90-Minute Sessions, hosted by Cleaver, on Zoom.

• SUNDAY, MARCH 9, from 2-3:30 pm ET
• SUNDAY, APRIL 6, from 2-3:30 pm ET
• SUNDAY, MAY 4, from 2-3:30 pm ET
• SUNDAY, JUNE 8, from 2-3:30 pm ET
• SUNDAY, JULY 6, from 2-3:30 pm ET
• SUNDAY, AUGUST 3, from 2-3:30 pm ET
• SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, from 2-3:30 pm ET
• SUNDAY, OCTOBER 5, from 2-3:30 pm ET

Cost: $5
Open to: All Writers

Are you struggling to find writing time? Showing up for your writing practice is the hardest part—life knocks you off track.
       Cleaver Magazine to the rescue! You don’t have to go it alone. Join us for our monthly Ass in Chair Sessions, a once-a-month, 90-minute commitment to your writing practice. With the communal energy that comes from writing together, you will make progress towards your writing goals, one word, one paragraph, one page at a time—by getting your Ass in Chair time. We’ll offer an optional prompt at the beginning—who knows where it will take you.
       Each session costs $5 (because you’re more likely to show up for yourself if you have some skin in the game), and happens on the second Sunday of every month. Make the commitment to yourself. 

Instructor: Karen Rile, Cleaver Editor-in-Chief

Dates: 

Sunday, April 13, 2025,  2-3:30 pm ET on Zoom

Sunday, May 18, 2025 2-3:30 pm ET on Zoom

Sunday, June 22, 2025 2-3:30 pm ET on Zoom

Sunday, July 13, 2025 2-3:30 pm ET on Zoom

Cost: $5

Open to: All writers, all genres, all humans

EMBODIED RESISTANCE. It’s a metaphor; it’s a concrete concept. Resistance training is the key to longevity and long-term mobility. Join us for a Sunday afternoon functional yoga class to reconnect your body to your mind. We'll practice a combination of movement, bodyweight resistance, brain mapping, and breathing for a fun, low-impact, anatomy-based workout. This class is based on the LYT Method (pronounced as in “litmag”), which combines the mindfulness of yoga with the intelligence of physical therapy to improve core strength, flexibility, and balance for humans of every age. You don’t need to be a writer, and you don't need yoga experience to attend. 

Our brains were designed to move; the better you move, the better you think.

This community class will be conducted on Zoom. You’ll need a yoga mat and two yoga blocks. If you have knee pain, have a blanket or towel nearby. If your wrists bother you, you can use a pair of dumbells (any weight) for support. You don’t need to turn on your camera, but if you set up your mat and camera so I can see you, I may be able to give you live feedback. Questions? Email me. Each session costs $5 and happens on the third Sunday of every month. If cost is a barrier, email me directly and you'll be added to the list, no questions asked. 

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Cleaver Founding Editor Karen Rile is a Philadelphia-based writer, creative writing professor, and movement instructor. She is a Level Two, 500-hour certified instructor of the LYT Method, the only yoga system created by physical therapists. She is also a certified Flexibility Coach, Yoga Trapeze, and Yoga Breathing coach through Yoga Teachers College, where she earned her first 200-hour yoga teacher certification. Subscribe/follow her at Embodied Resistance.

Instructor: Tricia Park

Date: Sunday, May 25, 2-4 pm ET on Zoom

Can’t make it on May 25th? No problem. A recording will be sent to all registrants.

Cost: $60

Open to writers of: All Genres

What if the key to writing a great story wasn’t writing at all—but speaking? Inspired by the late great Peter Elbow’s Vernacular Eloquence, this workshop explores how storytelling begins in the voice, not the page. Through guided exercises in talking your stories aloud before writing them down, we’ll unlock natural rhythms, authentic emotions, and the freedom to shape our narratives intuitively.

We’ll also explore progressive distancing—a technique that allows writers to step back from personal experience, transforming raw memories into crafted fiction. By shifting perspectives and filling in the gaps with imagination, you’ll discover how to turn personal moments into rich, compelling stories without feeling trapped by “what really happened.”

Maybe something like (last paragraph): This generative workshop is perfect for writers who struggle with self-consciousness, feel stuck in personal truth, or simply want a more fluid, natural approach to storytelling. Participants can expect to leave with new writing to take home and develop. Come ready to talk, listen, and discover the hidden fiction in your lived experience

Learn More about Tricia Park here. 

 

SHARPEN, SHIFT, SURPRISE: REVISING FLASH FICTION
Instructor: Francine Witte

Date: June 29, 2025, 2–4 PM ET on Zoom

Open to writers of: Flash fiction and short prose (300–400 words)

You’ve written the draft. Now what? This interactive session explores revision as a creative act, not just a clean-up job. We’ll focus on powerful strategies for sharpening language, deepening emotional resonance, and reimagining structure in flash fiction. How can a shift in point of view open up new meaning? How does a small cut or one added image completely change the emotional arc?

Together, we’ll examine a toolkit of revision techniques and apply them through a series of guided exercises. The session includes a breakout room for small-group feedback and a final group critique of a few volunteer drafts (300–400 words), offering real-time strategies you can apply to your own work.

If you’ve got a messy draft and a hunch that something more is waiting to be uncovered—this class is for you.

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Francine Witte is a flash fiction writer, poet, and prompt session leader. She is the author of eleven poetry and flash fiction books. Her work can be found in numerous journals. She is flash fiction editor of Flash Boulevard and  Soflopojo. She is a former high school teacher. She lives in NYC.  

 

TRANSCENDING THE TUMULT: WRITE RIGHT NOW 

Instructor: Beth Kephart 

Date: July 27, 2025, 2-4 PM ET on Zoom 

In the tumult of these times, writing is neither self-indulgence nor distraction. It is, instead, that chance you have, that risk you take, to find proof of residual beauty, courage, purpose, even honesty. How do we find those things “worth” writing about? How does the work of drafting and revising center us, teach us, strengthen our resolve, reveal to us who we are and must be within this clamorous age? In this master class, Beth Kephart will share brief passages from writers who have offered written proof of beauty and meaning during the noisiest times. She will showcase her own work-in-progress, tracing a prose poem from inception through revision to illustrating and posting on her Substack, The Hush and the Howl. Come prepared to be inspired by writers like Virginia Woolf, Chloe Dalton, Lulu Miller, and Nick Cave and to write inspirations of your own. 

National Book Award Finalist Beth Kephart is the award-winning author of nearly 40 books in multiple genres, a paper artist, and the author of The Hush and the Howl (Substack). Her new book, Tomorrow Will Bring Sunday’s News: A Philadelphia Story, melds history, the imagination, and memoir to tell a story inspired by the life of Beth’s grandmother in the pivotal year of 1918. More at bethkephartbooks.com and bind-arts.com.
 

BUILDING A REWRITING PRACTICE
Instructor: Megan Stielstra
Date: Sunday, August 24, 2-4 ET on Zoom
(Signups not yet available)
Cost: $60. Open to writers of: All genres

We write what is urgent to us; we rewrite to make it urgent for others. This lightning-bolt session examines rewriting as an invitation to invite other people—readers—into your writing practice and, in many ways, your own head and heart. What will they need to understand what you’re trying to share? What will they need to feel what you felt, see what you saw? Pulling from both literary and oral storytelling traditions, we’ll engage in activities asking us to consider the different stages of the rewriting process—are you diving back into the work to find its deeper meaning, or preparing it to share with others, i.e. submission and publication?
We all have hard drives and handwritten notebooks full of stories. We wrote them for a reason—let’s find it. Let’s share it. Let’s get at your stories. 

Read more about Megan Stielstra here.
 

Instructor: Beth Kephart

Cost: $60

Open to writers of: Creative Nonfiction, Memoir

Are we ever really objective when we write ourselves onto the page? Are we in complete control of our image? What happens when we approach ourselves with ironic distance or guilt or self-forgiveness? When we announce ourselves to be a liar? When we own up to having more questions than answers? When we change perspectives? Jenn Shapland, David Carr, Emilie Pine, Sonja Livingston, Bella Pollen, Alexandra Fuller, and Mark Doty will help illuminate the topic. Exercises will advance the art of self-portraiture on the page.

Learn more about Beth Kephart here.

READY! SET! WRITE! 

Instructor: Kathy Fish

Date: Sept 28, 2025, 2-4 PM ET on Zoom 

Have you found yourself terrified and intimidated by the dreaded blank page? It’s a common problem for writers! Choreographer and dancer Twyla Tharp says, “in order to be creative, you have to know how to prepare to be creative.” As a big believer in the value of pre-writing, I have developed several exercises and activities aimed at immersion and deep work before we begin the joyful task of creating new art. The result? Fresh, original drafts of surprising depth and beauty. In this engaging, interactive two-hour session we will begin with a series of fun and interesting activities and prompts that will prime our brains for creative expression.

Next, we’ll put together “toolboxes” for story writing, equipping ourselves with our own unique word banks, vocabulary, images, characters, settings, even titles. Finally, we’ll draw on these tools to draft rich, resonant stories that might not otherwise be written had we not arrived at the page primed, prepared, energized, and inspired. 

This generative workshop is aimed at anyone who has a difficult time getting started; writers who feel they must drum up an “idea” or a “plot” before they put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. Come ready to write, play, dare, and dream. Expect to leave this session three exciting flash fiction length drafts and an abundance of tools and tricks to call upon the next time you face the blank page. 

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Kathy Fish’s stories have been widely published in journals, anthologies, and textbooks. Her work has been published in Ploughshares, Guernica, Swamp Pink, Electric Literature, Denver Quarterly, Best American Nonrequired Reading, the Norton Reader, and Norton’s Flash Fiction America (2023). She has been honored with a Copper Nickel Editor’s Prize and multiple appearances in both the Wigleaf Top 50 and the Best Small Fictions series. The author of five short fiction collections, Fish teaches a variety of writing workshops online and in person worldwide. She also publishes a bestselling craft newsletter, The Art of Flash Fiction, which was recently named one of the 20 Best Creative Writing Substacks by Writers at Work. Her writing has been generously supported by fellowships from the Ragdale Foundation and the Kerouac Project.

Instructor: Chris Callison-Burch

Cost: $60  Open to writers of: All Genres

This two-hour masterclass explores the impact of AI on the writing profession, from creative possibilities to practical concerns. Drawing on his expertise in AI research, Prof. Chris Callison-Burch will demonstrate key AI writing tools and discuss how writers might begin incorporating AI into their creative process. The session includes hands-on examples using popular tools like ChatGPT and Claude, strategies for using AI as a creative partner, and a frank discussion of AI's limitations and ethical considerations.

Topics include:

1. The state of AI writing technology
2. Hands-on demonstrations with popular AI tools
3. Creative applications (brainstorming, editing, research)
4. Maintaining creative control and authenticity
5. Future trends and preparing for change

Chris Callison-Burch is an expert in artificial intelligence who has been in the field for 20 years and has been using language models in his research for much of that time. His more than 100 publications have been cited over 25,000 times.  Language models are at the heart of generative AI, which had its breakthrough moment in November 2022 with the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. In 2023, Prof. Callison-Burch testified before Congress about generative AI. At the University of Pennsylvania, his course on artificial intelligence has one of the highest enrollments at the university, with over 500 students taking the class each Fall.  He also teaches a computer science graduate seminar, "Interactive Fiction and Text Generation" (https://interactive-fiction-class.org/lectures.html)  
 

Instructor: Jackson Tatge
Cost: $60
Open to writers of: All Genres

Take charge of your digital footprint! In this hands-on workshop, you’ll learn how to create a professional website tailored to your unique voice and brand as a writer. Over the course of this class, you’ll be guided through each step of website development. We’ll cover essential elements such as choosing the right platform, designing an engaging layout, and integrating features that showcase your work effectively and engage your audience. You’ll also delve into optimizing your site for search engines and ensuring it’s mobile-friendly. By the end of the course, you’ll have a fully functional, personalized website that serves as a powerful tool for building your online presence. Whether you’re an emerging author or a seasoned writer, this class will provide you with the skills and confidence to create a professional digital space that highlights your work and attracts potential readers. Join us to transform your ideas into a dynamic online platform and enhance your visibility in the literary world.
 

Jackson Tatge (He/Him/His), from Ridgefield, Connecticut, received his BFA in Graphic Design from Michigan State University. Jackson works as an QL Development Assistant for Michigan State University’s MTH102 course, where he makes graphic assets and animated explainer-style video lectures. Jackson is also currently working on contract in web design for the Affordable Housing Institute, and works as an SEO, Web, and Graphic Design specialist at Cleaver Magazine. In his free time, Jackson is working in motion, character, and UI/UX design for a mobile game application he is developing. Visit his websitehere.

Cleaver is pleased to offer limited full-tuition scholarships to our workshops for writers living in Philadelphia, thanks, in part, to the generosity of the Philadelphia Cultural Fund and the City of Philadelphia. 

Scholarships are limited to one per workshop; one scholarship per writer per year. 

Please complete this brief form explaining your interest in the selected workshop and why this workshop will make a difference for you at this stage of your writing journey.

Instructor: Morgan LaRocca, Publicist, Milkweed Editions
Cost: $60
For: All writers, all genres

In this masterclass, we’ll peel back the curtain and look into how publicity works to advance your book at every stage in your writing process, and how you can help get the word out about yourself and your work. We’ll work together to create goals for how you would like to see your book move in the world, discuss the various tactics and strategies that are incorporated into a publicity campaign, and perfect your “elevator pitch” for your book. No matter where you are in your writing, knowing how to be an advocate for your book, and how the publicity process works will bolster your success.

Morgan LaRocca is the publicist at Milkweed Editions. Prior to joining Milkweed in 2022 they worked as a freelance publicist, Publicity Associate at Graywolf Press and served as Marketing and Publicity intern at Tin House Books. They also serve as the publicity mentor for Poets and Writers Get the Word Out Program for Poetry. They are a graduate of Towson University.

Instructor: Andrea Caswell

Cost: $60

For: All fiction and nonfiction writers with work at any stage of revision

“Revision is the journey of a story—the story of a story, if you like—and of its writer’s relationship with that story.” ~ Peter Ho Davies, The Art of Revision

Most writing is the act of rewriting, or re-vision, from the moment we craft a piece and begin to imagine its next draft. The word revolution is an auto-antonym; it means both to return to a point of origin, and the opposite, to depart from a fixed point by making a significant change. Thus the concepts of revision and revolution go hand-in-hand whenever writers undertake the rewriting process.  

This two-hour master class reframes revision as a dynamic collaboration between writer and text, rather than a combat sport. How can we embrace revision as a creative partnership that helps us transform our work into its next iteration? In what ways might we nurture both the work and ourselves during these transformational stages? In this class, students will: 

• learn revision strategies for use with works-in-progress
• explore roadblocks that may surface during revision, plus ways to work with them 
• gain perspective on potential directions for next drafts
• develop insights to hone their creative strengths and writing/rewriting practice  

Writers will leave the session with a set of actions they can take to begin or continue the process of revision on a short story, essay, or longer work. 

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Andrea Caswell holds an MFA in fiction and nonfiction from the Bennington Writing Seminars. She’s a senior fiction editor at Cleaver Magazine and is on the faculty of the Cleaver Workshops. She runs Cleaver’s Short Story Clinic, offering detailed feedback on fiction up to 5000 words. Andrea’s work appears or is forthcoming in Tampa Review, The Coachella Review, River Teeth, The Normal School, Atticus Review, Columbia Journal, and others. She’s an alum of the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. For more information, please visit www.andreacaswell.com.

Instructor: Sophie Lucido Johnson
Cost: $60
Open to writers of: All Genres

Tired of submitting your work and getting rejected, or not hearing back at all? Want to build a self-publishing practice on your own terms? In this interactive workshop, you’ll learn how to create, grow, and monetize a successful email newsletter using Substack. Sophie Lucido Johnson, the creator of “You Are Doing A Good Enough Job,” will guide you through the essentials of building a newsletter that not only captivates readers but also generates revenue. With thousands of subscribers and a thriving community, Sophie brings her expertise and experience to help you turn your newsletter dreams into reality.
Learn more about Sophie Lucido Johnson here.

Instructor: Megan Stielstra

Open to writers of: All Genres

“Literature does its best to maintain that its concern is with the mind,” wrote Virginia Woolf in 1926. “On the contrary, the very opposite is true. All day, all night, the body intervenes.” This workshop examines how memory lives in the body, using our own stories and experiences as a contribution to a wider cultural and political dialogue that centers human beings. Pulling from both literary and oral storytelling traditions, we'll engage in activities that will take our writing out of the head and into the body, generating new work and digging deeper into material you're already exploring. 

Writers and storytellers at all levels are welcome. While the workshop centers the personal essay/memoir, writers of all genres may find it useful in the development of story and character.
 

Megan Stielstra is the author of three collections: Everyone Remain Calm, Once I Was Cool, and The Wrong Way to Save Your Life, the Nonfiction Book of the Year from the Chicago Review of Books. Her work appears in the Best American Essays, New York Times, The Believer, Poets & Writers, Tin House, Longreads, Guernica, LitHub, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. A longtime company member with 2nd Story, she has told stories for National Public Radio, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Steppenwolf Theatre, and regularly with the Paper Machete live news magazine at the Green Mill. She teaches creative nonfiction at Northwestern University and is an editor at Northwestern University Press.

Instructor: Sarah Freligh
Cost: $60
Open to writers of: All Genres

This class will focus on how writers create unique and believable characters in very short stories. Our in-class discussion will revolve around published work with an eye toward how each author employs aspects of craft – including dialogue, action, thought and physical description — to build effective, unforgettable characters. xOur discussion will also include dynamic versus static characters, the inextricable union of character development and story arc, and guided exercises –in-class and take-home – designed to inspire new characters as well as revise/revive tired old characters from drafts. Students will leave the session with an understanding of character development and the aspects of craft involved in creating characters on a very small canvas.

Sarah Freligh is the author of seven books, including Sad Math, winner of the 2014 Moon City Press Poetry Prize, Hereafter, winner of the 2024 Bath Novella-in-Flash contest and Other Emergencies, forthcoming from Moon City Press in 2025. Her work has appeared in many literary journals and anthologized in New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction (Norton 2018), and Best Microfiction (2019-22). Among her awards are poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Saltonstall Foundation.
 

Instructor: Sophie Lucido Johnson

Cost: $60

Open to writers of: All Genres

Since the dawn of the written word, humor has been a tool to tell the truth and target our humanity with brevity and a masterful air of ease. In fact, writing humor is no joke: there are a lot of complex principles and ideas that can make or break a piece of writing. Including humor in more serious pieces can provide levity and make deeper themes more salient, making this workshop appropriate for writers of all stripes. We will focus on the nuts and bolts of the ever-expanding genre of humor writing, and practice ways to incorporate levity into all types of compositions. 

Sophie Lucido Johnson is the author of Many Love: A Memoir of Polyamory and Finding Love(s); Love Without Sex: Stories on the Spectrum of Modern Relationships; and Dear Sophie, Love Sophie: A Graphic Memoir in Diary Entries, Letters, and Lists. She is a cartoonist for The New Yorker Magazine, and has been published in The New York Times, The Guardian, Bon Appetit, The Chicago Reader, The Believer, McSweeney's, and lots of other places. She lives in Chicago and teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Instructor: Beth Kephart

Open to writers of: All Genres

“Details aren’t automatically interesting,” Sarah Manguso once wrote, an aphorism that rings abundantly true. Details either illuminate the story or occlude it. They establish a pattern, render a character, extend an invitation to a particular time and place—or they make a mess of things. How do we know if the details we layer into our stories are truly telling details? How can we expand our capacity to generate fresh and meaningful details, while vanquishing those that are merely fluff or, worse, self-negating contradictions? In this master class, we’ll look to the work of Claire Keegan, Elizabeth Hardwick, and James McBride—isolating key details, taking note as those details evolve across pages, and discussing the additive impact. Generative prompts will be offered, as will opportunities to collectively edit oversaturated prose that will be created expressly for this purpose. This workshop is for writers at all stages, working in all genres.

Beth Kephart is the award-winning author of nearly 40 books in multiple genres, an award-winning teacher, co-founder of Juncture Workshops, and a book artist. Beth’s newest book, the acclaimed My Life in Paper: Adventures in Ephemera, sprang from her own obsession with paper. Beth’s most recent craft books are We Are the Words: The Master Memoir Class and Consequential Truths: On Writing the Lived Life. More at bethkephartbooks.com and bind-arts.com. Read Michelle Fost's interview with Beth about My Life in Paper: Adventures in Ephemera here. 

LET OTHERS CARRY IT: PUBLISHING AS PRACTICE

Instructor: Megan Stielstra

PURCHASE RECORDING

Cost: $60

Open to: All writers

“Once the work is done, it’s not yours anymore,” wrote Frank Chimero. “If the thing you make goes anywhere, it’s because other people carried it.” The choice of if, when, and how to share our work with others is a deeply personal decision, both terrifying and exhilarating. How do you get there? And once you're there, what do you… do?

This two-hour masterclass reframes publication as a vital and informative part of the writing practice, as opposed to rejection/acceptance roulette. How can our unique publication goals influence the rewriting process? How does the consideration of a wider audience take our work to the next level and when should we leave those (scary and often very loud) outside voices at the door? And how can we demystify the nuts-and-bolts of submitting—finding the right literary journals or publishing houses, writing a solid cover letter, connecting with editors—and get back to what we’re all here to do: carry each other’s stories.

Megan Stielstra is the author of three collections: Everyone Remain Calm, Once I Was Cool, and The Wrong Way to Save Your Life, the Nonfiction Book of the Year from the Chicago Review of Books. Her work appears in the Best American Essays, New York Times, The Believer, Poets & Writers, Tin House, Longreads, Guernica, LitHub, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. A longtime company member with 2nd Story, she has told stories for National Public Radio, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Steppenwolf Theatre, and regularly with the Paper Machete live news magazine at the Green Mill. She teaches creative nonfiction at Northwestern University and is an editor at Northwestern University Press.

 

Instructor: Kathryn Kulpa

PURCHASE RECORDING

Cost: $60

Open to writers of: Flash Fiction, Flash Nonfiction, Hybrid Forms

Writing doesn’t stop when you pen the final line, or even when you make the final revision. If you’ve written a flash story, and it’s wonderful, you probably want it to be published so you can share it with the world—but first, there’s that pesky process called “submissions.” This class will help writers at all levels untangle the sometimes daunting process of taking your flash and microfiction from private to public. 

In this class, you’ll learn: 

· How to format your stories 

· Tips for cover letters and bios 

· Where to find journals looking for flash—and strategies for narrowing down seemingly endless lists 

· How to make sense of rankings and data, and when to ignore them

· Three ways to make editors hate you (and how to make them love you, maybe

· Some strategies to survive rejection

Kathryn Kulpa has published more than 100 stories in journals from Atticus Review to X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, and her work has been chosen for Best Microfiction and the Wigleaf longlist and nominated for Best Small Fictions and the Pushcart Prize. She is senior flash editor at Cleaver and is also the author of two chapbooks, Girls on Film and Cooking Tips for the Demon-Haunted, has a micro-chapbook forthcoming from Porkbelly Press, and won the 2024 Gold Line Press Fiction Chapbook Competition. 

BEHIND THE COVERS: PUBLISHING YOUR BOOK

Instructor: Anni Liu

Cost: $60

Open to: All writers, especially those seeking to publish a book.

During this two-hour masterclass, you will learn about the book publishing process. Guided by a prose editor at Graywolf Press who is also an award-winning poet, this class will provide insight into the journey of publication –  from both the writer’s and the editor’s perspective – as well as  a rare opportunity to ask your questions directly to a top editor at an important and innovative publishing house.  Topics will include: pitching agents, working with an editor, and book events like launches and readings. You will leave this class armed with information and a greater understanding of how book publishing works.

Anni Liu is the author of Border Vista (Persea Books), which won the Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize and was a New York Times Best Poetry Book of 2022. She’s the recipient of an Undocupoets Fellowship, a Gregory Djanikian Scholarship from The Adroit Journal, and residencies at Civitella Ranieri and the Anderson Center. She’s an editor at Graywolf Press.

WRITING ADVANCED BY CATEGORIES: TURNING OUR OBSESSIONS INTO STORIES

Instructor: Beth Kephart

Recorded masterclass, instant access

Cost: $60

Open to: All fiction and nonfiction writers, working at any stage of their careers

Writing, let’s face it, is hard. Life gets in the way. Discipline brings us back to our desks but so, in the end, do our obsessions. In this two-hour, prompt-rich workshop, we’ll be thinking about how to make the most of our obsessions in our writing practice and in our storylines. We’ll be looking to writers like Michelle Zauner, Will Dowd, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Kate Zambreno, and Claire-Louse Bennett for inspiration and to obsessions like food, weather, the natural world, and books. We’ll transform lists into metaphors and thru-lines. We’ll launch sentences. We’ll leave the session with a better understanding of what sparks us as we write, how our own sparks can become the stuff that galvanizes readers, and some brand-new passages.

Beth Kephart is the award-winning author of nearly 40 books in multiple genres, an award-winning teacher, co-founder of Juncture Workshops, and a book artist. Beth’s newest book, the acclaimed My Life in Paper: Adventures in Ephemera, sprang from her own obsession with paper. Beth’s most recent craft books are We Are the Words: The Master Memoir Class and Consequential Truths: On Writing the Lived Life. More at bethkephartbooks.com and bind-arts.com.

Show Us Your Best: A Guide to Creative Writing MFA Applications

Instructor: Jess Sifla

Cost: $60

Open to: All writers, especially those interested in applying for an MFA

This two-hour masterclass will equip aspiring writers with the skills, insights, and strategies to craft compelling MFA applications. Led by a writer with a wealth of knowledge in the MFA application process, this class is tailored to enhance your writing portfolio and illustrate what creative writing programs are looking for.

In this class, you will:

● Gain a comprehensive understanding of the MFA application process, including key

deadlines, program structures, and admission criteria.

● Learn the critical elements of a compelling personal statement.

● Explore techniques to connect your personal narrative with your artistic goals.

● Understand the importance of solid recommendation letters and how to approach

potential recommenders.

● Get insights on how to guide your recommenders to highlight your strengths as a writer.

● Receive guidance on selecting the right MFA programs for your writing goals.

There will be time for a Q&A near the end of the class.

Jess Silfa is an Afro-Latine writer from the South Bronx. They graduated with an MFA from Vanderbilt University and are currently an Albert C. Yates Fellow in the Ph.D. program at the University of Cincinnati. Jess is President of the Disabled and D/deaf Writers Caucus and has been published or has work forthcoming in ANMLY, beestung, Transition Magazine, and others.

URGENCY AND THE PERSONAL ESSAY
Taught by Megan Stielstra

$60 a la carte single recorded workshop
This lightning-bolt session begins with the gut. What you need to tell; the memories, fascinations, and questions that live not in your head but your bones. Then: craft—how to tell our personal stories in ways that are equally urgent to an audience. Pulling from both literary and oral storytelling traditions, we’ll engage in activities (adapted for Zoom!) to get our experiences out of the body and onto the page, encouraging risk and discovery and examining literary craft in new ways. How does telling a story aloud heighten our understanding of its structure? How does the presence of an immediate audience influence the rewriting process? What does it mean to build an individual writing process that will sustain us without the support of a class?
Writers and storytellers at all levels are welcome. The work we’ll do is useful both in generating new material and digging deeper into stories you’ve been wrestling with for years. Need to jumpstart an ongoing project? Need to finalize a manuscript for submission/publication? Need to get this story out of your body so you don't have to carry it anymore? Let’s make it happen.



 

 

Megan Stielstra is the author of three collections: Everyone Remain Calm, Once I Was Cool, and The Wrong Way to Save Your Life, the Nonfiction Book of the Year from the Chicago Review of Books. Her work appears in the BET American Essays, New York Times, The Believer, Poets & Writers, Tin House, Longreads, Guernica, LitHub, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. A longtime company member with 2nd Story, she has told stories for National Public Radio, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Steppenwolf Theatre, and regularly with the Paper Machete live news magazine at the Green Mill. She teaches creative nonfiction at Northwestern University and is an editor-at-large with Northwestern University Press.

 

YOU, INC.: BUILDING YOUR WRITING BRAND
Taught by Jen Mathy

$60 a la carte single workshop
You write. You revise. And with a little perseverance, you publish. Now it’s up to the journal to attract readers. Your piece will, naturally, reach the desk of a literary agent who is brought to tears by the quiet restraint of your unquestionable genius. She immediately lands you a book deal at a Big 5 publisher who dedicates bajillions (yes, bajillions) to market your work. There’s a book tour, a Times review, and a viral video of Oprah personally – and lovingly – applying stickers to your book jacket. Neat!
The reality is that journals, presses, and publishers often lack the resources to market your work. A successful writer needs to think of themselves as an entrepreneur, a business partner, a brand, and a literary citizen. It’s daunting for many writers, but promoting yourself and your work can be accomplished though small, mindful tasks. And, it may lead to freelance assignments, commissions, teaching gigs, agents, even that book deal.
This masterclass will demystify marketing. We’ll talk about your small-business “must-haves,” use literary examples to illustrate the differences among social media platforms, and look at best practices across the literary community. We’ll do exercises to get you thinking about yourself as a brand and discuss ways to weave brand-building into your writing practice.
Participants will be emailed brand-building checklists and handouts at the end of the class.

 Jen Mathy is a marketing communications consultant in social media, PR, and advertising. She was VP of advertising and brand management for Morgan Stanley, brand manager for Discover Card, and in university relations for NorthwETern University. She managed social media for Bennington Writing Seminars, and served as a consultant for both the Hurston-Wright Foundation and the Maurice Sendak Foundation. She currently manages social media for Cleaver Magazine. Jen has an MFA in Writing from Bennington College. She has written stories for The Chicago Tribune and WGN-TV, among others, and wrote the poetry and prose for “An Expat Journey in Singapore,” a book of photography about the island nation.

POINT OF VIEW AS PLAY AND PRACTICE
Taught by Sheree L. Greer
$60 a la carte single workshop
In this single-session workshop, writers will explore point of view as both a craft element and an opportunity for play and practice. Through interactive readings, discussion, and writing exercises, writers will examine point of view as a portal of exploration in their prose and their creative practice.
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 ShereeL. Greer is a writer living in Tampa, Florida. She is the author of two novels, Let the Lover Be and A Return to Arms, and a short story collection, Once and Future Lovers. Her work has been published in LezTalk Anthology, VerySmartBrothas, Autostraddle, The Windy City Times, and the Windy City Queer Anthology: Dispatches from the Third Coast. Sheree is a VONA/VOICES alum, Astraea grantee, as well as a Yaddo and Ragdale Fellow. Her essay, "Bars" published in Fourth Genre Magazine, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and notably named in Best American Essays 2019.

DELUSIONS OF GRAMMAR
A Masterclass by Sara Levine
$60 a la carte single workshop
“All I know about grammar is its infinite power,” Joan Didion wrote, and if that sends a shiver of curiosity up and down your spine, welcome to my workshop! This one-day class is a high-energy exploration of the rhetoric of grammar: how to think strategically about form. We’ll look at how writers make decisions when they confront a sentence: the patterns sentences typically follow and the different ways clauses hang together. By the class’s end, you’ll be able to diagnose what makes a sentence boring and tweak it until it has more suspense than a Netflix thriller.
What you’ll get from the class:
● One immersive real-time meeting with your instructor and cohort
● A new sensitivity to grammar and how it can serve you as a writer
● Detailed explanations of how to mess around with grammar on the ground (as opposed to
memorizing rules about split infinitives or dangling participles)
● Short and never tedious exercises to move the grammar lessons out of your head and into
your hand
● A Further Reading List, should you decide to fully embrace your grammatical power




 

 Sara Levine is the author of the novel Treasure Island!!! and the short story collection Short Dark Oracles. She has a Ph.D. from Brown University, where she was a Mellon Fellow in the Humanities, and has taught at the University of Iowa as well as The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her nonfiction has been anthologized in The Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: 1970 to the Present; Essayists on the Essay: Montaigne to Our Time; and Understanding the Essay. You can find out more about her at sara-levine.com

Submit one story up to 4000 words. Manuscripts should be single-spaced. Literary fiction only. 

Submit creative nonfiction) up to 3000 words. Manuscripts should be single-spaced. 

(Craft essays submissions should be emailed directly to editor Lisa Romeo. More information here.)

Do you love to read contemporary fiction? Essays? Are you a literary tastemaker? Cleaver needs readers and editors whose sensibilities click with our own to help us thwack! through our growing submissions pile and to copyedit and proofread the pieces we accept. 

Editorial interns read and vote on submissions, help us proofread the issue before it goes live, and have the opportunity to work with a senior Cleaver editor to write a book review for publication. Time commitment: 5-10 hours/week. We can work with your college or university to provide academic credit for a semester-long internship at Cleaver. At this time, we are most in need of prose (fiction and creative nonfiction) readers.

We consider editorial internship applications on a rolling basis. Fall internships run September–December, spring internships January–April, and summer internships May–August. If you have not yet received a response to your application, it is under consideration for the upcoming term.

If you are past the "intern" stage and would like to be considered for our editorial staff, use the editorial internship application, but let us know in your cover letter that you are applying to be part of our regular staff. We often ask potential regular staff to complete an internship with us first, just to make sure we are a good fit for one another.

Here's how to apply:

• Upload your resume and a creative writing sample in the main genre you'd like to work with. Let us know other relevant skills including your familiarity with web platforms, and other tools. (Don't worry, technical savvy is not a prerequisite, but if you have it, we're thrilled to know.)
• Write a cover letter telling us about yourself and why you'd like to be on the Cleaver team. Be sure to explain which genres you're comfortable evaluating and editing.