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Writing Workshops
LitArts RI writing workshops are open to all levels of writers across various genres and mediums. You must be 18+ to attend.
Please contact Staff if you wish to pay in person by cash or check to avoid Eventbrite fees.​​
CRAFT INTENSIVES | Fall 2024
The Art of Revision
Thurs, Sept 19 + 26, 6-8pm
with Susan Tacent
Fiction | Nonfiction
Much of our work as writers rests in revision. Careful revision ensures credible characters, enticing language, well-paced plots, and points of view that honor the intent and power of our stories. Through a craft-oriented look at work by Virginia Woolf, Lydia Davis, George Saunders, Morgan Talty, Peter Ho Davies, NK Jemisin, and others, we’ll explore the why and how of revision. Through writing exercises, group discussion, and a spirit of discovery, we’ll revise works-in-progress toward keeping readers invested and engaged. Open to prose writers of all levels and genres with a current work-in-progress. This is a 2-week workshop, with a 2-hour session each week. Please prepare to spend time revising your work between sessions.
REGISTER
SUSAN TACENT’s (she/her) work appears in Tin House Online, Michigan Quarterly Review, Blackbird, decomp, DIAGRAM, and elsewhere. She is writer-in-residence for Creature Conserve and co-editor of Creature Needs: Writers Respond to the Science of Animal Conservation, University of Minnesota Press, forthcoming Fall 2024.
Crafting A Sense of Place
Wed, Oct 2, 9, 16 + 23, 6:30-8pm
with John Cotter
Fiction | Nonfiction | Poetry
The cities and fields and oceans of our writing can be antagonists, love interests, murder weapons, scorekeepers and heroes. In this generative 4-week course we’ll talk about the seven deadly sins of settings, shortcuts to spare background painting, how places are always *doing* and *becoming*, and how not to test your reader’s patience. We’ll learn how to activate place in our writing through a series of in-class prompts and critiques, and leave with a better sense of where we are now. Open to writers of all levels and genres. This is a 4-week workshop, with a 1.5-hour session each week. Please prepare for approximately 1 hour of work between sessions.
JOHN COTTER (he/him) is the author of the memoir Losing Music (Milkweed, 2023) and the novel Under the Small Lights (Miami University Press, 2010). His essays and fiction have appeared in New England Review, Prairie Schooner, Epoch, Raritan, Guernica, The New York Times Magazine, The Georgia Review, and Electric Literature's Recommended Reading. He's been a resident fellow at SPACE gallery in Portland, ME, and the James Merrill House in Stonington, CT.
Photo credit: Joanna Scott​​
The Multilingual Writer
Sat, Nov 16, 1-3pm
with Jessica Araújo
Fiction | Nonfiction | Poetry
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This workshop aims to create a dynamic and inclusive space where multilingual writers can explore and celebrate their linguistic diversity. Participants will be provided tools and techniques to integrate their multiple languages into their writing and discuss how this can make for an enriching and dynamic experience for our readers. The objectives are to discuss how more than one language may offer certain linguistic and cultural vantage points that one singular language may not, to practice multilingual writing in different contexts, e.g., poetry, fiction, etc., and to foster a sense of community among multilingual writers. Open to writers of all levels and genres.
REGISTER
JESSICA ARAÚJO (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of English at the Community College of Rhode Island. She has an MA in Literature and MFA in Creative and Professional Writing. She writes fiction, poetry, and critical essays. Her poems have been published in Sad Girl Diaries Literary Magazine, Cathexis Northwest Press, Wingless Dreamer, and the forthcoming issue of Green House Literary Magazine
Accessibility
All workshops will meet in person at LitArts RI’s wheelchair-accessible literary arts center at 400 Harris Ave, Unit E in Providence, unless otherwise noted. LitArts RI is actively committed to cultivating a community that values and reflects diversity, equity and inclusivity and to providing programming that is accessible to all attendees. Please let us know about any accommodations we can make to allow you to participate fully in these workshops.
