemporary and classic literature. Each week we pinpoint the specific ways a writer has constructed a narrator with a distinct voice, and conclude the class with suggested exercises based on the narrative technique studied that week. These exercises form the basis for the work students bring into their respective workshops. More advanced writers working on novels, memoirs, short stories, and poems use their weekly exercise as a prompt to more deeply explore material or a specific character in a longer work in progress.

Craft Class meets via Google Meet once a week for eight weeks during the school’s four sessions. Whether or not you attend the Craft Class via Google Meet, a recording of the class is emailed to you the day after the class. Students are also invited to subscribe to the podcast where recordings are added each week, if that is their preference. Many students take the class asynchronously and watch or listen to it at their convenience.

Writers Studio teachers and guest teachers such as Edward Hirsch, Jonathan Santlofer, Ellen Bass, Cornelius Eady, Tina Chang, Jocelyn Nicole Johnson, and Carl Dennis enjoy discussing the technical aspects of that week’s readings, and students who publish often tell us which exercises inspired aspects of their novels, poems, and memoirs.

Craft Class is open to students in all levels as well as writers who are not enrolled in a writing workshop. All students begin taking Craft Class when they enter their third term of Level 3 (Online or NYC); their fourth term of Advanced Poetry or Advanced Memoir; or when they begin taking Advanced Workshop (Tucson, San Francisco, or Hudson River Towns). Over the years the reading list for this class has included the short stories, novels, poems, and memoirs of a wide array of venerable and up-and-coming authors including fiction writers Lucia Berlin, Bonnie Jo Campbell, John Cheever, Anton Chekhov, Toni Morrison, J.D.Salinger and Colson Whitehead; poets Elizabeth Bishop, Rita Dove, Jorie Graham, Pablo Neruda and Adam Zagajewski, and memoirists Jill Bialosky, Annie Ernaux, Natasha Trethewey and Audre Lorde.

Interested in past Craft Class recordings? The Writers Studio Craft Class Archive includes 30 years of recordings of Craft Class lectures taught by Philip Schultz, various Writers Studio teachers and distinguished authors. Purchase recordings here.

Craft Class Reading List Fall 2025

Tuesdays 6:30 – 8:00pm EDT

Our dedicated Bookshop store, already populated with the current Craft Class reading list is here.* You can also purchase Craft Class books from the Strand Bookstore in NYC or Amazon. Links for the Strand and Amazon are included in the list below.

September 30: Jill Bialosky, The End Is the Beginning: A Personal History of My Mother (Washington Square Press) Taught by Jill Bialosky and Philip Schultz

Strand: The End Is the Beginning: A Personal History of My Mother

Bookshop.org

Amazon: The End Is the Beginning: A Personal History of My Mother

October 7: Edward Hirsch, My Childhood in Pieces: A Stand-Up Comedy, a Skokie Elegy (Knopf) Taught by Edward Hirsch and Philip Schultz

Strand: My Childhood in Pieces: A Stand-Up Comedy, a Skokie Elegy

Bookshop.org

Amazon: My Childhood in Pieces: A Stand-Up Comedy, a Skokie Elegy

October 14: Katie Williams, Tell the Machine Goodnight (Riverhead Books) Taught by Reneé Bibby

Strand: Tell the Machine Goodnight

Bookshop.org

Amazon: Tell the Machine Goodnight

October 21: Martin Espada, Floaters (W.W. Norton & Company) Taught by Lisa Bellamy

Strand: Floaters

Bookshop.org

Amazon: Floaters

October 28: Suleika Jaouad, The Book of Alchemy: A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life (Random House) Taught by Mark Peterson

Strand: The Book of Alchemy: A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life

Bookshop.org

Amazon: The Book of Alchemy: A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life

November 4: Jamaica Kincaid, At the Bottom of the River (Picador) Taught by Francesca Moroney

Strand: At the Bottom of the River

Bookshop.org

Amazon: At the Bottom of the River

November 11: Pushcart Prize 2025 (Pushcart Press) Taught by Marie Kilroy
Fiction: “Portrait of the technocrat as a Standard Man” by Shaan Aachdev and "The Zaminder’s Watch” by Nishanth Injam; Poetry: “Self-portrait as a Coriander Seed” by Abby E. Murray, “For Acie” by Kate Delay, “Preparing for Residential Placement for My Disabled Daughter” by Jennifer Franklin, “The End of Wildness” by Gail Griffin, and “Spangle” by John A. Nieves

Strand: Pushcart Prize 2025

Bookshop.org

Amazon: Pushcart Prize 2025

November 18: Peter Balakian, Ozone Journal (University of Chicago Press) Taught by Peter Balakian and Philip Schultz

Strand: Ozone Journal

Bookshop.org

Amazon: Ozone Journal

*The Writers Studio receives a small referral fee when you purchase through Bookshop or click through Amazon-linked titles. This does not affect the price you pay for the books.

Suggested Reading List

Fiction: Javier Marías, The Infatuations; Paul Beatty, The Sellout; John Jeremiah Sullivan, Pulphead; Jenny Erpenbeck, Go Went Gone; Mohsin Hamid, Exit West; Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Friday Black; Bernadine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other: A Novel; Xuan Juliana Wang, Home Remedies; Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous; Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, The Discomfort of Evening; Richard Powers, The Overstory; NoViolet Bulawayo, Glory; Janet Malcolm, Still Pictures (a memoir); Antoine Wilson, Mouth to Mouth; Rabih Alameddine, The Wrong End of the Telescope; Joy Williams, Concerning the Future of Souls

Poetry: Kevin Young, Brown; Nick Laird, Feel Free; Rodney Jones, Alabama; Michael Waters, Sinnerman; Leslie Sainz, Have You Been Long Enough at Table; Matthew Dickman, Husbandry: Poems; Rodney Jones, Alabama