Slowing Down and Speeding Up: Playing With Time and Detail in Prose

What: Even when we write about less difficult subjects, choosing what speed we use to recount them can change our own, and our readers’, understanding. If we’re reflecting on how conflict affects our world or the people we come from, experimenting with time and detail can make a big difference.

When might zooming out or zooming in, speeding up or slowing down, help us convey the profound effect something has had on us, our family, our community? What happens when we play with the pace of events in unexpected ways?

We’ll read a few short examples together, talk about how they expand or compress time—and use them as prompts to try some new writing of our own. By the end of class, participants will have new ways of thinking about pacing and detail—the big picture and the small—as well as examples and drafts to keep experimenting with.

Who: Michele Lent Hirsch is a genderqueer writer, editor, and educator. Her poetry and prose have appeared in Third Coast, Bellevue Literary Review, and The Guardian, among other outlets. Her first book—a blend of memoir and journalism on disability and gender—came out from Beacon Press, and has been translated into Korean. It’s been featured in Literary Hub, The New York Times, and Longreads. An editor at a range of publications, Michele works with writers to deepen their craft, and has taught workshops at the 92nd Street Y and elsewhere.

When & Where: Online: Tuesday, June 9 from 7:30p – 9p ET

Class Limit: 15

Cost: $25

Conflict Literature Workshop: A Prose Class

What: This workshop centers on the development and critique of original writing that engages with conflict in its broadest sense. Participants will submit a piece of up to two thousand words—fiction or creative nonfiction—that explores conflict from any perspective: civilian, military, journalistic, displaced, humanitarian, or otherwise imagined.

The course is designed to support writers working within what we define as conflict literature—writing that grapples with the lived realities, moral complexities, and human consequences of conflict. Through guided discussion and peer critique, participants will deepen both their craft and their understanding of how conflict can be represented with nuance, responsibility, and emotional resonance.

Participants should be prepared to encounter material that may include depictions of trauma, violence, displacement, and loss. While no one is expected to share beyond their comfort level, the workshop encourages thoughtful engagement with difficult subject matter.

In three of the four sessions, participants will engage in a thirty-minute facilitator-led discussion of selected works of conflict literature, distributed in advance (including a short story, two essays, and an excerpt from a longer work):

◆ “The Things They Carried” – Tim O’Brien
◆ “Shooting an Elephant” – George Orwell  / “The Third Winter” – Martha Gellhorn
◆ Nothing Ever Dies – Vietnam and the Memory of War (excerpt) – Viet Thanh Nguyen

Each session will include in-depth discussion of participant work. Writers will be workshopped for approximately thirty minutes each.

At the start of their session, the writer will read a brief excerpt (two to three minutes) from their piece. This is followed by a structured “listening phase,” during which the group discusses the work while the writer remains present but does not respond. This approach allows the writer to hear how the piece is received without interruption or the need to clarify intent.

Following the discussion, the writer is invited to rejoin the conversation to ask questions, respond to feedback, or seek clarification. Emphasis is placed on constructive, respectful critique that supports revision and strengthens craft. Formal feedback guidance will be disseminated prior to the course.

Sessions that include assigned readings will begin with a facilitated discussion connecting the text to key themes in conflict literature, such as voice, ethics of representation, narrative authority, and the portrayal of violence and memory.

By the end of the workshop, participants will:

◆ Receive detailed verbal and written feedback on an original piece of writing
◆ Develop a stronger understanding of craft techniques relevant to writing about conflict
◆ Engage critically with contemporary conflict literature across perspectives and forms
◆ Strengthen their ability to give and receive constructive critique
◆ Leave with concrete revision strategies for their submitted work

With a maximum of eight participants, the workshop ensures that each writer’s work is discussed in depth in a focused, supportive environment.

Who: Dewaine Farria is a former US Marine, and has spent much of his professional life with the United Nations, with assignments in the North Caucasus, Kenya, Somalia, and Occupied Palestine. In recognition of his actions during an attack on a UN compound in Mogadishu in June 2013, he received the United Nations Bravery Award.

He has received fellowships from the National Security Education Program (2004), MacDowell (2021, 2022), and the National Endowment for the Arts (2022). He holds a BS from the University of the State of New York-Albany, an MA in International and Area Studies from the University of Oklahoma, and an MFA in Creative Writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Tobias Wolff selected his debut novel, Revolutions of All Colors (Syracuse University Press, 2020) as winner of the inaugural Veteran’s Writing Award. Farria’s short stories and essays have appeared in Literary Hub, The New York Times, The Rumpus, The Daily Beast, Southern Humanities Review, CRAFT, War on the Rocks, Consequence, and the anthology Our Best War Stories (Middle West Press, 2020).

When & Where: Online: Sundays, June 28 – July 19 from 6p – 8p ET

Class Limit: 8

Cost: $350

The Land Cannot Forget: An Eco-Poetics Workshop

What: Our human relationship to trauma is often embodied interpersonally as well as politically. However, the land in which war and geopolitical violence is enacted is subject to wound, just as our flesh and mind are. 

In this five-week workshop, we will engage with a number of poets who look to the natural world to express the devastating effects of war and colonization. We will read and discuss poets like Jehanne Dubrow and Don Mee Choi, as well as have an opportunity to workshop our own poems.

Week One: Intro to Trauma-Informed Eco-Poetry
Week Two: Workshop, lecture on the Anthropocene
Week Three: Workshop, lecture on War and the Environment 
Week Four: Workshop, lecture on the War on the Environment 
Week Five: Workshop, closing reading.

This class will build critical reading skills as we analyze poems from an eco-poetics lens. It will also provide instruction and prompts for writing your own eco-poems. You will leave the class with a host of first drafts and sharpened skills in close reading and text analysis, while also getting a chance to hone your public reading skills if you so choose.

Who: Madeline Simms is a creative with midwestern roots. She is concerned with how our unique ecologies inform language and believes in place-based pedagogy. Madeline is the recipient of the 2023 AWP Intro Award in Fiction. She has received support from the University of Alabama and Sundress Academy for the Arts. You can find her writing in About Place Journal, Poet Lore, Quarterly West, and elsewhere. Madeline writes and teaches in Madison, WI.

When & Where: Online: Sundays, July 21 – Aug. 2 from 1p – 3p ET

Class Limit: 10

Cost: $110

Fiction on Foreign Policy and Conflict

What: War, diplomacy, and global conflict have animated some of the best-known fiction around the world, but writers with firsthand knowledge of these worlds often struggle to translate their expertise into compelling storytelling. This course explores how short stories and novels can carry geopolitical themes and plots without becoming dry or didactic. Across three sessions, moving from classic texts to contemporary voices to formally experimental work, this course will examine how authors transform foreign policy and conflict into character and craft.

Each session divides its time between close reading and generative writing. The class will discuss excerpts together, identifying the specific techniques authors use to render inner conflict, moral ambiguity, pacing, and place, and then immediately put those tools to work in short generative exercises. Writers will have the opportunity to share pieces of new or revised drafts and receive feedback from the group.

By the end of the course, students will leave with several pages (either new or revised from works in progress) that consciously deploy techniques drawn from the authors covered. Students should be introduced to at least one writer they hadn’t read closely before and should have a clearer sense of whose writing resonates with them and why. More importantly, they’ll have an expanded set of craft strategies for writing about conflict.

Who: Lauren D. Woods is the author of The Great Grown-Up Game of Make-Believe, a short story collection that won the 2024 Autumn House Fiction Prize and the Sergio Troncoso Award for Best First Book of Fiction from the Texas Institute of Letters. Lauren lives in Washington, DC, where she has also worked for the Department of State, on Capitol Hill, for various internationally focused nonprofits, and most recently in the private sector. She loves the intersection of foreign policy and literature. 

When & Where: Online: Saturdays, July 11, 18, & 25  from 11a – 12:30p ET

Class Limit: 12

Cost: $75