This workshop will meet every Monday at the same time for 10 consecutive weeks.

Class size is limited to 12 students so that all participants get personal attention.

Debra Marquart is the author of six books including The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere and a collection of poems, Small Buried Things: Poems. Marquart’s short story collection, The Hunger Bone: Rock & Roll Stories drew on her experiences as a former road musician. Marquart’s work has been featured on NPR and the BBC and has received over 50 grants and awards including an NEA Fellowship, a PEN USA Award, a New York Times Editors’ Choice commendation, and Elle Magazine’s Elle Lettres Award. The Senior Editor of Flyway: Journal of Writing & Environment, Marquart teaches in ISU’s interdisciplinary MFA Program in Creative Writing and Environment and in the Stonecoast Low-Residency MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine.

About this event:

Are you the one in the family who keeps track of stories or are you the one who sits in the corner and listens to everyone talking? Does your life sometimes seem like a reality TV show or do you walk through calm, peaceful days of beautiful serenity? Either way, you have a story to tell. In this introductory nonfiction workshop, we will look at short examples from published authors who have successfully put their stories down on paper, then we’ll try our own hands—through a series of creative writing prompts—to help you put down some of your own stories on paper. In this class, we will discuss the basic principles of craft (i.e., what makes good, vivid writing), and we will write short creative writing pieces based on inspiring prompts. Once you’ve written your starting drafts, you will share your writing with the members of the class in a roundtable workshop, and you’ll get feedback for improving your work.

About Humanities ND Online Writing Workshops:

Zoom writing workshops are very much like in-person workshops, but everything happens via videoconferencing rather than everyone meeting in the same room.

Our Zoom writing workshops offer the same quality of instruction as in-person workshops. Through the use of Zoom, we replicate the experience of being together in a venue with a scholar and fellow writers.

The writing workshop takes place in real-time, meeting at the same time each week. The scholar and participants will meet via videoconference using the simple-to-use Zoom software.

The only technical requirement for a Zoom writing workshop is a device (computer, tablet, phone) and good wifi. If you don’t have good wifi, there is also a call-in option.