Lit Fest - Lighthouse Writers Workshop 2026: Full Schedule

arrow_back View All Dates

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Fiction Workshop: Finding the Subterranean Story with Danielle Evans

Tuesday June 16, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT

Often, the process of drafting fiction is one of uncovering: What is it we actually mean to be writing about, and how can we bring that thread to the surface in revision? At the same time, one of the great pleasures of reading is the consideration of suggestions or questions that remain just beneath the surface of the text.

In this workshop, we'll consider the “layers” of a story, and we’ll explore how some of those subterranean layers can guide us toward structures and narrative arcs that serve the project. We'll negotiate the balance between what works best when said directly and what works best when it’s left to be discovered by the reader. Each workshop will open with discussion of a published short story and a brief responsive writing exercise; then we’ll move to an in-depth discussion of work submitted by participants.

Speakers

Danielle Evans

Visiting Author

Danielle Evans is the author of the story collections The Office of Historical Corrections and Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self. Her first collection won the PEN American Robert W. Bingham Prize, the Hurston-Wright award for fiction, and the Paterson Prize for fiction; her... Read More →

Tuesday June 16, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305

Fiction

Audience Advanced Workshop

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Fiction Workshop: Intimate Distance with Mat Johnson

Tuesday June 16, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT

TBA

Novels are long, often unruly, and inherently ambitious projects that require the writer to be both intimate with and distant from the text. It's easy to type a bunch of pages, but it’s hard to make them captivate the reader and ensure that the journey adds up to more than the sum of its parts. This course will explore the tools needed to bring your novel-length manuscript to life in its strongest form. Your novel has strengths: we'll explore how you can build on them. Your novel has weaknesses: we'll identify them and create strategies for you to overcome them. Together, we'll reveal what your novel is actually about, as opposed to what you planned for it to be. We’ll examine its hidden structures, and we’ll enable your characters and their struggles to come alive on the page.

Speakers

Mat Johnson

Visiting Author

Mat Johnson is a Philip H Knight Chair of Humanities at the University of Oregon. His publications included the novels Invisible Things and Pym, the nonfiction novella The Great Negro Plot, and the graphic novel Incognegro. Johnson is the recipient of the American Book Award, the... Read More →

Tuesday June 16, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305

Fiction

Audience Advanced Workshop

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Fiction Workshop: Situation and Event with Brandon Taylor

Tuesday June 16, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT

TBA

In this weeklong workshop, we’ll explore the intimate relationship between situation and event in narrative using work submitted by participants. The goal is to gain a stronger understanding of and appreciation for the underlying or pre-existing dramatic context that gives meaning to plot, character actions, and even the structure of a piece. We’ll use this stronger understanding to develop a more thorough conceptualization of our work so that we can make exciting, unexpected, and more meaningful choices in our stories.

We’ll be working with the below definitions:

Situation: All of the facts that comprise the starting condition of a character’s life at the beginning of a given story, novel, scene, or act. We may understand situation as another word for circumstance raised to the level of dramatic action and intent.

Event: The event is the happening or the trigger shot of a given scene, story, or novel. There are capital E Events and little e events. But regardless, both kinds of events should be drawn out of the very bedrock of your narrative and dramatic situation.

Speakers

Brandon Taylor

Visiting Author

Brandon Taylor is the author of the novels Minor Black Figures, The Late Americans, and Real Life, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, and named a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and a Science + Literature... Read More →

Tuesday June 16, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305

Fiction

Audience Advanced Workshop

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Fiction Workshop: The BS Detector with Steve Almond

Tuesday June 16, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT

TBA

Writing is decision making, nothing more and nothing less. What word? Where to place the comma? How to shape the paragraph? Join Steve Almond for a workshop focused on improving the decisions you make in your writing. By looking critically and carefully at other people’s work, you’ll walk away with a better sense of how to improve your own. The idea is not to slow your rate of composition via compulsive revision, but to instead make better decisions in the first place and to recognize quickly when you haven’t.

Speakers

Steve Almond

Visiting Author

Steve Almond [www.stevealmondjoy.org] is the author of a dozen books, including the New York Times bestsellers “Candyfreak” and “Against Football.” His first novel, “Which Brings Me to You” (co-written with Julianna Baggott) was made into a major motion picture starring... Read More →

Tuesday June 16, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305

Fiction

Audience Advanced Workshop

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Fiction Workshop: Who's Telling Your Story? with Christopher Castellani

Tuesday June 16, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT

TBA

The most important decision a writer makes is who tells their story. In this workshop, we will examine each other's manuscripts primarily through the lens of point of view and by using the concept of narrative strategy, but we will also take each manuscript as a whole and discuss how all the craft elements are working together. The primary question we will ask is, "How can the manuscript be a stronger, deeper version of itself?" This workshop is open to short story writers and novelists with stand-alone excerpts.

Speakers

Chris Castellani

Visiting Author

Christopher Castellani's fifth novel, Last Seen, will be published by Viking in February 2026. He is also the author of Leading Men (Viking, 2019) for which he received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, MacDowell, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, among others. Searchlight... Read More →

Tuesday June 16, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305

Fiction

Audience Advanced Workshop

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Generative Fiction Workshop: Starting, or Starting Over with Rebecca Makkai

Tuesday June 16, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT

TBA

In this generative workshop, we’ll either begin brand new pieces, or begin a brand new version of an old piece. In either case, we’ll use our clean slates to find startling originality, optimal angles of approach, and the energies that will carry a story or novel through to the end. We’ll write both in class and outside of class and (voluntarily) share what we’ve written. In the last two days of class, we’ll squeeze in mini-workshops on everyone’s opening page. Accepted participants do not need to come in with an idea of what to write, although they may.

Speakers

Rebecca Makkai

Visiting Author

Rebecca Makkai is the author of the New York Times bestselling I Have Some Questions For You as well as four other works of fiction. Her last novel, The Great Believers, one of the New York Times’ Best Books of the 21st Century, was a finalist for both the 2019 Pulitzer Prize and... Read More →

Tuesday June 16, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305

Fiction

Audience Advanced Workshop

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Nonfiction Workshop: Excavation with Andre Dubus III

Tuesday June 16, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT

TBA

We’ll begin with a difficult task: do not outline your novel or novella or short story or essay or memoir. Do not think out the plot, the narrative arc, the protagonist’s journey, whatever you want to call it. Instead, try to find the story through an honest excavation of the characters’ total experience of the situation in which they find themselves. Do that, and the story will begin to write itself.

But how, precisely, does one go about this “excavation”? And how, technically speaking, can we ignite a story into “writing itself”? Come to this workshop, and we’ll demystify those writerly tools and skills that, time and time again, if they are sharp enough, and if the writer can summon enough daily faith and nerve, can penetrate the mystery of story itself.

Fiction, as well as creative nonfiction is welcome. We will be doing in-class writing exercises and workshopping each participant’s submission.

Speakers

Andre Dubus III

Visiting Author

Andre Dubus III’s nine books include the New York Times’ bestsellers House of Sand and Fog, The Garden of Last Days, and his memoir, Townie. His most recent novel, Such Kindness, was published in June 2023, and a collection of personal essays, Ghost Dogs: On Killers and Kin, was... Read More →

Tuesday June 16, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305

Nonfiction/Memoir

Audience Advanced Workshop

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Nonfiction Workshop: Find Your Focus with Beth Nguyen

Tuesday June 16, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT

TBA

Maybe you’ve been wanting to try writing creative nonfiction. Maybe you have been writing it but are feeling a little bit stuck. Maybe you’re restless, curious. Maybe you’re wondering how to create a cohesive work out of a lifetime of material. Where to start? How to shape it? This generative workshop is geared toward inspiration, starts and restarts, and rethinking nonfiction, at any level. Whether you’re interested in memoir, essays, memoir-in-essays, or anything in between, you’ll find guidance, support, writing prompts, and discussion aimed at helping you figure out your writing process. We’ll talk about ideas, structure, perspective, ethical concerns (how do we know what we should write? how do we write about other people?), and more. This workshop is all about gaining greater focus and understanding as we generate work and ideas in a fun and supportive environment.

Speakers

Beth Nguyen

Visiting Author

Beth Nguyen is the author of the memoirs Owner of a Lonely Heart and Stealing Buddha’s Dinner, as well as two novels. She has received a Guggenheim award and an American Book Award, and her work has appeared in publications including The New Yorker, Paris Review, Time Magazine... Read More →

Tuesday June 16, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305

Nonfiction/Memoir

Audience Advanced Workshop

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Nonfiction Workshop: Mapping the Memoir with Emily Rapp Black

Tuesday June 16, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT

TBA

Art is architecture; art is artificial; art is...? The biggest challenge for any writer of narrative is finding the map from beginning to end. This workshop is designed for writers working on book-length memoirs who wish to delve more deeply into the issues of structure, style, and voice: these three craft points will be our focus, as they make up the net that holds a narrative together in a propulsive, engaging, immersive, and beautiful way. The goal of this workshop is to take your completed manuscript to the next level. We'll also discuss different avenues of publication.

Speakers

Emily Rapp Black

Visiting Author

Emily Rapp Black is the author of Poster Child: A Memoir (BloomsburyUSA); The Still Point of the Turning World (Penguin Press), which was a New York Times bestseller, Editor’s Pick, and a finalist for the PEN-USA Award; Sanctuary (Random House), a New York Times Editor’s Pick... Read More →

Tuesday June 16, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305

Nonfiction/Memoir

Audience Advanced Workshop

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Nonfiction Workshop: Shadow Narratives with Rachel Louise Snyder

Tuesday June 16, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT

TBA

Behind every piece of narrative nonfiction there exists a dual narrative. This partnership of story with meaning is often the blend that provides memoir, personal essay, and narrative nonfiction pieces with both tension and emotional consequence. There is the story as it exists on the page, and then there is the shadow narrative, whispering behind that story, trying to make sense of it. In this weeklong workshop, students will be asked to explore these dual narratives in their own work and in published works from contemporary practitioners such as Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, Eula Biss, Richard McCann, and others. Particular attention will be paid to voice and point of view.

Speakers

Rachel Louise Snyder

Visiting Author

Rachel Louise Snyder is the author of Fugitive Denim: A Moving Story of People and Pants in the Borderless World of Global Trade; the novel What We’ve Lost is Nothing; No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us; and the memoir Women We Buried, Women... Read More →

Tuesday June 16, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305

Nonfiction/Memoir

Audience Advanced Workshop

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Poetry Workshop: Draft Exclusion with Paul Muldoon

Tuesday June 16, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT

TBA

The popular image of the poet is as a dasher off of poem drafts. So manic and mercurial are poets’ imaginations that not even champion typists can keep abreast of them. If there’s a problem, it’s something to which they can return in a quiet moment way down the road. The focus of this week will be to set ourselves against this popular image, to make every moment a quiet moment, to fix problems as they arise, to revise even as the poem’s vision for itself is slowly coming into being and, in the end, to cut down on a lot of unnecessary work. The key to this approach is to write the poem one line at a time, to allow one idea to lead to another, and to avoid getting ahead of ourselves. When we implement this approach, the poem is now, paradoxically, more likely to bring us to a place of genuine immediacy and vitality which had hitherto been illusory.

Speakers

Paul Muldoon

Visiting Author

Paul Muldoon is the author of a number of poetry collections, including New Weather (1973), Why Brownlee Left (1980), Quoof (1983), Meeting the British (1987), New Selected Poems: 1968-1994 (1996), Hay (1998), Moy Sand and Gravel (2002)—which won both the Pulitzer Prize and the... Read More →

Tuesday June 16, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305

Poetry

Audience Advanced Workshop

9:00am MDT

Literary Lightning: Finding the Poetry in Your Prose (V)

Tuesday June 16, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT

Virtual

Are there lines in your stories or essays that, when you reread them, contain multitudes? Ideas in which your thinking has deepened or changed? How do you pull threads from previously written prose and turn it into prose poetry or hybrid prose? What was once an essay may carry the seeds of a flash essay, prose poem or song. We’ll explore work that began in one form and transformed into another and talk about how to do that for a piece of our own.

Speakers

Ellen Blum Barish

Faculty

Ellen Blum Barish is the author of the spiritual memoir Seven Springs: A Memoir and the essay collection Views from the Home Office Window: On Motherhood, Family and Life. Her work explores themes of identity, family, and spirituality. You can find her essays and prose poems in Brevity... Read More →

Tuesday June 16, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
Virtual

Poetry, Multi-Genre

Audience Craft Seminar

9:00am MDT

No Genre/All Genre Generative Lab with Eileen Myles

Tuesday June 16, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT

TBA

In this weeklong seminar, poets, fiction writers, and memoirists (and even non-writers) will re-consider and even de-rail their works in progress (or write new ones) informed by some new approaches, formal constraints, good talk, and engagement with other art forms. We’ll write at least four pieces this week, taking cues from the history of poetry and prose, music, photos, and film, and we will effectively banish the lines that separate these forms of expression in order to instill our own work with the real breadth of this postmodern world. Bring a song, a problem (aesthetic or personal), or at least one significant photo, stuffed animal, flyer, something—a piece of real or artificial fruit. The goal is to create a live working environment, a studio effect, in order to generate more work and to get reinstalled or re-awakened in our writing process.

*Since this is a generative class and can accommodate a few more people, Eileen cannot meet one-on-one with each participant, but they tend to be around Lit Fest and there are ample opportunities for additional talks.

Speakers

Eileen Myles

Visiting Author

Eileen Myles the author of more than twenty books, including a “Working Life,” For Now, Evolution, Afterglow (a dog memoir), Chelsea Girls, and I Must Be Living Twice: New & Selected Poems 1974-2014. Myles’s many honors include four Lambda Literary Awards, the Clark Prize for... Read More →

Tuesday June 16, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305

Poetry, Multi-Genre

Audience Advanced Workshop

12:00pm MDT

Lunchtime Business Panel: After the Debut—Life as a Working Writer

Tuesday June 16, 2026 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT

TBA

Panelists include: Claire Jia, Simone Stolzoff, Seth Brady Tucker, and Hannah Strouth (Sanford J. Greenburger Associates).

Debut year has a shape everyone recognizes—the thrill, the terror, the mystifying silence that follows. But what happens after? Four writers with books out in the last year talk honestly about what the debut actually taught them, how they're thinking about the next book, and what building a sustainable literary life really looks like once the confetti settles. Less "how to launch" and more "how to last"—useful for writers at every stage. This crew will also be joined by one of our visiting agents, who will give their take.

Speakers

Hannah Strouth

Agent, Greenburger Associates

Hannah is looking for literary and upmarket fiction, as well as select nonfiction. In fiction, she gravitates toward nuanced and compelling work that digs deep into a wide range of emotions. She’s automatically drawn to stories that help discover and explore new aspects about people... Read More →

Nini Berndt

Faculty

Nini Berndt's debut novel, There Are Reasons for This, comes out from Tin House Press in spring 2025. She's a graduate of the MFA program in Fiction at the University of Florida, and her work has appeared in The Southampton Review, Subtropics, Adroit, Passages North, Blackbird, and... Read More →

Claire Jia

Faculty

Claire Jia's debut novel Wanting (Tin House) was an NPR, Elle, Public Books and Chicago Sun-Times Best Book of 2025. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Modern Love column, The Rumpus, Reductress, and more. She writes for television and co-wrote the Peabody Award-winning video... Read More →

Simone Stolzoff

Faculty

Simone Stolzoff is an author and journalist who explores big questions about work, meaning, and identity. A former design lead at the global innovation firm IDEO, he is the author of two books: The Good Enough Job and How To Not Know. His work has been featured in The New York Times... Read More →

Seth Brady Tucker

Faculty

Seth Brady Tucker is a poet and fiction writer originally from Lander, Wyoming. His first book won the 2011 Elixir Press Editor’s Poetry Prize (Mormon Boy), and was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award. His second book won the Gival Press Poetry Award (We Deserve the Gods We Ask... Read More →

Tuesday June 16, 2026 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305

All Genres

Audience Lunchtime Business Panels

12:00pm MDT

Lunchtime Business Panel: After the Debut—Life as a Working Writer (Livestream)

Tuesday June 16, 2026 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT

Virtual

Speakers

Hannah Strouth

Agent, Greenburger Associates

Nini Berndt

Faculty

Claire Jia

Faculty

Simone Stolzoff

Faculty

Seth Brady Tucker

Faculty

Tuesday June 16, 2026 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
Virtual

All Genres

Audience Lunchtime Business Panels

1:00pm MDT

Two-Day Intensive: Finish the Nonfiction Book—Everything but the Pages

Tuesday June 16, 2026 1:00pm - 4:00pm MDT

Lighthouse Writers Workshop

This craft seminar is about everything except the pages. We'll talk through queries, proposals, research, drafting, editing, refinement, and, most importantly, designing a project plan so you can complete your book while staying sane. You'll leave with templates and examples of what different authors use to keep on track and a project plan specific to your book. Organization is an author's best friend, and this seminar will help you set yourself up for success.

Speakers

Simone Stolzoff

Faculty

Tuesday June 16, 2026 1:00pm - 4:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Publishing/Career

Audience Two-Day Intensive

1:30pm MDT

Advanced Structure Lab: Break the Story Free with Dean Bakopoulos

Tuesday June 16, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT

Lighthouse Writers Workshop

In this seminar designed for screenwriters and prose writers of all levels, we’ll use dramatic structure to help us get unstuck. Bring along a draft that’s failing or an idea that’s not finding a form, and we’ll explore the intricacies and opportunities of narrative structure. Over the course of this week, we’ll utilize a four-part system Bakopoulos developed while writing television pilot scripts (but that YOU can apply to any form of narrative writing—short stories, memoirs, novels, screenplays, TV scripts, plays etc.) to move past any literary obstructions you’re battling.

While no system is a magic potion that can take away the agonies of creation, this character-based approach to structure allows you to rethink the possibilities of your project. We'll discuss characters and their journeys towards liberation, as well as the notion of dramatic escalation, the tension between exposition and plot, the construction of compelling scenes, and the importance of unexpected dialogue and minor characters. We’ll watch scenes from great television pilot episodes and feature films as examples to illustrate these principles;we’ll also read a few passages of prose.

We’ll take part in at least one generative exercise per session; by the fifth day of the course, you will have a shiny new four-part outline that will help you successfully revise, or finally draft, a stuck project.

*Dean's weeklong seminar is two hours each day and does not include one-on-one meetings. The tuition is also adjusted (down) from the typical weeklong workshop.

Speakers

Dean Bakopoulos

Visiting Author

Dean Bakopoulos is the author of the novels Please Don't Come Back from the Moon (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), My American Unhappiness (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), Summerlong (Ecco/HarperCollins) and the forthcoming I Get Lonely in a Hurry. The winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship and... Read More →

Tuesday June 16, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Dramatic Writing

Audience Advanced Workshop

1:30pm MDT

Finding the Heart and Body of Your Memoir (V)

Tuesday June 16, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT

Virtual

One of the biggest challenges in writing memoir or essays is finding the focus and structure. So many directions tempt us before we find our best way forward. In this invigorating seminar, we’ll explore tools and approaches for sussing out the heart of the memoir, and from there, consider possibilities for organizing it (chronologically, thematically, as an essay collection, or even as a collage of vignettes). We’ll do some short exercises to clarify what our memoir or essay wants to be and how we can realize that potential. Ample handouts will be provided.

Speakers

Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg

Faculty

Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Ph.D, the 2009-13 Kansas Poet Laureate is the author of 24 books, including How Time Moves: New & Selected Poems; Miriam's Well, a novel; Needle in the Bone, a nonfiction book on the Holocaust; The Sky Begins At Your Feet: A Memoir on Cancer, Community, and... Read More →

Tuesday June 16, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Virtual

Fiction, Nonfiction/Memoir

Audience Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

I Hate You, Too: Writing Antagonistic Relationships

Tuesday June 16, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT

Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Our friends are close, but our enemies are uncomfortably closer, and the protagonist-antagonist relationship is often the most intimate one in any story. For this reason, it’s important to throw your protagonist and antagonist together in all sorts of interesting ways, so the torture can begin. In this hands-on, exercise-driven class, we’ll craft that antagonistic relationship to hit as many trigger points as possible, creating story-propelling conflict and change. Open to all prose writers.

Speakers

Erika Krouse

Faculty

Erika Krouse has taught at Lighthouse since 2008; she is a Book Project mentor and a winner of the Lighthouse Beacon Award. Erika's most recent collection of short stories, Save Me, Stranger, is out with Flatiron Books in January 2025. It has garnered starred reviews from Kirkus and... Read More →

Tuesday June 16, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Fiction, Multi-Genre

Audience Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

Information Underload: What Each Precious Paragraph Communicates to a Reader

Tuesday June 16, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT

Lighthouse Writers Workshop

We’re writers. We want to beguile our readers so we write and re-write, polish and agonize over every word and comma. But what information is the reader taking away? And does it match our intentions? In this two-hour session, we’ll examine paragraphs—published examples and our own—and identify what types of information readers glean, how it advances or deepens the plot, story, and characters. When it doesn’t achieve our designs, we’ll diagnose why, what we want to change, and most importantly, how to do so. This is an interactive session in which writers examine their own work, so please bring (or have available) some pages of manuscript.

Speakers

Bix Gabriel

Faculty

Bix Gabriel is a writer, teacher of creative writing, and seeker of the perfect jalebi. Her writing appears in the anthologies A Map is Only One Story, and Fusion: South Asian Flash Fiction, and in literary magazines such as Crab Creek Review, Longleaf Review, Guernica, and Electric... Read More →

Tuesday June 16, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Fiction, Multi-Genre

Audience Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

Reader in the Room

Tuesday June 16, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT

Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Writers are often told to “write from the heart,” but if the goal is to move or connect with others, audience matters. This two-hour class explores how powerful nonfiction honors both the writer’s truth and the reader’s experience. We’ll look at what audiences really want—to be invited into another’s world, to feel tension and release, to understand what’s at stake. Through short readings, discussion, and exercises, you'll learn to balance authenticity with craft—using the tools that make nonfiction not just true, but felt.

Speakers

Angelique Stevens

Faculty

Angelique Stevens lives in Upstate New York where she teaches creative writing, literature of genocide, and race literatures. Her nonfiction has been published or is forthcoming in Granta, LitHub, The New England Review, and a number of anthologies. Her essay “Ghost Bread,” which... Read More →

Tuesday June 16, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Fiction, Nonfiction/Memoir

Audience Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

Survey of Interiority

Tuesday June 16, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT

Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Using readings and examples from a variety of modes—short fiction, novels, cinema, and drama—this seminar provides a survey of interiority in narrative writing. We’ll examine and explore the technical challenges of writing interiority as well as the narrative and aesthetic motivations that accompany the concept. At the end of the seminar, we’ll engage in short writing exercises to synthesize and practice these techniques.
This is the in-person version of this event.

Speakers

Brandon Taylor

Visiting Author

Tuesday June 16, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Fiction

Audience Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

Survey of Interiority (Livestream)

Tuesday June 16, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT

Virtual

Speakers

Brandon Taylor

Visiting Author

Tuesday June 16, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Virtual

Fiction

Type advanced, intermediate, intro
Audience Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

The Cutting Room Floor: Late-Stage Revision

Tuesday June 16, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT

Lighthouse Writers Workshop

“I saw the angel in the marble, and I carved until I set him free,” Michelangelo said. What are both esoteric and practical techniques for cutting, in late-stage revision? We’ll dig into how different writers approach this question. Bring a draft or two to this revision-based class, in which we’ll practice techniques for excising, removing weight, and clarifying shapely prose.

Speakers

Evanthia Bromiley

Faculty

Evanthia Bromiley is a graduate of the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers and the recipient of scholarships from the Aspen Institute, a Lighthouse Fellowship, a Lisel Mueller scholarship, and Elizabeth George and Carol Houck-Smith awards. She is the 2025 Grace Paley Fellow for... Read More →

Tuesday June 16, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Fiction, Nonfiction/Memoir

Audience Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

They Can’t Be All Bad, Right?

Tuesday June 16, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT

Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Your antagonist is totally despicable. But despite horrible behavior, they must be interesting, fully capable of sustaining your reader, and a substantial foil to your protagonist. They must be more than a receptacle for revenge. Avoid the one-dimensional villain and make your antagonist develop beyond their worst act. This craft class will help fiction as well as nonfiction writers give depth to despots, frauds, and mean actors. Writers will use generative exercises, selected excerpts, and discussion to explore possible positive traits in even the most deplorable characters.

Speakers

Gloria J. Browne-Marshall

Faculty

Gloria J. Browne-Marshall is an Emmy Award-winning writer, a professor of Constitutional Law and Africa Studies at John Jay College (CUNY), civil rights attorney, and playwright. She is the author of She Took Justice: The Black Woman, Law, and Power; Race, Law, and American Society... Read More →

Tuesday June 16, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Fiction, Multi-Genre

Audience Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

Where the Deer and the Antelope (and the Poets) Play: On the Page

Tuesday June 16, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT

Lighthouse Writers Workshop

With our usual poetic practice, we might focus on clarity and meaning while letting our instincts determine the lines, stanzas, and punctuation. Some poems entice us to try something new. In this workshop, we’ll play on the page in hopes of discovering new layers and poetic intentions. We’ll talk punctuation and how it honors rhythm, including Dickinson’s emdash, when to “and” or “&,” and the mystery of / and // used by writers like Dana Levin. We will also consider methods of end stopping, enjambing, and even omitting punctuation altogether.

Speakers

Juan J. Morales

Faculty

Juan J. Morales is the son of an Ecuadorian mother and Puerto Rican father. He is the author of three poetry collections, including The Handyman’s Guide to End Times, winner of the 2019 International Latino Book Award. Recent poems have appeared in Crazyhorse, The Laurel Review... Read More →

Tuesday June 16, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Poetry, Multi-Genre

Audience Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

Hook, Line, and Sinker: Exploring Form Via Ruben Ostlund’s Triangle of Sadness

Tuesday June 16, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT

Lighthouse Writers Workshop

I recommend that every participant in this workshop watch Ruben Ostlund’s Triangle of Sadness (available on Hulu and elsewhere) before coming to class, and then we will discuss his unique triangular form. We’ll imitate the form in a writing exercise, coming up with a simple premise involving two characters, expanding the premise, and then flipping the premise entirely on its head. Come ready to write!

Speakers

Claire Jia

Faculty

Tuesday June 16, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Dramatic Writing, Multi-Genre

Audience Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

A Wrinkle in Time: How to Manage Chronology and Structure

Tuesday June 16, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT

Lighthouse Writers Workshop

One of the central struggles in storytelling is that human beings are, in essence, time travelers. We live in the past of our memories and the future of our hopes. Thus, when we tell stories, we often shuttle around in time. This can be exciting, but it more often winds up confusing the reader, and (in my case) the writer. In this fast-paced seminar, we’ll look at fiction and non-fiction examples of authors who manage chronology, and structure, masterfully. And we'll help writers learn how to do the same.

Speakers

Steve Almond

Visiting Author

Tuesday June 16, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Fiction, Nonfiction/Memoir

Audience Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

Write Stronger Scenes: A Checklist

Tuesday June 16, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT

Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Scene work is the backbone of any story. When your scene work is strong, your reader is pulled into the story and forget everything else. In this class, you’ll bring in one of your scenes and will reshape it according to a check list of what makes great scene work, including but not limited to controlling narrative distance, writing effective dialogue, capturing setting without being boring, maintaining tension, and integrating or eliminating backstory.

Speakers

Rachel Weaver

Faculty

Rachel Weaver is the author of the novel Point of Direction, which Oprah Magazine named a Top Ten Book to Pick Up Now and which won the 2015 Willa Cather Award for Fiction. She is on the faculty at Wilkes University’s low-residency MFA program in addition to teaching Lighthouse... Read More →

Tuesday June 16, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Fiction, Nonfiction/Memoir

Audience Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

Black Doubt, Revision, and Faith

Tuesday June 16, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT

Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Albert Camus reminds us that we cannot be successful writers without “black doubt.” What do we do, then, when this doubt feels overwhelming? What do we do when we’ve lost faith, not only in what we’re working on, but in our ability to ever write anything worth reading ever again? Often, what is needed in these disheartening moments is deep revision, a stage of artistic effort and creation that is absolutely essential and which too many writers give short shrift.

This is the in-person version of this event.

Speakers

Andre Dubus III

Visiting Author

Tuesday June 16, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Nonfiction/Memoir

Audience Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

Black Doubt, Revision, and Faith (Livestream)

Tuesday June 16, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT

Virtual

Speakers

Andre Dubus III

Visiting Author

Tuesday June 16, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Virtual

Nonfiction/Memoir

Audience Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

Symbolism and Metaphor: They Aren’t Just for Fiction

Tuesday June 16, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT

Lighthouse Writers Workshop

So you think symbolism and metaphor are devices only fiction writers use? Everything humans do is symbolic. We create symbols, we use them, we misuse them. In this class, we’ll first take a deep dive into the symbolic and the metaphorical in our everyday lives. We’ll analyze several examples of literary nonfiction that use the same devices fiction writers employ. We’ll talk about ways nonfiction writers can both deepen and complicate their own narratives and, in the process, understand why and how they can be beneficial.

Speakers

Angelique Stevens

Faculty

Tuesday June 16, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Nonfiction/Memoir

Audience Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

Forms and Functions: Poetic and Otherwise

Tuesday June 16, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT

Lighthouse Writers Workshop

In this generative workshop, we'll try our hand at writing poems using some newish, wild, and invented forms---like the burning haibun, the duplex, and more. Bring your rhymes and schemes and creative impulses, and be ready to write, sing, count, and laugh.

Speakers

Michael Henry

Faculty

Michael J. Henry, MFA currently serves as Executive Director of Lighthouse, where he also teaches poetry and memoir and essay workshops. A former recipient of a Colorado Council on the Arts Fellowship and a PlatteForum Fellowship, his work has appeared in such places as Copper Nickel... Read More →

Tuesday June 16, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Poetry, Multi-Genre

Audience Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

ChatGPT Is My Secretary (V)

Tuesday June 16, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT

Virtual

ChatGPT is awful. It’s a plagiarist, it lies and fabricates, it will run us out of our jobs…but it’s also free, exploitable, non-human labor! AI can be the answer to our harried dreams: a sometimes-reliable entity to perform research, consolidation, organization, and administrative tasks that would otherwise take us hours or months to do. What are the many ways a writer can use recent technologies to save ourselves valuable time and labor? How much can we trust it, and what are the ways we really shouldn’t? No technical knowledge needed; your instructor doesn’t have any, either.

Speakers

Erika Krouse

Faculty

Tuesday June 16, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Virtual

Writing Process, Multi-Genre

Audience Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

Two-Day Intensive: Emotional Truth—Using Fiction to Tell the Whole Truth and Nothing But the Truth

Tuesday June 16, 2026 4:00pm - 7:00pm MDT

Lighthouse Writers Workshop

This workshop will focus on how to write what you know, taking both small and large elements of your particular human experience to create fiction. We will study other fiction writers and their techniques and do exercises based on them. This class will focus on generating new text but should be inspiring for those writers deep into a work-in-progress too. Ideally, writers will experience a catharsis as they alchemize their hard times into art.

Speakers

Sarah Elizabeth Schantz

Sarah Elizabeth Schantz is a writer living on the East Side of Old Town Longmont in a Victorian bungalow one alley away from the train tracks. Her first novel Fig debuted from Simon & Schuster in 2015 and was selected by NPR as A Best Read of the Year before going on to win a 2016... Read More →

Tuesday June 16, 2026 4:00pm - 7:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Fiction, YA/Children's

Audience Two-Day Intensive

4:00pm MDT

Two-Day Intensive: Being a Romantic Poet in the 21st Century

Tuesday June 16, 2026 4:00pm - 7:00pm MDT

Virtual

How might Romanticism translate to our time? In this workshop, we'll carry its core precepts—spontaneity, accessible language, the connection between nature and human creativity, the power of individual imagination—into contemporary poetry. Drawing on Keats, Wordsworth, and Blake, we'll make our own departures into visionary lyricism.

Speakers

Elizabeth Robinson

Faculty

Elizabeth Robinson is the author of over a dozen volumes of poetry. Her most recent books are Three Novels (Omnidawn), Counterpart (Ahsahta), and Blue Heron (Center for Literary Publishing). Robinson’s mixed genre meditation, On Ghosts (Solid Objects), was a finalist for the Los... Read More →

Tuesday June 16, 2026 4:00pm - 7:00pm MDT
Virtual

Poetry

Audience Two-Day Intensive

4:30pm MDT

Lit Fest Fellows Showcase and Reading

Tuesday June 16, 2026 4:30pm - 6:00pm MDT

Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Help us celebrate the exceptional talent among this year’s Lit Fest Fellowship winners. Happy Hour beverages and snacks available (and see below about sober space options). Our lineup:

Veteran Writing Awardees
Reed Kuehn
Matt Eidson

Fellowship for Emerging Writers
Poetry: Christiana Castillo
(selected by Eduardo Corral)

Fiction: Marcie Alexander
Runner up: Blake Foster-Wagamon
Distinguished finalists: Hema Padhu & Evander Reyes
(selected by Ramona Ausubel)

Nonfiction: Sarah Kiley
Runner Up: Julia Marquez-Uppman
(selected by Elissa Washuta)

LARRK Fellowship Winners
Rachel Nielsen
Max Miller

We will have a Sober Space available on the second floor during this event. This is a welcoming, inclusive gathering place for people in all forms of recovery or anyone who wants to have a space to connect without alcohol during Lit Fest 2026. There will be snacks, NA beverages, writing prompts, and conversation starters available during this time.

For more resources and recovery meetings close to Lighthouse, you can visit: https://www.yorkstreetclub.com/Schedule

Tuesday June 16, 2026 4:30pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop

All Genres

Audience Event

4:30pm MDT

Lit Fest Fellows Showcase and Reading (Livestream)

Tuesday June 16, 2026 4:30pm - 6:00pm MDT

Virtual

Tuesday June 16, 2026 4:30pm - 6:00pm MDT
Virtual

All Genres

Audience Event

7:00pm MDT

Visiting Authors Reading: Emily Rapp Black, Mat Johnson, Rebecca Makkai, and Beth Nguyen

Tuesday June 16, 2026 7:00pm - 8:15pm MDT

Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Grab a drink or a bite from our food truck and buckle down in Beacon Hall to hear your favorite visiting author perform their recent works. Afterwards, you can shop at the Lit Fest pop-up bookstore operated by Spell Books and get your book signed. This is the in-person version of this event.

We will have a Sober Space available on the second floor during this event. This is a welcoming, inclusive gathering place for people in all forms of recovery or anyone who wants to have a space to connect without alcohol during Lit Fest 2026. There will be snacks, NA beverages, writing prompts, and conversation starters available during this time.

For more resources and recovery meetings close to Lighthouse, you can visit: https://www.yorkstreetclub.com/Schedule

Tuesday June 16, 2026 7:00pm - 8:15pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop

All Genres