Lit Fest - Lighthouse Writers Workshop 2026

Using fundamental techniques such as writing like a camera and tracking the sensory experience of a POV character, we'll learn how to write successful visionary movements such as hallucinations, delusions, distorted realities, daydreams, and interior fantasy lives. We'll study literary examples and film sequences as models for how to convince our reader they too are seeing and experiencing what the characters on the page think they are seeing and experiencing, when in fact it’s all in their head.

Your fully developed literary voice is as individual as your brain, your intelligence, your sight. It will set you apart from all other writers. Taking inspiration from Ben Yagoda’s The Sound on the Page and Jane Allison’s Meander, Spiral, Explode, we’ll examine your voice, discover its strengths and individuality, and ultimately help you break through to an even more distinct and complex voice on the page.

We will explore the “baroque” and “plain song” writing styles. When we talk baroque, consider Angela Carter's adjective-heavy prose, filled with language demanding a reader have a dictionary nearby. In the case of plain song, Ernest Hemingway, a journalist, employs prose so simple it almost reads like Dick & Jane. While every writer cultivates their own style and individual voice, this class examines the impact style has on content. We’ll explore how (and when) to write a complex-compound sentence absolutely littered with modifiers and punctuation versus when to be economic, sparse, even fragmented.