Summer/Fall 2025 Semester Learning Activities

How to Write Annotations

Thursday, July 10, 2025 3:00-4:30pm PT/ 6:00-7:30pm ET

Lorinda Toledo

Required for the Sunflower Cohort.

As literary artists, annotations offer students an opportunity to engage in meaningful conversations with the stories and poems they read in ways that nurture the stories and poems they write. But what exactly are annotations? How to begin? And what could we possibly have to say? 

This workshop will take a hands-on approach to address these questions and explore critical review. You’ll leave with a more efficient approach to writing annotations that bring value to your work, and a better understanding of potential topics that most intrigue you.

Designing a Flexible Workshop Syllabus 

Wednesday, July 16, 2025 3:30pm-4:45pm PT/ 6:30pm-7:45pm ET

Joshua Roark

Designed for all students who are interested in teaching creative writing, this seminar includes an overview of virtual teaching opportunities, the pedagogical strategies of a successful workshop, methods for decolonizing your learning environment, and an examination of model syllabi that meet the contemporary demands of a writing teacher. Attention will be given to tools writers can employ to sell their services virtually in a startup of their own or through a community organization.

Required for all incoming Post-MFA Certificate Students.

The Art of Subtext: The Unspoken Soul Matter

Wednesday, August 6, 2025 3:00-4:15pm PT/ 6:00-7:15pm ET

Victoria Patterson

Subtext is the stealth engine of fiction. The implied, the unexpressed, and the half-visible provide a deeper domain of psychological depth. How do we write to show the unseen? How do we reveal the unthinkable?

In this seminar, geared to fiction writers, through a series of prompts, we will practice techniques that facilitate the layering of our narratives with subtext. 

Let’s Get Critical: The Art and Craft of Reviewing

Wednesday, September 10, 2025 3:00-4:15pm PT/ 6:00-7:15pm ET

Anjali Enjeti

Do you spend all of your free time reading books, watching movies and television shows, attending art exhibits, and slipping away to the local theater to catch the latest play?

Why not become a reviewer? Writing reviews is a wonderful way to get your feet wet in writing and publishing. Like other forms of creative nonfiction, reviewing is an art in and of itself.  

In this seminar, we’ll do an overview of the various forms of this subgenre, which include “straight” reviews, review essays, capsule reviews, multi-work reviews, lists (e.g., best films of 2024, etc.), retrospectives, and previews. We’ll discuss the elements of compelling reviews as well as common pitfalls. We’ll read excerpts from stellar reviews, and learn how to develop your own voice and style as a reviewer. We’ll end the seminar with some tips on how to get your reviews published. 

How To Write A Play When You’re Stuck/Feel Like You Can’t/Don’t Want To

Thursday, September 18, 2025       3:00pm-4:15pm PT / 6:00-7:15pm ET

John Cariani

In this one hour and 15 minute session, we will do a series of exercises that will get you motivated, un-blocked, un-stuck, and inspired—exercises that will free you from your mind and help you connect to the "play" part of the word “playwright." It won’t teach you how to write a play. But it will give you exercises that will get you started. And getting started is 90% of the battle.

At the Intersection of the Personal and Political: Poetic Interventions in Given Text

Wednesday, October 1, 2025 3:00pm-4:15pm PT/ 6:00-7:15pm ET

Cathy Linh Che

Today, we are witnesses to U.S. state violence, enacted in the streets, at college campuses, and abroad, which is fueled by the degradation of language in news media, university preside

nts, and politicians. As poets, how can we disrupt duplicitous doublespeak? In this craft session, we will explore the intersection between the personal & the political, examining how we can write poetry that tells truer histories, documents our time, and imagines new futures. Example works may include poems written by torrin a. greathouse, George Abraham, Solmaz Sharif, Terrance Hayes, F. Douglas Brown, and I may also read out a few of my own poems at the end that demonstrate how I’ve applied this concept. Our goal in our time together is to examine how we can use poetic interventions in source texts to center voices that have been historically marginalized by our master narratives and to develop new methods for truth telling.