WELCOME TO THE HVWC CALENDAR: home of all our upcoming readings, events and workshops. You can view by list or calendar (see right menu to choose). Click the colored tabs below to show only specific options. Our workshops run as multi-session series or one-day “intensives.” Note, we list the multi-session courses on the first day they meet only. The full dates of the session are described in the course descriptions. You would need to scroll back to the start date if you needed to enroll for something already underway. But do let us know if you want to join something in midstream since we need the blessing of the instructor. Questions? Email us.
Workshops – This category encompasses all one-day and multi-week classes, whether in person or via Zoom.
Readings – Our readings are in many different genres and take place in person, on Zoom, or both!
HVWC Recurring Events – This category encompasses such regular favorites as Open Mic, Open Write, and Submission Sunday.
Special Events – These other creative experiences are sure to interest our creative community!
"In poetry you have a form looking for a subject and a subject looking for a form," writes W.H. Auden.In this workshop we'll try out several twenty-first century poetic forms such as the Bop, the Golden Shovel, and the Fib to see how form itself can influence and inspire what we feel an urgency to […]
This four-hour workshop will begin with an hour-long discussion of mostly inanimate (but also some living) objects or “things”: how to pay attention to them, how to use them in poems. We’ll explore several published poems that feature such “things”—as compelling descriptive details, as metaphors, as speakers (or addressees), and as other (sometimes quirky) occupiers […]
“History is the function of any one of us,” Charles Olson once said. In this workshop we will consider the poet as a witness to history and poetry as document. We will read and discuss poets from various periods in order to understand how their cultural moment impacted their writing and what impact their writing […]
In A Little Book on Form, Robert Hass names one definition of poetic form as the “external shape” of a poem. How do we utilize that first moment of encounter—when the reader first approaches the page, seeing the poem before they read it—to communicate meaning? In this craft class, we’ll explore the visual decisions that […]
We live in a time of always more, always faster, a time of disembodied screen-living where what’s new insists on itself as what’s most important—a culture built to help us pretend death is something for other people. But outside this frenzy are questions that demand slow pondering, queries old as human consciousness: Why are we […]
When it comes to revision habits, Time and Procrastination don’t need to be your worst enemies. Sometimes the best thing to do after you’ve written a draft is to put it immediately aside–and then not come back to it for many moons, even years! This workshop will seek to bring new light and energy to […]
A workshop focusing on generating fiction by utilizing prompts drawn from fairy tales and other sources. We will be generating flash stories or the beginnings of stories in this workshop, will read a fairy tale, and a few examples of flash fiction by people like Kathy Fish, Lydia Davis, and Kathryn Scanlan. We will start […]
Are you inspired to write about the transforming events of your life? Are you drawn to explore the circumstances surrounding your most vivid memories? For those with a work-in-progress or those starting fresh, this four-hour class will offer a supportive environment where we’ll be talking about memoir writing, writing in class and sharing for constructive […]
Marianne Moore said, "our thorns are the best part of you" ("Roses Only"). The key to revision then is not to eliminate the poem's metaphoric thorns but to convince the reader that they are essential. There are many revision strategies, all of them begin with some sort of dissatisfaction followed by action. This class is an opportunity to […]
This 4 hour intensive class is designed to stretch participants’ imaginations by giving you a sequence of provocative prompts of very various kinds, and very short writing times so as to short-circuit your cerebral controls and free what is lurking beneath the conscious brain. NB: This class will be taught on Zoom and will be […]
