“It took me half my life to achieve seeing my parents as cartoons,” Jonathan Franzen once said about managing to write with emotional detachment and lucidity about his family.

We can be faced with myriads of emotions when working on an essay, memoir, or family history making it challenging to see parents or siblings as complex human beings with unique and valuable perspectives. In this class, we’ll approach family-related projects from a place of deep curiosity and explore writing about those we know as if they were intriguing strangers. We’ll discuss interviewing methods to initiate deep and meaningful conversations, and self-care tips.

In this four-week course, we’ll explore research as a generative, creative tool—one that deepens your writing and expands what’s possible on the page. Whether you’re working on memoir, essays, fiction, or hybrid forms, this class will help you gather and wield research with both precision and purpose. You’ll learn how to create a personalized research roadmap, conduct effective interviews, and blend fact with feeling in ways that serve your story. We’ll also tackle common hurdles like getting buried in material, second-guessing your direction, or collecting more than you know what to do with, and how to move past them without losing momentum or voice. 

Perfect for writers with a project in mind or those craving clarity on how to begin, this class will help you turn curiosity into structure, and inspiration into insight. Leave with a tailored research strategy for your project, new pages of writing, and a deeper understanding of what your work is truly trying to uncover. 

We tend to think that we need a vast playground to be creative, but when the possibilities are numberless it can be daunting. That's why we dread the blank page. Where to start? How to find inspiration?

In this course we’ll read examples of writing born from constraints in length and form (such as haikus, hermit crab essays and tiny memoirs) and how creativity can flourish within set parameters. This will be a highly generative course with plenty of prompts, free-writing, exercises, in-class sharing, and discussions. Participants will also have the opportunity to develop one of the pieces they produce in this eight-week class and have it more formally critiqued by their peers and instructor.

You’ll leave the course with one critiqued story draft, several shorter pieces of writing and inspiration for your future writing. Writers of all levels are welcome and no previous workshop experience is needed.

Great fiction and nonfiction isn’t built on excessive self-contemplation, it has an outward lens, and writers of prose have a lot to learn from journalism. Journalists are trained to be outward looking rather than inward looking. They observe, follow their curiosity, ask questions, and search for answers and hidden truths. Experienced journalists know a good story when they see one and show tenacity and endurance when chasing it. This class will discuss journalistic instincts and some of the hard-won skills and proven techniques from the field, including tips for gathering information through research or interviews, and writing with more clarity and impact.

Writing about parents and other close family members can be one of the most emotionally, ethically and technically complex endeavors for any writer. How do we write about people who left an imprint on us? Can we be fair and remain compassionate while also relaying their shortcomings and showing them as the flawed humans we all are? How do we do this while avoiding clichés, blame or bitterness? This intensive two-hour seminar is for writers working on memoirs and personal essays about their families, who want to dive into all the complexities of how to explore personal histories and make sense of our most formative relationships.

In this session, Ladane will help writers explore how to approach their projects with an open heart and from a place of deep curiosity, while treating relatives and family members as complex characters worthy of discovery. Together, we’ll look at interviewing methods and techniques for sparking rich, revealing conversations. We’ll also talk about how to take care of ourselves and our interlocutors while engaging with emotionally charged material.

Research is a fundamental part of long-form writing projects. Knowing where to find the info and how to access it (whether through research or interviews) is a key skill for writers across genres. Background information, facts, anecdotes, and different perspectives all make a story richer and more authoritative.

Drawing from journalism and the oral history tradition, this class provides tools for writers working on essays, profiles, memoirs, or novels. We'll create a road map for our research and discuss how to prepare and conduct interviews with relatives or strangers to collect information professionally, responsibly, and ethically.

“Write what you know” is common advice, and writers produce some of their best work by drawing on their personal experiences. But “write and find out” is an equally apt piece of advice because sometimes it’s in the very act of writing that we understand ourselves and our motivations, that we uncover what it is we are attempting to make sense of. Research is also a powerful tool to help us make previously unseen connections and get to the actual story.

In this class, we will explore various nonfiction narrative forms by reading a selection of personal essays, memoirs, idea pieces and reported articles. We’ll do close readings of texts, examining voice, pacing, and overall story arc. We’ll discuss the authors’ craft choices, how they introduce settings, create the narrator’s persona, and develop characters, and find inspiration for our own writing.

The class will consist of some in-class prompts, writing exercises, and discussions. Each student will have the opportunity to be workshopped once. You’ll leave the course with several short pieces of writing and a longer one that’s been critiqued by your peers and instructor.

Where do we get story ideas from and how do we get started? How do we turn our life experiences, the mundane and the unexpected, into engaging prose? Can we take advantage of our day jobs, personal interests, or quirky obsessions to write intriguing stories? And how do we organize our ideas and craft the material at our disposal into compelling and convincing nonfiction pieces?

In this class, we’ll read each week a selection of personal essays, flash memoirs, idea pieces and reported articles, and explore the various nonfiction narrative forms. Our discussions will take place with an eye for the narrator’s presence, their voice, the story’s narrative arc, and the significant details. We’ll also examine the value research and reporting bring overall to a piece. The class will consist of in-class prompts, writing exercises, and the chance to work on a longer piece that will be critiqued by your peers and instructor. You’ll leave the course with a better understanding of nonfiction storytelling and more confidence to follow your curiosity and capture your ideas on the page.

Join us for an evening of creativity and connection: a chance to pause, reflect, and enter the new year with intention. Through a mix of writing prompts, playful craft, and guided meditation, you’ll explore what you want to carry forward into 2025 and what you’re ready to release. The session blends writing, drawing, and brainstorming in a relaxed, communal setting, encouraging lighthearted exchanges and meaningful connection with yourself and others. You’ll leave with a clearer vision for the year ahead, a renewed sense of inspiration, and the warmth of new community ties.

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