8-Week Workshops
8-Week: Eight Weeks, Eight Starts—Fiction and Nonfiction (Asynchronous) with Christopher Merkner
January 6, 2025 - February 28, 2025 | 24hr | Virtual via Wet Ink
This generative course is an ideal fit for intermediate and advanced writers of prose at any point of their projects looking to get themselves rolling at the start of a new year.
8-Week: Horror Workshop with Erika T. Wurth
January 6, 2025 - February 24, 2025 | 6:30pm - 8:30pm MDT | Virtual
In this eight-week critique-based workshop, we’ll look at the subgenres of horror through small snippets of different writers, from Silvia Moreno Garcia to Grady Hendrix, and we'll also focus on craft elements, both traditional (structure, characterization) and horror-focused, such as how does one create fear on the page?
8-Week: Intermediate Short Story Workshop with Emily Flouton
January 6, 2025 - February 24, 2025 | 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT | Virtual
Building on the foundations of Intro to Writing the Short Story, this class will consist primarily of workshopping short story and novel drafts. Each participant will have two opportunities to submit their work for peer review, one of which may (but does not have to) be a revision.
8-Week: This Thing First—Novel Openings with Nini Berndt
January 6, 2025 - February 24, 2025 | 6:30pm - 8:30pm MDT | In-Person
We've all gone to a bookstore and flipped through a few titles, read the first few lines or the first few pages. We put certain things back. Leave with others. So much of the success of a novel, our desire to read one out of a vast sea of books, is dependent on those first few pages. How do they grip us, hold us, create a character, a world, establish a voice, a stance, right from the first page?
8-Week: Intro to Writing the Novel with Jenée Skinner
January 6, 2025 - February 24, 2025 | 6:30pm - 8:30pm MDT | Virtual
Calling all daytime writers who aspire to write a novel or have already started the ambitious task. This course will aim to provide direction and guidance, and we’ll also appreciate the camaraderie of writing with peers in an encouraging space.
8-Week: Getting it Done—96 Hours Towards a Finished Draft with Sarah Elizabeth Schantz
January 6, 2025 - February 28, 2025 | 9:00am - 1:00pm MDT | Virtual
Every writer has the same goal: I’m going to finish my draft … soon. Then we get distracted. Before we know it, “soon” becomes “later” and our draft still isn’t done. This eight-week, 96-hour intensive writing experience is your chance to flip the script.
8-Week: Advanced Novel Workshop with Tiffany Quay Tyson
January 7, 2025 - February 25, 2025 | 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT | In-Person
A novel is a huge undertaking, and this class is intended to help you break down the process into manageable units, gain perspective, and sharpen the aspects that set your novel apart and make it uniquely yours. This class is intended for advanced novelists who have completed a sizeable portion of their manuscripts.
8-Week: Five Pages Feedback with Paula Younger
January 7, 2025 - February 25, 2025 | 10:00am - 12:00pm MDT | Hybrid
This class is designed for writers who want feedback on their projects but don't have the time for workshop. Each week, the instructor will assign an optional reading to inspire participants, and each writer will bring in five pages to read aloud to the group and get feedback.
8-Week: Productivity Club—Weekday Edition with Jenny Taylor-Whitehorn and Amanda Rea
January 7, 2025 - February 27, 2025 | 9:30am - 1:30pm MDT | In-Person
Who says writing has to be a solitary occupation? This facilitated writing program aims to combine two things every writer needs: focused time and a sense of community. Join us twice a week on Tuesday and Thursday, in person at Lighthouse, for concentrated writing time to finish that draft or start a new project using the Pomodoro technique.
8-Week: Advanced Novel Workshop with William Haywood Henderson
January 7, 2025 - February 25, 2025 | 6:30pm - 8:30pm MDT | Virtual
A novel is a huge undertaking, and this class is intended to help you break down the process into manageable units, gain perspective, and sharpen the aspects that set your novel apart and make it uniquely yours.
8-Week: Backstory—What’s Next with John Cotter
January 7, 2025 - February 25, 2025 | 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT | Virtual
In this eight-week class, we’ll put the story back in backstory: creating events in the past that feel as relevant and suspenseful as real-time action and which fit seamlessly into the worlds we’re building.
8-Week: Advanced Short Story Workshop with Jenny Wortman
January 8, 2025 - February 26, 2025 | 6:30pm - 8:30pm MDT | Virtual
This class is a continuing forum for experienced short story writers, with an emphasis on in-depth, supportive discussion of student work. We'll also explore the art of the short story through craft talks, readings, and writing exercises. Each participant may workshop two stories.
8-Week: Myth as Metaphor in Fiction with Daniel Levine
January 8, 2025 - February 26, 2025 | 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT | Virtual
They say every story has already been told, but we can use this to our advantage. Fiction can reference myths and archetypes to create resonance in the work and, on a larger scale, even model plots upon stories so deeply embedded in the popular psyche that they will ring with uncanny familiarity and strange truth and allow writers to retell ancient tales with a refreshing twist.
8-Week: Crafting and Revising a Story from Scratch with Dino Enrique Piacentini
January 8, 2025 - February 26, 2025 | 6:30pm - 8:30pm MDT | In-Person
In this workshop, we’ll not only generate a wholly new story from beginning to end, but we’ll also play around with it each week, tapping into our own hidden channels of creativity. The goal will be to deliver a story that you didn’t intend or anticipate—a story that will surprise your reader and you.
8-Week: Revising Fiction—The Novel Chapter with Alexander Lumans
January 8, 2025 - February 26, 2025 | 10:00am - 12:00pm MDT | Virtual
Novel chapters, like short stories, ask you to do a lot. Setting! Plot! Language! But chapters tend to ask a little more of you than short stories do: Where should I end this? Where do these scenes fit into my main character’s arc? Does this part even make sense? In this class, we’ll discuss a range strategies for revising your very own novel chapters.
8-Week: Intro to Writing the Short Story with Trent Hudley
January 9, 2025 - February 27, 2025 | 6:30pm - 8:30pm MDT | Virtual
This class will help writers tackle what might seem like the overwhelming task of writing a short story. Whether you are just beginning to write fiction or looking for guidance on a current draft, this introductory workshop will provide insight and direction to move you forward.
8-Week: Intermediate Novel Workshop with Jamie Figueroa
January 9, 2025 - February 27, 2025 | 6:30pm - 8:30pm MDT | Virtual
In this course, we'll shore up the basics but also dig past them: how do relationships drive a story? Why does setting matter? How does language build a mood, a whole atmosphere? We’ll dissect and consider scene, tension, character development, and pacing, exploring nontraditional ways of organizing and building plot alongside standard strategies.
8-Week: Start and Finish the Book—A Crash Course with Andrea Dupree
January 9, 2025 - February 27, 2025 | 6:00pm - 8:00pm MDT | Hybrid
This workshop is designed for writers working on fiction or nonfiction books who could benefit from the rotating mentorship of writers who have recently made it through to the other side. They come bearing gifts! Each week a recently or soon-to-be published guest writer will visit class (live or via Zoom) and provide a mini-lesson on one critical thing that helped them write, finish, or sell their book.
8-Week: Works in Progress—Prose with Sarah Elizabeth Schantz
January 9, 2025 - February 27, 2025 | 6:30pm - 8:30pm MDT | Virtual
This class is a workshop and writer's group for prose writers designed to give you that precious window to work and to simultaneously bring to life your works-in-progress via a process aimed at establishing and maintaining a steady momentum.
4-Week Workshops
4-Week: Watery World—A Generative Workshop with Jessica Roeder
January 6, 2025 - February 2, 2025 | 24hrs | Virtual via Wet Ink
Let water—its nature, its movement, its states of being, the creatures it contains—inspire four weeks of creative exploration. Each Monday, you’ll find new poetry and prose, visual art, videos, sounds, and creative prompts proximate to water.
4-Week: Finding Your Unique Voice with Raeann Giles
January 6, 2025 - January 27, 2025 | 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT | Virtual
This course is a deep dive of self-discovery that will bring our own personal life experiences and events to our characters and stories. We’ll first become in tune with our true inner selves through writing exercises to determine our purpose and blocks.
4-Week: Spark and Re-Spark—Re-Ignite Your Craft and Creativity with Joy Roulier Sawyer
January 6, 2025 - January 27, 2025 | 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT | Virtual
Revive your most powerful and productive writing core and recover your momentum and morale in this four-week intervention designed to reignite your creativity.
4-Week: Draft a Short Story or Essay with Alexander Lumans
January 7, 2025 - January 28, 2025 | 10:00am - 12:00pm MDT | Virtual
This generative, writing-intensive course will focus on the most important elements of writing short prose (fiction or personal essays) while keeping you on deadline. We’ll start at the beginning (how to write a great opening), then discuss evocative landscapes, narrative arcs, convincing characters, and make sure our drafts come equipped with a sturdy backbone of ideas.
4-Week: Writing 101—Gotta Start Somewhere with Joy Roulier Sawyer
January 7, 2025 - January 28, 2025 | 6:30pm - 8:30pm MDT | In-Person
In this experiential, non-critiquing writing workshop, you'll immerse yourself in a wide variety of writing exercises, learn to use your journal as a creative catalyst, assess your writing strengths, set do-able writing goals, reflect on and learn from your own writing process, and discuss future Lighthouse workshop options. No previous experience necessary. Just bring a pen, paper, and your burning desire to write.
4-Week: Shaping Our Stories Through Tarot with Hillary Leftwich
January 7, 2025 - January 28, 2025 | 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT | Virtual
In this four-week transformative workshop, we’ll practice weaving the esoteric art of Tarot with the creative craft of writing. Each week will feature tarot card pulls, writing exercises, and insightful discussions designed to evoke your storytelling, along with workshopping sessions to refine your divine aspirations.
4-Week: Submit Now—Short Story/Essay Edition with Erika Krouse
January 8, 2025 - January 29, 2025 | 6:30pm - 8:30pm MDT | Virtual
The first step in publishing short stories and essays is…you guessed it, submitting your work to literary magazines! But how? And how, and when, and what, and to whom, and at which litmags? In this weekly class, we’ll help you build a solid submission strategy and process that you can use immediately and well into the foreseeable future, based on time-proven techniques to maximize your success.
4-Week: Tuning In—How to Invite Inspiration and Keep Ideas Flowing with Sasha Geffen
January 8, 2025 - January 29, 2025 | 6:30pm - 8:30pm MDT | In-Person
Inspiration is one of the slipperiest, most elusive pieces of writing practice. What's the difference between a day when a big idea just comes to you and a day when all you seem to be getting is radio static? In this class, we'll reframe inspiration as something that can be honed with practice and attention: not a big cosmic gamble, but a skill in its own right.
4-Week: Novel Bootcamp I—Story with William Haywood Henderson
January 8, 2025 - January 29, 2025 | 6:30pm - 8:30pm MDT | Virtual
Writing a novel or memoir can feel overwhelming, but through the Novel Bootcamp series you can get a handle on all aspects of creating a book-length manuscript. Each four-week part of the series focuses on a particular area of craft and creativity.
4-Week: Write Like a Visual Artist with Steven Dunn
January 9, 2025 - January 27, 2025 | 6:30pm - 8:30pm MDT | Hybrid
Writer Steven Dunn and visual artist Jada Dunn will discuss examples and elements of visual art and experiment with possible ways to translate those elements to writing, from shading and highlighting to composition and character design. Surprise yourself through the act of pulling from one artistic practice into another.
4-Week: Body Horror—Our Bodies, Ourselves with Sarah Elizabeth Schantz
January 14, 2025 - February 4, 2025 | 6:30pm - 8:30pm MDT | Virtual
This four-week class will serve as a crash course on this subgenre of horror writing, with a keen focus on the intersection of abjection and the female/femme body as used to express historically marginalized experiences based also on race, disability, age, sexual orientation, etc. as well as gender.
4-Week: From Micro to Macro—Revising the Details with Sarah Elizabeth Schantz
January 27, 2025 - February 17, 2025 | 6:30pm - 8:30pm MDT | Virtual
This intensive prose-focused workshop zeroes in on the fine art of the line edit, considering punctuation, word choice, sentence structure, and repetition to explore how such microscopic work can result in big picture revisions. Each week, we’ll zoom in on key techniques, using an instructor provided manual to guide us.
4-Week: Writing 101—Gotta Start Somewhere with Joy Roulier Sawyer
February 3, 2025 - February 24, 2024 | 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT | Virtual
In this experiential, non-critiquing writing workshop, you'll immerse yourself in a wide variety of writing exercises, learn to use your journal as a creative catalyst, assess your writing strengths, set do-able writing goals, reflect on and learn from your own writing process, and discuss future Lighthouse workshop options. No previous experience necessary. Just bring a pen, paper, and your burning desire to write.
4-Week: Family Portraits with Lisa Kennedy
February 3, 2025 - February 24, 2025 | 6:30pm - 8:30pm MDT | In-Person
In this four-week course, we'll read pieces and excerpts—nonfiction, fiction, poetry—that take on family, then dive into our own work with in-class exercises. Whether embarking on a new project, working on an existing one or craving craft work in community, writers of all levels are welcome.
4-Week: The Art of Memory in Prose with Alexander Lumans
February 4, 2025 - February 25, 2025 | 10:00am - 12:00pm MDT | Virtual
As a source of inspiration as well as verisimilitude, memory’s deployment in prose writing typically offers a kind of grounding for the writer and reader. But as Alexander Chee says, “Memory is the thing you forget with.” In this class, we’ll examine how different writers have unexpectedly turned memory into a galvanizing force in their work.
4-Week: Writing the Nonhuman with Brittany Ackerman
February 4, 2025 - February 25, 2025 | 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT | Virtual
In Writing the Nonhuman, writers will explore featuring non-human beings in our stories in ways that subvert common cliches and stereotypes and tackle the hurdles of how to make unreal characters real, relatable, and resonant.
4-Week: Writing 101—Gotta Start Somewhere with Joy Roulier Sawyer
February 4, 2025 - February 25, 2025 | 6:30pm - 8:30pm MDT | In-Person
In this experiential, non-critiquing writing workshop, you'll immerse yourself in a wide variety of writing exercises, learn to use your journal as a creative catalyst, assess your writing strengths, set do-able writing goals, reflect on and learn from your own writing process, and discuss future Lighthouse workshop options. No previous experience necessary. Just bring a pen, paper, and your burning desire to write.
4-Week: Novel Bootcamp II—Narrative Strategy with William Haywood Henderson
February 5, 2025 - February 6, 2025 | 6:30pm - 8:30pm MDT | Virtual
In this class, we’ll find the best way to tell our tales, focusing on how our narrative strategies work organically with our tales. We’ll look at point of view, voice, vision, psychic distance, language, etc., trying to answer the basic questions of who is telling the story, where the story is being told from, why the story is important, what will set the voice apart, and who the audience might be.
One-Day Workshops
Glimmers: A Generative Technique with Sarah Elizabeth Schantz
January 19, 2025 | 10:00am - 12:00pm MDT | Virtual
Using a concept Pam Houston calls “glimmers,” we'll draw from our past, from our everyday, and from our dreams to write what haunts us. Sometimes the right "glimmer" serves as the revision strategy you didn't know you needed.
The Dreaded Middle (And How to Get Through It) with Jenny Taylor-Whitehorn
January 26, 2025 | 10:00am - 12:00pm MDT | Hybrid
In this class, we’ll use screenwriting techniques to not only get through the middle, but energize and revitalize those in-between moments, focusing on the power of three-act story structure and crafting nuanced character arcs. Though we’ll be discussing screenwriting methods and using TV and film for examples, all stories are welcome!
Adding Energy to Your Writing with Alyse Knorr
February 16, 2025 | 12:00pm - 2:00pm MDT | Virtual
Do you have a piece of writing that feels flat and you can’t tell why? Why does some writing seem charged with electric energy and others not so much? This workshop will offer you some quick practical tips for how to add energy into your writing in any genre. Bring a piece in-progress or take tips away for your next piece.
Out of Character with Sarah Elizabeth Schantz
February 22, 2025 | 10:00am - 12:00pm MDT | Virtual
Focusing on all the ways people are walking contradictions, we'll learn to create complex, believable characters and realistic portraits of the human psyche. We'll start with low-stakes writing exercises, then work on applying these lessons to our own characters.
