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

Chappell Roan has enjoyed a meteoric rise to fame that can be attributed to her larger-than-life stage presence and campy, theatrical aesthetic. But why does her music resonate so deeply with so many people? It’s the writing. In this generative class, we’ll explore Chappell’s playful approach to writing, from frank storytelling to evocative pacing, and experiment with incorporating these techniques into our own writing—all while listening to music from the Midwest Princess herself.

INSTRUCTOR

Shelley Mann Hite is a Columbus, Ohio-based writer and editor. Her work has been published in The New York Times, 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

Back by popular demand (with new activities)! Whether you’re a Taylor Swift fan or not, it’s plain to see that Taylor is one of our generation’s most prolific songwriters, and there’s a lot we can take from her approach and incorporate into our own writing. In this generative writing class, we’ll look at the way Taylor uses figurative language in her lyrics and find ways to bring her colorful metaphors and layered meaning into our own writing. We’ll mimic her approach in three different songs to create our own deeply personal pieces. If you’re not a Swiftie, don’t worry… you might be after this workshop!

INSTRUCTOR

Shelley Mann Hite is a Columbus, Ohio-based writer and editor. Her work has been published in The New York Times, 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

Does the world seem out of control? Are your emotions running rampant? Do you need to untangle the clump of thoughts in your head? Does creativity in community sound healing? Then join us as we write our way through the brambles of contemporary life.

You will be guided with thought-provoking questions, engage with inspiration, and take time to write in your own form and style. If you want, you will be able to share your writing in conversation with classmates as they, too, share their lived experience (but there is no requirement to share).

As we work through our individual and collective struggles, you might find peace of mind or open up Pandora’s box. Either way, we’ll do it together with empathy, courage, and kindness as we embrace writing as a form of self-care.

You can sign up for one or both parts of this workshop, but signing up for both parts is strongly encouraged to get the most out of your time with Niki and your classmates.

Instructor

Nicole Gnezda (Niki) is a writer, artist, speaker, and educator with a Ph.D. in creativity studies. Included in her body of publications is the book, Teaching Difficult Students: Blue Jays in the Classroom (Rowman and Littlefield), professional articles, and poetry published in Ohio Bards Poetry Anthology, Common Threads, Crone Magazine, and Uppercase. Niki makes bobbin lace with her ancestor’s bobbins, paints, cooks, and travels. She believes creativity takes life apart and reassembles it in magnificent ways. It gets us through and sometimes heals us.

ABOUT

The pen is mightier than the sword, and more gentle. Welcome back to taking care of yourself through writing. For those who attended the previous session, this week is a continuation of the exploration and community-building we started. There will be new prompts and lots of time for writing and sharing (but there is no requirement to share). New participants, you will be helped to plunge softly into self-understanding and expression, guided by the healing powers of creativity.

As we work through our individual and collective struggles, you might find peace of mind or open up Pandora’s box. Either way, we’ll do it together with empathy, courage, and kindness as we embrace writing as a form of self-care.

You can sign up for one or both parts of this workshop, but signing up for both parts is strongly encouraged to get the most out of your time with Niki and your classmates.

INSTRUCTOR

Nicole Gnezda (Niki) is a writer, artist, speaker, and educator with a Ph.D. in creativity studies. Included in her body of publications is the book, Teaching Difficult Students: Blue Jays in the Classroom (Rowman and Littlefield), professional articles, and poetry published in Ohio Bards Poetry Anthology, Common Threads, Crone Magazine, and Uppercase. Niki makes bobbin lace with her ancestor’s bobbins, paints, cooks, and travels. She believes creativity takes life apart and reassembles it in magnificent ways. It gets us through and sometimes heals us.

ABOUT

As writers, we all follow certain rules of punctuation, genre, style, and form. They’re useful. They’re necessary. But what if we broke them? And what if we made new rules—wild, out-of-the-box rules—to see what would happen? In this class, we will dabble in Oulipo, a type of constrained writing that delights in playful and peculiar limits. Also known as the “Workshop of Potential Literature,” Oulipo stretches the mind and fuels the imagination.

We’ll delve into multiple Oulipo-ean forms, including the Perverb (chopping up existing proverbs to make a new ones), the Lipogram (omitting one or more letters when writing), the Snowball (growing a poem by adding a new letter or word to each line), and the N+7 Method (replacing each of a poem’s nouns with the noun found seven entries after the original in a dictionary). If you love language, puzzles, and surprises, you’re a perfect fit for Oulipo!

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.

Thank you to our major arts supporters:

The Harry C. Moores Foundation