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Friday, June 12
 

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 the spine of your story. The goal will be to KISS (keep it simple, scribe!), but we'll also discuss ways to incorporate elements of other common western story structures (such as Hero's Journey, Save the Cat!, Storygrid, and 3-act, 4-act, and 5-act structures).
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 you and your writing will once again be besties (or at least unlikely to murder each other).

This is the in-person version of this event.
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 you and your writing will once again be besties (or at least unlikely to murder each other).

This is the livestream version of this event.
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, among other temporal devices, while also learning how we might orchestrate different “time signatures” to enhance both meaning and beauty in our writing.
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 and why constraints are of great use to any writer. And we’ll get a chance to try our own constraints via fun prompts. Even if you’ve never worked with constraints before, this class is still for you.
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

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. Open to all genres and all writing, dance, and fitness levels: the dances will be offered in lower intensity forms to suit the non-gym environment, though comfortable clothes and shoes are recommended.
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 perspectives, and take note of how they change the stories we tell. Other topics will include head-hopping, psychic distance, and narrative voice.
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 that skim the surface. In this class, we’ll look at famous works that definitely took a risk, and, with these excerpts as inspiration, we’ll take an expedition to find our own dark materials.
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

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 generative session, we’ll look at strategies for making our dialogue as dynamic as it can be, including subtext, characterization, embedded action, using voice, as well as the nuts and bolts of dialogue tags and formatting.
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. Whether you have an idea or a first draft, bring your characters to the workshop and be prepared to write.
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 artfully weaves the ecological with the individual. We’ll then experiment with enhancing our own writing through new techniques of engagement with the natural world. For any writer wanting more reason to hold onto hope for the future!
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, contradictions, and desires that can crack open your writing.
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 new curiosities and the confidence to work and play with time as we might voice, POV, and every other element of creative writing.
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
 
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 each participant read aloud one sentence from their work, to remind us of the spell of their fiction, and then we will discuss what we found to be persuasive, and what we found to be less so, with the aim of offering a path forward for revision.
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

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 which power might manifest? How might it be applied? And how and when might it shift, so that your characters—and your reader—are kept on their toes?
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

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 major turning points in every plot that keep your story on track to the finish line (even if the story wanders a little in between).
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 the characters on the page think they are seeing and experiencing, when in fact it’s all in their head.
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 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 choices. We’ll discuss his emotionally affecting style that takes bigger and bigger risks by the page. And we’ll experiment in our own writing with his craft techniques. Come ready to learn from one of our modern masters!
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

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 eat, the tasks we complete, the rules we have to follow, can become the thrilling, perplexing, nuanced, and propulsive heart that keeps us invested in a story.
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 voice on the page.
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

1:30pm 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 the story. Collectively, we’ll explore character arcs and how to create lasting relationships between readers and characters. Each writer will leave this seminar having developed an archetype for one of their characters.
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. Through examples, discussion and exercises, we’ll learn how everyday ephemera can jumpstart your writing, help you approach a project from another angle, or simply see your world differently. Bring your inner child, an open mind, and be prepared to play.
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, and concluding with examples submitted by participants (from their own work or from well-known writers, preferably dead). Where, exactly, we go will be driven by the examples selected and the questions that arise. Emphasis will be on exploring the phenomenal plasticity of language, design tradeoffs in sentence structure, and the cognitive processes involved in reading, rather than issues of correctness, style, or rhetorical strategy.
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 motifs that call to us; locate potential motifs in our own drafts; identify ways to tease out arcs for our motifs; and maybe even figure out how to use those motifs to build an entire story or essay around. Bring something short you’d like to play around with.
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 their current projects, focusing on the difference between narrative and chronology, how voice evolves across structure, how to braid personal reflection with reportage and analysis, and much more.
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

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 prompts, we’ll explore visual ekphrasis, as well as experimental forms of audio and somatic ekphrasis to generate new fiction. Participants will receive first-blush feedback on their work, and opportunities to share will be available to those who would like to do so.
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

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 their secrets for our personal use. And then confess to it. Privacy will be respected; open to all genres.
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 we’ll read examples from writers including Miranda July, Deborah Jackson Taffa, Olga Tokarczuk, Damon Young, Kirstin Valdez Quade, Kevin Wilson, and Hanif Abdurraquib and try writing knockout prose of our own.
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 explore the idea but creative nonfiction writers and memoirists will learn how to use the same concept in their work. All participants will learn who the people populating their pages really are.
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, bring the settings of our fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction to life in more vivid detail.
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
 
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 each participant read aloud one sentence from their work, to remind us of the spell of their fiction, and then we will discuss what we found to be persuasive, and what we found to be less so, with the aim of offering a path forward for revision.
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

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 for doing just that. We’ll explore meditation, archetype, myth, ekphrasis, writing in motion, somatic exercises, stichomancy, and alchemy. We’ll also discuss the outlining process from a perspective of fluidity, and how, like the ship of Theseus, an outline can evolve as we write and edit.

This is the in-person version of this event.
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 for doing just that. We’ll explore meditation, archetype, myth, ekphrasis, writing in motion, somatic exercises, stichomancy, and alchemy. We’ll also discuss the outlining process from a perspective of fluidity, and how, like the ship of Theseus, an outline can evolve as we write and edit.
This is the livestream version of this event.
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 own sex scenes with genuine emotion and ecstatic sensation, not evasions and porn clichés. Arrive ready to lay your characters bare.
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

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 major turning points in every plot that keep your story on track to the finish line (even if the story wanders a little in between).
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 choices. We’ll discuss his emotionally affecting style that takes bigger and bigger risks by the page. And we’ll experiment in our own writing with his craft techniques. Come ready to learn from one of our modern masters!
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 the characters on the page think they are seeing and experiencing, when in fact it’s all in their head.
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

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 eat, the tasks we complete, the rules we have to follow, can become the thrilling, perplexing, nuanced, and propulsive heart that keeps us invested in a story.
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 voice on the page.
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

1:30pm 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 different joke forms. To note, the class will be focused on fiction, though all writers of all levels are welcome.
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 class examines the impact style has on content. We’ll explore how (and when) to write a complex-compound sentence absolutely littered with modifiers and punctuation versus when to be economic, sparse, even fragmented.
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 intimidating and see it as an organic, intrinsic, and hugely satisfying part of storytelling.
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

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 prompts, we’ll explore visual ekphrasis, as well as experimental forms of audio and somatic ekphrasis to generate new fiction. Participants will receive first-blush feedback on their work, and opportunities to share will be available to those who would like to do so.
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
 
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 we’ll explore how some of those subterranean layers can guide us toward structures and narrative arcs that serve the project. We'll negotiate the balance between what works best when said directly and what works best when it’s left to be discovered by the reader. Each workshop will open with discussion of a published short story and a brief responsive writing exercise; then we’ll move to an in-depth discussion of work submitted by participants.
Speakers
avatar for Danielle Evans

Danielle Evans

Visiting Author
Danielle Evans is the author of the story collections The Office of Historical Corrections and Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self. Her first collection won the PEN American Robert W. Bingham Prize, the Hurston-Wright award for fiction, and the Paterson Prize for fiction; her... Read More →
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 strongest form. Your novel has strengths: we'll explore how you can build on them. Your novel has weaknesses: we'll identify them and create strategies for you to overcome them. Together, we'll reveal what your novel is actually about, as opposed to what you planned for it to be. We’ll examine its hidden structures, and we’ll enable your characters and their struggles to come alive on the page.
Speakers
avatar for Mat Johnson

Mat Johnson

Visiting Author
Mat Johnson is a Philip H Knight Chair of Humanities at the University of Oregon. His publications included the novels Invisible Things and Pym, the nonfiction novella The Great Negro Plot, and the graphic novel Incognegro. Johnson is the recipient of the American Book Award, the... Read More →
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 more thorough conceptualization of our work so that we can make exciting, unexpected, and more meaningful choices in our stories.

We’ll be working with the below definitions:

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

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

Brandon Taylor

Visiting Author
Brandon Taylor is the author of the novels Minor Black Figures, The Late Americans, and Real Life, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, and named a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and a Science + Literature... Read More →
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 compulsive revision, but to instead make better decisions in the first place and to recognize quickly when you haven’t.
Speakers
avatar for Steve Almond

Steve Almond

Visiting Author
Steve Almond [www.stevealmondjoy.org] is the author of a dozen books, including the New York Times bestsellers “Candyfreak” and “Against Football.” His first novel, “Which Brings Me to You” (co-written with Julianna Baggott) was made into a major motion picture starring... Read More →
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 stronger, deeper version of itself?" This workshop is open to short story writers and novelists with stand-alone excerpts.
Speakers
avatar for Chris Castellani

Chris Castellani

Visiting Author
Christopher Castellani's fifth novel, Last Seen, will be published by Viking in February 2026. He is also the author of Leading Men (Viking, 2019) for which he received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, MacDowell, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, among others. Searchlight... Read More →
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 days of class, we’ll squeeze in mini-workshops on everyone’s opening page. Accepted participants do not need to come in with an idea of what to write, although they may.
Speakers
avatar for Rebecca Makkai

Rebecca Makkai

Visiting Author
Rebecca Makkai is the author of the New York Times bestselling I Have Some Questions For You as well as four other works of fiction. Her last novel, The Great Believers, one of the New York Times’ Best Books of the 21st Century, was a finalist for both the 2019 Pulitzer Prize and... Read More →
Monday June 15, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Fiction

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 readers in your novel/memoir/short story/essay, and begin the art of narrative intrigue. Bring your ideas to class, and leave with new beginnings you can use immediately. Open to all prose writers.

This is the in-person version of this event.
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 readers in your novel/memoir/short story/essay, and begin the art of narrative intrigue. Bring your ideas to class, and leave with new beginnings you can use immediately. Open to all prose writers.

This is the livestream version of this event.
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 fiction masterpiece “Sticks” on a sentence-by-sentence level to examine and emulate how he packs an entire ocean of complexity—and decades of narrative time—into just 392 words.
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 from authors such as Jim Thompson, Patricia Highsmith, and Flannery O’Connor. We’ll then try our hand at creating some of these fascinating, and sometimes terrifying, characters in our own work. The class will combine readings, writings, and discussions, and when we're finished you should be comfortable writing from the POV of not-so-sympathetic characters.
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, thematic tuning, character mirroring, and more.
This is the in-person version on this event.
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, thematic tuning, character mirroring, and more.
This is the livestream version on this event.
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

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 worldbuilding; instead, we’ll craft settings and circumstances through the power of detail selections, rule systems, and essential mysteries. Together, we’ll ask much better questions: in your new world, what do readers need to know and what do readers want to know?
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? We’ll look at the way experts including Willy Vlautin, Susan Straight, and Percival Everett slide gracefully in and out of flashback.
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

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 catharsis as they alchemize their hard times into art.
Speakers
avatar for Sarah Elizabeth Schantz

Sarah Elizabeth Schantz

Sarah Elizabeth Schantz is a writer living on the East Side of Old Town Longmont in a Victorian bungalow one alley away from the train tracks. Her first novel Fig debuted from Simon & Schuster in 2015 and was selected by NPR as A Best Read of the Year before going on to win a 2016... Read More →
Monday June 15, 2026 4:00pm - 7:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction, YA/Children's
 
Tuesday, June 16
 

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Fiction Workshop: Finding the Subterranean Story with Danielle Evans
Tuesday June 16, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA
Often, the process of drafting fiction is one of uncovering: What is it we actually mean to be writing about, and how can we bring that thread to the surface in revision? At the same time, one of the great pleasures of reading is the consideration of suggestions or questions that remain just beneath the surface of the text.


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

Danielle Evans

Visiting Author
Danielle Evans is the author of the story collections The Office of Historical Corrections and Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self. Her first collection won the PEN American Robert W. Bingham Prize, the Hurston-Wright award for fiction, and the Paterson Prize for fiction; her... Read More →
Tuesday June 16, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Fiction

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Fiction Workshop: Intimate Distance with Mat Johnson
Tuesday June 16, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA
Novels are long, often unruly, and inherently ambitious projects that require the writer to be both intimate with and distant from the text. It's easy to type a bunch of pages, but it’s hard to make them captivate the reader and ensure that the journey adds up to more than the sum of its parts. This course will explore the tools needed to bring your novel-length manuscript to life in its strongest form. Your novel has strengths: we'll explore how you can build on them. Your novel has weaknesses: we'll identify them and create strategies for you to overcome them. Together, we'll reveal what your novel is actually about, as opposed to what you planned for it to be. We’ll examine its hidden structures, and we’ll enable your characters and their struggles to come alive on the page.
Speakers
avatar for Mat Johnson

Mat Johnson

Visiting Author
Mat Johnson is a Philip H Knight Chair of Humanities at the University of Oregon. His publications included the novels Invisible Things and Pym, the nonfiction novella The Great Negro Plot, and the graphic novel Incognegro. Johnson is the recipient of the American Book Award, the... Read More →
Tuesday June 16, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Fiction

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Fiction Workshop: Situation and Event with Brandon Taylor
Tuesday June 16, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA
In this weeklong workshop, we’ll explore the intimate relationship between situation and event in narrative using work submitted by participants. The goal is to gain a stronger understanding of and appreciation for the underlying or pre-existing dramatic context that gives meaning to plot, character actions, and even the structure of a piece. We’ll use this stronger understanding to develop a more thorough conceptualization of our work so that we can make exciting, unexpected, and more meaningful choices in our stories.

We’ll be working with the below definitions:

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

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

Brandon Taylor

Visiting Author
Brandon Taylor is the author of the novels Minor Black Figures, The Late Americans, and Real Life, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, and named a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and a Science + Literature... Read More →
Tuesday June 16, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Fiction

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Fiction Workshop: The BS Detector with Steve Almond
Tuesday June 16, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA
Writing is decision making, nothing more and nothing less. What word? Where to place the comma? How to shape the paragraph? Join Steve Almond for a workshop focused on improving the decisions you make in your writing. By looking critically and carefully at other people’s work, you’ll walk away with a better sense of how to improve your own. The idea is not to slow your rate of composition via compulsive revision, but to instead make better decisions in the first place and to recognize quickly when you haven’t.
Speakers
avatar for Steve Almond

Steve Almond

Visiting Author
Steve Almond [www.stevealmondjoy.org] is the author of a dozen books, including the New York Times bestsellers “Candyfreak” and “Against Football.” His first novel, “Which Brings Me to You” (co-written with Julianna Baggott) was made into a major motion picture starring... Read More →
Tuesday June 16, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Fiction

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Fiction Workshop: Who's Telling Your Story? with Christopher Castellani
Tuesday June 16, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA
The most important decision a writer makes is who tells their story. In this workshop, we will examine each other's manuscripts primarily through the lens of point of view and by using the concept of narrative strategy, but we will also take each manuscript as a whole and discuss how all the craft elements are working together. The primary question we will ask is, "How can the manuscript be a stronger, deeper version of itself?" This workshop is open to short story writers and novelists with stand-alone excerpts.
Speakers
avatar for Chris Castellani

Chris Castellani

Visiting Author
Christopher Castellani's fifth novel, Last Seen, will be published by Viking in February 2026. He is also the author of Leading Men (Viking, 2019) for which he received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, MacDowell, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, among others. Searchlight... Read More →
Tuesday June 16, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Fiction

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Generative Fiction Workshop: Starting, or Starting Over with Rebecca Makkai
Tuesday June 16, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA
In this generative workshop, we’ll either begin brand new pieces, or begin a brand new version of an old piece. In either case, we’ll use our clean slates to find startling originality, optimal angles of approach, and the energies that will carry a story or novel through to the end. We’ll write both in class and outside of class and (voluntarily) share what we’ve written. In the last two days of class, we’ll squeeze in mini-workshops on everyone’s opening page. Accepted participants do not need to come in with an idea of what to write, although they may.
Speakers
avatar for Rebecca Makkai

Rebecca Makkai

Visiting Author
Rebecca Makkai is the author of the New York Times bestselling I Have Some Questions For You as well as four other works of fiction. Her last novel, The Great Believers, one of the New York Times’ Best Books of the 21st Century, was a finalist for both the 2019 Pulitzer Prize and... Read More →
Tuesday June 16, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Fiction

1:30pm MDT

Finding the Heart and Body of Your Memoir (V)
Tuesday June 16, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Virtual
Register Here!
One of the biggest challenges in writing memoir or essays is finding the focus and structure. So many directions tempt us before we find our best way forward. In this invigorating seminar, we’ll explore tools and approaches for sussing out the heart of the memoir, and from there, consider possibilities for organizing it (chronologically, thematically, as an essay collection, or even as a collage of vignettes). We’ll do some short exercises to clarify what our memoir or essay wants to be and how we can realize that potential. Ample handouts will be provided.
Speakers
avatar for Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg

Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg

Faculty
Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Ph.D, the 2009-13 Kansas Poet Laureate is the author of 24 books, including How Time Moves: New & Selected Poems; Miriam's Well, a novel; Needle in the Bone, a nonfiction book on the Holocaust; The Sky Begins At Your Feet: A Memoir on Cancer, Community, and... Read More →
Tuesday June 16, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Virtual
  Fiction, Nonfiction/Memoir

1:30pm MDT

I Hate You, Too: Writing Antagonistic Relationships
Tuesday June 16, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Our friends are close, but our enemies are uncomfortably closer, and the protagonist-antagonist relationship is often the most intimate one in any story. For this reason, it’s important to throw your protagonist and antagonist together in all sorts of interesting ways, so the torture can begin. In this hands-on, exercise-driven class, we’ll craft that antagonistic relationship to hit as many trigger points as possible, creating story-propelling conflict and change. Open to all prose writers.
Speakers
avatar for Erika Krouse

Erika Krouse

Faculty
Erika Krouse has taught at Lighthouse since 2008; she is a Book Project mentor and a winner of the Lighthouse Beacon Award. Erika's most recent collection of short stories, Save Me, Stranger, is out with Flatiron Books in January 2025. It has garnered starred reviews from Kirkus and... Read More →
Tuesday June 16, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction, Multi-Genre

1:30pm MDT

Information Underload: What Each Precious Paragraph Communicates to a Reader
Tuesday June 16, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
We’re writers. We want to beguile our readers so we write and re-write, polish and agonize over every word and comma. But what information is the reader taking away? And does it match our intentions? In this two-hour session, we’ll examine paragraphs—published examples and our own—and identify what types of information readers glean, how it advances or deepens the plot, story, and characters. When it doesn’t achieve our designs, we’ll diagnose why, what we want to change, and most importantly, how to do so. This is an interactive session in which writers examine their own work, so please bring (or have available) some pages of manuscript.
Speakers
avatar for Bix Gabriel

Bix Gabriel

Faculty
Bix Gabriel is a writer, teacher of creative writing, and seeker of the perfect jalebi. Her writing appears in the anthologies A Map is Only One Story, and Fusion: South Asian Flash Fiction, and in literary magazines such as Crab Creek Review, Longleaf Review, Guernica, and Electric... Read More →
Tuesday June 16, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction, Multi-Genre

1:30pm MDT

Reader in the Room
Tuesday June 16, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Writers are often told to “write from the heart,” but if the goal is to move or connect with others, audience matters. This two-hour class explores how powerful nonfiction honors both the writer’s truth and the reader’s experience. We’ll look at what audiences really want—to be invited into another’s world, to feel tension and release, to understand what’s at stake. Through short readings, discussion, and exercises, you'll learn to balance authenticity with craft—using the tools that make nonfiction not just true, but felt.
Speakers
avatar for Angelique Stevens

Angelique Stevens

Faculty
Angelique Stevens lives in Upstate New York where she teaches creative writing, literature of genocide, and race literatures. Her nonfiction has been published or is forthcoming in Granta, LitHub, The New England Review, and a number of anthologies. Her essay “Ghost Bread,” which... Read More →
Tuesday June 16, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction, Nonfiction/Memoir

1:30pm MDT

Survey of Interiority
Tuesday June 16, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Using readings and examples from a variety of modes—short fiction, novels, cinema, and drama—this seminar provides a survey of interiority in narrative writing. We’ll examine and explore the technical challenges of writing interiority as well as the narrative and aesthetic motivations that accompany the concept. At the end of the seminar, we’ll engage in short writing exercises to synthesize and practice these techniques.
This is the in-person version of this event.
Speakers
avatar for Brandon Taylor

Brandon Taylor

Visiting Author
Brandon Taylor is the author of the novels Minor Black Figures, The Late Americans, and Real Life, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, and named a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and a Science + Literature... Read More →
Tuesday June 16, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction

1:30pm MDT

Survey of Interiority (Livestream)
Tuesday June 16, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Virtual
Using readings and examples from a variety of modes—short fiction, novels, cinema, and drama—this seminar provides a survey of interiority in narrative writing. We’ll examine and explore the technical challenges of writing interiority as well as the narrative and aesthetic motivations that accompany the concept. At the end of the seminar, we’ll engage in short writing exercises to synthesize and practice these techniques.
This is the livestream version of this event.
Speakers
avatar for Brandon Taylor

Brandon Taylor

Visiting Author
Brandon Taylor is the author of the novels Minor Black Figures, The Late Americans, and Real Life, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, and named a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and a Science + Literature... Read More →
Tuesday June 16, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Virtual
  Fiction

1:30pm MDT

The Cutting Room Floor: Late-Stage Revision
Tuesday June 16, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
“I saw the angel in the marble, and I carved until I set him free,” Michelangelo said. What are both esoteric and practical techniques for cutting, in late-stage revision? We’ll dig into how different writers approach this question. Bring a draft or two to this revision-based class, in which we’ll practice techniques for excising, removing weight, and clarifying shapely prose.
Speakers
avatar for Evanthia Bromiley

Evanthia Bromiley

Faculty
Evanthia Bromiley is a graduate of the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers and the recipient of scholarships from the Aspen Institute, a Lighthouse Fellowship, a Lisel Mueller scholarship, and Elizabeth George and Carol Houck-Smith awards. She is the 2025 Grace Paley Fellow for... Read More →
Tuesday June 16, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction, Nonfiction/Memoir

1:30pm MDT

They Can’t Be All Bad, Right?
Tuesday June 16, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Your antagonist is totally despicable. But despite horrible behavior, they must be interesting, fully capable of sustaining your reader, and a substantial foil to your protagonist. They must be more than a receptacle for revenge. Avoid the one-dimensional villain and make your antagonist develop beyond their worst act. This craft class will help fiction as well as nonfiction writers give depth to despots, frauds, and mean actors. Writers will use generative exercises, selected excerpts, and discussion to explore possible positive traits in even the most deplorable characters.
Speakers
avatar for Gloria J. Browne-Marshall

Gloria J. Browne-Marshall

Faculty
Gloria J. Browne-Marshall is an Emmy Award-winning writer, a professor of Constitutional Law and Africa Studies at John Jay College (CUNY), civil rights attorney, and playwright. She is the author of She Took Justice: The Black Woman, Law, and Power; Race, Law, and American Society... Read More →
Tuesday June 16, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction, Multi-Genre

4:00pm MDT

A Wrinkle in Time: How to Manage Chronology and Structure
Tuesday June 16, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
One of the central struggles in storytelling is that human beings are, in essence, time travelers. We live in the past of our memories and the future of our hopes. Thus, when we tell stories, we often shuttle around in time. This can be exciting, but it more often winds up confusing the reader, and (in my case) the writer. In this fast-paced seminar, we’ll look at fiction and non-fiction examples of authors who manage chronology, and structure, masterfully. And we'll help writers learn how to do the same.
Speakers
avatar for Steve Almond

Steve Almond

Visiting Author
Steve Almond [www.stevealmondjoy.org] is the author of a dozen books, including the New York Times bestsellers “Candyfreak” and “Against Football.” His first novel, “Which Brings Me to You” (co-written with Julianna Baggott) was made into a major motion picture starring... Read More →
Tuesday June 16, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction, Nonfiction/Memoir

4:00pm MDT

Write Stronger Scenes: A Checklist
Tuesday June 16, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Scene work is the backbone of any story. When your scene work is strong, your reader is pulled into the story and forget everything else. In this class, you’ll bring in one of your scenes and will reshape it according to a check list of what makes great scene work, including but not limited to controlling narrative distance, writing effective dialogue, capturing setting without being boring, maintaining tension, and integrating or eliminating backstory.
Speakers
avatar for Rachel Weaver

Rachel Weaver

Faculty
Rachel Weaver is the author of the novel Point of Direction, which Oprah Magazine named a Top Ten Book to Pick Up Now and which won the 2015 Willa Cather Award for Fiction. She is on the faculty at Wilkes University’s low-residency MFA program in addition to teaching Lighthouse... Read More →
Tuesday June 16, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction, Nonfiction/Memoir

4:00pm MDT

Two-Day Intensive: Emotional Truth—Using Fiction to Tell the Whole Truth and Nothing But the Truth
Tuesday June 16, 2026 4:00pm - 7:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
This workshop will focus on how to write what you know, taking both small and large elements of your particular human experience to create fiction. We will study other fiction writers and their techniques and do exercises based on them. This class will focus on generating new text but should be inspiring for those writers deep into a work-in-progress too. Ideally, writers will experience a catharsis as they alchemize their hard times into art.
Speakers
avatar for Sarah Elizabeth Schantz

Sarah Elizabeth Schantz

Sarah Elizabeth Schantz is a writer living on the East Side of Old Town Longmont in a Victorian bungalow one alley away from the train tracks. Her first novel Fig debuted from Simon & Schuster in 2015 and was selected by NPR as A Best Read of the Year before going on to win a 2016... Read More →
Tuesday June 16, 2026 4:00pm - 7:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Fiction, YA/Children's
 
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 we’ll explore how some of those subterranean layers can guide us toward structures and narrative arcs that serve the project. We'll negotiate the balance between what works best when said directly and what works best when it’s left to be discovered by the reader. Each workshop will open with discussion of a published short story and a brief responsive writing exercise; then we’ll move to an in-depth discussion of work submitted by participants.
Speakers
avatar for Danielle Evans

Danielle Evans

Visiting Author
Danielle Evans is the author of the story collections The Office of Historical Corrections and Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self. Her first collection won the PEN American Robert W. Bingham Prize, the Hurston-Wright award for fiction, and the Paterson Prize for fiction; her... Read More →
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 strongest form. Your novel has strengths: we'll explore how you can build on them. Your novel has weaknesses: we'll identify them and create strategies for you to overcome them. Together, we'll reveal what your novel is actually about, as opposed to what you planned for it to be. We’ll examine its hidden structures, and we’ll enable your characters and their struggles to come alive on the page.
Speakers
avatar for Mat Johnson

Mat Johnson

Visiting Author
Mat Johnson is a Philip H Knight Chair of Humanities at the University of Oregon. His publications included the novels Invisible Things and Pym, the nonfiction novella The Great Negro Plot, and the graphic novel Incognegro. Johnson is the recipient of the American Book Award, the... Read More →
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 more thorough conceptualization of our work so that we can make exciting, unexpected, and more meaningful choices in our stories.

We’ll be working with the below definitions:

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

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

Brandon Taylor

Visiting Author
Brandon Taylor is the author of the novels Minor Black Figures, The Late Americans, and Real Life, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, and named a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and a Science + Literature... Read More →
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 compulsive revision, but to instead make better decisions in the first place and to recognize quickly when you haven’t.
Speakers
avatar for Steve Almond

Steve Almond

Visiting Author
Steve Almond [www.stevealmondjoy.org] is the author of a dozen books, including the New York Times bestsellers “Candyfreak” and “Against Football.” His first novel, “Which Brings Me to You” (co-written with Julianna Baggott) was made into a major motion picture starring... Read More →
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 stronger, deeper version of itself?" This workshop is open to short story writers and novelists with stand-alone excerpts.
Speakers
avatar for Chris Castellani

Chris Castellani

Visiting Author
Christopher Castellani's fifth novel, Last Seen, will be published by Viking in February 2026. He is also the author of Leading Men (Viking, 2019) for which he received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, MacDowell, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, among others. Searchlight... Read More →
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 days of class, we’ll squeeze in mini-workshops on everyone’s opening page. Accepted participants do not need to come in with an idea of what to write, although they may.
Speakers
avatar for Rebecca Makkai

Rebecca Makkai

Visiting Author
Rebecca Makkai is the author of the New York Times bestselling I Have Some Questions For You as well as four other works of fiction. Her last novel, The Great Believers, one of the New York Times’ Best Books of the 21st Century, was a finalist for both the 2019 Pulitzer Prize and... Read More →
Wednesday June 17, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Fiction

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 workshop, students will be required to read two other participants materials. You'll be taught how to evaluate an ending and guide the reader to opportunities to deepen the ending.
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, suspense, and character decision-making. Whether you write fiction or nonfiction, this class will help you supercharge your plot.
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

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 complete generative exercises modeled after some of the work discussed.
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 you’re a debut writer or a seasoned pro, you’ll leave with practical tools to make your stories darker, tighter, and more intense.
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

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

Danielle Evans

Visiting Author
Danielle Evans is the author of the story collections The Office of Historical Corrections and Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self. Her first collection won the PEN American Robert W. Bingham Prize, the Hurston-Wright award for fiction, and the Paterson Prize for fiction; her... Read More →
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 strongest form. Your novel has strengths: we'll explore how you can build on them. Your novel has weaknesses: we'll identify them and create strategies for you to overcome them. Together, we'll reveal what your novel is actually about, as opposed to what you planned for it to be. We’ll examine its hidden structures, and we’ll enable your characters and their struggles to come alive on the page.
Speakers
avatar for Mat Johnson

Mat Johnson

Visiting Author
Mat Johnson is a Philip H Knight Chair of Humanities at the University of Oregon. His publications included the novels Invisible Things and Pym, the nonfiction novella The Great Negro Plot, and the graphic novel Incognegro. Johnson is the recipient of the American Book Award, the... Read More →
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 more thorough conceptualization of our work so that we can make exciting, unexpected, and more meaningful choices in our stories.

We’ll be working with the below definitions:

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

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

Brandon Taylor

Visiting Author
Brandon Taylor is the author of the novels Minor Black Figures, The Late Americans, and Real Life, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, and named a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and a Science + Literature... Read More →
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 compulsive revision, but to instead make better decisions in the first place and to recognize quickly when you haven’t.
Speakers
avatar for Steve Almond

Steve Almond

Visiting Author
Steve Almond [www.stevealmondjoy.org] is the author of a dozen books, including the New York Times bestsellers “Candyfreak” and “Against Football.” His first novel, “Which Brings Me to You” (co-written with Julianna Baggott) was made into a major motion picture starring... Read More →
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 stronger, deeper version of itself?" This workshop is open to short story writers and novelists with stand-alone excerpts.
Speakers
avatar for Chris Castellani

Chris Castellani

Visiting Author
Christopher Castellani's fifth novel, Last Seen, will be published by Viking in February 2026. He is also the author of Leading Men (Viking, 2019) for which he received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, MacDowell, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, among others. Searchlight... Read More →
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 days of class, we’ll squeeze in mini-workshops on everyone’s opening page. Accepted participants do not need to come in with an idea of what to write, although they may.
Speakers
avatar for Rebecca Makkai

Rebecca Makkai

Visiting Author
Rebecca Makkai is the author of the New York Times bestselling I Have Some Questions For You as well as four other works of fiction. Her last novel, The Great Believers, one of the New York Times’ Best Books of the 21st Century, was a finalist for both the 2019 Pulitzer Prize and... Read More →
Thursday June 18, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Fiction

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 a writer's notebook, and discuss the importance of giving your characters skills.
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 voice and narrative distance, layering the uncanny into the everyday, and crafting tension through implication. Participants will have opportunities to share their inspired yet distinct approaches to estrangement and enchantment.
Speakers
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

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 our own projects.
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 discuss ways to put characters in peril and keep them there for the sake of crafting a compelling story.
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

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 continue perfecting on your own. Open to all short prose genres.
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
 
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 we’ll explore how some of those subterranean layers can guide us toward structures and narrative arcs that serve the project. We'll negotiate the balance between what works best when said directly and what works best when it’s left to be discovered by the reader. Each workshop will open with discussion of a published short story and a brief responsive writing exercise; then we’ll move to an in-depth discussion of work submitted by participants.
Speakers
avatar for Danielle Evans

Danielle Evans

Visiting Author
Danielle Evans is the author of the story collections The Office of Historical Corrections and Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self. Her first collection won the PEN American Robert W. Bingham Prize, the Hurston-Wright award for fiction, and the Paterson Prize for fiction; her... Read More →
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 strongest form. Your novel has strengths: we'll explore how you can build on them. Your novel has weaknesses: we'll identify them and create strategies for you to overcome them. Together, we'll reveal what your novel is actually about, as opposed to what you planned for it to be. We’ll examine its hidden structures, and we’ll enable your characters and their struggles to come alive on the page.
Speakers
avatar for Mat Johnson

Mat Johnson

Visiting Author
Mat Johnson is a Philip H Knight Chair of Humanities at the University of Oregon. His publications included the novels Invisible Things and Pym, the nonfiction novella The Great Negro Plot, and the graphic novel Incognegro. Johnson is the recipient of the American Book Award, the... Read More →
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 more thorough conceptualization of our work so that we can make exciting, unexpected, and more meaningful choices in our stories.

We’ll be working with the below definitions:

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

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

Brandon Taylor

Visiting Author
Brandon Taylor is the author of the novels Minor Black Figures, The Late Americans, and Real Life, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, and named a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and a Science + Literature... Read More →
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 compulsive revision, but to instead make better decisions in the first place and to recognize quickly when you haven’t.
Speakers
avatar for Steve Almond

Steve Almond

Visiting Author
Steve Almond [www.stevealmondjoy.org] is the author of a dozen books, including the New York Times bestsellers “Candyfreak” and “Against Football.” His first novel, “Which Brings Me to You” (co-written with Julianna Baggott) was made into a major motion picture starring... Read More →
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 stronger, deeper version of itself?" This workshop is open to short story writers and novelists with stand-alone excerpts.
Speakers
avatar for Chris Castellani

Chris Castellani

Visiting Author
Christopher Castellani's fifth novel, Last Seen, will be published by Viking in February 2026. He is also the author of Leading Men (Viking, 2019) for which he received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, MacDowell, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, among others. Searchlight... Read More →
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 days of class, we’ll squeeze in mini-workshops on everyone’s opening page. Accepted participants do not need to come in with an idea of what to write, although they may.
Speakers
avatar for Rebecca Makkai

Rebecca Makkai

Visiting Author
Rebecca Makkai is the author of the New York Times bestselling I Have Some Questions For You as well as four other works of fiction. Her last novel, The Great Believers, one of the New York Times’ Best Books of the 21st Century, was a finalist for both the 2019 Pulitzer Prize and... Read More →
Friday June 19, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Fiction

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 narrative possibilities that give us control over completely fictional worlds. We’ll touch on the ethics, difficulties, and occasional necessity of writing genders, races, sexual orientations, abilities, ages, religions, etc. different from our own, and we’ll focus more deeply on how to make stories up out of whole cloth and fully inhabit characters who aren’t you.

This is the in-person version of this event.

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 narrative possibilities that give us control over completely fictional worlds. We’ll touch on the ethics, difficulties, and occasional necessity of writing genders, races, sexual orientations, abilities, ages, religions, etc. different from our own, and we’ll focus more deeply on how to make stories up out of whole cloth and fully inhabit characters who aren’t you.

This is the livestream version of this event.
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 strategies for creating a propulsive read no matter what sort of book you are writing.
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

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 continue perfecting on your own. Open to all short prose genres.
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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