Attending Workshops In-Person

If you register to attend in-person, your workshop(s) will be held at Thurber Center (91 Jefferson Avenue, Columbus, OH 43215), next door to Thurber House. There is free parking on Jefferson Avenue and in our back parking lot, accessible off N. 11th Street.

ABOUT

We all have busy lives, so how do we fit in time to write the memoir, the novel, the short story, or the essay? In this session, we’ll identify life obstacles to writing, set realistic goals, and learn tips and techniques to help you harness the demons holding you back. By workshop's end, you'll be on your way to charting a new path for getting started — or unstuck. Get ready to create a writing life that works for you!

INSTRUCTOR

Lisa Lopez Snyder is an essayist and short story writer. Her pieces have been featured in 34th Parallel, Adelaide, The Sommerset Review, The Raleigh Review, The Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, and other magazines. Her essay, “In Transit,” won The Chattahoochee Review’s 2011 Lamar York Prize for Nonfiction and she was named the 2015 Carl Sandburg Writer-in-Residence. She received her MFA in creative writing at the University of South Carolina and went on to teach first-year writing at Dartmouth College. She is currently working on a memoir-in-essays about being a paper girl in Huber Heights, Ohio.

ABOUT

Readers love stories that fit genre expectations. That's why stories and memoirs are classified into genres—so readers can narrow down the numerous options to a subset of books they think will interest them. But how can you make your story really stand out to readers—even while fulfilling genre expectations? This course focuses on how to overcome this seeming conundrum to create stand-out stories that readers will remember—and tell other readers about.

INSTRUCTOR

Sharon Short is the award-winning author of more than fifteen published books. Her newest, Trouble Island, is historical suspense (Minotaur Books), set in 1933 and partly inspired by true family history. Short is a contributing editor to Writer’s Digest, for which she writes the column, “Level Up Your Writing (Life).” She is also a three-time recipient of the Individual Excellence Award in Literary Arts from Ohio Arts Council and has been a John E. Nance Writer in Residence at Thurber House. When not writing, Sharon enjoys spending time with family and friends, reading, swimming, and occasionally hiking. Learn more about her work at www.sharonshort.com or www.jessmontgomeryauthor.com.

ABOUT

Curious about how to bring sensory experience to your writing? Whether you write nonfiction or fiction, developing believable characters and scenes brings momentum and interest to your writing. In this session, we'll learn how to use everyday objects to enrich your storytelling. We’ll learn tips and interactive techniques for creating vivid scenes and characters that jump off the page. Come prepared to write and experience the sensory of storytelling — and leave with ideas you've already put to the page!

Instructor

Lisa Lopez Snyder is an essayist and short story writer. Her pieces have been featured in 34th Parallel, Adelaide, The Sommerset Review, The Raleigh Review, The Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, and other magazines. Her essay, “In Transit,” won The Chattahoochee Review’s 2011 Lamar York Prize for Nonfiction and she was named the 2015 Carl Sandburg Writer-in-Residence. She received her MFA in creative writing at the University of South Carolina and went on to teach first-year writing at Dartmouth College. She is currently working on a memoir-in-essays about being a paper girl in Huber Heights, Ohio.

ABOUT

This workshop will explore different approaches to creating compelling stories from family history. We will study how artifacts such as letters and official documents can be used to develop a narrative, discuss different research methods, and look closely at how source material is transformed into a story. We will also practice writing short scenes and examine literary devices and structure to help shape our stories. This one-session workshop will include a reading distributed prior to the session and is appropriate for any skill level.

INSTRUCTOR

Annette Gendler is the author of the guide How to Write Compelling Stories from Family History, the award-winning children's book Natalie and the Nazi Soldiers, and the memoir Jumping Over Shadows. She specializes in teaching others how to write stories from their family history through her online courses and in-person workshops. She writes regularly on Substack and lives in Chicago with her family.

ABOUT

The challenge is omnipresent: a fiction writer has written a gripping opening section and has a page-turning last few chapters in mind. But on the way from beginning to end, the narrative sags. Characters flail. Pace diminishes. Unfortunately, as Mickey Spillane said, “No one reads to get to the middle.” In this class, Andrew Welsh-Huggins will discuss how to overcome the phenomenon known as “the mushy middle” through outlining and plotting techniques. He will also review the pros and cons of the three-act structure, and discuss time-honored techniques for reviving a flagging narrative, from love affairs to fist fights. He’ll also walk the class through a hands-on activity to create an outline for a book that keeps the reader engrossed to the end.

INSTRUCTOR

Andrew Welsh-Huggins is the Shamus, Derringer, and ITW-award-nominated author of the Andy Hayes Private Eye series, the editor of the Columbus Noir anthology, and author of the standalone crime novel, The End of The Road, which Kirkus called, “A crackerjack crime yarn chockablock with miscreants and a supersonic pace.” His stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Mystery Magazine, and many other publications, and in multiple anthologies including The Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2021 and 2024. His nonfiction book, No Winners Here Tonight, is the definitive history of the death penalty in Ohio.

ABOUT

You don’t want to miss this: our original wildly popular “Go Rogue” workshop is back!

Put the “creative” back in "creative writing" with an afternoon of writing . . . JUST FOR FUN! Give yourself a gift with this uber fun class where you’ll write just for the heck of it. All of the lively, intriguing activities and unexpected prompts we’ll tackle are inspired by Thurber House’s camps for young writers. (And, sure, you'll learn something . . . we'll just pretend you didn't!)

This workshop is open to adults and teens ages 15+.

INSTRUCTOR

Katherine Matthews is a freelance writer, editor, and writing instructor. She served as managing editor at PageSpring Publishing and as editor-in-chief of Flip the Page: Central Ohio's Teen Literary Journal. Her work has appeared in Columbus Monthly magazine and, most recently, in the anthology awfully hilarious: period pieces. Her creative nonfiction received an Individual Excellence Award grant from the Ohio Arts Council. Katherine served as committee chair for the Word is Art Stage at the Columbus Arts Festival for six years. At Thurber House, she teaches children and adults and produces interactive mysteries for the Summer Writing Camp.

ABOUT

One of the most powerful gifts a writer has is imagination, and one way writers throughout history have used that power is to write about new imagined futures and help others see the possibilities of what could be. In this generative workshop, we will look at examples from speculative fiction authors throughout history who have conjured utopias, matriarchies, communal societies, and more, and learn how we can use these world-building and alternate reality techniques in our own writing.

INSTRUCTOR

Shelley Mann Hite is a Columbus, Ohio-based writer and editor. Her work has been published in The Rumpus, HuffPost, Motherwell, Stonecrop Review, and more, and she is working on a memoir manuscript. She is a prose editor for Typehouse Literary Magazine, and co-founder of the Columbus Women’s Writing Group. She got her start in journalism, and previously was an editor at Columbus Crave and Columbus Alive.

ABOUT

Whether we’re writing in first person or third, it’s vital for our characters to have distinctive voices. Even if you’re writing with an omniscient narrator, eventually there will be dialogue and when your characters talk, they should sound like individual people. We’ll use this two-hour class to discuss what makes up a voice, look at examples of strong character voices in published work, and delve into exercises designed to help you create those individual voices in your own work.

INSTRUCTOR

Katrina Kittle's latest novel, Morning in This Broken World, was an Amazon First Reads pick for August 2023. She is the author of four other adult books—Traveling Light, Two Truths and a Lie, The Kindness of Strangers, and The Blessings of the Animals—and one tween novel, Reasons to Be Happy. Katrina teaches creative writing at the University of Dayton and through Word’s Worth Writing Connections. Katrina lives south of Dayton with her fella, her anxious cat, her sweet beagle, and her out-of-control garden. You can find out more at www.katrinakittle.com and follow her @katrinakittle on Instagram and @katrinakittleauthor on Facebook.