In this workshop with best-selling author and life coach Hope Edelman, and writer and narrative therapy practitioner Andrea Wilson, we’ll explore new methods for crafting rich life stories. Using exercises Hope and Andrea have designed just for this weekend, we’ll deconstruct and excavate the main themes of our stories. We will also learn how to re-author with a deeper, more multi-dimensional understanding of our human experiences.

To develop a work, sometimes you need to write to discover the world around the story, the history of characters, the provenance of an object, in other words, sometimes you have to write a lot that won’t go directly on the page but will flavor everything that does. In this workshop, writers will dig deep into their work to discover and strengthen structure, explore the complexities and contradictions of their characters, and heighten imagery that can tie the whole piece together. We will look at what has spilled out on the page in the excitement of the first draft and begin the work of refining, deepening and mining the story within.  This workshop is open to anyone writing a story, no matter what the form. Participants who come with in progress work (some pages of flushed out ideas) will gain the most benefit from the workshop. Beginning writers should feel comfortable bringing their work--we all start somewhere. 

This workshop is sure to be an experience that develops you as a writer and helps you dive deep into the possibilities of your stories!

In this workshop, young writers will explore an unsolved Iowa mystery and use the facts of the case to inspire their own fictional tales. Author and teacher Staci Mercado takes students through the process that created Seeking Signs, the 2013 Midwest Book Award winner and a story of historical fiction based on the death of Minnie Seamer in Clinton County. 

Announcing our first Writers' House weekend workshop in Des Moines! 

This weekend workshop will examine six essential foundational elements of storytelling in relation to both fiction and nonfiction: characterization, point of view, dialogue, setting, scene, and plot.

Participants will discuss several short essays and successful story examples related to each craft element, and we will use corresponding writing exercises to help develop the practice of each element. Writing exercises will generate new work or can be applied to a work-in-progress, and participants will have multiple opportunities to share what they have written during class time.

This workshop will examine the ways we write about love in fiction: romantic love, familial love, unconventional love, etc.  Our basis will be the notion that love is ultimately self-knowledge, which lies at the core of all great fiction, and like self-knowledge it involves an endless and inexhaustible act of seeking. 

This weekend workshop will examine six essential foundational elements of storytelling in relation to both fiction and nonfiction: characterization, point of view, dialogue, setting, scene, and plot.

Participants will discuss several short essays and successful story examples related to each craft element, and we will use corresponding writing exercises to help develop the practice of each element. Writing exercises will generate new work or can be applied to a work-in-progress, and participants will have multiple opportunities to share what they have written during class time.

 A recipe is a slice of history—an archival document that offers information about a recipe writer’s family structure, ethnicity, economic status, diet, and geography. In this workshop, participants will consider the recipe as a form of familial storytelling and meaning-making all its own and provide participants with the opportunity to excavate their own recipes for family stories and write an extended memoir essay, or “Edible Essay.”

Finding Your Voice is a two-day workshop for young girls aged 8-14. Our teachers will not only introduce the girls to the many forms of fiction and nonfiction writing but will also help them find their own narrative voice. Through creative exploration in an environment of safe learning and expression, our girls will learn about themselves and about the voice they have inside that is waiting to come out.

Chicago-based author Rebecca Makkai has tips for beginners and professionals when it comes to the basics of fiction writing. In this weekend workshop, participants will explore the building blocks of a great story and learn what solid narrative architecture looks like. The class will examine successful examples of narrative fiction as models, and also look at some of the wildest formal innovation being done today.

Writing great characters is at the core of every great writer’s skill set. A well-drawn character is someone who seems ready to walk off the page and begin talking with your readers. In this workshop we’ll focus on how to fine-tune your characterization skills. We'll take a two-pronged approach and focus on both the interior life of a character and the visible, physical details.

This workshop on memoir writing is designed to help you craft a distinct narrative voice that both is and isn't you and will carry across your work. Led by travel memoirist Michele Morano, this two-day workshop is designed for both beginning and seasoned writers.

Learn the ins and outs of the writer's arc with Dan Boscaljon. In this workshop, participants will edit and refine a small draft of writing from multiple angles, and will leave having gained dynamic set of options for approaching the creative writing process as a cumulative, upward spiral built on original moments of self-understanding. 

Every writer knows, there is writing and then there is revising. The editing and revision phase requires putting on a separate hat than the one you wore for the first draft. Often the difference between a good piece and a great piece lies in the writer's ability to both to ruthlessly reduce and delicately refine their work. This workshop is designed to help writers develop and hone their editor's eye through review of their own work and participating in peer critique through the traditional 'workshop' method. 

This workshop for fiction and nonfiction writers focuses on drawing from personal memory and experience to craft new stories. Led by former Iowa International Writing Program fellow Sabata Mokae, this workshop will explore ways and means of retrieving from one’s own archive, from the visuals etched in the mind from way back, in order to create narratives.