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Tuesday, June 16
 

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Fiction Workshop: Finding the Subterranean Story with Danielle Evans
Tuesday June 16, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA
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
avatar for Danielle Evans

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

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
avatar for Mat Johnson

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

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
avatar for Brandon Taylor

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

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
avatar for Steve Almond

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

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
avatar for Chris Castellani

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

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
avatar for Rebecca Makkai

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

1:30pm MDT

Finding the Heart and Body of Your Memoir (V)
Tuesday June 16, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Virtual
Register Here!
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
avatar for Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg

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

1:30pm MDT

I Hate You, Too: Writing Antagonistic Relationships
Tuesday June 16, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
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
avatar for Erika Krouse

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

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
Register Here!
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
avatar for Bix Gabriel

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

1:30pm MDT

Reader in the Room
Tuesday June 16, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
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
avatar for Angelique Stevens

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

1:30pm MDT

Survey of Interiority
Tuesday June 16, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
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
avatar for Brandon Taylor

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 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction

1:30pm MDT

Survey of Interiority (Livestream)
Tuesday June 16, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Virtual
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 livestream version of this event.
Speakers
avatar for Brandon Taylor

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 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Virtual
  Fiction

1:30pm MDT

The Cutting Room Floor: Late-Stage Revision
Tuesday June 16, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
“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
avatar for Evanthia Bromiley

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

1:30pm MDT

They Can’t Be All Bad, Right?
Tuesday June 16, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
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
avatar for Gloria J. Browne-Marshall

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

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
Register Here!
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
avatar for Steve Almond

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 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction, Nonfiction/Memoir

4:00pm MDT

Write Stronger Scenes: A Checklist
Tuesday June 16, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
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
avatar for Rachel Weaver

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

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
Register Here!
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
avatar for Sarah Elizabeth Schantz

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
 

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