Naslund-Mann Offering during the Summer Virtual Residency: Special-Topic Generative Mini-Workshops: June 25–28

For the second half of the Summer 2025 virtual residency, students will participate in a faculty-led, special-topic, mini-workshop that is generative (meaning you won’t hand in a worksheet but will be doing in-workshop writing to share with your workshop leader and other student participants).

The descriptions for the special-topic generative workshops are below. Be thinking about which workshops interest you. Students will receive a link to register for these workshops on Monday, May 5. Workshops will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis.

---

From All-Over-the-Place to Someplace:

Taking Scattered Ideas to Form Poems and Essays

with Molly Peacock

This workshop/studio will allow participants to map the evolution of jottings into poems or essays. As online visual art teachers demonstrate by drawing, Molly Peacock will show, in real (and replicated) time, how all-over-the-place notes can coalesce into poems or personal essays. How can intuition merge with technique?  Our simple start will be domestic and personal objects:  a bowl, a fork, a purse, a cane, a shoe, a screwdriver, a Band-aid, a phone, a pillowcase etc. We will briefly reference the work of Deborah Lutz: The Bronte Cabinet: Three Lives in Nine Objects as Molly drafts a poem or essay demonstration-style, allowing participants intimate observation of a process that they can adapt to their own use. The only thing you need to bring are scraps of ideas, thoughts, words, and an actual personal or domestic object. Let’s start all over the place and arrive at Someplace.

Writing the Scene

with Sam Zalutsky

All writers need to know how to write a good scene, no matter what genre you write. This workshop will examine the basic building blocks of the dramatic scene, including visual description, structure, dialogue, conflict, character, obstacle and objective through screenplay scene to explore what works in a scene and what doesn't. Then you will do multiple screenwriting exercises as well as a revision exercise to strengthen your scene writing skills. There will be several short screenplays to read. Open and beneficial to all genres.

Write from the Heart: A Generative Writing Workshop

with Lesléa Newman

How do we, as writers, gain access to the stories that lie deep inside our hearts, the stories that matter to us, the stories that only we can tell? In this workshop we will use observation, memory, and imagination to crack open the treasure chest of stories that lies within us just waiting to be discovered and developed. We will focus on character, action, and setting, using tried and true writing exercises that enable us to discover the stories we need to tell and the ways in which to tell them. A myriad of prompts will guide you to generate many starts to new projects and/or discover new aspects of projects on which you have already begun. Appropriate for writers of all genres and students can generate work in any area.

Using The Three-Act Screenplay Structure to Clarify the Story of Your Novel, Short Story, W4YA or CNF Book-in-Progress or Play or Screenplay

with Charlie Schulman

You've written a draft or a portion of your novel, short story, CNF book, screenplay, or play, and while you like a lot of it, you  also know you have “story problems.” This workshop will focus on the classic three-act structure that tells a compelling story with an active protagonist and that has a beginning, middle, and end that creates, builds, and pays off dramatic tension. By following the mantra "Simplify, Clarify, and Heighten," students will be asked to write and revise one-page scenarios. The goal is for participants to return after the workshop to their works-in-progress with a renewed sense of clarity, urgency, and purpose.

Elegant Opinion: Writing the Short Personal Opinion Essay

with Roy Hoffman

What’s your opinion on A.I., learning poetry by heart, thank you notes, body image, guns, the sorrows or beauty of aging? How can you bring a personal story to a topic that’s succinct and widely accessible? In “Elegant Opinion” we’ll turn our workshop into a thoughtful newsroom, writers taking their ideas from inception to first draft, then polishing them up, ideally, ready to submit. We’ll progress in this way each session: You’ll tell us what’s on your mind, focus it with group conversation, sketch out a draft of 750 to 800 words—a standard length in viewpoint sections of newspapers and magazines—share it with the group, and get input. We’ll encourage not only clarity of opinion—with a personal connection—but also vividness of language. We want to understand your opinion through your eyes, experience it as we walk in your shoes. Literature, art, food, fashion, politics, societal norms, sports, you name it—we’ll be interactive, conversational, generative, and productive. You don’t have to chase headlines—hard to do if you’re not a news columnist—but what’s going on in the world can be a catalyst for your personal take on issues big and small, including in your own community. For pre-reading, I’ll distribute links to published personal opinion pieces as models of the form. Our goal? For you to have an elegant opinion, even two, to submit on your own for publication, with a list provided of general contact information for a wide range of viewpoint sections. Each session, participants will spend a brief period of time discussing published work to be distributed ahead of time.

Schedule:

Wednesday–Friday, June 25–27, 3:15–5:30 p.m. EDT.

Saturday, June 28, 10:30–11:30 a.m. EDT. Revision Workshop.