2023
Teen Writers Workshop with James Winter
The free, online Teen Writers Workshops with James Winter will meet on Zoom from 7-8:30 the first Thursday from January to April. Register once, attend any number.
Bring your questions about dialog, character development, setting, plot, etc. All experience levels welcome. Teens only, please. Register here.
Meet the teaching artist: James Winter is an Associate Professor of English at Kent State University. His work has won the CRAFT Short Fiction Prize, a Pushcart Special Mention, an Honorable Mention for the J.F. Powers Prize, and was a finalist for the Frank McCourt Memoir Prize. He has been a Tennessee Williams Scholar in Fiction at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and published in One Story, Salamander, PANK Magazine, Midwestern Gothic, and Dappled Things, among others.
Writing Intensives: Writing From Memory
Lit Youngstown is offering a monthly, all day workshop from January to September, on writing true stories. Teens and adults, all experience levels are welcome. The workshops will be led by Lit Youngstown staff. Each participant will end the workshop with a printed book of stories. The cost for the course is $100.
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Schedule
Saturdays, 10am to 4:00pm
January 7, February 4, March 4, April 1, May 6, June 3, July 1, August 5, September 2
FAQ
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Q: Will the workshops be online or in-person?
A: The workshops will be in-person unless the weather is treacherous.
Q: I am unable to attend all of the sessions. Can I still register? Is it ok to only pay for the sessions I will attend?
A: Your registration fee is for the seat. We hope you will attend as many sessions as possible, but we will need your whole registration fee to run the program.
Q: Why so expensive? Most of Lit Youngstown’s programming is free or very affordable.
A: This program will be more expensive to run than a short workshop. We will offer you a payment plan option if that would be helpful. This registration fee is high for Lit Youngstown, but still very low for a typical workshop of this length and quality.
Q: What is the commitment outside the workshop?
A: The commitment is to write one new story per month.
Q: Is this workshop tailored for writers of a certain experience level?
A: No. We are looking for participants of any experience level who will approach this workshop with commitment. We believe we are developing a forum that will allow everyone to receive high quality feedback on their work.
Q: Will you offer this workshop next year?
Each year, we’ll rotate genres and return to creative nonfiction in a few years.
2022 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Love is a Verb: Depicting Romance in Fiction
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What is love? Irrelevant. How do we get our character’s love to seem genuine and avoid feeling forced? This is paramount. This workshop will focus on the way that readers have learned to look for signs of romance, and how to capitalize on romance and audience expectations in fictional settings.
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Saturdays, January 7th, 14th, 21st, 28th, and February 4th, 10:00am to noon on Zoom. Course fee $25 (hardship sponsorships are available).
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Meet the teaching artist: N.P. Stokes holds a B.A. in English from YSU and he is founding editor of Volney Road Review. His works of realism focus on issues faced by the working poor living in America’s Rust Belt, while his works of fiction and poetry center around philosophical ideas and perceptions of reality. His works have been published in The Penguin Review, and he received YSU’s Robert R. Hare awards for academic and creative writing.
LGBTQ+ Writers Workshop
This workshop is designed for LGBTQ+ writers of all levels. The goal of this workshop is to explore common themes that help us develop our community by using free writing or stream of consciousness writing as it is sometimes called, based on guided prompts. This will be a safe and affirming space and will be a no critique/no criticism workshop. However, there will be opportunities for participants to share their work with the group. The purpose of the workshop is to give participants additional tools to stash in their toolbox and to encourage and support participants no matter where they are on their writing journey. It is the goal of the workshop to help LGBTQ+ individuals to develop their writing skills and encourage them to pick up their pens to write about their unique experiences.
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Tuesdays, January 10th, 17th, 24th, 31st, and February 7th and 14th, 7:00-8:00pm. Course fee $25 (hardship sponsorships are available).
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Meet the teaching artist: Barbara Marie Minney, a native of West Virginia, is a transgender woman, award-winning poet, writer, and quiet activist. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies and publications, including Politico and The Buckeye Flame. Barbara also wrote the introduction to the 2021 Akron Pride Festival Guide. Barbara’s first collection of poetry, If There’s No Heaven, was the winner of the 2020 Poetry Is Life Book Award and was selected by the Akron Beacon Journal as a Best Northeast Ohio Book in 2020. Barbara is a retired attorney and lives in Tallmadge, Ohio, with her wife of over 40 years.
NaNoWriMo Workshop Series
October-November​
Join us for our NaNoWriMo workshop series facilitated by R.W. Franklin and Cassandra Lawton. ​
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In this free workshop event, we will discuss tips for success for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). Facilitators R.W. Franklin and Cassandra Lawton will guide the conversation and all participants will walk away with a plan for tacking NaNoWriMo in November.
A huge thanks to Davis Family YMCA Writing Club and the Public Library for helping make this event possible.
Caretaking: A Generative Graphic Memoir Workshop
Tuesday, December 6
Caretaking affects all aspects of our lives and can often change how we see ourselves and the world around us. During this workshop, we will reflect upon caretaking through writing and art. Participants will come away with a draft and exercises they can use to develop a graphic memoir.
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Meet the teaching artist: McKayla Anne Rockwell, from Youngstown, holds an M.A. in English from YSU. She has published in several literary journals, including Petrichor Journal and Angles. She has also worked as an editor for magazines such as Volney Road Review and Jenny Magazine.
Finding the Poem in Family Stories
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WED, JUNE 1 AT 5 PM
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Finding the Poem in Family Stories
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“Everyone loves a story,” wrote the poet Philip Levine. And surely we all have them—how Aunt Ruby lost her only diamond. How you lost your virginity! “You think you have a right/to know everything?” Levine goes on to ask in his poem, A Story, that is not, in fact, a narrative—no plot, no chronological beginning, middle, end--but a poem with story lurking at its edges. In this generative workshop, poet Pauletta Hansel will provide several examples of poems that use story to do their lyrical work, and provide some prompts to get us writing.
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​Meet the teaching artist: Pauletta Hansel’s books include Heartbreak Tree, Friend, Coal Town Photograph and Palindrome, winner of the 2017 Weatherford Award for Appalachian poetry; her writing was featured in Oxford American, Verse Daily and Poetry Daily. Pauletta was Cincinnati’s first Poet Laureate and past managing editor of Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel. https://paulettahansel.wordpress.com/
Excavating a Character's Inner Wounds with Meredith Doench (Zoom)
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SUN, MAY 15 AT 2 PM
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This workshop will examine the various types of inner wounds that may be festering in main characters. Emotional wounds have the power to influence a protagonist's thoughts and behavior long after the event or trauma occurred. Understanding how these manifest in a character's life can be a strong tool of the writer's toolbox. Come to the workshop with a character in mind, and we will work to develop them into three dimensional characters with an interesting past. For this workshop, some experience is helpful.
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Meet the teaching artist: Meredith Doench is the author of the Luce Hansen thriller series and Whereabouts Unknown (March 2022). Her writing has also appeared in many literary journals. She is a board member of Mystery Writers of America, Midwest Chapter, and is a senior lecturer of creative writing, literature, and composition at the University of Dayton in Ohio. For more information about this author, please visit www.meredithdoench.com
Youngstown Black History Tour
SAT, MAY 7 AT 11 AM
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Lit Youngstown presents a Black History Tour, curated by historian Vince Shivers and featuring poet-in-residence Quartez Harris.
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​The tour will include the Youngstown Historical Center of Industry & Labor, Oakhill Cemetery, the lower North Side, YSU, and the Belmont/422 corridor.
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We are so grateful to Vince Shivers, the Greater Warren-Youngstown Urban League, Sokolov Honors College, Ohio Arts Council, Rob Briggs, Alyssa Lenhoff-Briggs and our many community partners.
Beginner Poetry Workshop
FRI, MAY 6 AT 6 PM
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We’ll respond to a generative poetry exercise where we’ll discuss craft, play with language and line breaks, and experience the possibilities for our own writing. This free workshop is ideal for those who are trying their hand at writing or teaching poetry. We invite you to stay for a reading after the workshop, featuring Quartez Harris and Sony Ton-Aime.
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Meet the Teaching Artist: Quartez Harris is a poet from Springfield, Ohio and the Ohio Poetry Association's 2021 Poet of the Year. Harris is the author of We Made It To School Alive, a full-length collection of poems published by Twelve Arts Press, and Nothing, But Skin, a poetry collection published in 2014 by Writing Knights Press. We Made It to School Alive was inspired by his work as a teacher and gives voice to the experiences of the children he works with every day who deal with structural barriers, intergenerational poverty, educational negligence and more. He is the first recipient of the Barbara Smith Writer-In-Resident at Twelve Literary Arts and a 2020 Baldwin House Fellow and his poetry and ideas have been featured in The Plain Dealer, Ideastream, and City Club of Cleveland. Harris' works in progress are two picture books and a young-adult novel in verse.
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Playwriting with Mike Geither
SUN, MAY 1 AT 3 PM
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Playwright Mike Geither leads participants in a generative playwriting workshop. All ages and experience levels are welcome. Free with registration
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This workshop is part of an Artists Resiliency Initiative funded by the Ohio Arts Council, Rob Briggs & Alyssa Lenhoff Briggs. Many thanks to the Hopewell Theatre.
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Mike Geither’s plays and solo performances have been staged in San Francisco, Chicago, Toronto, New York and London. He is a four-time Ohio Arts Council fellow and has served as a resident artist at Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito and as Playwright-in-Residence at Cleveland Public Theatre. Recent works include The Body is the Best (Zuppa Theatre, Halifax, 2022), Heirloom (convergence-continuum, 2019), and The Events of the Warren County Fair as Observed by a Young Astronaut (2016-19). He currently teaches in the NEOMFA at Cleveland State University.
Writing and Performing Solo Works with Mike Geither
SUN, MAY 1 AT 11 AM
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Playwright and solo performer Mike Geither leads participants on a hands-on workshop in developing and performing solo works. All ages and experience levels are welcome. Free with registration
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This workshop is part of an Artists Resiliency Initiative funded by the Ohio Arts Council, Rob Briggs & Alyssa Lenhoff Briggs. Many thanks to the Hopewell Theatre.
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Mike Geither’s plays and solo performances have been staged in San Francisco, Chicago, Toronto, New York and London. He is a four-time Ohio Arts Council fellow and has served as a resident artist at Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito and as Playwright-in-Residence at Cleveland Public Theatre. Recent works include The Body is the Best (Zuppa Theatre, Halifax, 2022), Heirloom (convergence-continuum, 2019), and The Events of the Warren County Fair as Observed by a Young Astronaut (2016-19). He currently teaches in the NEOMFA at Cleveland State University.
Writing in Translation Workshop with Manuel Iris
SAT, APR 2 AT 2 PM
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Poet-in-Residence Manuel Iris offers a translation writing workshop hosted by The Community Literacy Workforce and Cultural Center. No experience necessary. All welcome. Free with registration: https://libraryvisit.libnet.info/event/6228503
This workshop is part of an Arts Resiliency Initiative funded by the Ohio Arts Council, and Rob Briggs and Alyssa Lenhoff-Briggs.
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Manuel Iris is recent Poet Laureate of the City of Cincinnati. He is the author of five books of poetry in Spanish and the bilingual book The Parting Present. He holds a BA in Latin American Literature from the Autonomous University of the Yucatan (Mexico), an MA in Spanish from New Mexico State University, and a PhD in Romance Languages from the University of Cincinnati.
Giving Voice: Mahoning Valley Hispanic Culture
SAT, APR 2 AT 12 PM
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Join us for a bilingual afternoon of award-winning poetry, storytelling, cuisine from local restaurants & music by the Labra Brothers
Saturday, April 2, noon to 2:00 The Community Literacy Workforce & Cultural Center
436 Struthers Coitsville Rd., 44436
*Free and open to the public with registration*
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Manuel Iris is recent Poet Laureate of the City of Cincinnati. He is the author of five books of poetry in Spanish and the bilingual book The Parting Present. He holds a BA in Latin American Literature from the Autonomous University of the Yucatan (Mexico), an MA in Spanish from New Mexico State University, and a PhD in Romance Languages from the University of Cincinnati.
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Poetry Writing Workshop for Teens with Manuel Iris
SAT, APR 2 AT 11 AM
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Poet-in-Residence Manuel Iris offers a poetry writing workshop for teens at The Community Literacy Workforce and Cultural Center. No experience necessary.
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This workshop is part of an Arts Resiliency Initiative funded by the Ohio Arts Council, and Rob Briggs and Alyssa Lenhoff-Briggs.
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Manuel Iris is recent Poet Laureate of the City of Cincinnati. He is the author of five books of poetry in Spanish and the bilingual book The Parting Present. He holds a BA in Latin American Literature from the Autonomous University of the Yucatan (Mexico), an MA in Spanish from New Mexico State University, and a PhD in Romance Languages from the University of Cincinnati.
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Poetry Intensives
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Lit Youngstown is offering a monthly, in-depth poetry writing workshop from January to September, 2022. Each participant will set their own goals for writing, publishing and participating in other opportunities in the literary community. Workshop leaders will offer a variety of topics and influences.
​Schedule
January 15
Morning topic: contemporary poetry books
Guest Workshop Leader Robert Miltner & Molly Fuller, on the sounds of music in poetry
Robert Miltner, Emeritus Professor of creative writing and literature at Kent State University Stark, writes prose poetry, short fiction, creative nonfiction, and intersectional hyrid forms. His books of poetry include Orpheus & Echo (in Triptych) (Etruscan Press), Eurydice Rising (Red Berry Editions), Imperative (All Nations Press) & Hotel Utopia (New Rivers Press).
Molly Fuller, PhD candidate at Kent State, is the author of Girls Forged by Lightning (All Nations Press)
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February 10
Morning topic: craft books on poetry writing
Guest Workshop Leader Mary Biddinger, on inviting strangeness into your poems
Mary Biddinger is Professor of English at the University of Akron, where she is on the faculty of the NEOMFA creative writing program and is poetry editor for the University of Akron Press. She is the author of eight books of poetry, including Department of Elegy and Partial Genius: Prose Poems (Black Lawrence Press).
March 12
Morning topic: journals, submissions
Guest Workshop Leader Steve Reese, on abstract vs. concrete in poetic language
Retired professor of English from Youngstown State, Steve Reese has published three poetry collections including American Dervish (Salmon), and Excentrica: Notes on the Text (BlazeVOX) and two volumes of translation, Synergos (Etruscan; poems of Roberto Manzano) and Womanlands (Verbum, Spain; poems of Diana María Ivizate González).
April 9
Morning topic: chapbooks
Guest Workshop Leader Marion Boyer, on revision
Marion Boyer, Professor Emeritus of Kalamazoo Community College, is the author of four poetry collections including The Sea Was Never Far (Main Street Rag) and The Clock of the Long Now (Mayapple Press)
May 14
Morning topic: full-length books
Guest Workshop Leader Barbara Sabol, on beginnings and endings
Barbara Sabol is the author of Imagine a Town (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions) and Solitary Spin (Main Street Rag)
June 11
Morning topic: residencies, contests, retreats, conferences
Guest Workshop Leader Allison Pitinii Davis, on linebreaks
Allison Pitinii Davis has a PhD in poetics from the University of Tennessee and is the author of Line Study of a Motel Clerk
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August 13
Morning topic: performance reading
Guest Workshop Leader Susan Grimm, on how the poem happens: thinking about the parts and the whole
Susan Grimm is the author of Lake Erie Blue (BkMk Press) and editor of Ordering the Storm: How to Put Together a Book of Poems (Cleveland State University Poetry Center).
November 12
Morning topic: creating a workshop group
Guest Workshop Leader Diane Kendig, on time
Diane Kendig has taught in academic, community and prison settings. Her poetry collections include Woman with a Fan: On Maria Blanchard (Shanti Arts) and Prison Terms (Main Street Rag).
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December 3
Morning topic: trade journals
Guest Workshop Leader Philip Terman, on Writing the Longer Poem
Philip Terman’s books include This Crazy Devotion (Broadstone, 2020) and Tango Beneath a Narrow Ceiling: the Selected Poems of Riad Saleh Hussein
(Bitter Oleander, 2021), which he co-translated with the Syrian writer, Saleh Razzouk and Our Portion: New and Selected Poems (Autumn House, 2015). Retired from Clarion University where he taught creative writing and
literature, he directs the Bridge Literary Arts Center in Franklin, PA.
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FAQ
Q: I am unable to attend all of the sessions. Can I still register? Is it ok to only pay for the sessions I will attend?
A: Your registration fee is for the seat. We hope you will attend as many sessions as possible, but we will need your whole registration fee to run the program.
Q: Why so expensive? Most of Lit Youngstown’s programming is free or very affordable.
A: The community survey indicated that many local and regional writers would like programming that offers depth, continuity and access to experienced writers. This program will be more expensive to run. We will offer you a payment plan option if that would be helpful. This registration fee is high for Lit Youngstown, but still very low for a typical workshop of this length and quality.
Q: What is the commitment outside the workshop?
A: The commitment is to write one new poem per month. There will be optional opportunities for additional reading and research, depending on your time and interest.
Q: Is this only for experienced poets?
A: No. We are looking for participants of any experience level who will approach this workshop with commitment. We believe we are developing a forum that will allow everyone to receive high quality feedback on their work.
Q: Will you offer this next year?
If this workshop model is successful, we’ll rotate genres and return to poetry in a few years.
2021-----------------------------------
Workshop Using Recipes for Revising Your Half-Baked Poems
We’ve all got poems stashed away that just don’t seem fully realized. This workshop will provide at least a dozen different “recipes” for reworking, reimagining, revamping those poems. Let’s experiment together with these recipes and see what we can cook up and share with one another in a relaxed and supportive way.
Meet the teaching artist: Marion Starling Boyer is the author of four poetry collections, her most recent The Sea Was Never Far (Main Street Rag). A professor emeritus, Boyer has led workshops for Lit Cleveland, Lit Youngstown, Kalamazoo Poetry Fest, and Wisconsin’s Washington Island Literary Conference. She lives in Twinsburg, Ohio.
Haiku Workshop
In this seven-week workshop, participants will learn more about reading and writing haiku in many forms.
Meet the teaching artist: Joshua Gage is an ornery curmudgeon from Cleveland, Ohio. His newest chapbook, Origami Lilies, is available on Poet's Haven Press. He is a graduate of the Low Residency Creative Writing MFA at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University. He has a penchant for Pendleton shirts, Ethiopian coffee, and any poem intoxicating enough to yank the breath out of his lungs.
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Is Your Poem Telling the Truth?
This workshop will examine all aspects of when and whether a poem is “telling the truth.” What is “truth” in a poem? Is it sticking to the story of what happened? An emotional truth? A spiritual truth? All of the above? None of the above? How do we know when our poems are telling the truth?
Meet the teaching artist: Erica Bodwell is a poet and attorney from Concord, New Hampshire. Her manuscript, Crown of Wild, won the Two Sylvias Press 2018 Wilder Prize. Her chapbook, Up Liberty Street, was released 2017 by Finishing Line Press. Her poems have appeared in VerseDaily, Beloit Poetry Review, North American Review, PANK and other journals.
Start Publishing Your Short Works.
This workshop was for previously unpublished teen and adult writers and artists interested in publishing their short poetry, prose, photographs, paintings, comics, and other creative pieces.
Meet the Teaching Artist: McKayla Anne Rockwell is a Youngstown-born writer currently attending and teaching at YSU. She has several short publications and ample experience working with Youngstown-based literary journals, including Volney Road Review and Jenny Magazine.
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A Great Villain Kills It
This workshop is focused on addressing villainy: crafting believable villains, looking at how they direct the story, and using 3-dimential baddies vs evil for evil’s sake. The goal will be for writers to craft or improve on a villain in a piece of fiction they are working on.
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Meet the teaching artist: N.P. Stokes holds a Bachelor’s in English from Youngstown State University. He is writer of realism, creative fiction, and poetry, as well as literary criticism. His works have been published in The Penguin Review, and he works as the prose editor for Volney Road Review.
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Speculative Summer Workshop
Bring your space invaders, ghost ships, and hidden treasures to this relaxed and supportive virtual monthly workshop for writers of fantasy, sci-fi, horror, weird, speculative, or genre-mash ups. Workshop hours will include excerpt readings, feedback, and discussions of participant submissions. Long fiction and short stories welcome. Participants are asked to limit total submission length to fifteen pages (approximately 5 pages per workshop).
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Meet the Teaching Artist: An admirer of strange wonders, sleights of hand, and carousels, E. F. Schraeder writes poetry and fiction that is often inspired by not quite real worlds. Schraeder’s work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Pulp Modern, Mystery Weekly Magazine, and other journals and anthologies.
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Believe it or Not? Writing Surreal, Weird, and Speculative Worlds
If your writing contains out-of-this-world elements or the suspension of disbelief is key to your project, this workshop is designed to help you craft plausible speculative fiction. From space invaders, underworld adventures, to the supernatural, we will examine examples and strategies that make the impossible believable. Bring a concept or project overview to discuss. Fiction. Adults and teens, all experience levels welcome.
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Meet the Teaching Artist: An admirer of strange wonders, sleights of hand, and carousels, E. F. Schraeder writes poetry and fiction that is often inspired by not quite real worlds. Schraeder’s work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Pulp Modern, Mystery Weekly Magazine, and other journals and anthologies.
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Writing About Identity and the Fractured Self
In this workshop we will read and write pieces dealing with identity and how we understand our sense of self via an array of topics related to the fractured identity including heritage, sense of place etc. Examined works include those of Scott Russell Sanders, Mary Karr and Mark Doty.
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Meet the Teaching Artist: Anastasios Mihalopoulos holds a bachelor’s degree in Chemistry and English from Allegheny College. His thesis in creative nonfiction was titled, Distillations: Essays on Science and Singularity in the Self. He attended the Writing Workshops in Greece (WWIG) and is currently pursuing an M.F.A. in creative writing through the Northeast Ohio MFA program.
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Writing for Happiness
Many folks write anticipating joy, but instead encounter doubt, fear, or defeat. 2020 was an especially difficult year to cultivate space for creating what we love. With a new year comes new possibility. In this session, we will invigorate writing habits, pursue happiness, and open our eyes to the ways writing can change us… and the world.
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Meet the Teaching Artist: Annmarie Kelly-Harbaugh is the author of Here Be Dragons: A Parent’s Guide to Rediscovering Purpose, Adventure, and the Unfathomable Joy of the Journey, a memoir about the sweet and wonderful misery of raising children with someone you love. She lives in Shaker Heights with her husband, their three kids, and an assortment of dying houseplants.
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Elements of Scene
Scenes are dramatized moments that engage characters or speakers in action and dialogue. It is one of the essential building blocks of prose writing and can be vital to plot development. Used by both fiction and creative nonfiction writers, scenes pull readers into the work and help them to “see” the characters and the world the writer has developed. This workshop will focus on the important elements needed to write a strong scene and will provide some tips on how to make scenes in your own writing stand out. Come ready to write a scene or two!
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Meet the Teaching Artist: Meredith Doench is the author of the Luce Hansen thriller series from Bold Strokes Books. Her fiction and nonfiction has appeared in literary journals such as Hayden’s Ferry Review, Women’s Studies Quarterly, and Gertrude. Her nonfiction essay “South Carolina, 2012” was nominated for a 2019 Pushcart Prize by The Tahoma Literary Review. She served as a fiction editor at Camera Obscura: Journal of Literature and Photography and is a senior lecturer of writing at the University of Dayton in Ohio.
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Building Upon Your Natural Writing Style
Whether you write prose or poetry, you have your own natural skill set – it may be for storytelling, or for writing a lyrical line, or perhaps you have a gift for generating strong images. This workshop is designed to explore and develop ways to stretch and build upon what comes naturally to you and to find new ways to complement your own writing style. Generative prompts and exercises will encourage you to experiment and share your writing in a relaxed and supportive way.
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Meet the Teaching Artist: Marion Boyer is a poet and essayist with four published poetry collections; her most recent book is The Sea Was Never Far. Boyer is an emeritus professor and has conducted poetry workshops for Lit Youngstown’s Winter Writing Camp, Wisconsin’s Washington Island Writers Festival, Lit Cleveland, and the Kalamazoo Poetry Festival.
2020 -----------------------------------
Play to Your Long Suit — Discover Your Writing Temperament
Story, Structure, Music, and Imagination are what Gregory Orr calls the natural temperaments of writers. Together we will discover which of the four temperaments is your particular strength and how to deepen and broaden that talent. Further, each temperament has its complement, so we will discuss ways to develop your complementary temperament. For prose and poetry writers.
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Meet the Teaching Artist: Marion Boyer is a poet and essayist with four published poetry collections; her most recent book is The Sea Was Never Far. Boyer is an emeritus professor and has conducted poetry workshops for Lit Youngstown’s Winter Writing Camp, Wisconsin’s Washington Island Writers Festival, Lit Cleveland, and the Kalamazoo Poetry Festival.
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Playwriting 102
Students who enjoyed the “The Power of Ten”playwriting class will enjoy this workshop where we write and share scenes, monologues, or completed short plays over the course of 4 weeks. Didn’t take the first class? No problem. You’ll be able to join right in. Classes will be a combination of the technique practice, discussion and sharing of material.
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Meet the Teaching Artist: Kelly Bancroft’s plays have been produced in Youngstown, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee and Cleveland. She earned an MFA from the NEOMFA program at YSU. She is also a poet and prose writer. A short documentary she co-produced based on one of her plays was a selection of the Cleveland International Film Festival.
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Believe it or Not? Writing surreal, weird, and speculative worlds
If your writing contains out-of-this-world elements or the suspension of disbelief is key to your project, this workshop is designed to help you craft plausible speculative fiction. From space invaders, underworld adventures, to the supernatural, we will examine examples and strategies that make the impossible believable. Bring a concept or project overview to discuss. Fiction.
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Meet the teaching artist: Author of two poetry chapbooks and the fiction collection Ghastly Tales of Gaiety and Greed (Omnium Gatherum, 2020), E.F. Schraeder is an admirer of strange wonders, slights of hand, and carousels who writes poetry and fiction often inspired by not quite real worlds. Schraeder’s work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Pulp Modern, Mystery Weekly Magazine, and other journals and anthologies.
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Building an Author Website
Have you ever searched for the website of an author whose work you love or just discovered? An author website allows you to introduce yourself to readers, so they might purchase-promote your publications or invite you to present. This interactive workshop will help you design a website of your own.
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Meet the Teaching Artist: Ashley Dillon is a digital media artist working primarily in sound and moving image. Her current body of work is centered around the rust belt, its people and its history. Through this she explores identity, origins, history and the collective experience of its inhabitants past and present. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Music Performance from The Dana School of Music (Youngstown State University). She currently lives and works in Youngstown, Ohio.
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Putting the “I’s’ in Activism: Personal Narrative as a Form of Transformative Resistance
Sharing stories is one of the most fundamental means of communication. In 2020, our reliance on connecting through personal narratives is as strong as ever as we continue to use various social media platforms to share our stories with the world. Speaking out about social injustice is proving to be a powerful way to expose oppressive power dynamics and motivate change. Channeling our experiences into compelling narratives that inspire dialogue helps to heighten our awareness of the complex social issues that plague our communities. In this workshop we will focus on crafting strong, personal narratives about injustice as a form of transformative resistance, with the suggestion that sharing these narratives with your community can be a powerful tool in combating social justice issues.
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Meet the teaching artist: Adrianna Lamonge is an educator in Trumbull County and graduate of YSU where she received an M.A. in English. Her nonprofit is Rustbelt Social Justice Education and Activism.
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The Power of Ten
Google the question “What can you do in 10 minutes” and you’ll get suggestions from vacuuming a single room to matching socks to cleaning out a junk drawer. In this class, students will read, discuss and write a ten-minute play. It will take students more than ten minutes to write it (4 weeks to be exact) but the performance of the piece will land right in that ten-minute sweet spot. Students will be invited to read or perform their final works.
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Meet the Teaching Artist: Kelly Bancroft’s plays have been produced in Youngstown, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee and Cleveland. She earned an MFA from the NEOMFA program at YSU. She is also a poet and prose writer. A short documentary she co-produced based on one of her plays was a selection of the Cleveland International Film Festival.
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Writing a Strong Humanities Graduate School Application
Applying to graduate school in the humanities is confusing and, let’s face it, until you actually have to write these documents, most people have never even heard of them. This class will focus on learning to craft effective personal statements (and other documents) for applying to graduate school.
Writing a Strong Humanities Graduate School
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Meet the Teaching Artist: Dr. Laura Beadling earned her Ph.D in American Studies from Purdue University and has taught at YSU in the English Department since 2013, where she is currently an Associate Professor of English and Film Studies. She has served on committees that deal with graduate students in a number of capacities.
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2019 --------------------------------------
“Show, Don’t Tell” but also “Less is More”: Using Scene and Summary in Short Story Writing
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In this workshop, we will examine several short stories to look for successful examples of using both scene and summary. Writers can bring in their own drafts with the goal of revising them, or will be able to generate drafts. Writers in this workshop will find their own happy mediums between “show, don’t tell,” and “less is more.”
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Meet the teaching artist: Specializing in fiction through the NEOMFA program, Bridgid Cassin has worked as writer and editor for Youngstown State University’s New Frontiers research publication while also serving on the staff of the Jenny literary magazine. She has led workshops for Lit Youngstown, Winter Wheat, and the Hoyt Center for the Arts in Newcastle, PA. Bridgid has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and attended the Juniper Summer Writing Institute in 2018. Bridgid previously earned Master’s in English from St. John’s University, and also completed a certificate in Children’s and YA Literature at YSU.
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Using Scene and Summary in Short Story Writing.
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This workshop will focus on submitting poems and short prose (fiction, nonfiction, essay) for literary journals, anthologies and contests. We will discuss how to find print and online publications that might be a good fit, how to write a cover letter, how to track submissions, and how to find and enter contests. Whether you are new to publishing or an old hat looking for a jump-start, join us for this four-week workshop.
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Submitting Poems & Short Prose for Publication.
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Karen Schubert is the author of five poetry chapbooks, most recently Dear Youngstown (NightBallet Press). She has published dozens of poems, fiction, creative nonfiction, essays, reviews and interviews in journals including National Poetry Review, Apple Valley Review, diode poetry journal, Waccamaw and Terrain.org.
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FLASH FICTION WORKSHOP
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The Flash Fiction workshop will focus on experimentation and practice of flash fiction forms as well as the questions—what is flash fiction, how is its power achieved? During this five-week course students will examine and write stories that fall into five flash fiction categories: flash fiction (1000-1500); sudden flash fiction (750 words); microfiction (100 words); the six-word story; and the final class will be on marketing. There will be reading and writing assignments in and outside of class.
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Arya F. Jenkins is a writer/teacher/editor. Her flash fiction has been published in numerous journals and zines such as Anti-Heroin Chic, Black Scat Review, Brilliant Corners, Cider Press Review, The Feminist Wire, Front Porch Review, KYSO Flash, The Matador Review, Metafore Literary Magazine and Mojave Literary Review. Her fiction was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2017 and her fiction and flash fiction garnered three nominations in 2018. She has published two poetry chapbooks and her short story collection Blue Songs in an Open Key was published by Fomite Press November 2018. Blue Songs in an Open Key is available via www.aryafjenkins.com. Arya has taught creative writing at Fairfield University and Mahoning County Career and Technical Center. She has worked as an editor for numerous writers, and as a newspaper, magazine and book editor.
2018 --------------------------------------
LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION, POETRY!
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Meet the Teaching artist: Santer is a Columbus, Ohio, award-winning poet and educator who developed and taught a film studies curriculum to high school students and adults for seventeen years. She has published film reviews and studied film at New York University, The Ohio State University, Antioch University, The University of Montana, and Wesleyan University and currently serves on the advisory board of Film Columbus. She holds a master’s degree in journalism from Kent State University and a master’s of fine arts in creative writing from The Ohio State University. Her poetry has been published widely and Nightballet Press released her fifth poetry collection, Make Me That Happy. (www.rikkisanter.com)
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2017 -------------------------------------
Through Others We Find Our Own: Amplifying Voice in Fiction
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Meet the Teaching Artist: William R. Soldan holds a BA in English Literature from YSU and is a graduate of the NEOMFA program. His writing appears or is forthcoming in publications such as New World Writing, Jellyfish Review, Kentucky Review, Thuglit, The Literary Hatchet, (b)OINK, The Best American Mystery Stories 2017, and many others.
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The Hard Way on Purpose: Writing the Beauty of Unglamorous Places
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Meet the Teaching Artist: David Giffels is the author of The Hard Way on Purpose: Essays and Dispatches From the Rust Belt (Scribner 2014), nominated for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, and the memoir All the Way Home (William Morrow/HarperCollins 2008), winner of the Ohioana Book Award. His writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Atlantic.com, Parade, the Wall Street Journal, Esquire.com, Grantland.com, Redbook, and many other publications. He also was a writer for the MTV series Beavis and Butt-Head. He is an associate professor of English at University of Akron, where he teaches creative nonfiction in the Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts Program.
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Screenwriting: Think the Academy
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Meet the Instructor: Allison Davis is the author of Line Study of a Motel Clerk (Baobab Press, 2017), a full-length collection about small family businesses in northeast Ohio, and Poppy Seeds (Kent State University Press, 2013), winner of the Wick Poetry Chapbook Prize. She holds an MFA from Ohio State University and fellowships from Stanford University’s Wallace Stegner program, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and the Severinghaus Beck Fund for Study at Vilnius Yiddish Institute. Her work has recently appeared in Best American Poetry 2016, The Missouri Review, and Crazyhorse.
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Mothering: The Arc of Your Story
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Meet the Instructor: A self-proclaimed journaling activist, Ginny Taylor is a certified Journal to the Self instructor. Her writing background includes an MFA in creative writing from Ashland University, multiple publications, and teaching in college-level writing programs. Through her business called Women of Wonder, Ginny facilitates workshops where she channels her passion for empowering women through difficult challenges and into lives filled with wonder and joy. Writing, gentle yoga, and creative expression are her muses that almost always show up in her programs. Ginny lives in Warren with her husband and two dogs. She has three grown children and one adorable grand-baby who calls her GiGi.
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Are you an aspiring writer?
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Meet the Instructors: Stacey Schneider is a freelance writer and journal editor, as well as a professor at Northeast Ohio Medical University. She earned her Doctor of Pharmacy degree and practiced as a pharmacist for many years in the community but teaching and writing emerged as her true life calling. Writing began for her as a means to heal her own scars and has since transformed into one of her true passions.
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Poetry Mimetics: Mimicking Other Poems to Deepen Our Own Voices
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Meet the Instructor: Karen Schubert was a 2017 writer-in-residence at the Vermont Studio Center. Her most recent chapbooks are Black Sand Beach (Kattywompus Press) and I Left My Wings on a Chair (Kent State Press), selected by Kathleen Flenniken for a Wick Poetry Center Chapbook Prize. Her poems and interviews appear in Diode, Best American Poetry Blog, Waccamaw, PoetsArtists. She is a graduate of the Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts, creative non-fiction editor for Ragazine and a founding director of Lit Youngstown.
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The Road Less Traveled: The Journey Narrative
Meet the Instructor: Mari Alschuler is a poet and fiction writer who earned an MFA from Columbia University. Her work has been published in literary journals and anthologies for over 35 years. She is on the social work faculty at YSU and is in private practice in Poland as a poetry therapist and psychotherapist.
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Sharing Your Family Story
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Meet the Instructor: Liz Hill coordinated Lit Youngstown’s Phenomenal Women project, which created a book of first-person narratives from 12 Youngstown women. She’s also created and self-published two memoir books for her own family. More at lizhill.net.
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Knowing Is Half the Battle: The Knowledge Matrix as a Writing Tool
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Meet the Instructor: Caitlyn Ryan is a graduate of the NEOMFA program and teaches writing at YSU, but that doesn’t really tell you much about her. She is a lazy poet and a lazier fiction writer who periodically takes up and then abandons hobbies like crocheting, ink-making, and walking across the country. Oregon was cool.
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The “Me” in Memoir
Meet the Instructor: Kelly Bancroft writes personal essays, fiction, poetry and plays. She has taught writing to students of all ages in schools, detention centers and community centers and at YSU. She is a prize-winning graduate of the Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts program. Her prose and poetry have been widely published and two plays have been produced. She is currently working on a collection of essays about an ancestor, as well as a YA novel with friend and writer, Colleen Clayton.
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Persona Poetry: The Power of the “I” Who Is Not You
Meet the Instructor: Karen Kotrba is the author of the poetic sequence She Who Is Like a Mare: Poems of Mary Breckinridge and the Frontier Nursing Service.
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Getting Published: the Where, What, When, How and Why of Submitting Poetry and Short Fiction
Meet the Instructor: Barbara Sabol is a speech therapist, teacher and editor. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, Original Ruse and The Distance between Blues. Her work has most recently appeared in the Tupelo Press Poetry Project, The Louisville Review, The Examined Life, San Pedro River Review, Common Ground Review, Ekphrasis, Pentimento, Chrysanthemum and Modern Haiku, Pudding Magazine, and forthcoming in The Comstock Review and Blue Lyra Review. Her poetry has also appeared in a handful of anthologies. In 2015, Barbara’s poetry was displayed in a collaborative visual art exhibit at the Box Gallery in Akron, and at Heights Arts. Her poetry has also been adapted for song lyrics by folk artist Sam Sapp. Barbara was awarded the Mary Jean Irion Prize in Poetry, sponsored by the Chautauqua Institute. She holds an MFA from Spalding University. Barbara reviews poetry books for the blog Poetry Matters. She lives and works in Cuyahoga Falls with her husband and wonder dogs.
Past Workshops
