The Writers Studio

Imagine writing about a personal subject you’ve never really been able to deal with before, overcoming whatever emotional barriers you’ve previously encountered. This six-week class provides a private space and opportunity to explore our most intimate feelings about our most important subjects. The journal form frees us from our more self-conscious ambitions — imagine using such literary personalities and masks as Kafka, Peter Handke, Virginia Woolf, Dostoevsky, or any of our more contemporary poets and writers as a lens through which to view our own lives and subject matters.

In this six-week workshop, we will dive deep into how writers may use journals to develop a deeper understanding of the interests and material that most deeply fuels their desire to write. In addition, we continue to utilize and advance the Writers Studio techniques to allow the writer to gain greater emotional freedom and depth in their work.

This workshop will examine and focus on creating exercises from craft classes in recent years that discussed journaling by several specific writers. Three craft class recordings will need to be purchased from the archive to participate in the class. For the Fall 2025 session, we will examine Peter Handke - A Sorrow Beyond Dreams, Jhumpa Lahiri - Whereabouts, and Saul Bellow - Seize the Day.

The format for this workshop is a virtual Google Meet classroom. All critiques and feedback will be completed live in the virtual meet-up with the whole class.