Lit Fest - Lighthouse Writers Workshop 2026: Full Schedule

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9:00am MDT

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

Thursday June 18, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am 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 →

Thursday June 18, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305

Fiction

Audience Advanced Workshop

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Fiction Workshop: Intimate Distance with Mat Johnson

Thursday June 18, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am 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 →

Thursday June 18, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am 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

Thursday June 18, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am 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 →

Thursday June 18, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am 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

Thursday June 18, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am 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 →

Thursday June 18, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am 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

Thursday June 18, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am 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 →

Thursday June 18, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am 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

Thursday June 18, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am 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 →

Thursday June 18, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305

Fiction

Audience Advanced Workshop

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Nonfiction Workshop: Excavation with Andre Dubus III

Thursday June 18, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am 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 →

Thursday June 18, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am 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

Thursday June 18, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am 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 →

Thursday June 18, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am 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

Thursday June 18, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am 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 →

Thursday June 18, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am 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

Thursday June 18, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am 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 →

Thursday June 18, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am 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

Thursday June 18, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am 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 →

Thursday June 18, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305

Poetry

Audience Advanced Workshop

9:00am MDT

No Genre/All Genre Generative Lab with Eileen Myles

Thursday June 18, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am 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 →

Thursday June 18, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305

Poetry, Multi-Genre

Audience Advanced Workshop

12:00pm MDT

Lunchtime Business Panel: A Perfect Pairing—The Author-Agent Relationship

Thursday June 18, 2026 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT

TBA

Panelists include: Megan O'Grady and Sarah Burnes (The Gernert Company).

As the publishing industry continues to change, the relationship between an author and their agent can make or break a career. Join Megan O’Grady and her agent Sarah Burnes as they talk about the ways they’re navigating the choppy waters of publishing together.

Speakers

Sarah Burnes

Agent, The Gernet Comany

Sarah began her career on the editorial side of publishing, first at Houghton Mifflin, then in the Knopf Group, and last at Little, Brown. She became an agent in 2001, joining The Gernert Company in 2005. As an editor, she acquired and edited literary fiction and non-fiction, and... Read More →

Megan O'Grady

Faculty

Megan O’Grady is a critic and an essayist. She was a writer at large for T: The New York Times Style Magazine, where she created the Culture Therapist column. Her reviews and essays about art and life also appear in The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, and The New York... Read More →

Thursday June 18, 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: A Perfect Pairing—The Author-Agent Relationship (Livestream)

Thursday June 18, 2026 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT

Virtual

Speakers

Sarah Burnes

Agent, The Gernet Comany

Megan O'Grady

Faculty

Thursday June 18, 2026 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
Virtual

All Genres

Audience Lunchtime Business Panels

1:30pm MDT

Advanced Structure Lab: Break the Story Free with Dean Bakopoulos

Thursday June 18, 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 →

Thursday June 18, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Dramatic Writing

Audience Advanced Workshop

1:30pm MDT

Crash Course in Character

Thursday June 18, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT

Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Characters are the most basic part of writing fiction, but just how do you create fictional people that will win readers over with their authenticity and verve? We'll study how masters such as Kent Haruf, Lucia Berlin, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, and Ann Patchett introduce major and minor characters, talk about "spark plug characters" and how to create them, learn how to collect character details in a writer's notebook, and discuss the importance of giving your characters skills.

Speakers

Jenny Shank

Faculty

Jenny Shank's short story collection, Mixed Company, won the George Garrett Fiction Prize and the Colorado Book Award and her novel, The Ringer, won the High Plains Book Award in fiction.

Jenny's stories, essays, satire, and reviews have appeared in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Prairie Schooner, Alaska Quarterly Review, Missouri Review, McSweeney's, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Poets & Writers, Bust Magazine, The Guardian, Santa Monica... Read More →

Thursday June 18, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Fiction, Nonfiction/Memoir

Audience Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

Fantastic Thresholds: Short Fiction Techniques of Kelly Link and Susanna Clarke (V)

Thursday June 18, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT

Virtual

Kelly Link and Susanna Clarke write stories in which the extraordinary emerges from the ordinary in an elegant, intimate, and unsettling manner. We’ll explore key techniques that shape their short fiction, such as finely calibrated voice, well-placed rupture, and invitation into mystery. Discussion of excerpts will lead into generative exercises, encouraging writers to experiment with modulating voice and narrative distance, layering the uncanny into the everyday, and crafting tension through implication. Participants will have opportunities to share their inspired yet distinct approaches to estrangement and enchantment.

Speakers

Kanika Agrawal

Kanika Agrawal is a queer Indian writer, editor, and educator. As a mad diasporic hybrid who developed over six countries on four continents, she works between and across languages, geographies, and disciplines. She received a BS in Biology and a BS in Writing from MIT. She then earned... Read More →

Thursday June 18, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Virtual

Fiction

Audience Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

Make a Scene!: How to Bring Your Memoir to Life (V)

Thursday June 18, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT

Virtual

If your memoir is reading like the hair in the "Before" photo in a shampoo commercial — flat, lifeless and dull — adding a scene might be what's missing! In this seminar we'll chat about what it looks like to "show not tell" by bringing your reader into the real-time of your narrative. The writing prompts for this seminar can be applied to your work-in-progress or generate writing for a new piece.

Speakers

Minda Honey

Faculty

Minda Honey’s (she/her) essays on politics and relationships have appeared in Harper’s Baazar, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Washington Post, the Guardian, the Oxford American, Teen Vogue, and Longreads.

Her work is featured in “Burn It Down: Women Writing About Ang... Read More →

Thursday June 18, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Virtual

Nonfiction/Memoir

Audience Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

Making the Personal Matter

Thursday June 18, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT

Lighthouse Writers Workshop

In this seminar, we’ll explore strategies for integrating research into our own first-person writing with the goal of answering some burning questions about creative nonfiction: How do essayists use “real” experiences to make stories that move? How do they create context that matters, turn personal anecdotes into universally applicable meanings, and write fresh perspectives into experiences and topics that are age-old: culture, travel, death, or love? What is the best way to build context and to shape essays so that they have momentum and meaning? In other words, how do we make meaning?

This is the livestream version of this event.

Speakers

Emily Rapp Black

Visiting Author

Thursday June 18, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Nonfiction/Memoir

Audience Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

Making the Personal Matter (Livestream)

Thursday June 18, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT

Virtual

Speakers

Emily Rapp Black

Visiting Author

Thursday June 18, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Virtual

Nonfiction/Memoir

Audience Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

From Idea to Outline

Thursday June 18, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT

Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Often we have a nugget that we want to play with, but can't find the larger story. This generative workshop walks writers through a toolbox to go from idea to outline. This will work for people who are pantsers as well as plotters, because they can apply the tools at any point in the process. The takeaway from this class isn't "this is how it's done" but rather "here are tools for when you are struggling."

Speakers

Mary Robinette Kowal

Faculty

Mary Robinette Kowal is the author of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus award winning alternate history novel The Calculating Stars, the first book in the Lady Astronaut series which continues in 2025 with The Martian Contingency. She is also the author of The Glamourist Histories series... Read More →

Thursday June 18, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Writing Process, Multi-Genre

Audience Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

Seance of the Bees: Writing and Ritual Practices

Thursday June 18, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT

Lighthouse Writers Workshop

What parts of your body do you write with? Your brain, your heart, your lungs, your womb? This interactive, movement-based seminar will guide participants through a series of somatic and ritual practices, stemming from the wisdom of bees and the artist/writers Ana Mendieta, Cecilia Vicuña, Audre Lorde, and Gloria Anzaldúa, among others.

Speakers

Andrea Rexilius

Faculty

Andrea Rexilius is the author of: Sister Urn (Sidebrow, 2019), New Organism: Essais (Letter Machine, 2014), Half of What They Carried Flew Away (Letter Machine, 2012), and To Be Human Is To Be A Conversation (Rescue Press, 2011), as well as the chapbooks Séance (Coconut Books, 2014... Read More →

Thursday June 18, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Writing Process, Multi-Genre

Audience Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

Secrets: Strategies for Story

Thursday June 18, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT

Lighthouse Writers Workshop

In this workshop, we’ll explore secrets as a major component for all storytelling. Secrets both separate us from one another and bind us together. Writers will learn how to make powerful allusions in their writing to build plot and develop character. In addition to learning the art of confession, we’ll also explore subtext as strategy and when and how to prioritize the reader’s experience.

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 →

Thursday June 18, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Writing Process, Multi-Genre

Audience Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

The Picture Within: Art as Inspiration and Critique

Thursday June 18, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT

Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Throughout literary history, writers and poets have often turned to artists for inspiration and contemplation. Visual art can be a powerful catalyst for both sensory and formal exploration, deepening our awareness of color, composition, tension, and scale. It can also elicit words within us, to paraphrase Virginia Woolf on Cézanne, from places we had not known language to exist. Through close-looking exercises, short ekphrastic readings (contemporary and classic), and writing prompts drawn from our own encounters with art, we’ll hone our skills as noticers and interpreters of life.

Speakers

Megan O'Grady

Faculty

Thursday June 18, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Writing Process, Multi-Genre

Audience Craft Seminar

1:30pm MDT

The Rich Layers of Personal Style

Thursday June 18, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT

Lighthouse Writers Workshop

“Good artists copy; great artists steal.” This quote is famously attributed to the artist Pablo Picasso, but it applies equally to writers. We all bring to the page our influences over the years—the books we’ve admired (or even hated), the imagery and music and themes we’ve been drawn to again and again, and the styles we’ve envied. In this class, we’ll look at your influences, how they’ve helped shape your style and ideas, and work to consciously incorporate your influences in your writing. No one will accuse you of stealing—we’ll just admire the rich layers of your style.

Speakers

William Haywood Henderson

Faculty

William Haywood Henderson earned a BA in English from the University of California at Berkeley, an MA in creative writing from Brown University, and attended Stanford University as a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Creative Writing. He is the author of three novels: Native, The Rest of... Read More →

Thursday June 18, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Writing Process, Multi-Genre

Audience Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

Satisfy Me!

Thursday June 18, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT

Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Even when you think you know where the draft of your story or poem is headed, its "real" ending is often lurking somewhere beneath the surface. In this discussion class, we will close-read the endings of two works of fiction and poetry on the spot (no advance reading required). The goal is to figure out not only how/if these endings "satisfy" but what "satisfaction" actually means for them and for our own projects.

Speakers

Christopher Castellani

Thursday June 18, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Fiction

Audience Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

Suffering Builds Character

Thursday June 18, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT

Lighthouse Writers Workshop

A story in which characters don’t suffer (or don’t suffer enough) is a story that’s easy to put down. In the most compelling stories, characters struggle mightily. They grapple with impossible dilemmas. They face their greatest fears. And just when you imagine they can take no more, things get undeniably worse. We’ll look at examples from literary fiction and commercial fiction. We’ll discuss ways to put characters in peril and keep them there for the sake of crafting a compelling story.

Speakers

Tiffany Quay Tyson

Faculty

Tiffany Quay Tyson is the author of two novels, The Past is Never and Three Rivers. The Past is Never is the recipient of the Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction, the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, the 2019 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Fiction, and the 2019... Read More →

Thursday June 18, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Fiction, Nonfiction/Memoir

Audience Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

Writing the Best American Essay: Contemporary Techniques and Ideas

Thursday June 18, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT

Lighthouse Writers Workshop

In this class, we’ll read excerpts from essays that appeared in the Best American Essays 2025 with an eye to their technique, structure, story, voice, and emotion. We’ll study recent trends in essays as well as classic templates, glean everything we can learn from some of the best essayists working today, and leave with some fresh starts and ideas for our own writing.

Speakers

Jenny Shank

Faculty

Thursday June 18, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Nonfiction/Memoir

Audience Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

Exploring Prose Poetry: The Art of Condensed Writing (V)

Thursday June 18, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT

Virtual

In this course, we’ll explore the definition and intentions of prose poetry. We’ll have close readings and discussion of contemporary masters like James Tate, Harryette Mullen, Victoria Chang, Shivani Mehta and others. There will also be time for generative prompts and prose poetry.

Speakers

Jose Hernandez Diaz

Faculty

Jose Hernandez Diaz is a 2017 NEA Poetry Fellow. He is the author of The Fire Eater (Texas Review Press, 2020) and Bad Mexican, Bad American (Acre Books, 2024). His work appears in The American Poetry Review, Boulevard, Colorado Review, Crazyhorse, Georgia Review, Huizache, Iowa Review... Read More →

Thursday June 18, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Virtual

Poetry, Multi-Genre

Audience Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

Just Keep Going: Being a Writer for Life

Thursday June 18, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT

Lighthouse Writers Workshop

What sets "real writers" apart from dilettantes? The practice of writing. As creative people, too often we blame ourselves for a lack of motivation and consistent creative work, when the truth is that we live in a society designed to distract us from original creation, encouraging us to put off creative work in favor of something more "productive" (e.g., money-making). This seminar proposes the radical idea that part of your job as an artist is self-motivation: you need to keep yourself inspired and creating, despite everything. Together we'll explore ideas, strategies, and daily practices to ensure you Just Keep Going.

Speakers

Buzzy Jackson

Faculty

Buzzy Jackson is an award-winning author who lives in Boulder, Colorado. She has a Ph.D. in History from UC Berkeley and is a voting member of the National Book Critics Circle. Her books include To Die Beautiful: A Novel (Dutton) which won the Colorado Book Award, as well as A Bad... Read More →

Thursday June 18, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Writing Process, Multi-Genre

Audience Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

Undoing Poetry and Prose

Thursday June 18, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT

Lighthouse Writers Workshop

This practice-oriented talk will take a close look at three poems and three short pieces of prose. I’ll explain why I think they are great and how they operate as memory machines and embodied practice. We’ll then pause and write a poem using some of what we’ve learned. We’ll look at a James Schuyler poem* , N. Nourbese Philip’s Zong!, and something by Fanny Howe. For prose, we’ll read Kafka, Sergio Chejfec, and Elena Garro**. After we look at these guys, we will do the same as we did with the poets: we’ll use their meanings to write something of our own.

This is not a workshop—it’s very much a playful lit crit group experience, and anything you write will be an opening of some sort, which I hope will continue to roll after this session. Plus, I really think reading is more important than writing—for writers and for everyone. So there’s only gain here for the species.

*Go buy his collected poems! Or check out the new bio of him by Nathan Kernan.
**I’d recommend reading Chejfec’s The Planets and Garro’s Week of Colors before the seminar. For additional reading, you might read Jazmina Barrera’s Queen of Swords, which is kind of a neo-bio of Elena Garro.

Speakers

Eileen Myles

Visiting Author

Thursday June 18, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Writing Process

Audience Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

Writing in an AI Powered World

Thursday June 18, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT

Lighthouse Writers Workshop

For many writers, artificial intelligence is changing not only the creative landscape, but also how we talk about our writing, connect with readers and other writers, and build community. One of the biggest challenges brought on by AI is anxiety. Writers worry about being falsely accused of using AI to produce work, their published works being used to train AI tools, and ensuring their words remain relevant in a world that’s rapidly become accustomed to AI-generated content. In this seminar, we’ll talk about these challenges and discuss approaches for building (or rebuilding) our creative confidence in the AI age.

Speakers

Cynthia Swanson

Faculty

Cynthia Swanson writes psychological thrillers, often using historical settings. Cynthia’s debut novel, The Bookseller, was a New York Times bestseller, an Indie Next selection, the winner of the 2016 WILLA Literary Award for Historical Fiction, translated into 18 languages, and... Read More →

Thursday June 18, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Writing Process, Multi-Genre

Audience Craft Seminar

4:00pm MDT

Two-Day Intensive: Bridges to Elsewhere—Writing Significance in the Everyday, Working-Class Moment

Thursday June 18, 2026 4:00pm - 7:00pm MDT

Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Analyzing moments from the films of Andrea Arnold, comics by Katrina Vogl, poems by Marie Howe and prose by Denis Johnson, Jo-Ann Beard and Lucia Berlin, as well as others, we will examine what might make the seemingly quotidian significant through a series of targeted craft exercises.

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 →

Thursday June 18, 2026 4:00pm - 7:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Fiction, Nonfiction/Memoir

Audience Two-Day Intensive

4:00pm MDT

Two-Day Intensive: The 48-Hour Story or Essay

Thursday June 18, 2026 4:00pm - 7:00pm MDT

Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Ready, set, write! In this generative class, we’ll write a short story or essay over two days. Using targeted exercises and a few insider tricks, we’ll work on particular elements of short stories/essays (both traditional or nontraditional) to form new characters, settings, story arcs, dialogue, action, interiority, and more! Come with a basic story idea and leave with a complete(ish) story to continue perfecting on your own. Open to all short prose genres.

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 →

Thursday June 18, 2026 4:00pm - 7:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Fiction, Multi-Genre

Audience Two-Day Intensive

4:30pm MDT

Poetry Collective Celebration

Thursday June 18, 2026 4:30pm - 6:00pm MDT

Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Come and celebrate the hard work of the Poetry Collective graduates, hear some of their final work, and learn more about the year-long program.

This is the in-person version of this event, if you'd like to attend this as a Livestream, click here.

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

Thursday June 18, 2026 4:30pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop

All Genres

Audience Event

4:30pm MDT

Poetry Collective Celebration (Livestream)

Thursday June 18, 2026 4:30pm - 6:00pm MDT

Virtual

Come and celebrate the hard work of the Poetry Collective graduates, hear some of their final work, and learn more about the year-long program.
This is the Livestream version of this event, if you'd like to attend this in-person, click here.

Thursday June 18, 2026 4:30pm - 6:00pm MDT
Virtual

All Genres

Audience Event

7:00pm MDT

Visiting Authors Reading: Dean Bakopoulos, Christopher Castellani, Andre Dubus III, Paul Muldoon, and Rachel Louise Snyder

Thursday June 18, 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

Thursday June 18, 2026 7:00pm - 8:15pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop

All Genres

Audience Event

7:00pm MDT

Visiting Authors Reading: Dean Bakopoulos, Christopher Castellani, Andre Dubus III, Paul Muldoon, and Rachel Louise Snyder (Livestream)

Thursday June 18, 2026 7:00pm - 8:15pm MDT

Virtual

Thursday June 18, 2026 7:00pm - 8:15pm MDT
Virtual

All Genres

Audience Event

8:30pm MDT

Lit Fest Open Mic at Fort Greene Bar

Thursday June 18, 2026 8:30pm - 9:30pm MDT

Fort Greene Bar

Grab a drink and join fellow Lit Fest participants at Fort Greene Bar for a late-night opportunity to read a five minute excerpt of your work! We will have ten time slots available, and sign up will be first-come, first-served starting at 8:20 PM onsite. You must be 21+ in order to attend this event.
Open Mic Guidelines:
We have a limited amount of time, so in order to make sure every person signed up has a chance to read, your excerpt needs to be 5 minutes (or less, if you prefer). We heavily encourage you to time yourself reading before getting up there! Five minutes goes pretty fast, but we have found that 3 or 4 pages double-spaced of prose or 3 short poems is standard. As someone famous once said, leave the audience wanting more! We also recommend finding something in your work that's particularly visual, funny, or action oriented so that people can follow more easily.

Thursday June 18, 2026 8:30pm - 9:30pm MDT
Fort Greene Bar 321 E 45th Ave, Denver, CO 80216

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