Join me in this live two-hour class and discover the Five Things I’ve Learned about the ways that poetic form both organizes and conveys our essential emotions and insights.

Hello! I’m Maya C. Popa.

I very much hope you’ll join me for my upcoming two-hour class, Five Things I’ve Learned about Poetic Form.

I’m a writer, editor, and teacher based in New York City and the author of Wound is the Origin of Wonder (W.W. Norton, 2022) and American Faith (Sarabande, 2019). I serve as the Poetry Reviews editor of Publishers Weekly, where I have the honor and pleasure of reading and championing contemporary poetry. I also hold a PhD from Goldsmiths, University of London on the role of wonder in poetry. My Substack newsletter Poetry Today goes out to thousands of readers weekly and covers, among other things, the relationship of mindset and writing. There are also a number of posts on literary curiosities (Emily Dickinson’s gingerbread recipe, anyone?). Each Wednesday, I share a post on my research into wonder and poetry.

While I love talking about literary craft, I’m just as passionate about speaking about the setbacks and so-called “failures” that underly our achievements as writer. Anxiety, stress, doubt, despair—these are not the most useful emotions to encounter when we sit down to the black page. And so many of those less helpful feelings are often at the forefront of our minds. They come from stories we tell ourselves about our own capacity and worth, the limitations we impose, and the comparisons our ego draws. We know that our physiologies work in particular ways that either assist or detract from how we learn. So, while I credit two MAs and a PhD with teaching me a great deal about literary history and poetry, and while I am always eager, excited, and delighted to share anything I know with you, my primary purpose goal, purpose, and mission is to get you to help you write, and to write with greater ease. If I can get you to put aside your self doubt, you will process more, take more risks, and most importantly, enjoy writing, and the gifts it has to offer your life.

What does this have to do with poetic form? Well, much alas, form gets a bad rep. I think we can safely attribute this to the way that many of us were taught poetry in school: take this poem, now answer a series of punishing riddles about how it was constructed (do words like “tetrameter” ring a bell?). However, as we well know, poets don’t go in with an agenda to make their readers lives miserable, nor to have them fail an exam. Form is a profoundly useful tool to poets because it organizes thought and emotion. Wordsworth called poetry “the overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origins from emotion recollected in tranquility.” Form is essential in containing that powerful feeling. Its limiting constraints help distill and convey our emotions and insights.

In this class, we will redeem the subject of form from your high school English curriculum by reviewing how poems are structured and constructed and finding new ways to think about how we might use form in our writing. We’ll begin by considering all the reasons we are drawn to forms, even if they can sometimes intimate us, while exploring the idea of poetry as its own “system of syntax” (T.S. Eliot).

If you would like to finally understand why we break lines (enjambment), and how you can wield this power in your writing, this course is for you. You will walk away feeling better equipped to discuss how sonnets work, as well as better-versed in a series of lesser known forms, including ghazals and haibuns.

Together, we’ll develop a deeper appreciation for the singular relationship between a poem’s content and its form.

Please join me,

-Maya

Join me in this live, two-hour class and discover the Five Things I’ve Learned about why writing happens best when we summon the faith and the nerve to get out of our own way – and free-fall instead into our psyche and imagination.

Dear Fellow Writers,

My name is Andre Dubus 3, and I’m the author of five novels, two short story collections, a memoir, and a forthcoming collection of personal essays. I have been writing since the early 1980s, but I’ve also been teaching creative writing for nearly as long, and one of the many things I’ve discovered in the classroom is that we writers quite often and quite easily can get in our own way.

Getting in the way is a difficult habit to recognize, and an even harder habit to break. And that’s why I want to invite you to my upcoming live class, Five Things I’ve Learned about Writing as Dreaming. Whether we’re writing fiction or creative non-fiction, we tend to want our work to illuminate something in particular – perhaps the challenges of marriage (gay or straight), of racism and patriarchy, of the ravages of addiction, etc – and so we control our writing, and we beat it into submission until it says just what we authors want it to say. But, if I’ve learned nothing in my decades of creative writing, I’ve learned this: the writing is larger than the writer, a surrender of each writer’s ego and its attendant authorial desires to something larger than herself, and this can only happen with a brave free-fall into the writer’s own psyche and imagination.

And so, during our time together, I’ll explain to you why I recommend that you do not outline your work. And why I urge you not to think out the plot, the narrative arc, the protagonist’s journey, whatever you want to call it. Instead, try to find the story through an honest excavation of the characters’ total experience of the situation in which they find themselves. Do that, and I promise the story will begin to write itself, with little need for the controlling hand of the godly, intelligent, well-read, and ambitious author.

How, precisely, does one go about this “excavation”? And how, technically speaking, can we ignite a story into “writing itself”? Come to this two-hour class, and I will seek to demystify those writerly tools and skills that time and time again, if they are sharp enough, and if the writer can summon enough daily faith and nerve, can penetrate the mystery of story itself.

Thank you. I look forward to working with you.

– Andre

Join me in this live two-hour class and discover the Five Things I’ve Learned about how poetry works – and how poetry helps us all become better listeners to the world around us, to the voices of others, and to the voice within.

I’m Joseph Fasano.  I’m a poet, novelist, songwriter, and teacher.

I’ve been invited to participate in this exciting series called Five Things I’ve Learned, and in my case that means Five Things I’ve Learned About the Craft and Magic of Poetry.

I say “craft and magic” because I believe that a writer is always searching for that place where craft and magic are one, where form and freedom are not opposed but in fact are revealed to be the same.

Poetry has saved me time and again, and I have devoted the past 30 or so years of my life to learning how it works, how it opens us, how it frames its mysteries. I would love to share what I’ve learned with you.

So I invite you to join me for this two-hour class, in which I will offer you five essential insights into poetic craft: (1) the effects of rhythmic language, (2) the use of imagery to unlock unconscious content, (3) the structures of lineation, (4) the union of “form” and “freedom,” and (5) the power of the human voice in the performance of verse.

This class is for those of you who want to improve your writing, but it is also for those who just want to deepen your reading experience of poetry. And, I might add, this class will help all of us become better listeners to the world around us, to the voices of others, and to the voice within.

I hope you’ll join me, and I’m very excited to take this journey with you.

-Joseph Fasano

View the archive of my live, two-hour class and discover the Five Things I’ve Learned about a book’s critical first page – and about how you can ensure your opening paragraphs do all they can to hook readers and keep them reading.

Hi, I’m Holly Payne. 

I’ve been an award-winning novelist, a professor, and a private writing coach for more than two decades. I’m also the host and producer of the Page One Podcast, where I talk with master storytellers about the craft of the first page of their book. I’ve talked at length with great and inspiring writers including Jasmin Darznik, Tom Barbash, Daniel Handler, Alka Joshi, and Dean Koontz about the power and craft of their opening page. Why? Because master storytellers share a secret: Their first page is often the most rewritten; it has to work so hard to do so much.

The first page is where writers have their first chance to make a good impression. It’s also their first chance—and hopefully not their last—to hook readers and keep them engaged. As part of my obsession with a book’s first page, I’ve discovered that when well crafted, the first page contains the same elements in every genre, including fiction and non-fiction. Mastering these elements is possible for anyone who wants to engage their readers. And while the first page will inevitably be the most rewritten page of any book, getting it “right” doesn’t have to be agonizing—in fact it can be one of the most ecstatic moments in the process.

How you can approach your first page is exactly what I want to share with you in this live, two-hour class. We’ll look at the five things I’ve learned about how master storytellers work their magic, right from the start.

To begin, I’ll try to demystify ‘page one’ by sharing the five key principals I’ve learned every writer can apply right away to hook their readers. We’ll look closely at a few great first pages together to see what works and how each writer sets the ground for success in their opening paragraphs. 

We’ll also spend a good amount of time workshopping three page-ones that I’ll select from workshop participants. I’ll offer positive and valuable feedback in what I promise will be a safe, celebratory, and exploratory space.

Of course, I look forward to your questions to learning what you’re working on, and to offering additional insights to support your revision process. My hope is that when our time together concludes your book will be better positioned than ever to succeed – both in hooking an agent and editor and, most importantly, in ways that will engage and grow future readership.

Whether you’re working on your first draft, or honing your fifteenth, I hope you’ll join me for this lively, inspiring discussion about how a certain combination of just 26 letters can satisfy eager readers. 

Writing is an endurance sport. Let’s start with page one!

-Holly Payne

Join me in this live, 90-minute class and discover the Five Things I’ve Learned the contemporary cultural shifts reshaping classical music – and what the future might hold for musicians and audiences who love this great art.

It’s a disturbing thought, but could classical music be dying?

This of course can be an emotional question, for people who’ve loved classical music all of their lives. But there’s a reason for it. The classical music audience, as so often we hear, has grown older, and ticket sales have fallen. If these things are true — and if they continue — will we soon see a tipping point? Will the audience get so small that classical music can’t survive?

I’ll discuss that with great sympathy, whatever the answer might be. This is a class that’s for everyone, whether or not you’re a classical music fan. You won’t need special knowledge. We’ll talk about classical music not just as musical art, but as an absorbing cultural issue. And I love hearing all points of view.

To this class I’ll bring my passion for music, including moments when music carried me away. Like Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, in a performance so intense that the musicians and audience (including me) were in tears.

And also a show by Luther Vandross, the R&B great, where I found myself on my feet shouting his name, with no idea how I got there.

But above all I’ll bring what I’ve learned working for more than 40 years as a classical music professional. I’ve been a composer, a well-known critic, and above all a specialist in classical music’s future, on which I’ve been called a thought leader. Plus I’ve spent a few years in the pop music world, which — in an age when pop music dominates — helps give me a wider perspective.

For years I taught a course on the future of classical music at Juilliard, moving it this fall to another top music school, the Peabody Institute. Where — and I like this — the curriculum focuses on what classical music needs today.

I’ve written about classical music’s future, given talks on it in the U.S. and abroad, served as a consultant, and done projects with major symphony orchestras.

About the big questions we’ll ask, here are five things I think are true:

• The crisis is real. The audience really has aged, and ticket sales really have fallen. The crisis is systemic, involving declines in many aspects of classical music, like radio broadcasts, and media coverage. As time goes on, all this keeps getting worse. And then there’s what I see as classical music’s isolation. Amazing things might happen in classical music performances, but the outside world just doesn’t care. Which it would have, when I was young. 
• Classical music still isn’t dead! This past year, Tār broke through — the film so many of us saw, with Cate Blanchett as a troubled symphony conductor — and, at least for awhile, people talked about classical music. Inside the classical music world, big events still happen, and on a good night the audience still can look big. The New York Philharmonic, placing a bet on its future, spent more than $500 million to remodel its concert hall. Young people still study classical music. Though as I know from my teaching, these students are outliers in today’s world. Their friends — and often even their families — don’t understand what they do.
• There’s been a cultural shift. Which for me explains why there’s a crisis. Our culture has changed. We think and feel in contemporary ways, while classical music still basks in masterworks from the past, creating a disconnect with the present-day world. Though some of my colleagues wouldn’t agree. They’d say that people today have grown shallow, and that classical music now is too complex for them to understand. We can discuss this. What’s your view?
• Classical music is changing. Some classical musicians, especially young ones, dress more informally. Some talk to their audience, and play in new venues, even in dance clubs. Some play the old pieces in striking new ways. And much more new classical music is performed, especially works by female and Black composers. All of this can make classical music more current, and more accessible. Can we then hope that this art form — without losing its depth — can evolve still more, and find a new audience?
• The changes might not go far enough. This is the final question I’ll ask in this class — remembering, always with sympathy, that some people who love classical music might not want it to change much at all. But since changes are happening, we need to ask if they’re breaking through to the rest of the world. Not that classical music has to reach everyone. All it needs is enough support to sustain it — which, on a cautionary note, given how costly orchestral and opera performances are, might still be a lot of support. Can classical music find it?

These are big questions we’ll end on. Together, we’ll look for some answers. We might not solve the classical music crisis, but we can get some clarity.

– Greg Sandow

Join me in this live 90-minute class and discover the Five Things I’ve Learned about the ways that psychedelic-assisted therapy is revolutionizing medical treatment for hard-to-treat illnesses including addiction, anxiety disorders, depression, and PTSD.

My name is Andrew Penn. I’m a psychiatric nurse practitioner and clinical professor at UC San Francisco.

I’ve worked in the field of mental health for over 30 years, and for the last decade, I’ve been closely involved with researching psychedelic compounds in the context of psychotherapy. At UCSF, we’re studying these drugs with the aim of providing relief to people that have may not been helped as much as we would like by conventional pharmacologic treatments and psychotherapies. I’m happy to say that the results have been remarkable, and remarkably encouraging. We’re just at the beginning of what promises to be a breathtaking era of new treatments and therapies.

It’s these results – and their dramatic impact both for individuals currently suffering from some of the most challenging conditions we face today and for the clinicians and therapists who serve them – that I want to share with you in my upcoming live 90-minute class, Five Things I’ve Learned about Psychedelic Science and Psychedelic Assisted Therapy.

You may already know about some of the latest research taking place in world class institutions like Johns Hopkins, NYU, Imperial College London – and at UCSF. Remarkably, psychedelic drugs like psilocybin and MDMA are consistently being found to accelerate the process of psychotherapy for conditions including PTSD and chronic depression. These same compounds also show promising results when integrated within therapy for as a number of substance use disorders.

In our time together, I’ll talk about the long history of research into these compounds before they ever became part of popular culture. I’ll explain why this research went dark for decades, and review the most promising key findings of contemporary research efforts, findings that document these drugs’ remarkable impact as they’ve slowly become integrated within a variety of clinical practices over the last 25 years. Of course, I’ll also illustrate the remarkable potential of psychedelic assisted therapy with case studies from my own research at UCSF.

I think you’ll find this discussion both provocative and clarifying. Like anything that’s new, there’s both hope and hype. But one thing is certain: what researchers are discovering across the country is that the same psychedelics that were once considered to be only dangerous, recreational drugs are showing promise for treating mental health conditions when given in controlled, therapeutic settings. My aim is to share with you not only what we know about these drugs, but also what we still need to learn to keep this practice safe and effective.

I hope you’ll join me.

-Andrew Penn

Join me in this live, two-hour class and discover the Five Things I’ve Learned about maintaining music’s connection to all we need to cultivate creativity and build a joyful life.

Howdy! My name is Valerie June. I’m Grammy-nominated a musician, singer-songwriter, poet, and author. 

What do I know best? That the key to creativity is the secret every child knows by heart: We’re each the dreamer we’ve been waiting for.

I hope you’ll join me for my upcoming live class, Five Things I’ve Learned about Cultivating Music, Creativity, and Your Own Badass Self – in Five Songs. I’m eager to share with you what I’ve learned about creativity and about what can happen when you follow the power inside you and use your ancient wisdom to become who you are most meant to be: your own Badass Self.

During this two-hour class, I’ll share how I’ve discovered this wisdom time and again. It’s there, deep within some of my favorite songs. I’ll talk about and play some of my favorite music for you – and I’ll also share poems and inspiring words from a few of my favorite writers. I hope that in our time together, I’ll be able to show you how we all can better recognize and connect to the dreaming part of our nature; and how creativity and confidence flower when we become more attuned with our personal histories. That’s how I bring to life my own Badass Self – by aligning my inner shine with my personal, creative superpowers.

I experience this knowledge as a student of the blues. I feel its power, for example, every time I understand more about the ways in which the blues gave birth to jazz, soul, and rock-n-roll, even in some ways to country music. Oftentimes, I think about how some of the most oppressed, enslaved, and poverty-stricken people of the past century could keep believing in beauty, hope, and magic, even though that path was not even visible. Turning pain into power, they made tiny steps that created space for the luxuries and dreams we celebrate today.

I’ll talk about this history when we’re together. But, even more, I hope to offer other uplifting strategies you can use right away to unlock your own personal power and creativity. You’ll need to bring a journal with pencils and pens because we’ll create contracts and agreements, self-healing wishes and spells, and maps and prescriptions. I’ll also share quick exercises and prompts you can use right away to cultivate more harmony, healing, and balance within yourself and with the planet.

The goal is to open the portals that ignite your creative superpowers: What does it mean to find sound in silence? How does connecting with nature lead to your next song, poem, painting, dance, essay, or book? What is possible when we allow ancient messages and themes from the artistic revelations of our ancestors to guide us as we move fearlessly toward our dreams? Together, we can find out.

Please join me! The world can sometimes be a heavy and dark place, but I’ve found music, mindfulness, and creativity to be essential elements living a joyful life.  

I can’t wait to share with you what I’ve learned.

– Valerie June

Join me in this live, two-hour class and discover the Five Things I’ve Learned about the about the ways artificial intelligence is helping writers find new ways to develop their ideas and cultivate their creativity.

I’m Matt Strain. Most recently, I spent more than seven years in Adobe Research Lab, working as part of a team to explore the intersection of A.I. and creativity.

At Adobe, I worked with the scientists conducting the groundbreaking research, with product managers who converted this first-hand research into Adobe products, and with artists who incorporated the results of these efforts to create magic using Adobe tools. Work at the Adobe Research Lab took place in teams. But in every case, the focus of our research was intensely personal: we wanted to understand the best way that new tools could intimately change the way creative people work and express themselves.  

In many ways, this wonderful time at Adobe has given me what today is an equally personal perspective from which to explore the current AI revolution. In response to A.I., we all will soon be re-considering what we think of as the natural boundaries of “creativity.” Already, technical professionals and thinkers are wrestling with the implications of terms like “computational creativity” and “augmented intelligence.” We’ve entered an era in which writers, artists, filmmakers, craftspeople of all kinds will soon also be be equally challenged with the creative – and even the ethical – consequences of this new technology.

As we enter the early stages of this new reality, I wish to share with you in my live upcoming class, Five Things I’ve Learned about the Ways A.I. is Revolutionizing the Writing Process. I’m eager to tell you what I know broadly about the coming A.I. revolution. But I’m even more eager to share with you what A.I. is going to mean for what to me still feels like our most intimate and personal means of communication. If you’re a writer, or if you’re someone cares about writing and reading, you likely already know that I’m talking specifically to you.

In this two-hour class, I’ll share with you the five most important things I’ve learned about the new collection of tools already changing what it means to create, to experience, and to write. These tools go well beyond the human support of editors and ghostwriters; every day, A.I.-infused grammar coaches grow more human-like, and technologies like ChatGPT get better and better able to summarize, translate, and generate new content.

It’s a lot to take in and make sense of. That’s why in our time together, I’ll share what I believe writers need to know most. Of course, the lessons extend well beyond writing – they’ll soon be impacting ever creative thinker no matter their medium.

I’ll share my take on:

• A.I’.s current, most essential technologies: I’ll provide an as-up-to-the-moment understanding as I can of the technological systems that shape today’s best A.I. tools. My hope is that as a result you’ll be better able appreciate where these tools end and the work of humans still begins.
• A.I. and writing: I’ll focus specifically on how A.I. can be thoughtfully incorporated into the work great writers already do – not to replace their efforts but to support them. I’ll provide an update on the available approaches and technologies genuinely useful to writers’ brainstorming and research, as well programs that can help writers better draft, edit, and proofread their work.
• A.I. and publishing: I’ll share A.I.’s potential to help transform tasks now relegated almost entirely to publishers – efforts now more accessible than ever thanks to A.I.. I’ll suggest A.I.’s potential role in designing a book’s interiors and its cover, as well as technology’s increasing capacity to help streamline and scale a work’s publishing, marketing, and distribution.  
• A.I’.s legal and ethical consequences: I’ll tackle the legal issues that A.I. now requires us all to reconsider – fundamental issues like intellectual property and ownership. And I’ll also suggest some of the broader ethical implications of the A.I. revolution. 
• A.I’.s broader consequences for writers and citizens: I’ll reflect on what A.I. could mean not just for the future of writing but for the future of human creativity, particularly the many possibilities and the concerns that come with automation. (It really is going to be a brave new world, especially for writers!)

I’ve given this all some thought, but I’m most happy that I’ve not been thinking all on my own. Already, I’ve solicited the ideas and approaches of the folks who joined me for my first Five Things I’ve Learned class, Five Things I’ve Learned about Getting Started with A.I. – for Real People, and many of their suggestions have directly shaped the ideas and practices I hope to share with you. I hope that you, too, will think of this session as a collaborative gathering of our collective wisdom. You’ll have a chance to provide input in the days before our class begins, and again when we’re together. I look forward to sharing ideas with fellow writers and – I hope – with technologists and A.I. industry leaders who will also be in attendance for this live class.

My goal is to leave you with a concrete understanding of A.I.’s role in writing and publishing, as well as a better nuanced view of the broader discussions surrounding AI and humanity.

Whether you are a seasoned author or someone just curious about the possibilities A.I. offers, I hope this session will be your gateway to writing’s new frontier. 

Please join me in exploring, learning, and connecting.

-Matt Strain

Join me in this live, two-hour class and discover the Five Things I’ve Learned about accepting failure as a necessary step to success – and about reframing creative failures as opportunities for learning and growth.

I’m Steve Almond. I’m a writer, and a teacher. And I hope you’ll join me for my upcoming class, Five Things I’ve Learned about the Wisdom of Failure.

In 2022, at the tender age of 55, I published a book called All the Secrets of the World. It was my first published novel. But it was actually the fifth novel I’d written. The other four were never published, though I worked on them for years and years. The truth is, I’ve spent most of my career defining myself as a failed novelist. I don’t recommend this kind of thinking to fellow writers (or to artists of any kind), but my sense is that most of us succumb to it on some level. Rather than esteeming our own efforts, and triumphs, we obsess over our failures.

This happens, in large part, because we’re told to hide our failures —directly and indirectly, a million times a day. It turns out, that’s the wrong approach.

In this two-hour, freewheeling class, I’ll discuss what I’ve come to learn is the right approach, which is to accept failure as a necessary step on the way to success, and to reframe our creative failures as opportunities for learning and growth. What I mean, more precisely, is that my “failed” novels were, in fact, the key to my eventual success.

By studying my novels in all their wretched, overwritten, under-plotted glory, I was able to understand my patterns as a writer. I was able, too, to learn from my mistakes. Rather than viewing these books as artistic failures, I was eventually able to understand them as tools for learning. And I used all I learned from this reconsideration over and over again in the writing of my fifth novel.

In our time together, I’ll talk about how I came to understand the wisdom of failure. I’ll share the process by which I came to understand that it was, in fact, it was the writing of my earlier books that ultimately allowed me to to work through all the familiar pitfalls I eventually worked beyond to create All the Secrets of the World. In particular, I’ll talk about how I was able move past things like writer’s block, a meandering plot, and the loss of faith and imaginative engagement – things that, in the past, had always signaled doom.

More than anything, this is a story with a happy ending. And it’s a story, I believe, that applies to every creative endeavor. If you’ve ever failed at a creative endeavor and hidden that failure (and the feeling that comes from failure) this is the class for you.

I hope you’ll join me.

-Steve Almond

Join me in this live, 90-minute class and discover the Five Things I’ve Learnedabout the good, beautiful, weirdly-efficient blur that can streamline your life and transform your writing.

I’m a novelist who has published over twenty books. I also run a film and television production company that currently has over twenty projects in development. Throughout my career, I’ve also been a professor in creative writing programs, as well as a film school, and the sole breadwinner for a family of six. (In fairness, we are currently trying to kick some of our children, the ones now in their 20s, off of our phone plan so, you know, I’m not currently supporting them all. That said, I’m pretty sure phone plans are for life.)

Regardless, I have a lot to say—not about work life balance but about life work blur. A good, beautiful, weirdly efficient blur that has made me streamline and obsess and mine my life in ways that, seriously, made me write more than I would have on a timeline where I’m a trust-fund baby with butlers. I truly believe that my process is a portable and flexible process in large part because it had to be.

I hope you’ll join me and Steve Almond for our upcoming conversation, Five Things I’ve Learned about Family, Writing, and the Work/Life Blur. I think about and give talks about process an awful lot, and I’m going share with Steve the ways I’ve built a writing practice filled with little maneuvers — and a few big ones.

Together, we’ll wonder at the beauty of my favorite quote on the topic. Kafka once wrote, “Time is short, my strength is limited, the office is a horror, the apartment is noisy, and if a pleasant, straightforward life is not possible, then one must try to wriggle through by subtle maneuvers.”

Then, we’ll talk at length about the Five Things I’ve Learned that have made a big difference for me – strategies that I hope will prove equally transformative for you.

Join us as together we share strategies for:

• How to write when you’ve got no time to write. 

• How to make sure you never have to face a blank page. 

• How to take down the boundaries between a writer’s work and their life and live as a writer. 

• How to get to know your process and put it to work for you. 

• How to be agile and experimental with your process so it’s sustainable, built for the long haul. 

When our time together concludes, you’ll be….

-Julianna