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Friday, June 12
 

9:00am MDT

Hike and Write: Urban Style
Friday June 12, 2026 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
The tradition of nature writing goes back to the Romantics and before, most likely because we are creatures of place. In this hands-on and feet-walking session, we'll explore some of the 'natural' settings just outside of Lighthouse, using the landscape as inspiration, and see what we find, and what the world around us has to say. We won't be walking miles on end, but please wear comfortable...
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Speakers
avatar for Michael Henry

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 →
Friday June 12, 2026 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  All Genres

9:00am MDT

Beginnings, Middles and Ends: The 9 Parts of Your Story
Friday June 12, 2026 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Stumped by all the novel structures out there? So was I, until I heard someone say "end of the middle" and it made me start thinking of the novel I'm revising in 9 parts: the beginning, middle, and end of the beginning; the beginning, middle, and end of the middle; and the beginning, middle, and end of the end. This class will explore using these 9 parts as a simple (okay, simpler, way) to build...
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Speakers
avatar for Carleen Brice

Carleen Brice

Faculty
Carleen Brice's debut novel, Orange Mint and Honey, is the basis for the NAACP Image Award-winning Lifetime TV movie "Sins of the Mother" starring Jill Scott and Nicole Beharie. Orange Mint and Honey was also an Essence "Recommended Read" and a Target "Bookmarked Breakout Book." For... Read More →
Friday June 12, 2026 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction

9:00am MDT

Getting Unstuck
Friday June 12, 2026 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Does it sometimes seem like your novel is trying to kill you? Have you considered divorcing a story? Me too. Being a writer means coming up against self-doubt. But what if it doesn't have to be so defeating? What if the blank page felt more like an invitation than a cliff? In this gathering we will work through a few exercises designed to bring joy and a sense of possibility and invention so that...
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Speakers
avatar for Ramona Ausubel

Ramona Ausubel

Faculty
Ramona Ausubel grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her newest novel, The Last Animal, received a Science + Literature Prize from the National Book Foundation and was a National Bestseller and a Barnes & Noble monthly pick. Her newest book will be out in Spring, 2026. Unstuck: 101 Doorways... Read More →
Friday June 12, 2026 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction, Publishing/Career

9:00am MDT

Getting Unstuck (Livestream)
Friday June 12, 2026 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Virtual
Does it sometimes seem like your novel is trying to kill you? Have you considered divorcing a story? Me too. Being a writer means coming up against self-doubt. But what if it doesn't have to be so defeating? What if the blank page felt more like an invitation than a cliff? In this gathering we will work through a few exercises designed to bring joy and a sense of possibility and invention so that...
See More →
Speakers
avatar for Ramona Ausubel

Ramona Ausubel

Faculty
Ramona Ausubel grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her newest novel, The Last Animal, received a Science + Literature Prize from the National Book Foundation and was a National Bestseller and a Barnes & Noble monthly pick. Her newest book will be out in Spring, 2026. Unstuck: 101 Doorways... Read More →
Friday June 12, 2026 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Virtual
  Fiction, Publishing/Career

9:00am MDT

How to Work with Narrative Time
Friday June 12, 2026 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
In our novels, we control how quickly or slowly time passes for our readers. We can compress several decades of events into a couple of paragraphs, or we can let an entire chapter linger on a single scene. Managing narrative time is an essential (and often overlooked) storytelling skill. In this seminar, we’ll hone that skill by deepening our understanding of sequence, pacing, and flashback,...
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Speakers
avatar for Andrea Bobotis

Andrea Bobotis

Faculty
Andrea Bobotis is the author of the debut novel The Last List of Miss Judith Kratt. A native of South Carolina, she holds a PhD in English literature from the University of Virginia, where she was honored with the All-University Graduate Teaching Award. Her fiction has received support... Read More →
Friday June 12, 2026 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction

9:00am MDT

The Art of Constraints: Setting Limits to Set Ourselves Free
Friday June 12, 2026 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
As Oulipo Writer Georges Perec says, “I set myself rules in order to be totally free.” In this seminar, we’ll follow Perec’s logic: working with writing constraints so our prose can emerge more forceful and more honed from the first draft on. We’ll read examples of contemporary writers who use (or appear to use) different constraints in their fiction and nonfiction. We’ll dissect how...
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Speakers
avatar for Alexander Lumans

Alexander Lumans

Editor
Alexander Lumans was awarded a 2018 NEA Creative Writing Grant in Fiction. He received fellowships in 2015 and 2024 for expeditions with The Arctic Circle Residency and he was the Spring 2014 Philip Roth Resident at Bucknell University. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in... Read More →
Friday June 12, 2026 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction, Nonfiction/Memoir

9:00am MDT

Memoir: What's Research Got to Do With It?
Friday June 12, 2026 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Memoir and personal essay may seem far removed from the world of Google Scholar, articles with citations, surveys, news databases, historical archives, theoretical texts, and other resources frequently used by academic researchers. As a memoirist and essayist who also just published a scholarly book, I’ll lead you through a diverse toolbox of research resources, as well as discuss ways that...
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Speakers
avatar for Angie Chuang

Angie Chuang

Faculty
Angie Chuang is an associate professor of journalism at University of Colorado Boulder who writes and teaches a wide range of nonfiction forms. Her memoir, The Four Words for Home (Aquarius Press/Willow Books, 2014),won an Independents Publishers Award for Multicultural Nonfiction... Read More →
Friday June 12, 2026 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Nonfiction/Memoir

9:00am MDT

Where's the Conflict?
Friday June 12, 2026 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
A deep dive into how to shape characters and their conflicts on the page. In this two-hour seminar, we’ll look at relationships between the self and other characters, as well as the types of conflicts to consider in your nonfiction work or memoir.
Speakers
avatar for Anna Qu

Anna Qu

Anna Qu is a Chinese American writer. Her critically acclaimed debut memoir, Made In China: A Memoir of Love and Labor, was named a New York Times Editors’ Choice pick. Her work has appeared in Threepenny Review, Lumina, Kartika, Kweli, and Vol.1 Brooklyn, among others. She was... Read More →
Friday June 12, 2026 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Nonfiction/Memoir

9:00am MDT

Intense Emotions, Subtle Words
Friday June 12, 2026 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Poetry is the native tongue of passionate intensity. Yet how much is ‘too much’ when it comes to expressing enormous, complicated emotions? We can use various literary devices to create poetic restraint and redirection. We'll discuss works from contemporary poets Ada Limón, Sherman Alexie, Kim Addonizio, and others, as well as write our own intense—yet subtle—poems.
Speakers
avatar for Joy Roulier Sawyer

Joy Roulier Sawyer

Faculty
Joy Roulier Sawyer holds an MA from New York University, where she received the Herbert Rubin Award for Outstanding Creative Writing. The author of several nonfiction books, she's also published two poetry collections, Tongues of Men and Angels (White Violet Press), and Lifeguards... Read More →
Friday June 12, 2026 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Poetry

12:00pm MDT

Lunchtime Business Panel: Big Press, Small Press, No Press
Friday June 12, 2026 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Panelists include: multi-press authors Cynthia Swanson (big press, no press) and Ramona Ausubel (big press, indie press) along with editors Brittany Torres Rivera from Graywolf (indie) and Caroline Bleeke Flatiron/Macmillan (big press)Traditional publisher, small press, or self publication: how do you determine where your work belongs? Our distinguished panel of industry experts will discuss...
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Speakers
avatar for Caroline Bleeke

Caroline Bleeke

Caroline Bleeke is Editorial Director, Fiction at Flatiron Books, having joined the imprint in 2014, at the very beginning of the fiction program. In addition to helping shape the vision and strategy for fiction acquisitions, she publishes a list of literary and upmarket fiction... Read More →
avatar for Brittany Torres Rivera

Brittany Torres Rivera

Assistant Editor, Graywolf Press
Bio: Brittany Torres Rivera is the assistant editor at Graywolf Press, where she edits poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, and is especially involved in works in translation from the Spanish. She is an alumna of the Fulbright Program and a columnist for Letras Latinas, the literary... Read More →
avatar for Ramona Ausubel

Ramona Ausubel

Faculty
Ramona Ausubel grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her newest novel, The Last Animal, received a Science + Literature Prize from the National Book Foundation and was a National Bestseller and a Barnes & Noble monthly pick. Her newest book will be out in Spring, 2026. Unstuck: 101 Doorways... Read More →
avatar for Cynthia Swanson

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 →
Friday June 12, 2026 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  All Genres

12:00pm MDT

Lunchtime Business Panel: Big Press, Small Press, No Press (Livestream)
Friday June 12, 2026 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
Virtual
Register Here!
Panelists include: multi-press authors Cynthia Swanson (big press, no press) and Ramona Ausubel (big press, indie press) along with editors Brittany Torres Rivera from Graywolf (indie) and Caroline Bleeke Flatiron/Macmillan (big press)Traditional publisher, small press, or self publication: how do you determine where your work belongs? Our distinguished panel of industry experts will discuss...
See More →
Speakers
avatar for Caroline Bleeke

Caroline Bleeke

Caroline Bleeke is Editorial Director, Fiction at Flatiron Books, having joined the imprint in 2014, at the very beginning of the fiction program. In addition to helping shape the vision and strategy for fiction acquisitions, she publishes a list of literary and upmarket fiction... Read More →
avatar for Brittany Torres Rivera

Brittany Torres Rivera

Assistant Editor, Graywolf Press
Bio: Brittany Torres Rivera is the assistant editor at Graywolf Press, where she edits poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, and is especially involved in works in translation from the Spanish. She is an alumna of the Fulbright Program and a columnist for Letras Latinas, the literary... Read More →
avatar for Ramona Ausubel

Ramona Ausubel

Faculty
Ramona Ausubel grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her newest novel, The Last Animal, received a Science + Literature Prize from the National Book Foundation and was a National Bestseller and a Barnes & Noble monthly pick. Her newest book will be out in Spring, 2026. Unstuck: 101 Doorways... Read More →
avatar for Cynthia Swanson

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 →
Friday June 12, 2026 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
Virtual
  All Genres

1:30pm MDT

Dance. Write. Repeat.
Friday June 12, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
We write not just with our minds but with our bodies. In this class, taught by a certified dance fitness instructor, we’ll explore what moving our bodies does for our writing. Using the principles of LaBlast dance fitness, which incorporates ballroom dance moves into accessible, partner-free patterns, we’ll alternate a variety of dance styles with writing sessions and see what comes loose....
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Speakers
avatar for Jennifer Wortman

Jennifer Wortman

Faculty
Jennifer Wortman is the author of the story collection This. This. This. Is. Love. Love. Love. (Split/Lip Press, 2019), named the Denver Westword 2020 pick for best new short-story collection, the 2019 Foreword INDIES bronze winner for short stories, and a finalist for the Colorado... Read More →
Friday June 12, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction, Multi-Genre

1:30pm MDT

POV Jumpstart
Friday June 12, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
If you’ve ever found yourself lost in a workshop, listening to someone talk about the “first person plural” or the limitations of “close third,” you’re not alone. Perspective and point-of-view can be daunting, even to experienced writers. In this generative, no-pressure session, we’ll look at the various kinds of POV a writer can use, and why. We’ll experiment with different...
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Speakers
avatar for Amanda Rea

Amanda Rea

Faculty
Amanda Rea's stories and essays have appeared in Harper's, Best American Mystery Stories, One Story, American Short Fiction, Freeman’s, The Missouri Review, The Kenyon Review, The Sun, Electric Literature's Recommended Reading, Indiana Review, Iowa Review, New South, Lit Hub, and... Read More →
Friday June 12, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction, Nonfiction/Memoir

1:30pm MDT

Your Dark Materials
Friday June 12, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
It’s easy to write a story—you just have your characters do things, think, and engage in witty dialogue. But it’s difficult to write an excellent story—you have to expose something vital (maybe even dark, certainly elemental) that lurks in your subconscious, that speaks to your true self. If you’re unwilling to dig around and go deep, you’ll be forever writing perfectly fine stories...
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Speakers
avatar for William Haywood Henderson

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 →
Friday June 12, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction, Multi-Genre

1:30pm MDT

Orbweaving a Book of Essays
Friday June 12, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Do you dream of a book of essays, but need help finding a shape to cradle your vision? In this workshop, we’ll break out of linear thinking and into the many dimensions that can hold a book—from conception to publication. We’ll discuss themes, portals, organizational tools, and story-holding shapes (many from nature, such as the orbweaver’s spider web, which lent structure to my book)....
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Speakers
avatar for Christina Rivera

Christina Rivera

Faculty
Christina Rivera is a Pushcart Prize-winning essayist and ecofeminist writer whose debut book, My Oceans: Essays of Water, Whales, and Women (Curbstone Books/Northwestern University Press), received the IPNE Gold Award in Creative Nonfiction, a Best Debut designation from the Chicago... Read More →
Friday June 12, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Nonfiction/Memoir

1:30pm MDT

Speculative Nonfiction
Friday June 12, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Essayists, memoirists, and writers of hybrid nonfiction have long navigated the line between emotional truth and factual truth in search of meaning. In this hands-on, discussion-driven craft seminar, we’ll clarify the distinction between invention, lying, and the use of imagination and speculation as instruments of discovery. We’ll explore practical strategies for making our work deeper and...
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Speakers
avatar for Harrison Candelaria Fletcher

Harrison Candelaria Fletcher

Faculty
Harrison Candelaria Fletcher is the author of the essay collection, Descanso for My Father, the memoir, Presentimiento: A Life in Dreams, and his newest, Finding Querencia: Essays from In Between. Recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, Autumn House... Read More →
Friday June 12, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Nonfiction/Memoir, Multi-Genre

1:30pm MDT

True Crimes: The Challenges of Writing Homicide Stories (V)
Friday June 12, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Virtual
Register Here!
In this seminar, we'll explore the challenges of telling true crime stories: from capturing the essence of the cases to managing ethical sensitivity. To understand how masters do it, we will read David Carr, Marcela Turati, Truman Capote, Emmanuel Carrère, Óscar Martínez and others. We'll learn from their techniques on research, structure, and writing. A seminar for writers, journalists, and...
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Speakers
avatar for Javier Sinay

Javier Sinay

Faculty
Javier Sinay is a writer and journalist. His books include The Murders of Moises Ville (Restless Books, 2022–Nominated for Book of the Year, 2023 CrimeCon C.L.U.E. Awards/original title: Los crímenes de Moisés Ville), Camino al Este, Cuba Stone (in collaboration), and Sangre joven... Read More →
Friday June 12, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Virtual
  Nonfiction/Memoir, Multi-Genre

1:30pm MDT

Writing Through Chronic Illness and/or Disability: A Reclamation
Friday June 12, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
TBA
Register Here!
What does it mean to tell the story of a body that has been misunderstood, dismissed, or translated through the language of medicine? In this class, writers living with chronic illness and/or disability will workshop up to 1200 words of a personal essay, a poem, a short story, or a chapter from a longer work-in-progress, with an emphasis on shaping narrative, refining voice, and sustaining...
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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 →
Friday June 12, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Nonfiction/Memoir

1:30pm MDT

How to Tell Time: Narrative in Poetry
Friday June 12, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
While poetry doesn’t require narrative, readers are often searching for it. In this course, we will discuss time and movement in poetry, and the many tools that help us to “drive” a poem and determine what kind of time we are telling. Through reading, discussion, and generative prompts, we will explore image, sound, rhythm, meter, juxtaposition, form, and to deepen our understanding of...
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Speakers
avatar for Suzi Q Smith

Suzi Q Smith

Faculty
Suzi Q. Smith is an award-winning artist, organizer, and educator who lives in Denver, Colorado. She has created, curated, coached, and taught in Denver for over 20 years, managing the largest poetry festivals that Denver has seen to date. A TEDx speaker multiple times, Suzi has performed... Read More →
Friday June 12, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Poetry

4:00pm MDT

Writing From Weakness
Friday June 12, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Zadie Smith advises writers to “avoid your weaknesses.” With all due respect to Smith, sometimes our so-called weaknesses produce the best writing. In this generative class, we’ll embrace our weaknesses—personal, artistic, and physical—to see what power we can find. For writers of all levels and genres who don’t mind getting a little uncomfortable.
Speakers
avatar for Jennifer Wortman

Jennifer Wortman

Faculty
Jennifer Wortman is the author of the story collection This. This. This. Is. Love. Love. Love. (Split/Lip Press, 2019), named the Denver Westword 2020 pick for best new short-story collection, the 2019 Foreword INDIES bronze winner for short stories, and a finalist for the Colorado... Read More →
Friday June 12, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  All Genres

4:00pm MDT

Dynamic Dialogue
Friday June 12, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Strong dialogue brings characters to life in a way no amount of exposition can. It crystallizes relationships, advances the plot, provides texture and humor and heartbreak. In the words of Elizabeth Bowen: “Speech is what the characters do to each other.” It’s also when the reader is allowed to participate most fully in the world you’ve created. So let’s not shy away from it. In this...
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Speakers
avatar for Amanda Rea

Amanda Rea

Faculty
Amanda Rea's stories and essays have appeared in Harper's, Best American Mystery Stories, One Story, American Short Fiction, Freeman’s, The Missouri Review, The Kenyon Review, The Sun, Electric Literature's Recommended Reading, Indiana Review, Iowa Review, New South, Lit Hub, and... Read More →
Friday June 12, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction, Nonfiction/Memoir

4:00pm MDT

In the Trenches with Historical Fiction
Friday June 12, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
In historical fiction, you want to stay true to the period but resonate with modern readers. To feel like life, not a history book. So, how do our characters’ words capture the era? How does society decree they will relate to each other? Can you create an accurate world without overwhelming description? We'll explore shaping dialogue, choosing vocabulary, and making the best use of our research....
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Speakers
avatar for Terri Lewis

Terri Lewis

Faculty
Terri Lewis fell in love with medieval history in college. Not the dates or wars, but the mysterious daily lives of the people. Building on this love, she read and traveled widely, and finally, two sentences in a book bought at Windsor Castle led her to write her debut novel, Behold... Read More →
Friday June 12, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction

4:00pm MDT

Telling Stories in a Time of Fire: How to Write within the Climate Crisis
Friday June 12, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
“The future is not yet written,” says Rebecca Solnit, “[because] we are writing it now.” Even when hope feels harder than ever to maintain, the most effective single act of environmental conservation and protest is to tell stories. In this class, we’ll read and discuss writers across different genres, like Barry Lopez, Paisley Rekdal, Richard Powers, and Robin Wall Kimmerer. Their work...
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Speakers
avatar for Alexander Lumans

Alexander Lumans

Editor
Alexander Lumans was awarded a 2018 NEA Creative Writing Grant in Fiction. He received fellowships in 2015 and 2024 for expeditions with The Arctic Circle Residency and he was the Spring 2014 Philip Roth Resident at Bucknell University. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in... Read More →
Friday June 12, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction, Multi-Genre

4:00pm MDT

The Character Interview: Your Protagonist is Lying to You
Friday June 12, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Every character has secrets. It's your job as a writer to uncover them. In this craft workshop, we'll put your main characters in the hot seat and ask the tough questions that reveal who they really are, what they want, and what they're hiding from you. Through guided exercises and group discussion, you'll learn how to interrogate your characters to uncover hidden motivations, fears,...
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Speakers
avatar for Lior Torenberg

Lior Torenberg

Faculty
Lior Torenberg’s work has been published by One Story, MAYDAY, the Poetry Society of New York, and others. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from New York University and graduated from the Lighthouse Writers Workshop’s Book Project. Just Watch Me is her first novel.
Friday June 12, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction, Multi-Genre

4:00pm MDT

Time and Time and Time Again
Friday June 12, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
In this lecture and discussion, we'll consider time as a formal component of narrative, essayistic, and lyrical writing. Moving beyond the distinction between scene and summary, we'll introduce techniques for mapping a story's time, and consider what happens when we stop or step outside of time's passage. We'll also experiment with time as a generative tool. By the session's end, we'll depart with...
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Speakers
avatar for Kyle Beachy

Kyle Beachy

Faculty
Kyle Beachy is a novelist and essayist living in New Mexico. His memoir-in-essays, The Most Fun Thing (Grand Central, 2021), was named a Best Book of 2021 by NPR and Electric Lit. His writing has appeared in The Paris Review, Harvard Review, The Point, Portable Gray, Southwest Review... Read More →
Friday June 12, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction, Multi-Genre

4:00pm MDT

Contemporary American Women Poets 2026
Friday June 12, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Many living, breathing American women poets have written spectacular books in the last two years. Now in its seventh Lit Fest iteration, in preparation for this class I will sample nearly four dozen poetry collections from large and small presses. Danusha Lameris, Tara Stringfellow, Han Vanderhart and Diane Seuss are in the running, plus a long list of new poets to come. Continuing a tradition, we...
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Speakers
avatar for Lynn Wagner

Lynn Wagner

Faculty
Lynn Wagner is the author of No Blues This Raucous Song, which won the Slapering Hol Chapbook competition. She received an MFA from the University of Pittsburgh, where she won the Academy of American Poets prize. She has earned fellowships to the Virginia Center of the Creative Arts... Read More →
Friday June 12, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Poetry

4:00pm MDT

How To Be An Author For Hire (V)
Friday June 12, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Virtual
Register Here!
Want to write a book, but don't have a fully fleshed out concept or professional contacts in the publishing industry yet? With IP projects and other book-related content creation, publishers have ideas. They need writers to bring them to life. The same is often true for entrepreneurs, educational institutions, and businesses. Come learn about these lesser-known paths to becoming a traditionally...
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Speakers
avatar for Rachel Werner

Rachel Werner

Faculty
Rachel Werner is the author of the kidlit FLOODS (Capstone 2022), MOVING AND GROOVING TO FILLMORE'S BEAT (Capstone 2023), and THE GLAM WORLD TOUR (Capstone 2025) as well as several new titles in Capstone's Pebble Explore series such as ADA LOVELACE CREATES AN ALGORITHM and the forthcoming... Read More →
Friday June 12, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Virtual
  Publishing/Career

4:00pm MDT

How to Self-Publish on a Budget
Friday June 12, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
What do The Martian, The Tale of Peter Rabbit, and Fifty Shades of Grey have in common? They were all originally self-published! Traditional publishing isn't the best fit for every project or every writer. But many authors who choose to self-publish often find themselves in trouble—ripped off by dubious vanity presses that will charge tens of thousands of dollars to do what you can do for a few...
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Speakers
avatar for Ari Schneider

Ari Schneider

Faculty
Ari Schneider is a senior writer at Mountain Gazette and the author of Stolen Headstones: One Family's Forgotten Holocaust Story. He has contributed to The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Slate, Vogue, and Playboy. His work has also appeared alongside stories b... Read More →
Friday June 12, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Publishing/Career

5:00pm MDT

Friday Faculty Reading and Happy Hour: Arvin, Berndt, Henry, Smith, and Tyson
Friday June 12, 2026 5:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Hear readings from members of Lighthouse’s faculty while enjoying some of our Happy Hour offerings.Hear readings from members of Lighthouse’s faculty while enjoying some of our Happy Hour offerings.Our exciting roster:Nick ArvinNini BerndtMichael J. HenrySuzi Q. SmithTiffany Quay TysonThis is the in-person version of this event. If you’re interested in the Livestream version, click here.We...
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Friday June 12, 2026 5:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  All Genres

5:00pm MDT

Friday Faculty Reading and Happy Hour: Arvin, Berndt, Henry, Smith, and Tyson (Livestream)
Friday June 12, 2026 5:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Virtual
Register Here!
Hear readings from members of Lighthouse’s faculty while enjoying some of our Happy Hour offerings.
Our exciting roster:
  • Nick Arvin
  • Nini Berndt
  • Michael J. Henry
  • Suzi Q. Smith
  • Tiffany Quay Tyson
This is the Livestream version of this event, if you'd like to attend this in-person, click here.
Friday June 12, 2026 5:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Virtual
  All Genres

6:15pm MDT

Weekend Advanced Workshop Orientation
Friday June 12, 2026 6:15pm - 6:55pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Writers taking workshops with Melissa Broder, Heather Christle, Ingrid Rojas Contreras, Layli Long Soldier, and Megha Majumdar,  join us on Friday afternoon for quick introductions to your instructor and fellow classmates and a tour of the Lit Fest campus. Stay for a visit to the food trucks, happy hour, and a CPR "Turn the Page" with Colorado Matters Interview at 7PM.
Friday June 12, 2026 6:15pm - 6:55pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  All Genres

7:00pm MDT

Turn the Page with Colorado Matters, featuring Ryan Warner and Rachel Weaver
Friday June 12, 2026 7:00pm - 8:15pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
A newer Lit Fest tradition: Colorado Public Radio's "Turn the Page with Colorado Matters" comes to Lighthouse for a live, on-stage recording, this year with our own Rachel Weaver. Pick up her memoir, Dizzy, at the pop-up bookstore, then settle in as Ryan Warner— the most recognizable voice in Denver—does what he does best, this time exploring Rachel's account of a mysterious illness, the...
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Speakers
avatar for Ryan Warner

Ryan Warner

Host, Colorado Public Radio
yan Warner is senior host of Colorado Matters, the flagship daily interview program from CPR News. His voice is heard on frequencies around the state as he talks with Coloradans from all walks of life — politicians, scientists, artists, activists and others. Ryan's interviews with... Read More →
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 →
Friday June 12, 2026 7:00pm - 8:15pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  All Genres

7:00pm MDT

Turn the Page with Ryan Warner and Rachel Weaver (Livestream)
Friday June 12, 2026 7:00pm - 8:15pm MDT
Virtual
Register Here!
A newer Lit Fest tradition: Colorado Public Radio's "Turn the Page with Colorado Matters" comes to Lighthouse for a live, on-stage recording, this year with our own Rachel Weaver. Pick up her memoir, Dizzy, at the pop-up bookstore, then settle in as Ryan Warner— the most recognizable voice in Denver—does what he does best, this time exploring Rachel's account of a mysterious illness, the...
See More →
Speakers
avatar for Ryan Warner

Ryan Warner

Host, Colorado Public Radio
yan Warner is senior host of Colorado Matters, the flagship daily interview program from CPR News. His voice is heard on frequencies around the state as he talks with Coloradans from all walks of life — politicians, scientists, artists, activists and others. Ryan's interviews with... Read More →
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 →
Friday June 12, 2026 7:00pm - 8:15pm MDT
Virtual
  All Genres
 
Saturday, June 13
 

8:30am MDT

Advanced Weekend Fiction Intensive: Narrative Movement with Megha Majumdar
Saturday June 13, 2026 8:30am - 12:00pm MDT
TBA
How does a story move? What constitutes successful movement, and what can we learn from moments where the story fails to achieve its own goals? With particular attention to plot, structure, character evolution, and logic, we’ll use this critique-based workshop to examine these questions as they pertain to participants' short stories or excerpts from longer work. We’ll begin workshop by having...
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Speakers
avatar for Megha Majumdar

Megha Majumdar

Visiting Author
Megha Majumdar is the author of the National Book Award longlisted and Kirkus Prize finalist novel A Guardian and a Thief. Her first book, the New York Times bestselling novel A Burning, was nominated for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize... Read More →
Saturday June 13, 2026 8:30am - 12:00pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Fiction

8:30am MDT

Advanced Weekend Hybrid Workshop: Games Writers Play with Heather Christle
Saturday June 13, 2026 8:30am - 12:00pm MDT
TBA
Engaging in play strengthens our linguistic abilities and our capacity to imagine other ways to move through a day (or a life). This workshop will bring people together to play with language as a group and as individuals. We will work to lift ourselves and each other out of ruts worn into our minds. We will pick up strings of words and ask "What would happen if we took this in a different...
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Speakers
avatar for Heather Christle

Heather Christle

Visiting Author
Heather Christle is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Paper Crown. She has also published two works of nonfiction: In the Rhododendrons: A Memoir with Appearances by Virginia Woolf and The Crying Book. Her work has appeared in London Review of Books, The Nation... Read More →
Saturday June 13, 2026 8:30am - 12:00pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Poetry, Nonfiction/Memoir

9:00am MDT

The Creative Act: Finding Flow in Flaw (V)
Saturday June 13, 2026 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Virtual
Register Here!
Inspired by Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act, this generative workshop will loosen your sense of perfectionism and open the door to creative possibility. Through the practices of stillness, attention, and mindful observation, we’ll quiet the inner critic, welcome flaws on the page, and make them part of the creative process. Guided exercises will turn mistakes into unexpected openings and reveal...
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Speakers
avatar for Ladane Nasseri

Ladane Nasseri

Faculty
Ladane Nasseri is a journalist and writer. A former Middle East correspondent for Bloomberg News where she led Iran’s news coverage, Ladane has reported for a decade and a half from Tehran, Dubai, and Beirut. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, McSweeney’s, Businessweek... Read More →
Saturday June 13, 2026 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Virtual
  All Genres

9:00am MDT

Desire and Power
Saturday June 13, 2026 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Desire is a fundamental element of character-building, yet in too many drafts, character desires lack urgency or are too easily thwarted or fulfilled. In this seminar, we’ll discuss different ways to pump up the stakes and, even better, consider the sparks that can fly when multiple characters have multiple, competing desires. How can tension be built through power dynamics? What are the ways in...
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Speakers
avatar for Dino Enrique Piacentini

Dino Enrique Piacentini

Faculty
Dino Enrique Piacentini grew up in Los Angeles, lived in San Francisco for twenty years, and has also, at various times, set down stakes in Houston, Oaxaca, Champaign, and Prague. His debut novel, Invasion of the Daffodils, about a Mexican-American family living on an island off the... Read More →
Saturday June 13, 2026 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction, Multi-Genre

9:00am MDT

Haunted Landscapes: Writing Place as Presence
Saturday June 13, 2026 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
In this generative workshop, we’ll go about the project of animating setting as character. Through prompts and discussion, we’ll explore how landscape can embody memory, loss, and the uncanny—whether rural, urban, or imagined. Come ready to write!
Speakers
avatar for Hillary Leftwich

Hillary Leftwich

Faculty
Hillary Leftwich is a neurodivergent, multimedia writer and the author of Ghosts Are Just Strangers Who Know How to Knock (CCM Press, 2019 and Agape Editions, 2023 new edition), Aura (Future Tense Books and Blackstone Audio Publishing, 2022), and Saint Dymphna’s Playbook (forthcoming... Read More →
Saturday June 13, 2026 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction, Multi-Genre

9:00am MDT

Say Less, Mean More: Writing with Subtext
Saturday June 13, 2026 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Learn how to layer meaning beneath dialogue and description so your characters reveal as much in silence as they do in speech. We’ll analyze short examples, then practice writing scenes where the real tension simmers beneath the words.
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 →
Saturday June 13, 2026 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction, Nonfiction/Memoir

9:00am MDT

Revision is the Doorway to a Poem's (R)evolution
Saturday June 13, 2026 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
This seminar will begin with an artist talk focused on revision. We’ll look at the (r)evolution of selected poems and lyrical essays from personal archives—from their raw and earnest first attempts into their final forms. We’ll explore the process of research and material collection; intellectual/emotional considerations; and the detachment from initial ideas and embrace of new directions...
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Speakers
avatar for Layli Long Soldier

Layli Long Soldier

Visiting Author
Layli Long Soldier is author of the collection Whereas (Graywolf Press, 2017), which won the National Books Critics Circle award, the 2018 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her poems and critical work have appeared in POETRY Magazine, The New... Read More →
Saturday June 13, 2026 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Poetry

9:00am MDT

Revision is the Doorway to a Poem's (R)evolution (Livestream)
Saturday June 13, 2026 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Virtual
This seminar will begin with an artist talk focused on revision. We’ll look at the (r)evolution of selected poems and lyrical essays from personal archives—from their raw and earnest first attempts into their final forms. We’ll explore the process of research and material collection; intellectual/emotional considerations; and the detachment from initial ideas and embrace of new directions...
See More →
Speakers
avatar for Layli Long Soldier

Layli Long Soldier

Visiting Author
Layli Long Soldier is author of the collection Whereas (Graywolf Press, 2017), which won the National Books Critics Circle award, the 2018 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her poems and critical work have appeared in POETRY Magazine, The New... Read More →
Saturday June 13, 2026 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Virtual
  Poetry

9:00am MDT

Two-Day Intensive: Plotting Your Course—The Major Turning Points Every Story Needs
Saturday June 13, 2026 9:00am - 12:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Plotting your novel doesn’t have to feel like pulling teeth. Writers will learn about the plot points roadmap—the five major plot points in every story that you need to know before starting your first draft. We'll talk about the three-act structure, theme as the touchpoint for every story, and how plot and character rely on each other and propel each other forward. We’ll identify the five...
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Speakers
avatar for Jenny Elder Moke

Jenny Elder Moke

Faculty
Jenny Elder Moke is the award-winning author of children’s and adult literature. She enjoys fast-paced adventures with plenty of mysteries, surprising turns, and laughs along the way. Her most recent release is A Spark in the Cinders. She is also the author of Hood and the Curse... Read More →
Saturday June 13, 2026 9:00am - 12:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction, YA/Children's

9:00am MDT

Two-Day Intensive: The Visionary Movement
Saturday June 13, 2026 9:00am - 12:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Using fundamental techniques such as writing like a camera and tracking the sensory experience of a POV character, we'll learn how to write successful visionary movements such as hallucinations, delusions, distorted realities, daydreams, and interior fantasy lives. We'll study literary examples and film sequences as models for how to convince our reader they too are seeing and experiencing what...
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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 →
Saturday June 13, 2026 9:00am - 12:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction, Multi-Genre

9:00am MDT

Two-Day Intensive: The Personal. The Political. The Poetic.
Saturday June 13, 2026 9:00am - 12:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
To the tune of all things protest song and poetry: In this generative workshop, we'll read poems, speeches, essays, and lyrics that offer a lens on liberation and resistance, while highlighting the personal voice and experience. We'll consider the long-held traditions of poetry as a tool for social change and examine our own relationships to that history. Participants will write from prompts and...
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Speakers
avatar for Suzi Q Smith

Suzi Q Smith

Faculty
Suzi Q. Smith is an award-winning artist, organizer, and educator who lives in Denver, Colorado. She has created, curated, coached, and taught in Denver for over 20 years, managing the largest poetry festivals that Denver has seen to date. A TEDx speaker multiple times, Suzi has performed... Read More →
Saturday June 13, 2026 9:00am - 12:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Poetry, Multi-Genre

9:00am MDT

Two-Day Intensive: The Undeniable Voice—Craft Lessons from Vigil by George Saunders
Saturday June 13, 2026 9:00am - Sunday June 14, 2026 12:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
The latest novel from Booker Prize–winning George Saunders, Vigil, takes place in a single evening—the last one, in fact, for dying oil baron K.J. Boone. During his twilight hours, Boone finds himself transported to otherworldly realms populated by the living and the dead. And everyone he meets has an urgent story to tell. In this class, we’ll dissect Saunders’s meaningful storytelling...
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Speakers
avatar for Alexander Lumans

Alexander Lumans

Editor
Alexander Lumans was awarded a 2018 NEA Creative Writing Grant in Fiction. He received fellowships in 2015 and 2024 for expeditions with The Arctic Circle Residency and he was the Spring 2014 Philip Roth Resident at Bucknell University. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in... Read More →
Saturday June 13, 2026 9:00am - Sunday June 14, 2026 12:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction

10:00am MDT

Queer Creatives Drag Bingo Brunch
Saturday June 13, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
It’s brunch! And this year we're bringing back bingo with local drag queen Alice Glamoure! Come celebrate Lit Fest with delicious food from Scratch Catering Services, cocktails, mocktails, and some friendly bingo competition with your fellow LGBTQIA+ writers and creatives. The first three winners will receive prizes, including a choice of a book written by Lighthouse’s Queer Creatives...
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Saturday June 13, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  All Genres

12:00pm MDT

Lunchtime Business Panel: Clips and Careers—Editors of Lit Mags, Newspapers, and Outlets Tell All
Saturday June 13, 2026 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
TBA
Register Here!
Panelists include: Camille Bromley (NYT Opinion Special Projects), Alexander Lumans (American Short Fiction), Holly Amos (Poetry), and Jane Huffman (Denver Quarterly)Publishing a poem, essay, news piece, or short story can be a huge accomplishment on its own, but it can also be the first move in a much longer game. This panel brings together editors from literary magazines,...
See More →
Speakers
avatar for Jane Huffman

Jane Huffman

Jane Huffman’s debut collection, PUBLIC ABSTRACT, won the 2023 APR/Honickman First Book Prize, selected by Dana Levin. Buy a copy of PUBLIC ABSTRACT here. Jane is a doctoral student in poetry at the University of Denver and is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She found... Read More →
avatar for Holly Amos

Holly Amos

Poetry magazine
As the Managing Editor at the Poetry Foundation, Holly has over a decade of experience curating print and digital content for the leading organization dedicated to poetry in the US and beyond. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Columbia College Chicago and a BFA in Creative Writing from... Read More →
avatar for Camille Bromley

Camille Bromley

Editor, Special Projects, New York Times
Camille Bromley is a special projects editor for The New York Times Opinion desk, specializing in features and longform. Before coming to the Times, she was a features editor at Wired, The Believer, Harper’s, and the Columbia Journalism Review. The stories she's edited have be... Read More →
avatar for Alexander Lumans

Alexander Lumans

Editor
Alexander Lumans was awarded a 2018 NEA Creative Writing Grant in Fiction. He received fellowships in 2015 and 2024 for expeditions with The Arctic Circle Residency and he was the Spring 2014 Philip Roth Resident at Bucknell University. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in... Read More →
Saturday June 13, 2026 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  All Genres

12:00pm MDT

Lunchtime Business Panel: Clips and Careers—Editors of Lit Mags, Newspapers, and Outlets Tell All (Livestream)
Saturday June 13, 2026 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
Virtual
Register Here!
Panelists include: Camille Bromley (NYT Opinion Special Projects), Alexander Lumans (American Short Fiction), Holly Amos (Poetry), and Jane Huffman (Denver Quarterly)Publishing a poem, essay, news piece, or short story can be a huge accomplishment on its own, but it can also be the first move in a much longer game. This panel brings together editors from literary magazines,...
See More →
Speakers
avatar for Jane Huffman

Jane Huffman

Jane Huffman’s debut collection, PUBLIC ABSTRACT, won the 2023 APR/Honickman First Book Prize, selected by Dana Levin. Buy a copy of PUBLIC ABSTRACT here. Jane is a doctoral student in poetry at the University of Denver and is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She found... Read More →
avatar for Holly Amos

Holly Amos

Poetry magazine
As the Managing Editor at the Poetry Foundation, Holly has over a decade of experience curating print and digital content for the leading organization dedicated to poetry in the US and beyond. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Columbia College Chicago and a BFA in Creative Writing from... Read More →
avatar for Alexander Lumans

Alexander Lumans

Editor
Alexander Lumans was awarded a 2018 NEA Creative Writing Grant in Fiction. He received fellowships in 2015 and 2024 for expeditions with The Arctic Circle Residency and he was the Spring 2014 Philip Roth Resident at Bucknell University. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in... Read More →
avatar for Camille Bromley

Camille Bromley

Editor, Special Projects, New York Times
Camille Bromley is a special projects editor for The New York Times Opinion desk, specializing in features and longform. Before coming to the Times, she was a features editor at Wired, The Believer, Harper’s, and the Columbia Journalism Review. The stories she's edited have be... Read More →
Saturday June 13, 2026 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
Virtual
  All Genres

1:00pm MDT

Two-Day Intensive: Strange and Mundane—Pulling the Odd from the Everyday
Saturday June 13, 2026 1:00pm - 4:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
The minutia of our lives is a rich and wild and wonderful place. In this course, we'll look at a variety of writers—Joy Williams, Grace Paley, Lynne Tillman, Stephen Dixon, Donald Barthelme, George Saunders— to see how they mine the strangenesses of the everyday. In looking at these writers, we’ll identify places in our own work where the fascinating inner life of the work we do, the food we...
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Speakers
avatar for Nini Berndt

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 →
Saturday June 13, 2026 1:00pm - 4:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction

1:00pm MDT

Two-Day Intensive: Your Voice on the Page
Saturday June 13, 2026 1:00pm - 4:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Your fully developed literary voice is as individual as your brain, your intelligence, your sight. It will set you apart from all other writers. Taking inspiration from Ben Yagoda’s The Sound on the Page and Jane Allison’s Meander, Spiral, Explode, we’ll examine your voice, discover its strengths and individuality, and ultimately help you break through to an even more distinct and complex...
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Speakers
avatar for William Haywood Henderson

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 →
Saturday June 13, 2026 1:00pm - 4:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction, Multi-Genre

1:00pm MDT

Two-Day Intensive: Borrowed Structures—Finding Poetic Form in Unexpected Places
Saturday June 13, 2026 1:00pm - 4:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
What happens when a poem takes its shape from an art installation, divination text, or folk calendar entry? In this class, we'll explore how poets borrow forms—structures adapted from non-poetic sources—to create surprising and generative constraints. Through a range of examples, we’ll explore how to identify promising forms in the world around you and adapt them for poem making.
Speakers
avatar for Radha Marcum

Radha Marcum

Faculty
Radha Marcum, MFA, won the 2023 Washington Prize for her forthcoming collection, Pine Soot Tendon Bone (2024). She was also awarded the New Mexico Book Award in 2018 for her first collection of poems, Bloodline (3: A Taos Press), about her grandfather's work building the first atomic... Read More →
Saturday June 13, 2026 1:00pm - 4:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Poetry

1:30pm MDT

Is My Character An Asshole?
Saturday June 13, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
WWE Hall-of-Famer Scott Hall famously said, "Bad times don't last, but bad guys do." Is it true that bad characters last longer in our imaginations than the good ones? How does this compete with conventional wisdom that encourages likeable characters? We’ll examine common character tropes in fiction and nonfiction, as well as the mandate that characters can (or should?) change over the course of...
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Speakers
avatar for Pardeep Toor

Pardeep Toor

Faculty
Pardeep Toor's writing has appeared in the Best Debut Short Stories 2021, The PEN America Dau Prize, Catapult, Electric Literature, Longreads, and Southern Humanities Review. His short story collection, Hands, is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press.
Saturday June 13, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction, Nonfiction/Memoir

1:30pm MDT

Literary Ephemera
Saturday June 13, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
In this generative, multi-genre course, we’ll explore alternative approaches to storytelling, such as erasure, literary collage, photo captions and image-text hybrids. We’ll create narratives relying less on plot and more on association, juxtaposition and negative space. This seminar will be run like an art studio – with live prompts and plenty of cutting, pasting, erasing and replacing....
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Speakers
avatar for Harrison Candelaria Fletcher

Harrison Candelaria Fletcher

Faculty
Harrison Candelaria Fletcher is the author of the essay collection, Descanso for My Father, the memoir, Presentimiento: A Life in Dreams, and his newest, Finding Querencia: Essays from In Between. Recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, Autumn House... Read More →
Saturday June 13, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction, Multi-Genre

1:30pm MDT

Sentence Surgery: Another Live Editing Seminar
Saturday June 13, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Sentences in fiction are subject to different demands than sentences in nonfiction, and thus (perhaps) must be constructed and revised differently. In this multi-hour live-edit session, we'll collectively play with various sentences and paragraphs as a means of exploring this idea, beginning with a sentence that every typist knows by heart, then mauling passages from some famous/infamous works,...
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Speakers
avatar for David Wroblewski

David Wroblewski

Faculty
David Wroblewski is the author, most recently, of the novel Familiaris, his followup to the internationally bestselling The Story Of Edgar Sawtelle, an Oprah Book Club pick, Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, winner of the Colorado Book Award, Indie Choice Best... Read More →
Saturday June 13, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction

1:30pm MDT

Structure through Motif
Saturday June 13, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
A motif is a recurring element in a piece of art—an object, action, idea, sensation, or just a word or line. Saris. Doors opening and closing. Variations of the word “small.” And, like characters, motifs can develop over the course of a narrative, adding layers of suggestion and meaning. They can even serve as a narrative’s primary structural element. In this seminar, we’ll consider...
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Speakers
avatar for Dino Enrique Piacentini

Dino Enrique Piacentini

Faculty
Dino Enrique Piacentini grew up in Los Angeles, lived in San Francisco for twenty years, and has also, at various times, set down stakes in Houston, Oaxaca, Champaign, and Prague. His debut novel, Invasion of the Daffodils, about a Mexican-American family living on an island off the... Read More →
Saturday June 13, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction, Multi-Genre

1:30pm MDT

The Laundry Line (V)
Saturday June 13, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Virtual
Register Here!
In his writing workshops, the journalist Michael Pollan says that every piece of writing, whether fiction or nonfiction, needs a "laundry line": a main conceptual through-line that is strong yet flexible enough to hold the various vignettes, reflections, and analyses that make up the piece. This craft seminar will provide an opportunity for writers to begin developing a sturdy laundry line for...
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Speakers
avatar for Natalie Hodges

Natalie Hodges

Faculty
Born and raised in Denver, Natalie Hodges has performed as a classical violinist throughout Colorado and in New York, Boston, Paris, and the Italian Piedmont, as well as at the Aspen Music Festival and the Stowe Tango Music Festival. Her first book, Uncommon Measure: A Journey Through... Read More →
Saturday June 13, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Virtual
  Fiction, Nonfiction/Memoir

1:30pm MDT

Sell Essays That Boost Your Book's Potential
Saturday June 13, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Trying to build your platform to sell your memoir book proposal? I was in that situation last year. This seminar will help writers brainstorm a variety of reported essay angles for their main personal story, and craft pitches for reported stories that include the right balance of research and connection to readers. We’ll talk about finding contacts for editors and then grabbing their attention....
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Speakers
avatar for Amanda McCracken

Amanda McCracken

Faculty
Amanda McCracken is a freelance journalist who is passionate about experiences that highlight the intersection of wellness and relationships. A few places her work has been published include the New York Times, Washington Post, Guardian, National Geographic, Elle, Outside, NPR, ESPN... Read More →
Saturday June 13, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Nonfiction/Memoir

1:30pm MDT

Advanced Weekend Fiction Workshop: Using Image with Melissa Broder
Saturday June 13, 2026 1:30pm - 5:00pm MDT
TBA
This immersive workshop invites writers of all levels to explore the vibrant intersection of visual art and the written word. Ekphrastic writing, poetry, or prose is directly inspired by works of art, and it offers a powerful way to deepen perception, escape the linear mind during drafting, and evolve originality and surprise in one’s artistic voice. Through guided in-class exercises and...
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Speakers
avatar for Melissa Broder

Melissa Broder

Visiting Author
Melissa Broder is the author of the novels DEATH VALLEY, MILK FED, and THE PISCES, the essay collection SO SAD TODAY, and five collections of poems, including SUPERDOOM: Selected Poems. Her books are translated in over twelve languages. Broder has written for The New York Times, Harper's... Read More →
Saturday June 13, 2026 1:30pm - 5:00pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Fiction

1:30pm MDT

Advanced Weekend Nonfiction Workshop: Truth in Nonfiction with Ingrid Rojas Contreras
Saturday June 13, 2026 1:30pm - 5:00pm MDT
TBA
This workshop is for all writers working in nonfiction, established or otherwise. The rigors of nonfiction lie in telling the truth, fact-checking the truth, and working with material evidence. The factually accurate in nonfiction is of utmost importance—but how do we write the factually accurate when facts can be slippery? How, and what, do we write when the history of a people hasn’t been...
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Speakers
avatar for Ingrid Rojas Contreras

Ingrid Rojas Contreras

Visiting Author
Ingrid Rojas Contreras is the award winning author of Fruit of the Drunken Tree and The Man Who Could Move Clouds. She holds an MFA from Columbia College Chicago and currently teaches fiction at the University of San Francisco. Contreras was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia, but... Read More →
Saturday June 13, 2026 1:30pm - 5:00pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Nonfiction/Memoir

1:30pm MDT

Advanced Weekend Poetry Workshop: Freedom Before the Revolt with Layli Long Soldier
Saturday June 13, 2026 1:30pm - 5:00pm MDT
TBA
Poems have their own lives and their own minds, it seems. At some point, even with our best intentions, we may encounter resistance from the poem. Or worse, the poem may revolt and fall apart. So perhaps, the poem is like a young adult: It wants to say something and needs the freedom to do so. For this to happen, we as poets must set aside our expectations and predeterminations of what a poem...
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Speakers
avatar for Layli Long Soldier

Layli Long Soldier

Visiting Author
Layli Long Soldier is author of the collection Whereas (Graywolf Press, 2017), which won the National Books Critics Circle award, the 2018 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her poems and critical work have appeared in POETRY Magazine, The New... Read More →
Saturday June 13, 2026 1:30pm - 5:00pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Poetry

4:00pm MDT

I Shot the Sheriff: Writing True/Untrue Confessions
Saturday June 13, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Literary confessions generate sympathy, create immediacy, and solidify the confessor’s relationship with an empathetic reader. But how do you navigate the trickier aspects of confession: drama vs. self-indulgence, getting the reader to care, and scariest of all, what your mother might think? In this class, we’ll examine how the experts navigate their real and imaginary confessions, and plunder...
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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 →
Saturday June 13, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction, Multi-Genre

4:00pm MDT

Literary Swagger: Writing Prose that Makes Readers Take Notice
Saturday June 13, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Have you ever read a passage in a book that made you want to applaud, howl, laugh, and most of all, underline? Some writers have literary swagger, and don’t think that people don’t notice! Swagger can arrive through confidence, humor, decisiveness, or intensity of feeling. Swagger happens when the voice of the prose rises to meet the pitch of the story in an important moment. In this class...
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Speakers
avatar for Jenny Shank

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 →
Saturday June 13, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction, Multi-Genre

4:00pm MDT

Out of Character
Saturday June 13, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
TBA
Register Here!
Contrary to everything writers are told about crafting credible characters, this workshop will explore when and why your characters should do something “out of character.” Practicing techniques we’ll discuss in class, we’ll further develop characters, build tension, create conflict, and/or work toward revelation and resolution. We will use low-stakes fiction-focused writing exercises to...
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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 →
Saturday June 13, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Fiction, Multi-Genre

4:00pm MDT

Unspooling Local Lore: Bringing Your Setting to Life
Saturday June 13, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Even as many of us can quickly identify the eccentricities and mythology of places we’ve called home, it can be enormously challenging to fully capture a place on the page. In this two-hour, generative craft seminar, writers will have the opportunity to name, map, and explicate the urban legends, suburban gossip, and local lore that defines the towns and cities we call home, and, in doing so,...
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Speakers
avatar for Chris Vanjonack

Chris Vanjonack

Faculty
Chris Vanjonack is a writer and educator from Fort Collins, Colorado. A recipient of an AWP Intro Journals Award, his fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared in One Story, Barrelhouse, Electric Literature, Ninth Letter, DIAGRAM, Quarterly West, Shenandoah, and elsewhere. In... Read More →
Saturday June 13, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction, Multi-Genre

4:00pm MDT

Lyric Essay: Gathering Fragments
Saturday June 13, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
In this workshop, we will read examples and begin drafting our own lyric essays. The lyric essay is a form that brings together elements of poetry, memoir, and creative nonfiction to invite a reader to an experience. Sometimes fragmented, the lyric essay allows us to draw from our own memories, impressions, ideations, questions and research to weave a narrative about our individual and collective...
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Speakers
avatar for Suzi Q Smith

Suzi Q Smith

Faculty
Suzi Q. Smith is an award-winning artist, organizer, and educator who lives in Denver, Colorado. She has created, curated, coached, and taught in Denver for over 20 years, managing the largest poetry festivals that Denver has seen to date. A TEDx speaker multiple times, Suzi has performed... Read More →
Saturday June 13, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Nonfiction/Memoir, Multi-Genre

4:00pm MDT

Rhapsody (V)
Saturday June 13, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Virtual
Register Here!
Rhapsody: an expression of ecstasy or uncontrolled emotion. This is not a genre we hear much about in poetry classes, but this workshop invites writers to play in language and sing out their most unbridled feelings. We will look at how sound and image—and even the use of punctuation and the page—can open the poem to articulate what we might otherwise hesitate to express.
Speakers
avatar for Elizabeth Robinson

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 →
Saturday June 13, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Virtual
  Poetry

5:00pm MDT

Saturday Faculty Reading and Happy Hour: Rivera, Sawyer, O'Grady, Tucker, and Weaver
Saturday June 13, 2026 5:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Hear readings from members of Lighthouse’s faculty while enjoying some of our Happy Hour offerings.Our LineupChristina Rivera Joy SawyerMegan O'GradySeth Brady TuckerRachel WeaverWe will have a Sober Safe 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...
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Saturday June 13, 2026 5:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  All Genres

5:00pm MDT

Saturday Faculty Reading and Happy Hour: Rivera, Sawyer, O'Grady, Tucker, and Weaver (Livestream)
Saturday June 13, 2026 5:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Virtual
Register Here!
Hear readings from members of Lighthouse’s faculty while enjoying some of our Happy Hour offerings. This is the Livestream version of this event, if you'd like to attend this in-person, click here.
Our Lineup
Christina Rivera
Joy Sawyer
Megan O'Grady
Seth Brady Tucker
Rachel Weaver
Speakers
FT
Saturday June 13, 2026 5:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Virtual
  All Genres

7:00pm MDT

Visiting Authors Reading: Melissa Broder, Heather Christle, Layli Long Soldier, Megha Majumdar, and Ingrid Rojas Contreras
Saturday June 13, 2026 7:00pm - 8:15pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register 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 in-person version of this event.We will have a Sober Safe Space available on the second floor during this event. This is a welcoming,...
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Saturday June 13, 2026 7:00pm - 8:15pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  All Genres

7:00pm MDT

Visiting Authors Reading: Melissa Broder, Heather Christle, Layli Long Soldier, Megha Majumdar, and Ingrid Rojas Contreras (Livestream)
Saturday June 13, 2026 7:00pm - 8:15pm MDT
Virtual
Register 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.
Saturday June 13, 2026 7:00pm - 8:15pm MDT
Virtual
  All Genres
 
Sunday, June 14
 

8:30am MDT

Advanced Weekend Fiction Intensive: Narrative Movement with Megha Majumdar
Sunday June 14, 2026 8:30am - 12:00pm MDT
TBA
How does a story move? What constitutes successful movement, and what can we learn from moments where the story fails to achieve its own goals? With particular attention to plot, structure, character evolution, and logic, we’ll use this critique-based workshop to examine these questions as they pertain to participants' short stories or excerpts from longer work. We’ll begin workshop by having...
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Speakers
avatar for Megha Majumdar

Megha Majumdar

Visiting Author
Megha Majumdar is the author of the National Book Award longlisted and Kirkus Prize finalist novel A Guardian and a Thief. Her first book, the New York Times bestselling novel A Burning, was nominated for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize... Read More →
Sunday June 14, 2026 8:30am - 12:00pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Fiction

8:30am MDT

Advanced Weekend Hybrid Workshop: Games Writers Play with Heather Christle
Sunday June 14, 2026 8:30am - 12:00pm MDT
TBA
Engaging in play strengthens our linguistic abilities and our capacity to imagine other ways to move through a day (or a life). This workshop will bring people together to play with language as a group and as individuals. We will work to lift ourselves and each other out of ruts worn into our minds. We will pick up strings of words and ask "What would happen if we took this in a different...
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Speakers
avatar for Heather Christle

Heather Christle

Visiting Author
Heather Christle is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Paper Crown. She has also published two works of nonfiction: In the Rhododendrons: A Memoir with Appearances by Virginia Woolf and The Crying Book. Her work has appeared in London Review of Books, The Nation... Read More →
Sunday June 14, 2026 8:30am - 12:00pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Poetry, Nonfiction/Memoir

9:00am MDT

Becoming a Channel
Sunday June 14, 2026 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
In drafting and editing, there are often two different drives at play: our conception of what the text is “about” vs. the story that wants to be told. How, as writers, do we dismantle our egos, transcend the clutter of the conscious mind, and surrender control—even in a rigorous editing process—to tap into the fundamental heart of a story? In this seminar, writers will be given a toolkit...
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Speakers
avatar for Melissa Broder

Melissa Broder

Visiting Author
Melissa Broder is the author of the novels DEATH VALLEY, MILK FED, and THE PISCES, the essay collection SO SAD TODAY, and five collections of poems, including SUPERDOOM: Selected Poems. Her books are translated in over twelve languages. Broder has written for The New York Times, Harper's... Read More →
Sunday June 14, 2026 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction

9:00am MDT

Becoming a Channel (Livestream)
Sunday June 14, 2026 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Virtual
In drafting and editing, there are often two different drives at play: our conception of what the text is “about” vs. the story that wants to be told. How, as writers, do we dismantle our egos, transcend the clutter of the conscious mind, and surrender control—even in a rigorous editing process—to tap into the fundamental heart of a story?In this seminar, writers will be given a toolkit...
See More →
Speakers
avatar for Melissa Broder

Melissa Broder

Visiting Author
Melissa Broder is the author of the novels DEATH VALLEY, MILK FED, and THE PISCES, the essay collection SO SAD TODAY, and five collections of poems, including SUPERDOOM: Selected Poems. Her books are translated in over twelve languages. Broder has written for The New York Times, Harper's... Read More →
Sunday June 14, 2026 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Virtual
  Fiction

9:00am MDT

How to Write Sex Scenes without Shame
Sunday June 14, 2026 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Even though people think about sex all the time, and even have it occasionally, writers tend to shy away from the subject. Which is crazy. Because sex is the one experience that makes us all hopeful and horny and embarrassed and vulnerable. In this freewheeling afternoon, we’ll look at the work of Mary Gordon, James Salter, and other literary horndogs in an effort to figure out how to infuse our...
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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 →
Sunday June 14, 2026 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction

9:00am MDT

Creative Research: Turning Curiosity into Story (V)
Sunday June 14, 2026 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Virtual
Register Here!
At the start of every great story is a question and the need to explore or understand better. In this class, we’ll explore how intentional research can enrich your creative work and give it depth, texture, and authority. Drawing from my background in journalism, I’ll show you practical ways to design a research plan, find reliable sources, and conduct meaningful interviews with relatives and...
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Speakers
avatar for Ladane Nasseri

Ladane Nasseri

Faculty
Ladane Nasseri is a journalist and writer. A former Middle East correspondent for Bloomberg News where she led Iran’s news coverage, Ladane has reported for a decade and a half from Tehran, Dubai, and Beirut. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, McSweeney’s, Businessweek... Read More →
Sunday June 14, 2026 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Virtual
  Nonfiction/Memoir, Multi-Genre

9:00am MDT

Listen to the Work
Sunday June 14, 2026 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Writers of all genres are invited to take part in an experiment designed to help you listen. In the midst of creating a work, it’s necessary to invest time in dreaming what it could be. Throughout our process, we may make statements, diagram plot, lay down tidy plans for where a work will go, what it will mean, and what it will sound like. But your best-laid plans might be concealing a more...
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Speakers
avatar for Ingrid Rojas Contreras

Ingrid Rojas Contreras

Visiting Author
Ingrid Rojas Contreras is the award winning author of Fruit of the Drunken Tree and The Man Who Could Move Clouds. She holds an MFA from Columbia College Chicago and currently teaches fiction at the University of San Francisco. Contreras was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia, but... Read More →
Sunday June 14, 2026 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Nonfiction/Memoir

9:00am MDT

Re/vision: Nurture Your Inner Poetry Editor
Sunday June 14, 2026 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Revision is where mediocre poems become excellent ones—but how do you know what to change? This practical class offers concrete strategies for seeing your work with fresh eyes and revising with purpose. We'll cover five techniques for gaining critical distance from your drafts and five actionable revision approaches for poems that haven't yet reached their potential. You'll also learn how to...
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Speakers
avatar for Radha Marcum

Radha Marcum

Faculty
Radha Marcum, MFA, won the 2023 Washington Prize for her forthcoming collection, Pine Soot Tendon Bone (2024). She was also awarded the New Mexico Book Award in 2018 for her first collection of poems, Bloodline (3: A Taos Press), about her grandfather's work building the first atomic... Read More →
Sunday June 14, 2026 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Poetry

9:00am MDT

Two-Day Intensive: Plotting Your Course—The Major Turning Points Every Story Needs
Sunday June 14, 2026 9:00am - 12:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Plotting your novel doesn’t have to feel like pulling teeth. Writers will learn about the plot points roadmap—the five major plot points in every story that you need to know before starting your first draft. We'll talk about the three-act structure, theme as the touchpoint for every story, and how plot and character rely on each other and propel each other forward. We’ll identify the five...
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Speakers
avatar for Jenny Elder Moke

Jenny Elder Moke

Faculty
Jenny Elder Moke is the award-winning author of children’s and adult literature. She enjoys fast-paced adventures with plenty of mysteries, surprising turns, and laughs along the way. Her most recent release is A Spark in the Cinders. She is also the author of Hood and the Curse... Read More →
Sunday June 14, 2026 9:00am - 12:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction, YA/Children's

9:00am MDT

Two-Day Intensive: The Undeniable Voice—Craft Lessons from Vigil by George Saunders
Sunday June 14, 2026 9:00am - 12:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
The latest novel from Booker Prize–winning George Saunders, Vigil, takes place in a single evening—the last one, in fact, for dying oil baron K.J. Boone. During his twilight hours, Boone finds himself transported to otherworldly realms populated by the living and the dead. And everyone he meets has an urgent story to tell. In this class, we’ll dissect Saunders’s meaningful storytelling...
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Speakers
avatar for Alexander Lumans

Alexander Lumans

Editor
Alexander Lumans was awarded a 2018 NEA Creative Writing Grant in Fiction. He received fellowships in 2015 and 2024 for expeditions with The Arctic Circle Residency and he was the Spring 2014 Philip Roth Resident at Bucknell University. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in... Read More →
Sunday June 14, 2026 9:00am - 12:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction

9:00am MDT

Two-Day Intensive: The Visionary Movement
Sunday June 14, 2026 9:00am - 12:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Using fundamental techniques such as writing like a camera and tracking the sensory experience of a POV character, we'll learn how to write successful visionary movements such as hallucinations, delusions, distorted realities, daydreams, and interior fantasy lives. We'll study literary examples and film sequences as models for how to convince our reader they too are seeing and experiencing what...
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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 →
Sunday June 14, 2026 9:00am - 12:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction, Multi-Genre

9:00am MDT

Two-Day Intensive: The Personal. The Political. The Poetic.
Sunday June 14, 2026 9:00am - 12:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
To the tune of all things protest song and poetry: In this generative workshop, we'll read poems, speeches, essays, and lyrics that offer a lens on liberation and resistance, while highlighting the personal voice and experience. We'll consider the long-held traditions of poetry as a tool for social change and examine our own relationships to that history. Participants will write from prompts and...
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Speakers
avatar for Suzi Q Smith

Suzi Q Smith

Faculty
Suzi Q. Smith is an award-winning artist, organizer, and educator who lives in Denver, Colorado. She has created, curated, coached, and taught in Denver for over 20 years, managing the largest poetry festivals that Denver has seen to date. A TEDx speaker multiple times, Suzi has performed... Read More →
Sunday June 14, 2026 9:00am - 12:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Poetry, Multi-Genre

12:00pm MDT

Lunchtime Business Panel: Dear Agent
Sunday June 14, 2026 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
TBA
Register Here!
Panelists include: Kurestin Armada (Root Literary), Nicole Cunningham (Trellis Literary Management), and Julie Stevenson (Massie, McQuilkin & Altman Literary Agents).The slush pile is real, the inbox is overwhelming, and the rules keep changing—especially now. Join Shana Kelly and several agents for a candid conversation about what the querying process actually looks like in 2026: how they find...
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Speakers
avatar for Kurestin Aramada

Kurestin Aramada

Agent, Root Literary
Kurestin is an agent at Root Literary. She wants to work with creators who are creatively ambitious, whohave a whole boatload of ideas and are always pushing themselves to write what's most interesting andchallenging to them; these are the people that are always growing and writing... Read More →
avatar for Nicole Cunningham

Nicole Cunningham

Agent, Trellis Literary
Nicole Cunningham joined Trellis Literary Management in 2025, after nine years with The Book Group. She represents an exciting list of authors across a wide range of adult fiction, as well as select nonfiction.
Nicole is seeking literary, upmarket, and book club fiction. Across genres, she falls in love at the level of the line first, and wants to be dazzled by the quality, control, and creativity of the language itself. She’s drawn to fiction that’s immersive, smart, and voice-driven... Read More →
avatar for Julie Stevenson

Julie Stevenson

Agent, Massie, McQuilken & Altman
JULIE STEVENSON represents literary and upmarket fiction, suspense, memoir, graphic novels, narrative nonfiction, young adult fiction, and children’s picture books. She is drawn to powerful storytelling in these categories and looks for unforgettable characters, an authorial command... Read More →
Sunday June 14, 2026 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  All Genres

12:00pm MDT

Lunchtime Business Panel: Dear Agent (Livestream)
Sunday June 14, 2026 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
Virtual
Register Here!
Panelists include: Kurestin Armada (Root Literary), Nicole Cunningham (Trellis Literary Management), and Julie Stevenson (Massie, McQuilkin & Altman Literary Agents).The slush pile is real, the inbox is overwhelming, and the rules keep changing—especially now. Join Shana Kelly and several agents for a candid conversation about what the querying process actually looks like in 2026: how they find...
See More →
Speakers
avatar for Kurestin Aramada

Kurestin Aramada

Agent, Root Literary
Kurestin is an agent at Root Literary. She wants to work with creators who are creatively ambitious, whohave a whole boatload of ideas and are always pushing themselves to write what's most interesting andchallenging to them; these are the people that are always growing and writing... Read More →
avatar for Nicole Cunningham

Nicole Cunningham

Agent, Trellis Literary
Nicole Cunningham joined Trellis Literary Management in 2025, after nine years with The Book Group. She represents an exciting list of authors across a wide range of adult fiction, as well as select nonfiction.
Nicole is seeking literary, upmarket, and book club fiction. Across genres, she falls in love at the level of the line first, and wants to be dazzled by the quality, control, and creativity of the language itself. She’s drawn to fiction that’s immersive, smart, and voice-driven... Read More →
avatar for Julie Stevenson

Julie Stevenson

Agent, Massie, McQuilken & Altman
JULIE STEVENSON represents literary and upmarket fiction, suspense, memoir, graphic novels, narrative nonfiction, young adult fiction, and children’s picture books. She is drawn to powerful storytelling in these categories and looks for unforgettable characters, an authorial command... Read More →
Sunday June 14, 2026 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
Virtual
  All Genres

1:00pm MDT

Two-Day Intensive: Strange and Mundane—Pulling the Odd from the Everyday
Sunday June 14, 2026 1:00pm - 4:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
The minutia of our lives is a rich and wild and wonderful place. In this course, we'll look at a variety of writers—Joy Williams, Grace Paley, Lynne Tillman, Stephen Dixon, Donald Barthelme, George Saunders— to see how they mine the strangenesses of the everyday. In looking at these writers, we’ll identify places in our own work where the fascinating inner life of the work we do, the food we...
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Speakers
avatar for Nini Berndt

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 →
Sunday June 14, 2026 1:00pm - 4:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction

1:00pm MDT

Two-Day Intensive: Your Voice on the Page
Sunday June 14, 2026 1:00pm - 4:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Your fully developed literary voice is as individual as your brain, your intelligence, your sight. It will set you apart from all other writers. Taking inspiration from Ben Yagoda’s The Sound on the Page and Jane Allison’s Meander, Spiral, Explode, we’ll examine your voice, discover its strengths and individuality, and ultimately help you break through to an even more distinct and complex...
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Speakers
avatar for William Haywood Henderson

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 →
Sunday June 14, 2026 1:00pm - 4:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction, Multi-Genre

1:00pm MDT

Two-Day Intensive: Borrowed Structures—Finding Poetic Form in Unexpected Places
Sunday June 14, 2026 1:00pm - 4:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
What happens when a poem takes its shape from an art installation, divination text, or folk calendar entry? In this class, we'll explore how poets borrow forms—structures adapted from non-poetic sources—to create surprising and generative constraints. Through a range of examples, we’ll explore how to identify promising forms in the world around you and adapt them for poem making.
Speakers
avatar for Radha Marcum

Radha Marcum

Faculty
Radha Marcum, MFA, won the 2023 Washington Prize for her forthcoming collection, Pine Soot Tendon Bone (2024). She was also awarded the New Mexico Book Award in 2018 for her first collection of poems, Bloodline (3: A Taos Press), about her grandfather's work building the first atomic... Read More →
Sunday June 14, 2026 1:00pm - 4:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Poetry

1:30pm MDT

Structure and Alchemy: Writing Climactic Transformations (V)
Sunday June 14, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Virtual
Register Here!
Fiction writers are conditioned to assume the climax of our novel/short story is simply the point of highest action. But this is a narrow, purely situational definition of climax. And for nonfiction writers, the necessity of a climax in our structure is mentioned as an afterthought if at all. This seminar will reconceptualize narrative climax as an alchemical transformation deeply connected to a...
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Speakers
avatar for Natalie Hodges

Natalie Hodges

Faculty
Born and raised in Denver, Natalie Hodges has performed as a classical violinist throughout Colorado and in New York, Boston, Paris, and the Italian Piedmont, as well as at the Aspen Music Festival and the Stowe Tango Music Festival. Her first book, Uncommon Measure: A Journey Through... Read More →
Sunday June 14, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Virtual
  All Genres

1:30pm MDT

Beyond the Laugh: How and Why to Use Humor
Sunday June 14, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
There are serious reasons to crack a few jokes in your manuscript. In this class, we'll discuss how to use humor as a narrative tool. From deepening plot to establishing tone, we'll explore how and why comedy is an essential function in storytelling. The class will include close readings of examples from Twain to Tulathimutte, discussions of the various definitions of humor, and prompts using...
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Speakers
avatar for Kathleen Boland

Kathleen Boland

Faculty
Kathleen Boland is the author of the novel Scavengers. Her fiction has appeared in Tin House, Conjunctions, and Gulf Coast, among other places, and she has received support from the Tin House Summer Workshop, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Vermont Studio Center. She... Read More →
Sunday June 14, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction, Nonfiction/Memoir

1:30pm MDT

Going Out in Style
Sunday June 14, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
We will explore the “baroque” and “plain song” writing styles. When we talk baroque, consider Angela Carter's adjective-heavy prose, filled with language demanding a reader have a dictionary nearby. In the case of plain song, Ernest Hemingway, a journalist, employs prose so simple it almost reads like Dick & Jane. While every writer cultivates their own style and individual voice, this...
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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 →
Sunday June 14, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction, Multi-Genre

1:30pm MDT

Plot: A Conjuror's Guide
Sunday June 14, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
An often daunting aspect of writing fiction can be conjuring a plot that snags and keeps a reader's attention. In this craft seminar, we’ll break down different ways to think about plot, and we’ll examine how plot can be an essential element of the stories we are trying to tell. With a mix of lecture, writing exercises, and some time for Q&A at the end, we’ll work to make plot less...
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Speakers
avatar for Megha Majumdar

Megha Majumdar

Visiting Author
Megha Majumdar is the author of the National Book Award longlisted and Kirkus Prize finalist novel A Guardian and a Thief. Her first book, the New York Times bestselling novel A Burning, was nominated for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize... Read More →
Sunday June 14, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction

1:30pm MDT

Hike and Write: Urban Style
Sunday June 14, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
The tradition of nature writing goes back to the Romantics and before, most likely because we are creatures of place. In this hands-on and feet-walking session, we'll explore some of the 'natural' settings just outside of Lighthouse, using the landscape as inspiration, and see what we find, and what the world around us has to say. We won't be walking miles on end, but please wear comfortable...
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Speakers
avatar for Michael Henry

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 →
Sunday June 14, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Nonfiction/Memoir, Fiction

1:30pm MDT

Turn your essay into a TEDx Talk (V)
Sunday June 14, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Virtual
Register Here!
This course will demystify the TEDx process by helping writers find a TEDx organization taking applications, understand what organizers are looking for in your application, apply for a TEDx talk to be selected, and learn the difference between writing a TED talk script and an essay. I'll provide handouts with templates and links to helpful resources. My content will include personal anecdotes and...
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Speakers
avatar for Amanda McCracken

Amanda McCracken

Faculty
Amanda McCracken is a freelance journalist who is passionate about experiences that highlight the intersection of wellness and relationships. A few places her work has been published include the New York Times, Washington Post, Guardian, National Geographic, Elle, Outside, NPR, ESPN... Read More →
Sunday June 14, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Virtual
  Nonfiction/Memoir, Publishing/Career

1:30pm MDT

Are Words Alive?
Sunday June 14, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
This craft talk will focus on strategies for collaborating with words as living beings. How do we make ourselves available to their arrival? How do we treat them when we meet? What do they desire? What do they hate? We'll look to possible clues from poets, writers, and critics who knew language before us, as well as theories nabbed from neuroscience and predictive coding. We may not answer all our...
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Speakers
avatar for Heather Christle

Heather Christle

Visiting Author
Heather Christle is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Paper Crown. She has also published two works of nonfiction: In the Rhododendrons: A Memoir with Appearances by Virginia Woolf and The Crying Book. Her work has appeared in London Review of Books, The Nation... Read More →
Sunday June 14, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Poetry, Nonfiction/Memoir

1:30pm MDT

Advanced Weekend Fiction Workshop: Using Image with Melissa Broder
Sunday June 14, 2026 1:30pm - 5:00pm MDT
TBA
This immersive workshop invites writers of all levels to explore the vibrant intersection of visual art and the written word. Ekphrastic writing, poetry, or prose is directly inspired by works of art, and it offers a powerful way to deepen perception, escape the linear mind during drafting, and evolve originality and surprise in one’s artistic voice. Through guided in-class exercises and...
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Speakers
avatar for Melissa Broder

Melissa Broder

Visiting Author
Melissa Broder is the author of the novels DEATH VALLEY, MILK FED, and THE PISCES, the essay collection SO SAD TODAY, and five collections of poems, including SUPERDOOM: Selected Poems. Her books are translated in over twelve languages. Broder has written for The New York Times, Harper's... Read More →
Sunday June 14, 2026 1:30pm - 5:00pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Fiction

1:30pm MDT

Advanced Weekend Nonfiction Workshop: Truth in Nonfiction with Ingrid Rojas Contreras
Sunday June 14, 2026 1:30pm - 5:00pm MDT
TBA
This workshop is for all writers working in nonfiction, established or otherwise. The rigors of nonfiction lie in telling the truth, fact-checking the truth, and working with material evidence. The factually accurate in nonfiction is of utmost importance—but how do we write the factually accurate when facts can be slippery? How, and what, do we write when the history of a people hasn’t been...
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Speakers
avatar for Ingrid Rojas Contreras

Ingrid Rojas Contreras

Visiting Author
Ingrid Rojas Contreras is the award winning author of Fruit of the Drunken Tree and The Man Who Could Move Clouds. She holds an MFA from Columbia College Chicago and currently teaches fiction at the University of San Francisco. Contreras was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia, but... Read More →
Sunday June 14, 2026 1:30pm - 5:00pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Nonfiction/Memoir

1:30pm MDT

Advanced Weekend Poetry Workshop: Freedom Before the Revolt with Layli Long Soldier
Sunday June 14, 2026 1:30pm - 5:00pm MDT
TBA
Poems have their own lives and their own minds, it seems. At some point, even with our best intentions, we may encounter resistance from the poem. Or worse, the poem may revolt and fall apart. So perhaps, the poem is like a young adult: It wants to say something and needs the freedom to do so. For this to happen, we as poets must set aside our expectations and predeterminations of what a poem...
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Speakers
avatar for Layli Long Soldier

Layli Long Soldier

Visiting Author
Layli Long Soldier is author of the collection Whereas (Graywolf Press, 2017), which won the National Books Critics Circle award, the 2018 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her poems and critical work have appeared in POETRY Magazine, The New... Read More →
Sunday June 14, 2026 1:30pm - 5:00pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Poetry

5:00pm MDT

Weeklong Advanced Workshop Orientation
Sunday June 14, 2026 5:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Writers taking workshops with Steve Almond, Emily Rapp Black, Christopher Castellani, Andre Dubus III, Danielle Evans, Mat Johnson, Rebecca Makkai, Paul Muldoon, Eileen Myles, Beth Nguyen, Rachel Louise Snyder, and Brandon Johnson, join us on Sunday early evening for quick introductions to your instructor and fellow classmates and a tour of the Lit Fest campus. Stay for the Lit Fest Kickoff Party,...
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Sunday June 14, 2026 5:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  All Genres

6:00pm MDT

Lit Fest Kickoff Party
Sunday June 14, 2026 6:00pm - 8:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
The kickoff party brings together participants and instructors for a night of celebration. More details coming soon!We will have a Sober Safe 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,...
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Sunday June 14, 2026 6:00pm - 8:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  All Genres
 
Monday, June 15
 

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Fiction Workshop: Finding the Subterranean Story with Danielle Evans
Monday June 15, 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...
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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 →
Monday June 15, 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
Monday June 15, 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...
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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 →
Monday June 15, 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
Monday June 15, 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...
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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 →
Monday June 15, 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
Monday June 15, 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...
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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 →
Monday June 15, 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
Monday June 15, 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...
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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 →
Monday June 15, 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
Monday June 15, 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...
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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 →
Monday June 15, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Fiction

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Nonfiction Workshop: Excavation with Andre Dubus III
Monday June 15, 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...
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Speakers
avatar for Andre Dubus III

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 →
Monday June 15, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Nonfiction/Memoir

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Nonfiction Workshop: Find Your Focus with Beth Nguyen
Monday June 15, 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....
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Speakers
avatar for Beth Nguyen

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 →
Monday June 15, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Nonfiction/Memoir

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Nonfiction Workshop: Mapping the Memoir with Emily Rapp Black
Monday June 15, 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...
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Speakers
avatar for Emily Rapp Black

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 →
Monday June 15, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Nonfiction/Memoir

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Nonfiction Workshop: Shadow Narratives with Rachel Louise Snyder
Monday June 15, 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...
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Speakers
avatar for Rachel Louise Snyder

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 →
Monday June 15, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Nonfiction/Memoir

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Poetry Workshop: Draft Exclusion with Paul Muldoon
Monday June 15, 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...
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Speakers
avatar for Paul Muldoon

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 →
Monday June 15, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Poetry

9:00am MDT

No Genre/All Genre Generative Lab with Eileen Myles
Monday June 15, 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...
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Speakers
avatar for Eileen Myles

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 →
Monday June 15, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Poetry, Multi-Genre

9:00am MDT

Writing for Young Adults
Monday June 15, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
Virtual
Register Here!
Description forthcoming
Speakers
avatar for Kelsey Day

Kelsey Day

Faculty
Kelsey Day is a young adult author and queer Appalachian poet. Their writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Orion Magazine, Freeman’s and more. THE SPIRAL KEY is their first novel for young readers. You can find them online at KelseyDays.com or on Instagram @KelseyDays.
Monday June 15, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
Virtual
  YA/Children's

12:00pm MDT

Lunchtime Business Panel: Through the Fire—Debut Writers on Their First Books
Monday June 15, 2026 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
TBA
Register Here!
Panelists include: Lior Torenberg, Katie Boland, Amanda McCracken, Susan Golomb (Writers House).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...
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Speakers
avatar for Susan Golomb

Susan Golomb

Agent, Writers House
Susan Golomb has been an agent of literary fiction and non-fiction for over 30 years. She founded the Susan Golomb Literary Agency in 1988 with Jonathan Franzen as her first client and joined Writers House in 2015. Her other authors include award winners and bestsellers such as William... Read More →
avatar for Lior Torenberg

Lior Torenberg

Faculty
Lior Torenberg’s work has been published by One Story, MAYDAY, the Poetry Society of New York, and others. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from New York University and graduated from the Lighthouse Writers Workshop’s Book Project. Just Watch Me is her first novel.
avatar for Kathleen Boland

Kathleen Boland

Faculty
Kathleen Boland is the author of the novel Scavengers. Her fiction has appeared in Tin House, Conjunctions, and Gulf Coast, among other places, and she has received support from the Tin House Summer Workshop, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Vermont Studio Center. She... Read More →
avatar for Pardeep Toor

Pardeep Toor

Faculty
Pardeep Toor's writing has appeared in the Best Debut Short Stories 2021, The PEN America Dau Prize, Catapult, Electric Literature, Longreads, and Southern Humanities Review. His short story collection, Hands, is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press.
avatar for Amanda McCracken

Amanda McCracken

Faculty
Amanda McCracken is a freelance journalist who is passionate about experiences that highlight the intersection of wellness and relationships. A few places her work has been published include the New York Times, Washington Post, Guardian, National Geographic, Elle, Outside, NPR, ESPN... Read More →
Monday June 15, 2026 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  All Genres

12:00pm MDT

Lunchtime Business Panel: Through the Fire—Debut Writers on Their First Books (Livestream)
Monday June 15, 2026 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
Virtual
Register Here!
Panelists include: Lior Torenberg, Katie Boland, Amanda McCracken, Susan Golomb (Writers House).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...
See More →
Speakers
avatar for Susan Golomb

Susan Golomb

Agent, Writers House
Susan Golomb has been an agent of literary fiction and non-fiction for over 30 years. She founded the Susan Golomb Literary Agency in 1988 with Jonathan Franzen as her first client and joined Writers House in 2015. Her other authors include award winners and bestsellers such as William... Read More →
avatar for Lior Torenberg

Lior Torenberg

Faculty
Lior Torenberg’s work has been published by One Story, MAYDAY, the Poetry Society of New York, and others. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from New York University and graduated from the Lighthouse Writers Workshop’s Book Project. Just Watch Me is her first novel.
avatar for Kathleen Boland

Kathleen Boland

Faculty
Kathleen Boland is the author of the novel Scavengers. Her fiction has appeared in Tin House, Conjunctions, and Gulf Coast, among other places, and she has received support from the Tin House Summer Workshop, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Vermont Studio Center. She... Read More →
avatar for Pardeep Toor

Pardeep Toor

Faculty
Pardeep Toor's writing has appeared in the Best Debut Short Stories 2021, The PEN America Dau Prize, Catapult, Electric Literature, Longreads, and Southern Humanities Review. His short story collection, Hands, is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press.
avatar for Amanda McCracken

Amanda McCracken

Faculty
Amanda McCracken is a freelance journalist who is passionate about experiences that highlight the intersection of wellness and relationships. A few places her work has been published include the New York Times, Washington Post, Guardian, National Geographic, Elle, Outside, NPR, ESPN... Read More →
Monday June 15, 2026 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
Virtual
  All Genres

1:00pm MDT

Two-Day Intensive: Finish the Nonfiction Book—Everything but the Pages
Monday June 15, 2026 1:00pm - 4:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
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...
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Speakers
avatar for Simone Stolzoff

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 →
Monday June 15, 2026 1:00pm - 4:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Publishing/Career

1:30pm MDT

Advanced Structure Lab: Break the Story Free with Dean Bakopoulos
Monday June 15, 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...
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Speakers
avatar for Dean Bakopoulos

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 →
Monday June 15, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Dramatic Writing

1:30pm MDT

Bait the Hook: Your First Few Pages
Monday June 15, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
The first few pages of a story are the tryout; after that, the reader makes a decision to keep reading or move on. How can you “hook” your readers and immerse them in your narrative world? What techniques do you need to create a firm writer-reader contract? In this content-heavy class, we’ll explore hooks and expositions (a.k.a. beginnings): how to introduce your characters, ground your...
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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 →
Monday June 15, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction, Multi-Genre

1:30pm MDT

Bait the Hook: Your First Few Pages (Livestream)
Monday June 15, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Virtual
The first few pages of a story are the tryout; after that, the reader makes a decision to keep reading or move on. How can you “hook” your readers and immerse them in your narrative world? What techniques do you need to create a firm writer-reader contract? In this content-heavy class, we’ll explore hooks and expositions (a.k.a. beginnings): how to introduce your characters, ground your...
See More →
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 →
Monday June 15, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Virtual
  Fiction, Multi-Genre

1:30pm MDT

Every Sentence an Ocean: Concision and Compression in Flash-Fiction
Monday June 15, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
As anyone who’s ever sat down to write a flash story or essay knows, it can be incredibly difficult to fit an entire narrative into 1,000 words or less. Even more difficult: lacing that narrative with enough tension and emotional complexity to make your readers feel like they’ve devoured a much longer work. In this two-hour craft seminar, we’ll break down George Saunders’ 1995 flash...
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Speakers
avatar for Chris Vanjonack

Chris Vanjonack

Faculty
Chris Vanjonack is a writer and educator from Fort Collins, Colorado. A recipient of an AWP Intro Journals Award, his fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared in One Story, Barrelhouse, Electric Literature, Ninth Letter, DIAGRAM, Quarterly West, Shenandoah, and elsewhere. In... Read More →
Monday June 15, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction

1:30pm MDT

From Morally Gray to Black: Creating Flawed and Unscrupulous Protagonists
Monday June 15, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Bret Easton Ellis, author of American Psycho, claims: “The best way to create a memorable character is to make them both repellent and fascinating at the same time.” Indeed, more crucial than the likability of a protagonist is his/her charisma—even if that charisma only serves to hide complicated or even depraved psyches. In this class, we’ll explore some morally questionable protagonists...
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Speakers
avatar for Jon Bassoff

Jon Bassoff

Faculty
Jon Bassoff is the author of ten novels, including his latest, The Memory Ward (Blackstone Publishing). His mountain gothic novel, Corrosion, has been translated in French and German and was nominated for the Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere, France’s biggest crime fiction award... Read More →
Monday June 15, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction

1:30pm MDT

Novel Whispering
Monday June 15, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Have a novel that you just can’t finish, or finish well? Considering writing a novel and want an insight into how to actually complete one? In this seminar, we'll identify hurdles in completing the process of novel creation, and we’ll learn how to get over them. The seminar will provide participants with practical techniques to kickstart their manuscripts, such as applied story structuring,...
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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 →
Monday June 15, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction

1:30pm MDT

Novel Whispering (Livestream)
Monday June 15, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Virtual
Have a novel that you just can’t finish, or finish well? Considering writing a novel and want an insight into how to actually complete one? In this seminar, we'll identify hurdles in completing the process of novel creation, and we’ll learn how to get over them. The seminar will provide participants with practical techniques to kickstart their manuscripts, such as applied story structuring,...
See More →
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 →
Monday June 15, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Virtual
  Fiction

1:30pm MDT

From Patient to Protagonist: Claiming Agency in Your Own Story
Monday June 15, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Illness can make us feel passive, but memoir requires an active center. In this session, we’ll practice techniques for crafting a narrator who drives the story—even when circumstances are beyond their control. In this class, we’ll read brief examples and then draft scenes that externalize symptoms through action, imagery, and interaction. We’ll practice crafting vivid, fresh metaphors and...
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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 →
Monday June 15, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Nonfiction/Memoir

1:30pm MDT

Squash For Golfers: Line Movement in Prose and Poetry
Monday June 15, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
The defining characteristic of verse, formal or free, is the fact that the line makes a turn (versus) at some point before it reaches the right hand margin. There are any number of reasons why and places where that turn might be made. This seminar will focus on developing strategies for improving our sense of the line ending through readings of poems by Erika Jong, Joyce Carol Oates, W.G. Sebald,...
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Speakers
avatar for Paul Muldoon

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 →
Monday June 15, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Poetry

1:30pm MDT

Author Branding for Introverts and Impostors (V)
Monday June 15, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Virtual
Register Here!
Authors in traditional publishing, indie publishing, and self-publishing are all expected to do a tremendous amount of the lifting in their own promotion. This part of the job of being an author stirs lots of emotional issues for many authors. This session will explore how to identify your own brand as an author and harness the power of enthusiasm to bypass imposter syndrome and prioritize...
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Speakers
avatar for Henry Lien

Henry Lien

Faculty
Henry Lien is a 2012 graduate of Clarion West Writers Workshop, Seattle. He is the author of the critically-acclaimed and award-winning Peasprout Chen middle grade fantasy series, which he began writing under the guidance of George R.R. Martin, Kelly Link, and Chuck Palahniuk at Clarion... Read More →
Monday June 15, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Virtual
  Publishing/Career

4:00pm MDT

Creatures of Impulse: What Fictions Writers Can Learn From TV
Monday June 15, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
This session will focus on the way popular TV series hook viewers, construct scenes, build characters, and structure episodes. We’ll examine how this can easily be adapted to add energy to short stories, memoirs, novels, and maybe even poems! We will likely use the pilot (first) episodes of Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Atlanta, and Insecure as examples, so you may want to watch those in advance. I'll...
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Speakers
avatar for Dean Bakopoulos

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 →
Monday June 15, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Dramatic Writing

4:00pm MDT

How to Stop Worldbuilding and Start Worldconjuring
Monday June 15, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Writers wanting to build worlds are met with difficult questions: Should I describe the city’s sewer system for ten or twenty pages? How much to explain Frontier Utah’s rural bartering system of spiderwebs? These are also the wrong questions. As writer Lincoln Michel says, “Worldbuilding imposes. Worldconjuring collaborates.” In this seminar, we’ll challenge current paradigms for...
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Speakers
avatar for Alexander Lumans

Alexander Lumans

Editor
Alexander Lumans was awarded a 2018 NEA Creative Writing Grant in Fiction. He received fellowships in 2015 and 2024 for expeditions with The Arctic Circle Residency and he was the Spring 2014 Philip Roth Resident at Bucknell University. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in... Read More →
Monday June 15, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction

4:00pm MDT

To Flash Back or Not to Flash Back
Monday June 15, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Good characters come with a past, but is a flashback the only way to let readers know about essential details from before the story’s start? Not necessarily. We’ll look at examples from writers who eschew flashbacks but still give readers a rich sense of a character’s past life, including excerpts from Kent Haruf, Jane Austen, and more. If you choose to use flashbacks, how do you do it well?...
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Speakers
avatar for Jenny Shank

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 →
Monday June 15, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction, Nonfiction/Memoir

4:00pm MDT

Collage as Poetic Practice
Monday June 15, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
What can poets learn from the techniques of collage? In this image & text based seminar, we will discuss and practice collage in both written and visual mediums. Come ready to experiment and to play with textual fragments, images, scissors, paper, and glue. Participants, please bring collage materials (things to cut up).
Speakers
avatar for Andrea Rexilius

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 →
Monday June 15, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Poetry, Multi-Genre

4:00pm MDT

Letting the I Ching Help You Write Your Story (V)
Monday June 15, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Virtual
Register Here!
Philip K. Dick claimed that he did not write one of his greatest novels, The Man in the High Castle, by himself. Dick discovered the I Ching when he began the novel and he claimed the I Ching co-wrote the novel with him. The I Ching is a 3,000 year-old collection of 64 poems. It can be read as philosophy but is most famous as an oracle, using a method of casting coins or yarrow stalks. This...
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Speakers
avatar for Henry Lien

Henry Lien

Faculty
Henry Lien is a 2012 graduate of Clarion West Writers Workshop, Seattle. He is the author of the critically-acclaimed and award-winning Peasprout Chen middle grade fantasy series, which he began writing under the guidance of George R.R. Martin, Kelly Link, and Chuck Palahniuk at Clarion... Read More →
Monday June 15, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Virtual
  Poetry, Multi-Genre

4:00pm MDT

Two-Day Intensive: Emotional Truth—Using Fiction to Tell the Whole Truth and Nothing But the Truth
Monday June 15, 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...
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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 →
Monday June 15, 2026 4:00pm - 7:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction, YA/Children's

4:30pm MDT

Book Project Showcase: Stolzoff, Torenberg, Yun, Lennon, and Leotaud
Monday June 15, 2026 4:30pm - 6:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Come meet our very successful Book Project authors Simone Stolzoff (How to Not Know), Lior Torenberg (Just Watch Me), Marissa Leotaud (Family Affair), John J. Lennon (The Tragedy of True Crime), and Jihyun Yun (And the River Drags Her Down) read from their work and talk about writing their books. Stick around for book signings and Q&A from director William Haywood Henderson and others from the...
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Speakers
avatar for Simone Stolzoff

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 →
avatar for Lior Torenberg

Lior Torenberg

Faculty
Lior Torenberg’s work has been published by One Story, MAYDAY, the Poetry Society of New York, and others. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from New York University and graduated from the Lighthouse Writers Workshop’s Book Project. Just Watch Me is her first novel.
JY
JJ
AM
Monday June 15, 2026 4:30pm - 6:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  All Genres

4:30pm MDT

Book Project Showcase: Stolzoff, Torenberg, Yun, Lennon, and Leotaud (Livestream)
Monday June 15, 2026 4:30pm - 6:30pm MDT
Virtual
Register Here!
Come meet our very successful Book Project authors Simone Stolzoff (How to Not Know), Lior Torenberg (Just Watch Me), Marissa Leotaud (Family Affair), John J. Lennon (The Tragedy of True Crime), and Jihyun Yun (And the River Drags Her Down) read from their work and talk about writing their books. Stick around for book signings and Q&A from director William Haywood Henderson and others from the...
See More →
Speakers
avatar for Simone Stolzoff

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 →
avatar for Lior Torenberg

Lior Torenberg

Faculty
Lior Torenberg’s work has been published by One Story, MAYDAY, the Poetry Society of New York, and others. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from New York University and graduated from the Lighthouse Writers Workshop’s Book Project. Just Watch Me is her first novel.
JY
JJ
AM
Monday June 15, 2026 4:30pm - 6:30pm MDT
Virtual
  All Genres

7:00pm MDT

Visiting Authors Reading: Steve Almond, Danielle Evans, Eileen Myles, and Brandon Taylor
Monday June 15, 2026 7:00pm - 8:15pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register 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 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...
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Monday June 15, 2026 7:00pm - 8:15pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  All Genres

7:00pm MDT

Visiting Authors Reading: Steve Almond, Danielle Evans, Eileen Myles, and Brandon Taylor (Livestream)
Monday June 15, 2026 7:00pm - 8:15pm MDT
Virtual
Register 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.
Monday June 15, 2026 7:00pm - 8:15pm MDT
Virtual
  All Genres

8:30pm MDT

Lit Fest Faculty Reading at Fort Greene Bar: Boland, Hodges, Jia, Morales, and Stolzoff
Monday June 15, 2026 8:30pm - 9:30pm MDT
Fort Greene Bar
Register Here!
Hear readings from members of Lighthouse’s faculty at the storied Fort Greene bar. Grab a drink, enjoy the ambiance, and saddle up for some great readings!
Our roster:
  • Kathleen Boland
  • Natalie Hodges
  • Claire Jia
  • Juan Morales
  • Simone Stolzoff

Monday June 15, 2026 8:30pm - 9:30pm MDT
Fort Greene Bar 321 E 45th Ave, Denver, CO 80216
  All Genres
 
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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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

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...
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Speakers
avatar for Andre Dubus III

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

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....
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Speakers
avatar for Beth Nguyen

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

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...
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Speakers
avatar for Emily Rapp Black

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

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...
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Speakers
avatar for Rachel Louise Snyder

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

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...
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Speakers
avatar for Paul Muldoon

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

9:00am MDT

Literary Lightning: Finding the Poetry in Your Prose (V)
Tuesday June 16, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
Virtual
Register Here!
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...
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Speakers
avatar for Ellen Blum Barish

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

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...
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Speakers
avatar for Eileen Myles

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

12:00pm MDT

Lunchtime Business Panel: After the Debut—Life as a Working Writer
Tuesday June 16, 2026 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
TBA
Register Here!
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...
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Speakers
avatar for Hannah Strouth

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 →
avatar for Nini Berndt

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 →
avatar for Claire Jia

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 →
avatar for Simone Stolzoff

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 →
avatar for Seth Brady Tucker

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

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
Register Here!
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...
See More →
Speakers
avatar for Hannah Strouth

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 →
avatar for Nini Berndt

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 →
avatar for Claire Jia

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 →
avatar for Simone Stolzoff

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 →
avatar for Seth Brady Tucker

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
Virtual
  All Genres

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
Register Here!
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...
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Speakers
avatar for Simone Stolzoff

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 →
Tuesday June 16, 2026 1:00pm - 4:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Publishing/Career

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...
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Speakers
avatar for Dean Bakopoulos

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

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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
See More →
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...
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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

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
Register Here!
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...
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Speakers
avatar for Juan J. Morales

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

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
Register Here!
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...
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Speakers
avatar for Claire Jia

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 →
Tuesday June 16, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Dramatic Writing, 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...
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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,...
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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

Black Doubt, Revision, and Faith
Tuesday June 16, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
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...
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Speakers
avatar for Andre Dubus III

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

4:00pm MDT

Black Doubt, Revision, and Faith (Livestream)
Tuesday June 16, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Virtual
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...
See More →
Speakers
avatar for Andre Dubus III

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 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Virtual
  Nonfiction/Memoir

4:00pm MDT

Symbolism and Metaphor: They Aren’t Just for Fiction
Tuesday June 16, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
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...
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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 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Nonfiction/Memoir

4:00pm MDT

Forms and Functions: Poetic and Otherwise
Tuesday June 16, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
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
avatar for Michael Henry

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

4:00pm MDT

ChatGPT Is My Secretary (V)
Tuesday June 16, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Virtual
Register Here!
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...
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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 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Virtual
  Writing Process, Multi-Genre

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...
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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

4:00pm MDT

Two-Day Intensive: Being a Romantic Poet in the 21st Century
Tuesday June 16, 2026 4:00pm - 7:00pm MDT
Virtual
Register Here!
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
avatar for Elizabeth Robinson

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

4:30pm MDT

Lit Fest Fellows Showcase and Reading
Tuesday June 16, 2026 4:30pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
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 AwardeesReed KuehnMatt EidsonFellowship for Emerging WritersPoetry: Christiana Castillo(selected by Eduardo Corral)Fiction: Marcie AlexanderRunner up: Blake Foster-WagamonDistinguished...
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Tuesday June 16, 2026 4:30pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  All Genres

4:30pm MDT

Lit Fest Fellows Showcase and Reading (Livestream)
Tuesday June 16, 2026 4:30pm - 6:00pm MDT
Virtual
Register Here!
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 AwardeesReed KuehnMatt EidsonFellowship for Emerging WritersPoetry: Christiana Castillo(selected by Eduardo Corral)Fiction: Marcie AlexanderRunner up: Blake Foster-WagamonDistinguished...
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Tuesday June 16, 2026 4:30pm - 6:00pm MDT
Virtual
  All Genres

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

7:00pm MDT

Visiting Authors Reading: Emily Rapp Black, Mat Johnson, Rebecca Makkai, and Beth Nguyen (Livestream)
Tuesday June 16, 2026 7:00pm - 8:15pm MDT
Virtual
Register 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.
Tuesday June 16, 2026 7:00pm - 8:15pm MDT
Virtual
  All Genres
 
Wednesday, June 17
 

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Fiction Workshop: Finding the Subterranean Story with Danielle Evans
Wednesday June 17, 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...
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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 →
Wednesday June 17, 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
Wednesday June 17, 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...
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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 →
Wednesday June 17, 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
Wednesday June 17, 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...
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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 →
Wednesday June 17, 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
Wednesday June 17, 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...
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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 →
Wednesday June 17, 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
Wednesday June 17, 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...
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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 →
Wednesday June 17, 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
Wednesday June 17, 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...
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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 →
Wednesday June 17, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Fiction

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Nonfiction Workshop: Excavation with Andre Dubus III
Wednesday June 17, 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...
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Speakers
avatar for Andre Dubus III

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 →
Wednesday June 17, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Nonfiction/Memoir

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Nonfiction Workshop: Find Your Focus with Beth Nguyen
Wednesday June 17, 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....
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Speakers
avatar for Beth Nguyen

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 →
Wednesday June 17, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Nonfiction/Memoir

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Nonfiction Workshop: Mapping the Memoir with Emily Rapp Black
Wednesday June 17, 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...
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Speakers
avatar for Emily Rapp Black

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 →
Wednesday June 17, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Nonfiction/Memoir

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Nonfiction Workshop: Shadow Narratives with Rachel Louise Snyder
Wednesday June 17, 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...
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Speakers
avatar for Rachel Louise Snyder

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 →
Wednesday June 17, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Nonfiction/Memoir

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Poetry Workshop: Draft Exclusion with Paul Muldoon
Wednesday June 17, 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...
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Speakers
avatar for Paul Muldoon

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 →
Wednesday June 17, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Poetry

9:00am MDT

No Genre/All Genre Generative Lab with Eileen Myles
Wednesday June 17, 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...
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Speakers
avatar for Eileen Myles

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 →
Wednesday June 17, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Poetry, Multi-Genre

12:00pm MDT

Lunchtime Business Panel: Marketing Before, During and After Publication—Practical Strategies for Writers
Wednesday June 17, 2026 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
TBA
Register Here!
Panelists include: Angelique Stevens, Sara Megibow (Megibow Literary Agency), Helen Masvikeni (Megibow Literary Agency), and Megan Posco (Posco Publicity). Writers often dread marketing, but connecting with readers doesn’t have to mean losing yourself in the process. Join us for a panel of writers and agents where we will discuss practical, sustainable strategies for building a solid, authentic...
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Speakers
avatar for Megan Posco

Megan Posco

Megan Posco is a nonfiction book publicist who founded Posco Publicity in 2022 after several years working in-house at publishers including Hachette and Harvard University Press. The books she publicizes are primarily written by journalists and academics, about issues related to criminal... Read More →
avatar for Helen Masvikeni

Helen Masvikeni

Agent, Megibow Literary
Helen Masvikeni brings a fresh and multifaceted perspective to the publishing world. An internationally performing musician and photographer, she has also worked extensively in theater, film, and community engagement. With a strong foundation in business and marketing, Helen has spent... Read More →
avatar for Sara Megibow

Sara Megibow

Agent
Sara Megibow is a literary agent with KT Literary out of Highlands Ranch, CO. She’s worked in publishing since 2006 and represents New York Times bestselling authors including Casey McQuiston (Red, White & Royal Blue), Jason M. Hough (The Darwin Elevator) and Rebecca Roanhorse (Race... Read More →
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 →
Wednesday June 17, 2026 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  All Genres

12:00pm MDT

Lunchtime Business Panel: Marketing Before, During and After Publication—Practical Strategies for Writers (Livestream)
Wednesday June 17, 2026 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
Virtual
Register Here!
Panelists include: Angelique Stevens, Sara Megibow (Megibow Literary Agency), Helen Masvikeni (Megibow Literary Agency), and Megan Posco (Posco Publicity). Writers often dread marketing, but connecting with readers doesn’t have to mean losing yourself in the process. Join us for a panel of writers and agents where we will discuss practical, sustainable strategies for building a solid, authentic...
See More →
Speakers
avatar for Megan Posco

Megan Posco

Megan Posco is a nonfiction book publicist who founded Posco Publicity in 2022 after several years working in-house at publishers including Hachette and Harvard University Press. The books she publicizes are primarily written by journalists and academics, about issues related to criminal... Read More →
avatar for Helen Masvikeni

Helen Masvikeni

Agent, Megibow Literary
Helen Masvikeni brings a fresh and multifaceted perspective to the publishing world. An internationally performing musician and photographer, she has also worked extensively in theater, film, and community engagement. With a strong foundation in business and marketing, Helen has spent... Read More →
avatar for Sara Megibow

Sara Megibow

Agent
Sara Megibow is a literary agent with KT Literary out of Highlands Ranch, CO. She’s worked in publishing since 2006 and represents New York Times bestselling authors including Casey McQuiston (Red, White & Royal Blue), Jason M. Hough (The Darwin Elevator) and Rebecca Roanhorse (Race... Read More →
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 →
Wednesday June 17, 2026 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
Virtual
  All Genres

1:30pm MDT

Advanced Structure Lab: Break the Story Free with Dean Bakopoulos
Wednesday June 17, 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...
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Speakers
avatar for Dean Bakopoulos

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 →
Wednesday June 17, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Dramatic Writing

1:30pm MDT

That's Cinema: Applying Screenwriting Techniques to Novel Writing
Wednesday June 17, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
In this beginner-intermediate course, we will look to film and television to help us outline and visualize our novels. My debut, Wanting, was published this summer by Tin House, and I wrote it utilizing techniques I use every day as a screenwriter. I come from the world of half-hour comedy, which means tight three-act structure, snappy act blows, and characters that change from start to finish....
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Speakers
avatar for Claire Jia

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 →
Wednesday June 17, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Dramatic Writing, Multi-Genre

1:30pm MDT

Critiquing the End
Wednesday June 17, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Most workshops focus on the first part of a novel, but the ending is as important. In this critique session, we will specifically critique the last chapter of your work without requiring people to read an entire manuscript. To participate, each student will submit a synopsis, the first page, the middle page (yes, the page in the exact middle of the manuscript), and the last chapter. Before the...
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Speakers
avatar for Mary Robinette Kowal

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 →
Wednesday June 17, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction

1:30pm MDT

How to Make Plot Your Friend
Wednesday June 17, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Plot can feel like the enemy. You’ve got a compelling voice, a rich premise, real momentum—and then the story stalls. If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. In this seminar, you’ll learn how to make your plot your friend—instead of feeling trapped by it. Through close readings of classic and contemporary works, we’ll break down the mechanics of rising action, pacing, consequence,...
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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 →
Wednesday June 17, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction

1:30pm MDT

Memoir for the Anxious, Uncertain, or Scared Writer
Wednesday June 17, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
This craft seminar aims to demystify the process of writing a memoir. We'll talk about structure, perspective, ethical concerns, and more, including how to begin and how to continue. Let's deal with the anxiety together, and we’ll leave with the confidence and tools we need to write personal essays and memoirs!
Speakers
avatar for Beth Nguyen

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 →
Wednesday June 17, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Nonfiction/Memoir

1:30pm MDT

Memoir Structure: Scene by Scene
Wednesday June 17, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Contemporary memoirs are organized in many ways, from experimental to traditional three-act. But when it comes to structure on a page-by-page and sentence-by-sentence basis, there are some tenets most published memoirs follow. Come learn to discern the difference between sharing memories and creating a story, how to structure your memoir using scenes and transitions, how to work with causality,...
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Speakers
avatar for Jenny Shank

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 →
Wednesday June 17, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Nonfiction/Memoir

1:30pm MDT

On/Off the Record: Hybrid Writing with Documents (V)
Wednesday June 17, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Virtual
Register Here!
Hybrid writing often emerges from and recontextualizes documentary material, such as personal archives, news reports, legal documents, and scientific papers. In this seminar, we’ll explore how such sources can be transformed—and become transformative—in cross-genre writing. Through short readings and discussion, we’ll consider when and how writers can use documents to question the...
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Speakers
avatar for Kanika Agrawal

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 →
Wednesday June 17, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Virtual
  Nonfiction/Memoir, Multi-Genre

1:30pm MDT

Real People, Real Problems
Wednesday June 17, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
If you write about real people, sometimes they get mad at you. Your memoir, novel, short story, essay, or poem may cause problems ranging from family tiffs to actual lawsuits. All of us wonder if it’s okay to write certain stories, and further, what to consider when publishing them. What’s off limits, and who gets to decide? What types of things should you worry about? If you write fiction,...
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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 →
Wednesday June 17, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Nonfiction/Memoir, Publishing/Career

1:30pm MDT

Making Conversation: Inviting New Voices into The Poem
Wednesday June 17, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
“The Sun woke me this morning loud and clear, saying "Hey! I've been trying to wake you up for fifteen minutes.” In Frank O’Hara’s “A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island,” the dialogue creates character, humor, tension, and meaning. How might we invite other voices into our poems as a way to open new opportunities? In this generative workshop we will read and discuss...
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Speakers
avatar for Emily Perez

Emily Perez

Faculty
Emily Pérez is the author of What Flies Want, winner of the Iowa Prize; House of Sugar, House of Stone; and two chapbooks. She is co-editor of the anthology The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood. A CantoMundo fellow and Ledbury Critic, she’s received support from Hedgebrook... Read More →
Wednesday June 17, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Poetry

1:30pm MDT

The Supple Sonnet
Wednesday June 17, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Whether your reference point is Shakespeare or Diane Seuss, Gwendolyn Brooks or Claude McKay, Natasha Trethewey or Tyehimba Jess or Gerard Manley Hopkins, you have heard of this poetic form. There’s a reason the sonnet has persisted and permutated over hundreds of years— it’s versatile and malleable enough to handle whatever you want to throw at it. In this craft seminar, we’ll look at...
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Speakers
avatar for Melissa Range

Melissa Range

Visiting Author
Melissa Range is the author of Printer’s Fist, winner of the 2025 Vanderbilt Literary Prize (Vanderbilt University Press, 2026), as well as Scriptorium (Beacon Press, 2016) and Horse and Rider (Texas Tech University Press, 2010). Range is the recipient of awards and fellowships... Read More →
Wednesday June 17, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Poetry

1:30pm MDT

Designing Your Author Website with Style and Know-How (V)
Wednesday June 17, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Virtual
Register Here!
Need an author website but don’t know where to start? This planning workshop covers everything you need to know to imagine and create an engaging, user-friendly author website. Learn how to design a polished, professional site that reflects your unique voice and supports your books, projects, research, and long-term creative presence online. You’ll also leave with key handouts to continue...
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Speakers
avatar for HR Hegnauer

HR Hegnauer

Faculty
HR Hegnauer is a designer, writer, and creative professional specializing in book and web design for authors, independent publishers, and artists. As the owner of a design studio, HR has designed over 350 books, creating award-winning covers and interiors for both print and ebook... Read More →
Wednesday June 17, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Virtual
  Publishing/Career

4:00pm MDT

Ticking Clocks: Managing Time in Fiction
Wednesday June 17, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
In this craft seminar, we will consider how writers use time, with particular attention to the ways writers deliberately call attention to time: interruptions, flashbacks, glimpses of the future, passages quickly carrying the reader through a stretch of many years. In the first hour of the class, we will hold a seminar style discussion of examples from published work. In the second hour, we will...
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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 →
Wednesday June 17, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction

4:00pm MDT

Writing Thrillers
Wednesday June 17, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Learn to craft thrillers that grip readers from the first page, and develop the mindset to keep writing when you don’t feel like it. In this two-hour class, we’ll survey the psychology behind suspense: how to build pressure, raise stakes, and deliver unforgettable endings. You’ll explore emotional tension, consistent writing habits, and editing strategies that sharpen every scene. Whether...
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Speakers
avatar for Carter Wilson

Carter Wilson

Faculty
Carter Wilson is the Publishers Weekly and USA Today bestselling author of ten award-winning psychological thrillers. His works have earned starred reviews from all major trade publications, have been optioned for television and film, and his 2025 release Tell Me What You Did was... Read More →
Wednesday June 17, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction

4:00pm MDT

Perhapsing: What To Do When We Don’t Know
Wednesday June 17, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
In the craft book Tell It Slant, Brenda Miller and Suzanne Paola ponder the question memoirists face again and again: Does nonfiction mean “no fiction”? What do we do when we don’t remember or know all the details? How do we handle the fact we are all inherently unreliable narrators? “Perhapsing” is a term coined by Lisa Knopp to describe one technique a memoirist can employ to signal to...
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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 →
Wednesday June 17, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Nonfiction/Memoir

4:00pm MDT

Just 2 Poems (V)
Wednesday June 17, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Virtual
Register Here!
In this class, we’ll experience the power of deep reading. Before class, you’ll be given two poems that serve as jumping off points to explore and be inspired by master poets of exceptional craft. Previous years have featured long poems by BH Fairchild, Larry Levis and Brigit Pegeen Kelly. We’ll explore both the measured unfolding of a longer poem and the lyric compression of another....
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Speakers
avatar for Lynn Wagner

Lynn Wagner

Faculty
Lynn Wagner is the author of No Blues This Raucous Song, which won the Slapering Hol Chapbook competition. She received an MFA from the University of Pittsburgh, where she won the Academy of American Poets prize. She has earned fellowships to the Virginia Center of the Creative Arts... Read More →
Wednesday June 17, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Virtual
  Poetry

4:00pm MDT

Scaffolds and Skeletons: Crafting Strong Foundations in Poetry and Fiction
Wednesday June 17, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Structure should never be an afterthought for poets and writers—in poetry it often is the whole point, and in story it is the spine that lets a story stand upright—in this generative seminar we will work to create the frame and foundation for your own great poems and stories (and essays). We will begin with some core architectural strategies and choices that help shape compelling work across...
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Speakers
avatar for Seth Brady Tucker

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 →
Wednesday June 17, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Poetry, Fiction

4:00pm MDT

Perseverance Training: Surviving the Long Haul of Writing
Wednesday June 17, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
The novel that takes twenty years, the memoir that won’t cohere, the one hundredth agent who says no thanks, or worse, just ignores you — disappointment, doubt and fear are part of the process. Of course, so is gloriousness. In this two-hour workshop, we’ll air it all out: the anxieties, the self-sabotage, the night terrors. Together we’ll examine how other writers have pushed through fear...
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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 →
Wednesday June 17, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Publishing/Career, Multi-Genre

4:00pm MDT

Build Your Portfolio: On Longevity and Writing
Wednesday June 17, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Some writers have been at this for decades — through life, through rejection, through the moments when the work almost didn't survive. Come hear from a panel of poets, novelists, short story writers, and memoirists about how they built a practice that lasted. What does persistence actually look like? How do you keep going when life gets loud or the business gets discouraging? Grab a drink, bring...
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Speakers
avatar for William Haywood Henderson

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 →
avatar for Dino Enrique Piacentini

Dino Enrique Piacentini

Faculty
Dino Enrique Piacentini grew up in Los Angeles, lived in San Francisco for twenty years, and has also, at various times, set down stakes in Houston, Oaxaca, Champaign, and Prague. His debut novel, Invasion of the Daffodils, about a Mexican-American family living on an island off the... Read More →
avatar for Amanda Rea

Amanda Rea

Faculty
Amanda Rea's stories and essays have appeared in Harper's, Best American Mystery Stories, One Story, American Short Fiction, Freeman’s, The Missouri Review, The Kenyon Review, The Sun, Electric Literature's Recommended Reading, Indiana Review, Iowa Review, New South, Lit Hub, and... Read More →
avatar for Suzi Q Smith

Suzi Q Smith

Faculty
Suzi Q. Smith is an award-winning artist, organizer, and educator who lives in Denver, Colorado. She has created, curated, coached, and taught in Denver for over 20 years, managing the largest poetry festivals that Denver has seen to date. A TEDx speaker multiple times, Suzi has performed... Read More →
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 →
avatar for Natalie Hodges

Natalie Hodges

Faculty
Born and raised in Denver, Natalie Hodges has performed as a classical violinist throughout Colorado and in New York, Boston, Paris, and the Italian Piedmont, as well as at the Aspen Music Festival and the Stowe Tango Music Festival. Her first book, Uncommon Measure: A Journey Through... Read More →
avatar for Jenny Shank

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 →
Wednesday June 17, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Writing Process, Multi-Genre

4:00pm MDT

Build Your Portfolio: On Longevity and Writing (Livestream)
Wednesday June 17, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Virtual
Register Here!
Some writers have been at this for decades — through life, through rejection, through the moments when the work almost didn't survive. Come hear from a panel of poets, novelists, short story writers, and memoirists about how they built a practice that lasted. What does persistence actually look like? How do you keep going when life gets loud or the business gets discouraging? Grab a drink, bring...
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Speakers
avatar for Natalie Hodges

Natalie Hodges

Faculty
Born and raised in Denver, Natalie Hodges has performed as a classical violinist throughout Colorado and in New York, Boston, Paris, and the Italian Piedmont, as well as at the Aspen Music Festival and the Stowe Tango Music Festival. Her first book, Uncommon Measure: A Journey Through... Read More →
avatar for William Haywood Henderson

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 →
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 →
avatar for Dino Enrique Piacentini

Dino Enrique Piacentini

Faculty
Dino Enrique Piacentini grew up in Los Angeles, lived in San Francisco for twenty years, and has also, at various times, set down stakes in Houston, Oaxaca, Champaign, and Prague. His debut novel, Invasion of the Daffodils, about a Mexican-American family living on an island off the... Read More →
avatar for Amanda Rea

Amanda Rea

Faculty
Amanda Rea's stories and essays have appeared in Harper's, Best American Mystery Stories, One Story, American Short Fiction, Freeman’s, The Missouri Review, The Kenyon Review, The Sun, Electric Literature's Recommended Reading, Indiana Review, Iowa Review, New South, Lit Hub, and... Read More →
avatar for Jenny Shank

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 →
avatar for Suzi Q Smith

Suzi Q Smith

Faculty
Suzi Q. Smith is an award-winning artist, organizer, and educator who lives in Denver, Colorado. She has created, curated, coached, and taught in Denver for over 20 years, managing the largest poetry festivals that Denver has seen to date. A TEDx speaker multiple times, Suzi has performed... Read More →
Wednesday June 17, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Virtual
  Writing Process, Multi-Genre

4:00pm MDT

Two-Day Intensive: Bridges to Elsewhere—Writing Significance in the Everyday, Working-Class Moment
Wednesday June 17, 2026 4:00pm - 7:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
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
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 →
Wednesday June 17, 2026 4:00pm - 7:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction, Nonfiction/Memoir

4:00pm MDT

Two-Day Intensive: Being a Romantic Poet in the 21st Century
Wednesday June 17, 2026 4:00pm - 7:00pm MDT
Virtual
Register Here!
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
avatar for Elizabeth Robinson

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 →
Wednesday June 17, 2026 4:00pm - 7:00pm MDT
Virtual
  Poetry

6:00pm MDT

Portfolio Year Celebration
Wednesday June 17, 2026 6:00pm - 7:30pm MDT
TBA
Register Here!
Come and celebrate the hard work of the Portfolio Year graduates, hear some of their final work, and learn more about the year-long program. Location pending!
Wednesday June 17, 2026 6:00pm - 7:30pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  All Genres

7:00pm MDT

Writing in Color Trivia with Black People Know Things presented by Kundiman - Mountain West
Wednesday June 17, 2026 7:00pm - Thursday June 18, 2026 9:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Love trivia? Looking for new writer friends? Join Lighthouse's Writing in Color program and Kundiman - Mountain West during this year’s Lit Fest for a night of BIPOC+-centered literary trivia hosted by Black People Know Things! Open to writers of all backgrounds and identities, this event is a great opportunity for all writers to learn more about BIPOC+ culture, stories, and authors.So don’t...
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Speakers
BP
Wednesday June 17, 2026 7:00pm - Thursday June 18, 2026 9:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  All Genres
 
Thursday, June 18
 

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Fiction Workshop: Finding the Subterranean Story with Danielle Evans
Thursday June 18, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am 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...
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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 →
Thursday June 18, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Fiction

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

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

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

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

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

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...
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Speakers
avatar for Andre Dubus III

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

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....
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Speakers
avatar for Beth Nguyen

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

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...
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Speakers
avatar for Emily Rapp Black

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

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...
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Speakers
avatar for Rachel Louise Snyder

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

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...
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Speakers
avatar for Paul Muldoon

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

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...
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Speakers
avatar for Eileen Myles

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

12:00pm MDT

Lunchtime Business Panel: A Perfect Pairing—The Author-Agent Relationship
Thursday June 18, 2026 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
TBA
Register Here!
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
avatar for Sarah Burnes

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 →
avatar for Megan O'Grady

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

12:00pm MDT

Lunchtime Business Panel: A Perfect Pairing—The Author-Agent Relationship (Livestream)
Thursday June 18, 2026 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
Virtual
Register Here!
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
avatar for Sarah Burnes

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 →
avatar for Megan O'Grady

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
Virtual
  All Genres

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...
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Speakers
avatar for Dean Bakopoulos

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

1:30pm MDT

Crash Course in Character
Thursday June 18, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
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...
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Speakers
avatar for Jenny Shank

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

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
Register Here!
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...
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Speakers
avatar for Kanika Agrawal

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

1:30pm MDT

Make a Scene!: How to Bring Your Memoir to Life (V)
Thursday June 18, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Virtual
Register Here!
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...
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Speakers
avatar for Minda Honey

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

1:30pm MDT

Making the Personal Matter
Thursday June 18, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
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...
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Speakers
avatar for Emily Rapp Black

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 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Nonfiction/Memoir

1:30pm MDT

Making the Personal Matter (Livestream)
Thursday June 18, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Virtual
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...
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Speakers
avatar for Emily Rapp Black

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 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Virtual
  Nonfiction/Memoir

1:30pm MDT

From Idea to Outline
Thursday June 18, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
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...
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Speakers
avatar for Mary Robinette Kowal

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

1:30pm MDT

Seance of the Bees: Writing and Ritual Practices
Thursday June 18, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
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
avatar for Andrea Rexilius

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

1:30pm MDT

Secrets: Strategies for Story
Thursday June 18, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
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
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 →
Thursday June 18, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Writing Process, Multi-Genre

1:30pm MDT

The Picture Within: Art as Inspiration and Critique
Thursday June 18, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
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...
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Speakers
avatar for Megan O'Grady

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 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Writing Process, Multi-Genre

1:30pm MDT

The Rich Layers of Personal Style
Thursday June 18, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
“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...
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Speakers
avatar for William Haywood Henderson

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

4:00pm MDT

Satisfy Me!
Thursday June 18, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
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...
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Speakers
avatar for Christopher Castellani
Thursday June 18, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction

4:00pm MDT

Suffering Builds Character
Thursday June 18, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
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...
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Speakers
avatar for Tiffany Quay Tyson

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

4:00pm MDT

Writing the Best American Essay: Contemporary Techniques and Ideas
Thursday June 18, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
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
avatar for Jenny Shank

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

4:00pm MDT

Exploring Prose Poetry: The Art of Condensed Writing (V)
Thursday June 18, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Virtual
Register Here!
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
avatar for Jose Hernandez Diaz

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

4:00pm MDT

Just Keep Going: Being a Writer for Life
Thursday June 18, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
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...
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Speakers
avatar for Buzzy Jackson

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

4:00pm MDT

Undoing Poetry and Prose
Thursday June 18, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
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...
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Speakers
avatar for Eileen Myles

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 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Writing Process

4:00pm MDT

Writing in an AI Powered World
Thursday June 18, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
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...
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Speakers
avatar for Cynthia Swanson

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

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
Register Here!
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
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 →
Thursday June 18, 2026 4:00pm - 7:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction, Nonfiction/Memoir

4:00pm MDT

Two-Day Intensive: The 48-Hour Story or Essay
Thursday June 18, 2026 4:00pm - 7:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
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...
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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 →
Thursday June 18, 2026 4:00pm - 7:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction, Multi-Genre

4:30pm MDT

Poetry Collective Celebration
Thursday June 18, 2026 4:30pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
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...
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Thursday June 18, 2026 4:30pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  All Genres

4:30pm MDT

Poetry Collective Celebration (Livestream)
Thursday June 18, 2026 4:30pm - 6:00pm MDT
Virtual
Register Here!
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

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

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
Register 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.
Thursday June 18, 2026 7:00pm - 8:15pm MDT
Virtual
  All Genres

8:30pm MDT

Lit Fest Open Mic at Fort Greene Bar
Thursday June 18, 2026 8:30pm - 9:30pm MDT
Fort Greene Bar
Register Here!
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...
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Thursday June 18, 2026 8:30pm - 9:30pm MDT
Fort Greene Bar 321 E 45th Ave, Denver, CO 80216
  All Genres
 
Friday, June 19
 

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Fiction Workshop: Finding the Subterranean Story with Danielle Evans
Friday June 19, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am 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...
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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 →
Friday June 19, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Fiction

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Fiction Workshop: Intimate Distance with Mat Johnson
Friday June 19, 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...
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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 →
Friday June 19, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Fiction

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Fiction Workshop: Situation and Event with Brandon Taylor
Friday June 19, 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...
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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 →
Friday June 19, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Fiction

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Fiction Workshop: The BS Detector with Steve Almond
Friday June 19, 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...
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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 →
Friday June 19, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Fiction

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Fiction Workshop: Who's Telling Your Story? with Christopher Castellani
Friday June 19, 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...
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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 →
Friday June 19, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Fiction

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Generative Fiction Workshop: Starting, or Starting Over with Rebecca Makkai
Friday June 19, 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...
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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 →
Friday June 19, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Fiction

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Nonfiction Workshop: Excavation with Andre Dubus III
Friday June 19, 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...
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Speakers
avatar for Andre Dubus III

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 →
Friday June 19, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Nonfiction/Memoir

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Nonfiction Workshop: Find Your Focus with Beth Nguyen
Friday June 19, 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....
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Speakers
avatar for Beth Nguyen

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 →
Friday June 19, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Nonfiction/Memoir

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Nonfiction Workshop: Mapping the Memoir with Emily Rapp Black
Friday June 19, 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...
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Speakers
avatar for Emily Rapp Black

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 →
Friday June 19, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Nonfiction/Memoir

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Nonfiction Workshop: Shadow Narratives with Rachel Louise Snyder
Friday June 19, 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...
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Speakers
avatar for Rachel Louise Snyder

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 →
Friday June 19, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Nonfiction/Memoir

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Poetry Workshop: Draft Exclusion with Paul Muldoon
Friday June 19, 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...
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Speakers
avatar for Paul Muldoon

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 →
Friday June 19, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Poetry

9:00am MDT

No Genre/All Genre Generative Lab with Eileen Myles
Friday June 19, 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...
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Speakers
avatar for Eileen Myles

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 →
Friday June 19, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Poetry, Multi-Genre

12:00pm MDT

Lunchtime Business Panel: The Current State of Publishing—Agents and Authors Dish
Friday June 19, 2026 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
TBA
Register Here!
Panelists include: Elizabeth Copps (Copps Literary Services), Anjali Singh (The Anjali Singh Agency), Megan Posco (Posco Publicity), Jane Friedman, and Evanthia Bromiley. Publishing has always had its share of gatekeeping, but the landscape has never looked quite like this. AI is reshaping how stories are written, sold, and evaluated; hybrid publishers are dangling legitimacy at prices that...
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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 →
avatar for Elizabeth Copps

Elizabeth Copps

Agent
Elizabeth Copps is a literary agent and founder of Copps Literary Services based in Denver, Colorado. With 15 years of industry experience, Elizabeth began her publishing career in 2010 when she moved from Florida to New York City and discovered her passion through an agency internship... Read More →
avatar for Anjali Singh

Anjali Singh

Agent, The Anjali Singh Agency

avatar for Jane Friedman

Jane Friedman

Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; her... Read More →
avatar for Megan Posco

Megan Posco

Megan Posco is a nonfiction book publicist who founded Posco Publicity in 2022 after several years working in-house at publishers including Hachette and Harvard University Press. The books she publicizes are primarily written by journalists and academics, about issues related to criminal... Read More →
Friday June 19, 2026 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Publishing/Career, Multi-Genre

12:00pm MDT

Lunchtime Business Panel: The Current State of Publishing—Agents and Authors Dish (Livestream)
Friday June 19, 2026 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
Virtual
Register Here!
Panelists include: Elizabeth Copps (Copps Literary Services), Anjali Singh (The Anjali Singh Agency), Megan Posco (Posco Publicity), Jane Friedman, and Evanthia Bromiley. Publishing has always had its share of gatekeeping, but the landscape has never looked quite like this. AI is reshaping how stories are written, sold, and evaluated; hybrid publishers are dangling legitimacy at prices that...
See More →
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 →
avatar for Elizabeth Copps

Elizabeth Copps

Agent
Elizabeth Copps is a literary agent and founder of Copps Literary Services based in Denver, Colorado. With 15 years of industry experience, Elizabeth began her publishing career in 2010 when she moved from Florida to New York City and discovered her passion through an agency internship... Read More →
avatar for Anjali Singh

Anjali Singh

Agent, The Anjali Singh Agency

avatar for Jane Friedman

Jane Friedman

Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; her... Read More →
avatar for Megan Posco

Megan Posco

Megan Posco is a nonfiction book publicist who founded Posco Publicity in 2022 after several years working in-house at publishers including Hachette and Harvard University Press. The books she publicizes are primarily written by journalists and academics, about issues related to criminal... Read More →
Friday June 19, 2026 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
Virtual
  Publishing/Career, Multi-Genre

1:30pm MDT

Advanced Structure Lab: Break the Story Free with Dean Bakopoulos
Friday June 19, 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...
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Speakers
avatar for Dean Bakopoulos

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 →
Friday June 19, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Dramatic Writing

1:30pm MDT

Absolute Fiction
Friday June 19, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
In an age of both metafiction and high fantasy, writers have grown shy of writing realistic experiences wildly different than their own. Why have we lost the confidence to utterly make shit up and say it with authority? How can we get it back?   In this seminar, we’ll talk about writing away from the self and the lived experience, the research that makes such stories believable, and the...
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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 →
Friday June 19, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction

1:30pm MDT

Absolute Fiction (Livestream)
Friday June 19, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Virtual
In an age of both metafiction and high fantasy, writers have grown shy of writing realistic experiences wildly different than their own. Why have we lost the confidence to utterly make shit up and say it with authority? How can we get it back?   In this seminar, we’ll talk about writing away from the self and the lived experience, the research that makes such stories believable, and the...
See More →
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 →
Friday June 19, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Virtual
  Fiction

1:30pm MDT

Strange Beasts: Wild Structures and Architectures
Friday June 19, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
In this class we will examine works that use their architecture, or structure as a vessel to carry and deliver meaning. We might examine the works of Italo Calvino, Anne Carson, Max Porter, Bernardine Evaristo, and Olga Tokarczuk…among others. Bring a story in which the architecture is asking: how might I be wilder?
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 →
Friday June 19, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction, Nonfiction/Memoir

1:30pm MDT

The Propulsive Narrative: Creating and Maintaining Momentum
Friday June 19, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
You have a great premise. Maybe a gripping first chapter. But now your characters are wandering around contemplating the scenery, and you can't seem to make them do anything else. Sound familiar? If you want to write the sort of story that a reader cannot put down, you need to create urgency on every page. We’ll look at tools employed by writers of thrillers and suspense novels and explore...
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Speakers
avatar for Tiffany Quay Tyson

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 →
Friday June 19, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction, Nonfiction/Memoir

1:30pm MDT

Behind the Frame: To See, To Feel, to Know
Friday June 19, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Sometimes even the most familiar or memorable photographs mask the emotional truth of a moment. In this seminar, we’ll look at both new and well-known images from historical moments that capture or fail to capture the stories that exist behind them. Students will explore the relationship between visual representation and emotional gradation through discussion and experimental written exercises.
Speakers
avatar for Rachel Louise Snyder

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 →
Friday June 19, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Nonfiction/Memoir

1:30pm MDT

How To Be an Asshole
Friday June 19, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Stories need villains and brutes, scoundrels and jerks, creeps and lowlifes. Collectively, let’s call them assholes. They create conflict, suspense, and intrigue. They’re often the most interesting characters in a story. But writers are, generally, nice people. How do we put ourselves into the mind of the asshole? How do we give them their humanity without denying their depravity? Let’s...
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Speakers
avatar for Nick Arvin

Nick Arvin

Faculty
Nick Arvin is the author of In the Electric Eden, Articles of War, and The Reconstructionist. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal and has been honored with awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Library Association... Read More →
Friday June 19, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Writing Process, Multi-Genre

1:30pm MDT

Lens
Friday June 19, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
What the heck is lens? It’s merely a vital element of craft utilized on every line of every page of your writing. It helps you find meaning in detail, action, vision, and it allows space for subtext. Why is the sofa in your scene gold? If you don’t know, then it’s time to learn how lens works. In this class we’ll read great examples of lens (actually, any page of good writing can show us),...
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Speakers
avatar for William Haywood Henderson

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 →
Friday June 19, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Writing Process, Multi-Genre

1:30pm MDT

Unlock Ideas with Maps
Friday June 19, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Drawing inspiration from maps—real and imagined—in this generative workshop we’ll explore how to unlock memories, create worlds, and discover details we may not have thought of otherwise. We’ll consider recent and ancient cartographic maps but also search for what’s revealed in the often unmapped, such as radio waves permeating the air, light cast by street lights or wind chimes in a...
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Speakers
avatar for Malinda Miller

Malinda Miller

Faculty
Miller is a writer, teacher and editor who feels most at home at the top of Weston Pass in Colorado or in the Nevada desert where her family had a ranch just off Highway 50, aka the Loneliest Highway in America. She's an instructor for the Lighthouse Young Writers Program and facilitates... Read More →
Friday June 19, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Writing Process, Multi-Genre

3:45pm MDT

Lit Fest Closing Party
Friday June 19, 2026 3:45pm - 7:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Help us toast the closing of another year of Lit Fest with delicious food and drinks alongside friends both new and old.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,...
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Friday June 19, 2026 3:45pm - 7:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  All Genres

4:00pm MDT

Two-Day Intensive: The 48-Hour Story or Essay
Friday June 19, 2026 4:00pm - 7:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
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...
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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 →
Friday June 19, 2026 4:00pm - 7:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction, Multi-Genre
 

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Fort Greene Bar
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
TBA
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