Begins Wednesday, April 29, 2026
Class will meet weekly via Zoom on Wednesdays, 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM ET

Note: If you can't attend live, this class will be recorded. 

🌍 Class Times by Time Zone: Los Angeles (PDT): 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM / Chicago (CDT): 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM / New York (EDT): 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM

Any questions about this class? Use the Chat Button to talk with us. 

Instructor Lauren Hohle earned her MFA from Eastern Washington University. She is an alum of the Community of Writers at Olympic Valley and the Sewanee Writers' Conference and has served on the editorial staffs of Big Fiction Magazine, Lynx House Press, Willow Springs Books, the Gettysburg Review, and Conjunctions. Prose she has edited has won the Paterson Fiction Prize, the Latino Book Award, the Pushcart Prize, been a finalist for the Pen America Literary Award, and appeared in the Best American series. Her own writing appears in Black Warrior Review, the Sun, Massachusetts Review, New England Review, Ecotone, and other journals. Her essay "The Cardinal Way," originally published in Santa Monica Review, is listed as Notable in this year's Best American Essays.

Who is this class for?

This online fiction writing workshop is for writers who are feeling stuck—whether they received feedback that didn't resonate or they're wrestling with material that won't behave. It is open to all levels and welcomes writers who are excited to discover new possibilities in unconventional writing.

What to expect:

The documentary Grey Gardens, by Albert and David Maysles, begins with shots of pristine Long Island lawns and the newspaper headline "Mother and daughter ordered to clean house or get out." Too often, this image has served as the perfect metaphor for women, LGBTQ+, BIPOC, and other marginalized or misfit writers' experience in MFA programs, publishing, and other literary power centers. Writers have been told their stories, or style of storytelling, don't play by the rules—are too loud, too quiet, too angry, too plotless, too political, too weird, too difficult. They've been pressured to squeeze their stories into traditional structures, tamp down meandering sentences, kill their darlings, remove text that "doesn't fit." Diminishing creative impulses seems to be the one-size-fits-all solution to early drafts that, in form or content, or because of these cautioning attitudes, hover in the middle.

Evoking the spirit of Big Edie and Little Edie, the iconic subjects of this documentary, Lauren invites writers of all genders to bring in their most unyielding fiction. Through an expansion-focused creative writing workshop, generative exercises, and by examining stories that resist convention, students will lean into their eccentricities, hoard scraps, coax raccoons out of the walls, and learn to bring greater intentionality to the unwieldy.

This online fiction workshop casts aside shame-based methods of critique. Instead of taking unwieldy parts out, students will practice leaning in through learning to identify "placeholder text" and "doors" that can be opened, writing toward questions, and using craft-based prompts to improve writing without taming it.

What are the writing goals?

In this course, students will bring in fiction they feel stuck with and develop new strategies for shaping unconventional work. Students will receive a feedback letter from the instructor identifying the perceived intentions, strengths, ideas, and emphasis of each piece, along with opportunities and constraints, burning, lingering, and logistical questions, and in-text comments outlining the reading experience. Students will also receive peer feedback using this method. Through an expansion-focused workshop, students will be encouraged to further explore their rule-breaking impulses rather than taming them.

Readings

Readings will include Ursula K. Le Guin's The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, and short stories by Joy Williams, Haruki Murakami, Elena Garro, Lidia Yuknavitch, and others. Students will also read each other's work.

COURSE OUTLINE

Week 1: Introductions. Cocreate a burn book of unwelcome workshop feedback. Freewrites on "leaning in" to the impulses behind our rule-breaking. Introduction to self-directed workshopping and community guideline housekeeping. Introduction to reading and feedback method.

Weeks 2–7: Discuss assigned reading. Show & Tell. The writer reads a paragraph from their piece that they feel is working well, a paragraph that represents what they are feeling unsure about, and outlines what they want the class discussion to focus on. Discussion. The workshop will end with the writer's peers reading their favorite lines. Repeat weeks 3 - 7.

Week 8: Generative Revision Freewrites. Revision Round Table.

COURSE TAKEAWAYS:

• Students will feel equipped to continue working on stories they've felt stuck with and develop strategies for integrating elements in their fiction instead of relying on removal.
• Students will learn to identify opportunities to expand or explore ideas further in their writing and to write toward questions and craft-based prompts.
• Students will cultivate expansive and imaginative reading practices through examining stories that resist convention.
• Students will learn to give written and oral feedback that doesn't focus on "good" or "bad" elements but that helps authors realize their visions for their work.
• Students will practice generative revision and feel confident in their own unique storytelling styles.