Lit Fest - Lighthouse Writers Workshop 2026

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 livestream version of this event.