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Writing Workshops
LitArts RI writing workshops are open to all levels of writers across various genres and mediums. You must be 18+ to attend.
Admission
General Admission: $25/workshop hour
LitArts RI Member Admission: $20/workshop hour
Supporter Admission: $30/workshop hour
Please contact Staff if you wish to pay in person by cash or check to avoid Eventbrite fees for any workshops.
Writers' Block Party
This fall, we're holding a special a Writers' Block Party on the theme of "Resistance" a day of one-hour micro-workshops about writing for social change on Sat, Oct 18 from 9am-5pm. Learn more.
Community Access Lottery
Thanks to generous grant funding and contributors to LitArts RI, we are able to provide a limited amount of free seats in our writing workshops to those who could not otherwise afford to attend. Funding is intended for those who lack access to resources or are from a community that has faced institutional barriers in the writing and publishing world. The lottery closes 2 weeks before each workshop, at which time entrants will be notified if we are able to offer a free seat.
CRAFT INTENSIVES | Fall 2025
Deepen Your Writing with Research
Wed, Sept 17 & 24, 6-8pm
with Alizah Holstein
Fiction | Nonfiction
$100 General | $80 Member | $120 Supporter
Research can add depth, texture, and context to writing, but knowing when and how to use it isn’t always clear. This workshop offers practical guidance for writers in all genres who want to integrate research more purposefully into their creative process. We’ll explore a range of methods and tools that support both investigation and imagination. Readings from authors such as Teju Cole, Jill Lepore, and Zadie Smith will offer varied examples of how research can shape narrative voice, structure, and tone. Participants will identify areas in their own work that could be enriched by research and will have opportunities to apply new strategies in short in-class exercises and at home. You’ll leave the workshop with a compendium of methods and tools, a stronger sense of how to match research to your project’s needs, and greater confidence in your process.
Open to prose writers of all genres with a work in progress. This is a 2-week workshop, with a 2-hour session each week. Participants should be prepared to bring 1-2 pages of a work in progress (a very rough draft is fine) to the first meeting, and expect approximately 2-3 hours of work between sessions.
ALIZAH HOLSTEIN (she/her) is the author of the memoir My Roman History (Viking Press, 2024). She holds an MFA in creative writing & literary translation from Vermont College of Fine Arts and a PhD in history from Cornell University. Her essays have appeared in Literary Hub, Hamilton Arts & Letters, World Literature Today, and elsewhere. She has been interviewed on the Frommer’s Travel Show podcast and NPR’s Here & Now.
Silences & Blank Spaces: A Line-Editing Study
Sat, Oct 4, 12-2pm
with Courtney Denelle
Fiction | Nonfiction | Poetry
$50 General | $40 Member | $60 Supporter
Revision is more than just editing or fixing flaws. While writing requires a kind of courage and energy that can feel at times almost mystical, most stories come to life only when the right pieces are cut away. This workshop will include a discussion of omissions within the writing of Virginia Woolf, Abigail Thomas, Ada Limón, Su Hwang and Lucille Clifton and a guided revision exercise. Our task will be to uncover the secret of the story in your text, the story’s best version of itself, even if it means cutting all but one sentence or phrase. Sharpen your red pencils! It’s time to get excited about letting things go.
Open to writers of all genres with a work in progress. This is a 2-hour workshop. Please bring
a 10-15 page draft to workshop.
REGISTER
COURTNEY DENELLE (she/her) is the author of It's Not Nothing (SFWP, 2022), a novel- in-fragments drawn from her experience of homelessness and recovery. Winner of the 2021 Poets & Writers Maureen Egen award, Courtney has received a Hawthornden Fellowship, as well as residencies from Hedgebrook and the Jentel Foundation. She lives in Providence, where she received her greater education from the public library.
Writing as Resistance
ORIGINALLY SCHEDULED FOR OCT, THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED TO JAN
Sat, Jan 17, 24 + 31 12-2pm
with Nancy Agabian
Fiction | Nonfiction | Poetry
$150 General | $120 Member | $180 Supporter
This cross-genre workshop will look to various justice movements of previous eras—from the second wave feminism to Black Lives Matter—to find inspiration to resist war, genocide, climate change, and other crises and injustices. At-home readings from writers such as Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldua, Claudia Rankine and Roxanne Gay will fuel our in-person discussions and writing exercises for the first two sessions. The third session will be devoted to workshopping short prose pieces and poems and sharing resources for the publication of the work.
Open to writers of all levels and genres. This is a 3-week workshop, with a 2-hour session each week. Please prepare for approximately 1-2 hours of work between sessions.
NANCY AGABIAN (she/her) is the author of Princess Freak, a poetry collection; Me as her again, a memoir; and The Fear of Large and Small Nations, a novel. As a community writing workshop leader, Nancy has worked with multicultural groups in Los Angeles, women writers in Yerevan, SWANA writers online, first-generation writers in Queens, and young queer writers in NYC. A longtime NYU professor, she currently teaches at Bay Path University’s MFA Nonfiction Writing Program.
So You Want to Write for Video Games
Sat, Nov 15, 12-2pm
with Alison Lanier
Interactive Fiction
$50 General | $40 Member | $60 Supporter
What does writing for video games actually look like? Come explore how stories are told in games and how writers can approach this (often intimidating) field. In this workshop, we'll discuss what it means to write an interactive story and work in an ever-evolving medium, investigate various narrative-forward game forms from AAA RPGS to visual novels, and explore resources for participants to continue their own adventures. Bring your questions on interactive fiction and an excitement for new forms!
Open to writers of all levels. This is a 2-hour workshop. Please bring a laptop, tablet or phone to the workshop if you have one.
ALISON LANIER (she/her) is a writer for CD Projekt Red, where she works on the Witcher franchise. Based in Providence with her wife and cats, she is also a staff writer for Pajiba and has contributed work to Ms Magazine, Bust, The Establishment, Origin Journal, and others. She earned her MFA in fiction from UMass Boston and her Masters in media studies, encompassing interactive fiction, from MIT.
Haunting Returns: The Poetry of Pastness, Memory and Self
Thurs, Dec 4 & 11, 6-8pm
with Naimah Zulmadelle Petigny
Poetry | Nonfiction
$100 General | $80 Member | $120 Supporter
Unearth what haunts you in this workshop geared towards helping you return to your authentic, experimental, poetic inner voice. How are we tied to the past—to history, time, and space? What is haunting, and how might it embody ideas of erasure, absence, suspension, and refusal? What’s made you into a ghost of your former self? Together we’ll consider what to do with the liminal, unruly, and spectral inheritances—the parts of the story, of us—that don’t fit neatly in time and space.
This workshop will center poetry, while also exploring creative non-fiction and theory. Using texts, short movement exercises, and writing prompts, we’ll begin to tease out the past that preoccupies and possesses our writing. Texts from writers such as Lucile Cliffton, Eve Tuck, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Fahima Ife, and Dionne Brand allow us to examine how history, haunting, and loss are contoured by race, gender, sexuality, queerness, diaspora, and colonialism, while writing exercises and peer-to-peer feedback will orient us towards a rich reframing of what it means to be alive, and to return to oneself.
Open to writers of all levels. This is a 2-week workshop, with a 2-hour session each week. Please prepare for approximately 1-2 hours of work between sessions which might include completing a few short readings and generating 2-3 pages of rough, drafted writing.
REGISTER
NAIMAH ZULMADELLE PÉTIGNY (she/her) is a Black feminist scholar, dancer, poet, and abolitionist educator. She is an Assistant Professor of Literary Arts and Studies at the Rhode Island School of Design and holds the Schiller Family Assistant Professorship in Race in Art and Design. Naimah writes toward expansive, experimental notions of Blackness as she centers questions of gender, pastness, loss, and erotics. Her current book project considers how we might be lovingly adorned by loss, instead of anchored by it. Her writing has been published or is forthcoming in Commoning Ethnography, The Walker Art Center Magazine, Agitate! Unsettling Knowledges Journal, Routledge International Handbook of Gender and Feminist Geographies, and Cultural Studies.
Safe and Brave Space Policy
Writing workshops can be vulnerable spaces. As a literary arts organization, LitArts RI is committed to providing a safe, brave, inclusive and accessible space to all participants, regardless of race, ethnicity, class, citizenship status, age, size, abilities, sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression. Be sensitive, be supportive, be respectful and engage with care. Discriminatory, hateful, and threatening content will not be tolerated; we ask that you bring any concerns to our attention immediately.
Accessibility
All workshops will meet in person at LitArts RI’s wheelchair-accessible literary arts center at 400 Harris Ave, Unit E in Providence, unless otherwise noted. LitArts RI is actively committed to cultivating a community that values and reflects diversity, equity and inclusivity and to providing programming that is accessible to all attendees. Please let us know about any accommodations we can make to allow you to participate fully in these workshops.
This fall, we're holding a special a Writers' Block Party on the theme of "Resistance" a day of one-hour micro-workshops on Sat, Oct 18 from 9am-5pm. Writers’ block can stem from feelings of overwhelm and disempowerment in times of upheaval, but social change begins with how we wield our words. On Sat, Oct 18 join LitArts RI for a special edition Writers Block Party, designed to inspire us to engage with the issues that matter most as citizen writers.
Explore the connection between writing and activism through hour-long micro workshops on op-eds, oral and written testimony, flash and hybrid forms, and protest signage. Between sessions, take time to network and brainstorm, write postcards to elected officials, enjoy a potluck lunch, and participate in a closing community discussion on next steps and submissions.
Opt for one workshop, or take four workshops for a discount. All tickets include admission to the day’s opening and closing discussions, participation in the potluck lunch, and time to write in the LitArts RI Creative Workspace between workshops.
Get your tickets here.
Writers' Block Party
