Writers Week 2025 August 14-18, 2025 Visit Our Website 

Instructors:

•  Fiction Instructor:
•  Non-Fiction Instructor:
•  Poetry Instructor:
   

A Fiction Workshop with Keith F. Miller

Fiction Workshop Description:
Mapping the Wound: A Healing-Centered Workshop on (re)Memory, Story, and Structure
This workshop invites writers to engage emotionally charged, memory-driven work through a healing-centered lens—exploring how to craft scenes of (re)memory, relationships, and return in ways that honor emotional complexity and unlock what makes a story truly unforgettable.

Fiction Instructor
Keith F. Miller, Jr. is the author of the critically-acclaimed HarperCollins “PRITTY” YA series (Pritty, 2023; Togetha, 2025). In addition to being an award-winning educator, artist, and researcher, he is the founder of Healing By Any Means (HBAM), home of Narrative Systems Design, an emerging academic and professional discipline that powers system transformation through story. Keith is an executive producer of Pritty: The Animation, and he has an MFA in creative writing from St. Francis College in Brooklyn, NY.

Weeklong Workshop:
Mapping the Wound: A Healing-Centered Workshop on (re)Memory, Story, and Structure
This workshop invites writers to engage emotionally charged, memory-driven work through a healing-centered lens—exploring how to craft scenes of (re)memory, relationships, and return in ways that honor emotional complexity and unlock what makes a story truly unforgettable.

A Nonfiction Workshop with Tieshka Smith

Non-Fiction Workshop Description:
This course is for writers at all levels. Our instructor Tieshka Smith delves into the concept of writing as a journey back to one's origins. Students will be encouraged to engage in writing exercises that examine various facets of their heritage, such as culinary history, family customs, and community connections.

Students will:

•  Gain skills in effectively navigating the portrayal of family members and ancestral narratives.
   
•  Explore the nuanced concept of truth as it relates to writing from personal recollection.
   
•  Discover techniques for seamlessly blending personal experiences with broader universal themes.
   

Non-Fiction Workshop Description:
Write Beyond Yourself: Decentered Storytelling Through Your Own Art.
Overview:
This workshop is for visual artists and storytellers who want to engage with their own work in new and surprising ways. Using a photograph or image of a 2D or 3D piece as the starting point, participants will explore what happens when we decenter the obvious subject and instead give voice to something overlooked or unexpected within the composition.

What the students will learn (Goals/outcomes):

1.  Practice writing from perspectives embedded in your 2- or 3-dimensional work that are often ignored, silent, or invisible.
    
2.  Learn how decentering the focal point of a piece can reveal alternative narratives and emotional layers.
    
3.  Develop short written vignettes that challenge assumptions, deepen interpretation, and stretch your creative voice.
    

Who This Course Is For:
This workshop is designed for visual artists, photographers, and mixed-media storytellers who are curious about using their artwork as a generative prompt for writing. No formal writing experience is required—just bring a piece of your work and a willingness to listen for the story it wants to tell that challenges assumptions, deepens interpretation, and stretches your creative voice.

Non-Fiction Instructor
Tieshka (pronounced Tish-ka) Smith is a Philadelphia-based photographer, writer, teaching artist, and cultural documentarian. Her work interrogates placemaking, memory, and civic identity through the lenses of race and class. Smith is the author of Compositions of Black Joy: A Visual Chronicle of the Philadelphia Juneteenth Festival (2015–2022) and is currently working on her second book, Unscripted Moments: From the Diary of a Restless Lightchaser. Her photographs have been featured online and in galleries, museums, and publications across the U.S. A Chicago native, Smith holds a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from Northwestern University and a Master of Project Management degree from DeVry University’s Keller Graduate School of Management. Her website is tieshkasmith.com.

Poetry

Poetry Workshop Description:
Poetry is a form often associated with antiquity and irrelevance; most people think it’s old and boring, but in reality, poetry has never been more relevant and vital as a connective force and method of political speech and resistance.

What the students will learn:

1.  Broader understanding and appreciation for contemporary poetry
    
2.  Page vs performance principles
    
3.  Fundamentals of poetic expression
    

Who the course is for:
Writers with little poetry experience.

Poetry Instructor
Miles Justice Hardingwood is a poet and creative from Brooklyn, NY. He is a 2023 National Student Poet and a 2022 NYC Youth Poet Laureate Ambassador. His poetry has received a Scholastic National Gold Medal and an American Voices Medal, and he has performed at venues such as The White House, The Schomburg Center, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Nuyorican Poets Cafe, and Vice President Kamala Harris’s Black History Month Celebration. He attended the Kenyon Young Writers Workshop and the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio, and he currently attends Brown University, where he is pursuing a concentration in Literary Arts.

DISCLAIMER

Applicants must not contact instructors directly about the application process or send queries regarding other projects, unless invited by the instructor directly. If these actions occur, applicants will be ineligible to attend our writing workshops.

Deadline & Fees

Application Deadline:
Rolling admissions until each workshop reaches capacity. Registration deadline will be communicated, or once the 10-person cap per workshop is met.

Fees:

•  The fee is $450, which covers both the in-person Writers Weekend and the virtual weekend.
   
•  No separate application fee
   
•  Non-refundable
   
•  Full payment is due by the first day of the workshop
   

A detailed schedule will be provided upon acceptance.

Submission Format

•  Please ensure that your submission aligns with the genre to which you are applying.
•  For fiction, nonfiction: 10-page maximum, using Times New Roman, 12-point type, double-spaced with 1-inch margins.
•  For poetry applicants: Submit no more than 3 poems for consideration, no less than 2.
•  All applicants: Provide a title page with the author’s name and contact information.
•  Include a cover letter with information about your writing life and citations of any published work.
•  Applicants may apply to one workshop only. Previous attendees are eligible to apply.