Angie Kim moved as a preteen from Seoul, South Korea, to the suburbs of Baltimore. After graduating from Interlochen Arts Academy, she studied philosophy at Stanford University and attended Harvard Law School, where she was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. Her debut novel, “Miracle Creek,” won the Edgar Award and the ITW Thriller Award, and was named one of the 100 best mysteries and thrillers of all time by Time, and one of the best books of the year by Time, The Washington Post, Kirkus Reviews and the Today show. “Happiness Falls,” her second novel, was an instant New York Times bestseller and a book club pick for “Good Morning America,” Barnes & Noble, Belletrist and Book of the Month Club. She lives in northern Virginia with her family. 

Workshop Description

This workshop focuses on structuring a novel or short story around a propulsive character arc, plot, or story concept that is truly satisfying for the reader. Each participant will workshop either a full story or an excerpt from a longer work, along with a one-line story premise. (Don’t worry; you’ll get guidance on how to come up with the premise.) We will read one another’s work deeply and generously to figure out what is working best in a particular piece, what makes it special, so that the writer can approach revision knowing what to intensify and magnify (rather than simply what’s not working). Although we will be emphasizing story structure, we will consider all elements of fiction—voice, point of view, language—in our workshop discussions. Finally, we will definitely save some time to discuss publishing strategies and tips for submitting to journals, querying agents, and beyond. The goal is to leave energized and motivated, with a story premise you can use to pitch your work and a firm plan to guide your writing/revision. 

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Jim Shepard has written eight novels, including most recently “Phase Six” and “The Book of Aron,” which won the Sophie Brody Medal for Jewish Literature, the PEN/New England Award for Fiction, and the Clark Fiction Prize, and five story collections, including “Like You’d Understand, Anyway,” a finalist for the National Book Award and Story Prize winner. Seven of his stories have been chosen for the Best American Short Stories, two for the PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, and two for Pushcart Prizes. He’s also won a Guggenheim Foundation Award, the Library of Congress/ Massachusetts Book Award for Fiction and the ALEX Award from the American Library Association. He teaches at Williams College. 

Workshop Description

A workshop in close reading, and all that that entails. In order to improve as writers we have to improve as readers, so we’ll be working to hone our practice of the best sort of reading: figuring out how to make ourselves even more that ideal reader who is, in Louise Gluck’s formulation, consistently rigorous, fastidious and optimistic. A good workshop is at heart a dialogue about possibility, and we’ll be considering how many ways meaning can take shape on a page, to help us decide what our own path toward the fiction we want to write should look like. We’ll be breaking down as clearly and as comprehensively as possible what our fiction seems to want to be doing, and how it’s doing it. and how it’s doing it. For that reason, besides one or two exercises, the focus will be entirely on students’ work. 

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Barbadian author and editor Karen Lord has been a physics teacher, a diplomat, a part-time soldier and an academic at various times and in various countries. Her debut novel, “Redemption in Indigo,” won the 2008 Frank Collymore Literary Award, the 2010 Carl Brandon Parallax Award, the 2011 William L. Crawford Award, the 2011 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature and the 2012 Kitschies Golden Tentacle (Best Debut) and was longlisted for the 2011 Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. Is sequel, the crime-fantasy novel “Unraveling,” was published in 2019. Her second novel, “The Best of All Possible Worlds,” won the 2009 Frank Collymore Literary Award, and the 2013 RT Book Reviewers’ Choice Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. It’s sequel, “The Galaxy Game,” was published in 2015. She is the editor of the 2016 anthology “New World, Old Ways: Speculative Tales from the Caribbean.” Her latest book, “The Blue, Beautiful World,” was published in 2023.

She has been an instructor for Clarion West Writers Workshop (Seattle, 2018 and 2020) and the Clarion Workshop (San Diego, 2019); a co-facilitator or instructor for reading and writing workshops at the Bocas Lit Fest, the Bim Lit Fest and the Edinburgh International Book Festival; and a co-facilitator for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize (2018) and mentor for the Commonwealth Writers Mentorship Programme (2019, 2020).

Workshop Description

The 2024 Aspen Words science fiction and fantasy workshop is for writers from all backgrounds (natural sciences, social sciences, humanities and more) and with wide-ranging interests who wish to use invented worlds as a medium to illuminate and interrogate the real world. The week will be focused on critiques of participants’ work, either a complete short story or novel excerpt (excerpts may be accompanied by a single-page synopsis or story outline). We’ll begin each session with a brief discussion of craft and concepts in writing, with examples from published works. Topics will include worldbuilding and language; mindmapping for structuring plot; time, space, movement and the five senses; and perception, knowledge and belief. General information about the publishing industry, and specific advice about your writing goals, will be provided during class and in individual sessions. The goal is to leave Aspen with a path forward for your writing career, and a renewed appreciation of the power of literature to transform the way you, and your potential readers, see the world we live in.  

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Mahogany L. Browne, selected as Kennedy Center’s Next 50 and Weseleyan’s 2022-23 Distinguished Writer-in-Residence, the Executive Director of JustMedia, Artistic Director of Urban Word, a writer, playwright, organizer, & educator. Browne has received fellowships from Arts for Justice, Air Serenbe, Cave Canem, Poets House, Mellon Research & Rauschenberg. She is the author of recent works: “Vinyl Moon,” “Chlorine Sky, “Woke: A Young Poets Call to Justice,” “Woke Baby” & “Black Girl Magic.” Founder of the diverse lit initiative Woke Baby Book Fair, Browne’s latest poetry collection, “Chrome Valley,” is a promissory note to survival. She lives in Brooklyn, NY, and is the first ever poet-in-residence at Lincoln Center. 

Workshop Description

Do Not Make Grief Your God

A generative writing workshop focused on grief-letting as a practice of literary meditation. Through a series of lecture-styled talks and writing prompts, this workshop invites you to recall the many phases of grief through a collection of poems. 

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Martha McPhee is the author of the novels “An Elegant Woman,” “Dear Money,” “L’America,” “Gorgeous Lies” and “Bright Angel Time.”  She is also the author of “Omega Farm,” a memoir. Her work has been honored with fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts and The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.  In 2002 she was nominated for a National Book Award.  Her novels have been Best Books of The Year on The New York Times, Washington Post and Chicago Tribune lists.  Her essays and reviews have appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers including The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Newark Star Ledger, Vogue, More, Harper’s Bazaar, Self, Traveler, Travel & Leisure, among many others. McPhee is a tenured member of the English Department at Hofstra University, where she teaches fiction. She lives in New York City with her children and husband, the poet and writer Mark Svenvold. 

Workshop Description

Life Writing: A Memoir Workshop 

Everybody has a story to tell, but how do we elevate that from the personal to the literary? Memoir lives between fiction and autobiography; in this classic creative writing workshop, students learn strategies to mine their life experiences while utilizing the novelist’s toolbox to turn their experiences into stories. We will also be exploring how memory works, how its depths are infinite if we train our attention toward recall–a surface strand of memory unspooling those hidden beneath the sediment of time. Using our stories, the stories we need to tell, we will focus on developing our narrative voices and writing techniques with the goal of exploring the material we are full of. The acclaimed American fiction writer John Updike wrote, “You are full of your material—your family, your friends, your region of the country, your generation—when it is fresh and seems urgently worth communicating to readers. No amount of learned skills can substitute for the feeling of having a lot to say, of bringing news. Memories, impressions, and emotions from your first 20 years on earth are most writers’ main material; little that comes afterward is quite so rich and resonant. By the age of 40, you have probably mined the purest veins of this precious lode; after that, continued creativity is a matter of sifting the leavings.”  

Students will be encouraged to open themselves to critical analysis by their peers in order to learn what works and does not in their memoirs. Alongside close reading, we will understand editing and rewriting as integral parts of the creative process. Above all we will be exploring what makes for good memoir. The primary text for the class will be the students’ work, but we will also have time for in-class exercises and outside readings to inspire our imaginations and deepen our exploration of technique.  

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Chicago-born Peter Orner is the author of seven books, the memoirs/ essay collections, “Still No Word from You,” a finalist for the PEN Award for the Art of the Essay and “Am I Alone Here?”, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, as well as the story collection, “Maggie Brown and Others,” a New York Times Notable Book, and the novel, “Love and Shame and Love,” winner of a California Book Award. Other books include, “Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge,” “The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo” (finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award), and “Esther Stories,” (a finalist for the Pen/Hemingway Award). Peter is also the editor of three books of oral history for the McSweeney’s/ Voice of Witness series. His work has been awarded four Pushcart Prizes as well as the Rome Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Currently, Peter is chair of the English and Creative Writing Department at Dartmouth College and lives in Norwich, Vermont. 

Workshop Description

As someone who often moves back and forth between fiction and memoir, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how the two often overlap. Is all my fiction made up? Is all my memoir absolutely true? Good prose is good prose, no matter what we call it, and yet what I find most exciting about memoir is that there’s a constraint on my imagination and this constraint forces, at times, a kind of reckoning. I can’t retreat into making stuff up. I’ve got to try and hold steady and make some stab at some truth. As a reader, I’m especially interested in memoir that is outward rather than inward looking. For instance, one of my favorite books is called “Danube” by the Italian writer, Claudio Magris. It’s essentially a tour of the Danube River through central Europe. Now I confess, I’ve got no special interest in this particular river, and yet “Danube” has become, for me, a kind of essential text. It’s not billed as a memoir and yet by the end of it I know Magris better than I know some members of my own family, not because he’s told me so much about himself, but because his curiosity about place, history, and people, gives me deep insight into a remarkably singular brain. In this memoir workshop, we’ll be reading and discussing our own works in progress with an eye toward finding that truthful reckoning — whatever it takes to get there. We’ll also be reading short excerpts by Magris, Zadie Smith, Joseph Mitchell, Janet Malcolm, Vievee Francis, Fernanda Melchor, Taylor Johnson and Virginia Woolf (her journals). 

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Kelly Fremon Craig is a film director, screenwriter and producer, known for writing and directing the 2023 film adaptation of Judy Blume’s classic novel “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret,” named as one of Time Magazine’s Ten Best Movies of 2023, and garnering multiple awards and nominations for its cast.  In 2016, she made her directorial debut with the film  “The Edge of Seventeen,” which received widespread critical praise and numerous accolades, including a Directors Guild of America Nomination for Outstanding Achievement of a First Time Filmmaker, the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best First Film, three Critics’ Choice Award nominations, and a Golden Globe® nomination for the film’s lead actress. Kelly grew up in Orange County, California, and graduated from UC Irvine with a degree in English Literature. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and young son. 

Workshop Description – New for 2024 

In this screenwriting class, we will explore the art and craft of cinematic storytelling: creating compelling characters and emotional arcs, understanding the 3-act structure, constructing dynamic scenes, and breaking down the elements of a great film. In a warm and supportive environment, we will read and workshop each other’s screenplays, offer productive feedback, discuss and develop story ideas, and help each participant hone their unique writing voice and advance their creative work.  There will be assigned reading, in-class exercises, and after-class assignments. Consider this an intensive but fun screenwriting bootcamp to jumpstart your creativity, increase your confidence on the page, and help you find a clear sense of direction on your project. 

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