Our Writing Groups
Select a class below to find out more and enroll.
Stop Making Sense Part 3: Writing the Meaningless, Whimsical, Bizarre and Absurd
December 8-10, 2023
What happens when you make a huge mistake? Stand on your head atop a rock in the Colorado River? Marry a flotsam? When your best friend Katrina only tells you lies? Did I see you make out with a rubber tree? Is it raining men? Halleluia! In this rollicking weekend workshop we will look at nutty, fruity examples of writers, past and present, taking on unique prose, hallucinatory poems, fleet of feet phrases, musical outlanders, and whatnot. A space for freedom of play, whimsy, irrational, beatific, ridiculous innovations! Come ye, outsiders and reformers alike! Let the gibberish begin.
*Robert taught two similar but different courses: Part 1, in June, 2020, and Part 2 in November, 2022. You do NOT have to have taken the original courses to enroll in this Part 3.
About the Instructor
Robert Vaughan has authored six published collections, and in each he blends genre, plays with form, collaborates, and modifies voices so that they carry beyond the page. His newest is Askew (Cowboy Jamboree, 2022). His work is risk-taking, nature inspired, and infused with the surroundings of environmental writing. His work has been compared to William Burroughs, and David Lynch. Vaughan will encourage you to try new hybrid forms, and look at your writing in alternative ways.
Online Roundtable
This four month program brings the experience of our instructors (like our very own editor-in-chief and award-winning writer Robert Vaughan and our fiction editor Meg Tuite) in an informal online setting. Participants receive a monthly “lesson” and writing prompts, mid-month meetings with your cohort in an optional full group Zoom Meeting, and monthly one-on-one sessions with the instructor via Zoom.
Writing Retreats
Each year we offer a couple week-long, in person writing retreats. You will have the opportunity and inspiration to explore the unique challenges that writers face in writing a new piece each day. The workshop is ideal for writers of all levels of experience, from previously published writers to novice writers who are ready to launch into new terrain.