Upcoming & Past Classes
Crafty
Join Katie O’Donnell and Emily Stone for a two-week writing course designed for writers at any stage of the process who want to learn how to write killer scenes that cook.
Crafty is for anyone looking to deepen their understanding of the craft while generating material for an existing project— or discovering a new one. Each engaging hour-long Zoom session features a lecture paired with optional craft-centered prompts to inspire your writing and help you practice the skills covered in the lectures. These prompts are entirely flexible. You can complete them on your own schedule, or simply use them as inspiration. There is no required homework.
The deadline to sign up is September 15th, 2026.
What you’ll get
Dynamic lectures (two per class) covering elements like setting, room tone, conflict, character, Scene & Sequel, core wound, dark night of the soul, dialogue, and more (lectures will be recorded).
Twice-weekly optional writing prompts to practice new skills at your own pace.
Optional Friday office hours with Katie and Emily for personalized guidance and any additional questions.
Details
Price: $799
Dates: Tuesdays and Thursdays, September 29th - October 8th
Time: 1:30 - 2:30 pm ET
Location: Zoom (calendar invites with links sent ahead of class)
Format: Two 20 minute lectures with ten minutes between each for questions
About the instructors
Emily Stone and Katie O’Donnell bring a wealth of experience in craft-focused instruction, helping writers sculpt scenes, stories, and books into cohesive, compelling narratives. Their approach blends rigorous technique with supportive, collaborative feedback to elevate your writing. Plus, the classes are fun and include a lot of great book recs for your TBR!
Story Lab: A Craft Course in the Short Story w/ David Samuel Levinson
The short story is one of the most demanding and rewarding forms in fiction — a world that must be built, populated, and resolved in the space of a few thousand words, with no room for waste and nowhere to hide. This course offers a firm grounding in the essential elements of fiction craft while guiding you through the process of writing a complete short story of 2,500 words. Through lectures, targeted writing exercises, and two rounds of workshop, you will learn to make deliberate choices about every aspect of your work: how to find and develop a character whose desire drives the narrative forward, how to construct a plot that asks and answers a central dramatic question, how to use point of view, setting, dialogue, and pacing as active tools rather than background elements, and how to locate and sustain a voice that is distinctly your own.
The short story rewards compression. What a novel can afford to build slowly — character, atmosphere, theme — the short story must earn quickly, often in a single scene, a single exchange, a single image that does the work of many pages. This course treats that constraint not as a limitation but as a discipline, one that sharpens your instincts as a writer and teaches you to trust the reader. By the end of six weeks, you will have a completed draft of a short story, a clearer sense of your own aesthetic, and the craft vocabulary to revise with intention.
The deadline to sign up is September 6th, 2026.
What you’ll get
Lectures on craft elements, with close readings of published work
Writing exercises targeting the skill introduced each wee
Workshop: each student presents their work in progress to the group
Details
Price: $699 total
Dates: October 6th - November 10th
Time: Tuesdays, 6:30 - 8:00 pm ET
Location: Zoom (calendar invites with links sent ahead of class)
About the instructor
David Samuel Levinson is the author of the novels Tell Me How This Ends Well and Antonia Lively Breaks the Silence. His essay “How ‘Heated Rivalry’ Thawed the Chill Between My Father and Me” appeared in Modern Love in The New York Times in February 2026, and his fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Hobart, Prairie Schooner, Post Road, West Branch, and other publications. A recipient of a Fulbright-Mach Award, he recently returned from a Fulbright Fellowship in Vienna, Austria, where he researched and revised a new novel. He has taught creative writing at New York University, Emory University, Texas A&M University, and elsewhere.
Show Don’t Tell w/ Katie O’Donnell
“Show, don’t tell” is one of the most common pieces of writing advice—but what does it really mean? In this focused one-day pop-up lecture, you’ll learn how to spot when you’re telling instead of showing, and how to use sensory details, action, desire, and dialogue to bring your scenes to life.
You’ll also discover how to engage readers emotionally by revealing character through experience, not exposition and walk away with clear, practical tools to make your writing vivid and compelling.
What you’ll learn:
How to identify “telling” moments in your writing— why does telling tell us nothing and showing show us everything?
Techniques for creating voicey, immersive, sensory-rich scenes that pop off the page
How to reveal character through action
Rather than simply informing readers what your characters think or feel, Show, Don’t Tell will teach you how to make your readers experience those emotions for themselves.
Details
Price: $79
Date: Tuesday October 20th
Time: 6:00-7:15 pm ET
Location: Zoom (calendar invite with link sent ahead of class)
Talk the Talk w/ Emily Stone
Great dialogue does more than move a story forward— it reveals character, builds tension, and keeps readers…reading. In this dynamic, craft-focused pop-up, we’ll explore how to create distinct voices and weave conflict into every exchange. It’s called the core wound! Okay, maybe also the book wound, and the core secret, but more on these juicy underpinnings when we talk about how to make your dialogue sound less like a 1970s soap opera on a Tuesday— ie, recounting all the stuff readers already know— and imbue it with action. You’ll discover how to eliminate flat, expositional dialogue and replace it with scenes that crackle with emotion, conflict, humor, tension, and suspense.
Whether you’re writing fiction or memoir, you’ll leave this class with practical techniques for creating dialogue that sounds natural while raising the stakes, and bringing every character to life.
In this class, you’ll learn how to:
Create distinctive voices for each character
Build conflict into conversations to increase tension and momentum.
Use subtext to reveal what characters are thinking without saying it directly.
Balance dialogue with action (WANTS) and interior (CORE WOUND) for stronger scenes.
Avoid common dialogue pitfalls, including info-dumping and repetition.
Revise dialogue to make every line purposeful and emotionally charged.
You’ll also get optional writing prompts to practice these new skills at your own pace.
Details
Price: $79
Dates: Wednesday November 4th
Time: 6:00-7:15 pm ET
Location: Zoom (calendar invite with link sent ahead of class)