Writing Our Family — 6-Week Online Memoir, Fiction & Poetry Workshop with Kate Hill Cantrill Starts Wednesday, February 3rd, 2027
Writing Our Family: Multi-Genre Workshop | Feb 2027 Online
Writing Our Family: A Multi-Genre Memoir, Fiction & Poetry Workshop with Kate Hill Cantrill
Begins Wednesday, February 3, 2027
Class will meet weekly via Zoom on Wednesdays, 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM ET, with an online classroom in Wet Ink between sessions
🌍 Class Times by Time Zone:
- Los Angeles (PST): 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM
- Chicago (CST): 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM
- New York (EST): 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Now Enrolling! Open to all genres and levels. Limited to 8 writers.
Any questions about this class? Use the Chat Button to talk with us.
Instructor Kate Hill Cantrill is the author of the short story collection Walk Back From Monkey School. She holds an MFA from The Michener Center for Writers, and her stories, essays, and poetry have appeared in literary journals such as Story Quarterly, The Believer, Mississippi Review, Texas Observer, Blackbird, Salt Hill, The Short Story Project, and others. She has received fellowships from The Corporation of Yaddo, The Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Jentel Artists’ Residency, and The James A. Michener Fund.
Who is this class for?
This online writing workshop is open to all levels and all genres. It is for writers who want to dig into their writing voice, experiment with form, and shed some preconceptions about exactly how a story should be told. We cover craft concepts rather than the basic mechanics of writing.
What to expect:
Writing Our Family is an instructor-facilitated, peer-driven creative writing course about the complexities of writing family: the benefits, hindrances, and difficulties of writing about the people we are most entangled with. Over six weeks you'll work across genres, writing flash memoir, fiction, poetry, and epistolary stories in response to weekly prompts.
The class meets each Wednesday evening on Zoom to discuss published work and our own pages. Between sessions, Wet Ink is our online classroom, where you'll post your assignments and give and receive writing feedback with your peers and Kate. Each week brings a prompt (1-3 pages per assignment), a short published reading, and your classmates' work to read. The reading packet arrives as a PDF at the start of the course. Class size is limited to 8 writers, so every piece gets real attention.
Along the way you'll practice craft techniques such as voice, tone, point of view, psychic distance, metaphor, and allusion. These tools free you to explore territory you never thought you'd have the confidence to write about. This Zoom writing class is a safe and supportive space to ask hard questions and try to answer them on the page.
What are the writing goals?
In this course, students will complete a weekly writing assignment based on a prompt (1-3 pages each) and finish the six weeks with 4-5 drafts in varied genres, ready to be revised into standalone pieces or to become the beginning of a longer work. Students receive feedback from Kate and their peers in Wet Ink and in live discussion on Zoom. The final session is a reading and discussion of each writer's future writing intentions.
Readings
Readings may include excerpts from Jamaica Kincaid, Amy Hempel, John Edgar Wideman, Grace Paley, Raymond Carver, Meg Pokrass, Pia Z. Ehrhardt, Edwidge Danticat, ZZ Packer, Elizabeth Bishop, Lucille Clifton, Naomi Shihab Nye, George Saunders, Lydia Davis, Ander Monson, and Sandra Cisneros.
COURSE OUTLINE
- Week 1: Wednesday, February 3
- Week 2: Wednesday, February 10
- Week 3: Wednesday, February 17
- Week 4: Wednesday, February 24
- Week 5: Wednesday, March 3
- Week 6: Wednesday, March 10. Final session: a reading and discussion of future writing intentions
COURSE TAKEAWAYS:
- 4-5 new drafts across memoir, fiction, poetry, and epistolary forms
- Craft tools for writing about family: voice, tone, point of view, psychic distance, metaphor, and allusion
- Weekly writing feedback from Kate Hill Cantrill and a small cohort of peers
- A reading list of writers who put family on the page, from Jamaica Kincaid to George Saunders
- A plan for what comes next, shaped in the final session's reading and discussion
TESTIMONIALS:
"I am writing review as recipient of a gift from my husband to participate in this course. What a lovely course I experienced with Kate Hill Cantrill. I was a newbie to a formal writing course and also busy with regular life in the meantime. Kate was gracious, passionate, and kind. She was supportive and inspiring in her guidance and feedback. I appreciated the well prepared content and writing prompts, and loved the idea that we could be honest and open about the difficult topics we approached in writing about family. I felt Kate was also particularly patient and encouraging to newcomers to the process. I would recommend her course highly, and also hope to take a future course with her when I have the time."
— Richard J.
"I appreciated the ability to experiment with writing genres I would not have ordinarily have had the courage (& maybe even interest) to play around with, e.g., poetry, but surprisingly I really enjoyed writing a freeform piece. The class was life-changing for me because it provided an environment to explore how some of my childhood experiences affected me in a creative way; I am strongly considering sharing these with others."
— Sonya C.
"I would recommend Kate's class very highly. The class FAR exceeded my expectations! Kate is a fabulous teacher. She provided excellent input and a reading list of suggested authors that has been inspirational. Kate's feedback was so helpful for my personal growth as was her reading list, positive attitude, and her knowledge about writing was exceptional."
— Ellen G.
"Kate Hill Cantrill's class Writing Our Family was excellent! The group of students worked well together, Kate's comments were precise and helpful and I learned a lot. I would do it again!"
— V.S.
PAYMENT OPTIONS:
Tuition is $445 USD. You can pay for the course in full or use Shop Pay or Affirm to pay over time with equal Monthly Payments. Both options are available at checkout.
ONLINE COURSE STRUCTURE:
- Instructor: Kate Hill Cantrill
- Begins Wednesday, February 3, 2027
- Class will meet weekly via Zoom on Wednesdays, 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM ET
- Tuition is $445 USD.