Creative Writing Classes & Seminars
Looking for a place to express your inner writer? In each of our three yearly sessions (winter/spring, summer, and fall), we offer creative writing classes on weekday evenings, weekday mornings, and the daytime on weekends. Classes range from those geared for novice writers or those with some writing experience who are looking for a structured environment in which to bloom to those geared for intermediate, advanced, or professional writers.
We offer classes for adults as well as pre-teen and teen writers. Genres and topics offered include a variety of creative writing classes in poetry, fiction, flash fiction, memoir and creative nonfiction, screenwriting, playwriting, storytelling, comic books and graphic novels, songwriting, food writing, science fiction, fantasy, children’s book writing, journaling, and multi-genre writing, as well as seminars in writers craft, research, and professional development.
Class size is usually capped at 8 or 9 students—classes with different maximum sizes are indicated in the class listing. We teach short seminars that meet once all the way to longer workshops that meet up to eight times.
Search our classes by genre, level, and time of day below.
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Calendar Color Guide
June 2022
The Poetry Studio
The studio continues: Members of the group will actively write and revise original poetry, with a special emphasis on the careful review of members' work, the examination of the literary and commercial marketplace, and the submission of work for publication. Work will be submitted in advance of each meeting. All poems submitted will be critiqued during that meeting.
Tuesdays, June 28 - September 20 @ 7:00 pm EDT - 9:30 pm EDT
July 2022
Tell Me A Story
In this workshop led by National Book Award Nominee and former Virginia Poet Laureate, Tim Seibles, we will develop narrative poems that carry specific details and insights of remembered moments--particularly those from our teenage years. There will be both in-class and beyond-class writing/reading assignments. Come ready to write with a fever and feel your brain sizzle. Fiction writers also welcome.
Saturdays, July 16 - July 17 @ 1:00 pm EDT - 3:30 pm EDT
Relish and Replenish: A Poetry Workshop
In this workshop, participants will read work and learn from a selection of poets who write about hunger, nourishment, and the ways in which food circulates not only in our bodies but in a larger world of exchanges. Who is hungry? How much do we need? Who is fed and full? What does it take to replenish and sustain, to heal and comfort? How might a stronger awareness of the senses open pathways of wider understanding and satisfaction in a…
Sundays, July 24 - August 14 @ 1:00 pm EDT - 3:30 pm EDT
The Kingdom of Ordinary Time: Crafting Poems from Daily Life
In the wake of the pandemic, most of us are more acquainted than ever with the small and mundane aspects of our everyday lives. Though these details may seem too insignificant to write about, they are often the perfect entry point for poetry. Inspired by Marie Howe’s collection The Kingdom of Ordinary Time, this workshop will explore the everyday sufferings and joys of human existence, ripe with poetic potential but often overlooked. Each class will involve reading work by other…
Saturdays, July 30 - August 20 @ 10:00 am EDT - 12:30 pm EDT
Accessibility for Those with Disabilities
The Muse Writers Center strives to be a fully accessible facility. Please contact us if you have any questions or concerns or would like to request an accommodation.