Take a Class
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Our workshops are geared toward all styles, genres, and experience. All that is required is a love of language and the desire to tell a story. Those who take our workshops are assured a supportive environment, providing a better understanding of the pleasure of creative writing process. All of us are capable of intellectual and imaginative things, and WIM offers a variety of programs to help you to express your creativity.
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Classes
NOTE: A NUMBER OF CLASSES HAVE LIMITED ENROLLMENT, SO EARLY DECISION IS RECOMMENDED.
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NOTE: SHARON ISRAEL'S MONTHLY AMHERST METHOD WORKSHOP IS ON HIATUS UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE, SO SHARON CAN FOCUS ON HER WRITING PROJECTS. WE'LL KEEP YOU POSTED!
STORIES ON STAGE: WRITING FOR PERFORMANCE
with Katherine Varga
November 7 to
December 19, 2025
(skipping November 28)
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Fridays
(six sessions)
12:30 - 2:30pm ET
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ONLINE
A playwright’s words are not meant to live flat on the page, but rather to be fully embodied by actors in real time. How do you craft characters and situations that will get a live audience to lean into your story?
In this workshop-based playwriting class, you will write short scenes based on prompts and have the opportunity to hear your work read aloud and discussed. This class is open to anyone with a desire to learn more about the magic that happens when writing meets theater.
After an introductory crash-course session on theatre, including reading aloud and
discussing short scripts, each session will primarily be spent workshopping three- to five-page scenes written outside of class. We’ll read the piece aloud in class and I will moderate a brief discussion through feedback questions. Each session will end with a mini-lesson and new prompt for the next week’s workshops.
You will receive an outline for the classes at the outset, from introductory nuts and bolts to a discussion of the playwright’s role to readings, exercises, and homework to perception shifts and revision.
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Class Fee: $160 | REGISTER HERE
RETURNING IN DECEMBER!
Registration opening soon
MICRO: THE DIVINE DETAIL
Editing Class with Elizabeth Koster
September 18 -
October 30, 2025
(skipping October 2)
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Thursdays
(six sessions)
11 am - 1 pm ET
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ONLINE
Vladimir Nabokov told his students: “Caress the detail, the divine detail." In this class, through a combination of workshop and generative exercises, you will learn self-editing techniques to improve the musicality, specificity, and power of your (short) prose. Learn how to shape your stories, elevate your language, punctuate for emphasis, pare down sentences, and kill those darlings. Whether you write fiction or nonfiction, you will come away with polished work and a greater sense of how to trust yourself and make your words sing.
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Class limited to ten students.
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Class Fee: $160 | REGISTER HERE
RETURNING IN DECEMBER: Modern Love II
Registration opening soon
MODERN LOVE I
with Elizabeth Koster
October 7 -
November 11, 2025
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Tuesdays
(six sessions)
11am - 1 pm ET
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ONLINE
In this class, you will have the opportunity to complete an essay that you can submit for consideration in The New York Times Modern Love column. Through prompts and exercises, supportive feedback, a study of published essays, and discussions on tips and pitfalls, you will be able to sculpt and hone the story that you need to tell and the world needs to read.
Students who have taken this class in the past have found this instructor's gentle feedback and encouragement tremendously helpful in their work.
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Class limited to ten students.
Class Fee: $160 | REGISTER HERE
IMAGINARIUMS IN THE NOW: A COLLABORATIVE WRITING WORKSHOP
with Kathleen Sweeney
January 8 to February 12 2026
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Thursdays
(six sessions)
6 - 8 PM ET
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ONLINE
Soil-generated cities made of mycelium . . . Whale pods singing sonic cetacean sagas . . . A hybrid wolf-human species enacting lunar dance rituals to restore woodlands . . . An undersea world of kelp farmers collaborating with cephalopod memory-keepers . . . Enter a creative space for envisioning resilient, detailed worlds based in sensory awareness, time traveling, and radical imagining. “Imaginariums in the Now” explores dynamic entry points for crafting near future fiction and poetics rooted in possibility, solutionism, and interspecies communication drawn from a variety of fascinating sources. Collaborative poetics, drawing exercises, and guided-meditation techniques will be included in this mind-mapping of imaginary travelscapes to resilient worlds.
Drawing on recent scientific research in climate solutions, innovations in bioplastics and mycoremediation, the wood wide web of tree communications, ancient Celtic and indigenous myths and silviculture, this course combines writing prompts, audio tracks, and nature walks to conjure visions of believable worlds of awe and wonder. Perusing excerpts from Ursula K. LeGuin, Octavia Butler, Kim Stanley Robinson, and JRR Tolkien, we will also explore eco-visions of real-life Earth resilience from Robin Wall Kimmerer, Susanne Simard and Merlin Sheldrake.
As we collaborate to design storylines of communal resilience and fantastical innovation, vibrant worlds of sensorial believability appear on the page. “Imaginariums in the Now” bivouacs to trails, landscapes, and byways of wonder and possibility beyond dystopia.​
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Class Fee: $160 | REGISTRATION COMING SOON
January 2026. Full details to follow, stay tuned!​
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THE FIRST AUDIENCE IS YOU: JOURNALING TO CLARITY, CREATIVITY, AND EXPRESSION
with Nancy Steinkamp
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ONLINE
The journal can be a writer’s sketchbook, a container of inquiry and personal history, a roadmap to self-understanding, or a template capturing the joy and pain of living in real-time moments. It is written for your eyes first, and you determine if and when to share pieces of it with a broader audience. We will explore special journaling techniques each week that reveal themes, uncover deep meaning, and identify who would resonate with your unique message if you choose to develop a finished piece. New and experienced writers can benefit from adding or expanding a journal to their writing practice.
Sessions will be two hours and include an introduction to two to three journaling techniques each week to prompt the participant’s writing. After each technique is practiced, participants are invited to share their experience or a piece of writing. Writers can use the exercises to enhance a current piece of work or explore new subjects.
Materials:
* A new or active journal, paper or digital (some techniques may use paper/pen or colored pencils)
* Additional journaling resources will be provided
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​Class Fee: $160 | REGISTER HERE
Coming in early 2026. Full details soon!
STEP UP TO THE MIC
Public Reading Skills with Beth Lisick
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Three sessions, with an open mic reading party for the final!
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IN-PERSON!!
This four-week workshop is designed for writers who want to bring their work to life in front of an audience. Whether you’re preparing for a book launch, sharing a tale at a storytelling series, reciting a poem at a community/family event or rolling up to an open mic at a cafe, this series will offer practical tools and a supportive environment to develop your public reading skills.
We’ll talk about how to select and edit excerpts that lend themselves to performance, how to pace and shape your delivery, and how to use your voice, with and without a microphone. You’ll learn some basic performance techniques, strategies for calming your nerves, and ways to authentically connect with listeners.
At the end of the four weeks, the group will perform for a live audience in a celebratory public open-mic final session. No experience is required—just a willingness to experiment and share your work aloud. Come ready to transform your writing from page to stage, gain confidence in your voice, and most of all, enjoy yourself with the community we’ll create.
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Class Fee: $75 | REGISTER HERE
This trip has come home, but watch for another journey this spring!
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TRAVEL WRITING 101
with Rachel Dickinson
September 17 -
October 29, 2025
(skipping October 15)
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Wednesdays
(six sessions)
6 - 8pm ET
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ONLINE
Have you ever met a travel writer and thought "I wish I could do that?" Well, you can. In this course we'll read a variety of travel pieces, and talk about what makes them good (or not so good). We will look at different kinds of travel writing - roundups, essays, hotel/spa reviews. Then we will write a couple of travel pieces - one that features something where you live (you don't have to travel to do good travel writing) and another about some place you have visited. These pieces will be critiqued by the class.
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Class limited to ten students.
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​Class Fee: $160 | REGISTER HERE