CLASSES & WORKSHOPS

(See previous Classes & Workshops here. I offer many of these workshops to private groups and at educational institutions, so please look through and see what interests you.)

Advanced Creative Nonfiction Workshop
eight-week, all online, asynchronous workshop
digital platform: Wet Ink
for those who have worked with Wendy previously
next session begins Monday, January 13, 2025

In this workshop, we will write and we will offer one another feedback. It’s that simple. This course does not include assigned lessons, readings or exercises. It’s all about the writing. The first week, each participant will explain what they hope to accomplish during the eight-week session and describe their writing project. By Wednesday night each week, you will post work-in-progress, along with specific questions you would like your peers (and Wendy) to address—you set the terms for the feedback. The amount of writing that you post is chosen by you—the cost of the course is based on how much writing you plan to post and receive feedback on. 

You will receive constructive, supportive feedback on your work that encourages you to move forward and challenges you to improve your craft. Each week, you will offer feedback to two of your peers by Sunday night (four nights after the writing is posted), responding to the questions they have posed about their work. The amount of your peers’ writing you are expected to offer feedback on is linked to the amount of writing that you have signed up to post weekly. Wendy offers detailed feedback to everyone by Monday night (five nights after the weekly posting deadline). 

Wendy offers individualized suggestions for readings and specific exercises to advance your particular project. While there are no set lessons or prompts, the course website includes resources on topics like “How to Interview,” “How to Revise,” “How to Submit to Literary Journals,” and “How to Make An Annual Writing Plan.” Wendy posts new “How To’s” to the site based on your requests. All requests related to writing CNF are most welcome! 

The workshop is intended for writers who have an ongoing work-in-progress, whether that’s a single essay or a book-length work. All subgenres of creative nonfiction are most welcome: lyric and personal essay, memoir/wemoir, literary journalism, auto/biography, and everything else under the big tent of “creative nonfiction.”

Email Wendy if you are interested in the Advanced Creative Nonfiction Workshop. The fee for the eight-week workshop ranges from $320 to $685, based on the number of words you plan to post for feedback each week.

The Faraway Nearby
A writing and yoga retreat, co-facilitated with Yael Flusberg
Hotel Azucenas
Centro Histórico
Oaxaca City, Oaxaca, Mexico
September 19 to 28, 2025

I am delighted to be collbporating with poet-yoga therapist-healer Yael Flusberg for the third year to co-lead our “Faraway Nearby” Retreat. This time we will be writing in Oaxaca City, in southern Mexico, where I have spent one or month months nearly every year since 1998. Our nine-day, nine-night retreat will be at Hotel Azucenas, located two blocks up the hill from the spiritual heart of Oaxaca’s Centro Histórico, the Basilica de la Soledad.

Registration will be by application and the process opens Wednesday, January 15, 2025. The fee for the retreat is a sliding scale, US$1,250 to $1,600. There are three partial scholarships available for BIPOC writers, making the fee US$630. Please read more about the retreat here.

Next-Level Creative Nonfiction
Offered online at Writers.com
ten-week all online, asynchronous class
digital platform: Wet Ink
next session is planned for Fall 2025

Each week, we’ll explore one essential element of creative nonfiction:

• crafting good questions,

• research strategies,

• the narrative arc,

• the first-person narrator,

• strong character development,

• true-to-life scenes,

• self-editing techniques, and

• that elusive thing called “style.”

Eight weeks begin with a new "key" to nonfiction prose; two weeks are devoted to developing a first draft of your work on nonfiction and then revising it.

We’ll dissect great examples from masters of the genre – including James Baldwin, Jo Ann Beard, Annie Dillard, Joan Didion, Zora Neale Hurston, George Orwell, Luis Alberto Urrea, Alice Walker, and David Foster Wallace, looking at the gorgeous rooms they unlock with these eight keys to fabulous nonfiction. Then you will roll up your sleeves and get to writing, putting new skills to work in your nonfiction prose. All literary nonfiction genres, from memoir to literary journalism to lyric essay, are welcome. This online course includes short weekly assignments, with feedback from your peers and from the instructor, and culminates with each writer drafting and revising a 3,000-word nonfiction work. Register at the writers.com website.