Classes & Workshops
“Every course I have taken at NOWW has been on point! The teachers all share a passion for creativity! Inspiring indeed.”Isabella Christodoulou on NOWW Teachers
Form & Obstacle: A Generative Fiction Workshop
(All Levels, In-person)
Instructor: J.D. Hosemann
Genre: Fiction
Number of Sessions: 3
Meets: 6-8 PM CT
Dates: Thursdays, July 17, 24, and 31, 2025
Where: TBD
Cost: $140 / $128 Early Bird Sale until July 10
Sometimes, especially when we find ourselves trudging through the early stages of writing, it’s
easy to assume the creative impulse flows effortlessly through others. Meanwhile we struggle
to make a single sentence stick to the page. Of course this is an illusion, especially when it
comes to writing. Look into the creative process of most seasoned writers and you’ll find a very
different assumption. For these writers, creativity is not so much a personality type as it is a
discipline that requires cultivation and care.
In this generative fiction workshop, we will hold a similar assumption: creativity, along with
craft and technique, is something that can be honed and practiced. Interestingly, this
assumption will not lead us toward complete artistic freedom. Rather, our prompts, readings,
and exercises will present various obstacles—a random object, a piece of music, a secret word
or sentence, a specific color—that encourage you to find alternative paths. The goal here is to
discover something surprising, something unexpected. We’re not looking to perfectly execute
an artistic idea, but rather to open ourselves to the possibilities of the accidental, the
unexpected thing that gives life to our work.
This course could serve as an excellent low-stakes jumping off point for beginners as well as a
creative jolt for more experienced writers. No workshop experience is required and all prompts
are designed with principles of narrative and storytelling in mind. Expect to produce and
workshop several short pieces of fiction over our three weekly sessions.
J.D. Hosemann
J.D. Hosemann’s stories have appeared in places like The Kenyon Review Online, New World
Writing, hex, Gone Lawn, Maudlin House, Citywide Lunch and elsewhere. His work has been
supported by the Mississippi Arts Commission Fellowship for Literary Arts and the Nancy Zafris
Short Story Fellowship at Porches Writing Retreat. His chapbook Getting Out There was
published by Bottlecap Press in 2024. Hosemann is a faculty member at Tougaloo College,
where he teaches English and creative writing courses for undergraduates. He also leads a
summer fiction workshop for Brown University’s pre-college program.
Writing from the Archive
(All Levels, In-person)
Instructor: Brad Richard
Genre: Multi-genre
Number of Sessions: 3
Meets: 10 AM – 1 PM CT
Dates: Saturdays, July 26, August 2, and August 9
Where: TBD (New Orleans)
Cost: $225 / Early Bird Sale until July 10: $210
In the etymology of archive, you’ll find the Greek word arkhē, meaning “government” but aIso “beginning, origin, first place.” Sources are often surprising, revealing things we didn’t know or didn’t expect to learn about the topic we’re researching; sometimes, the source reveals something new when we examine it in an unexpected or “wrong” way.
In this series of three generative workshops, we’ll start by looking at examples of writing that takes imaginative approaches to using archival material. Among those imaginative approaches is the idea of the archive itself: yes, it can be material from historical records and/or databases, and it can include family photos, obituaries, immigration forms, letters, emails, recipes, things you’ve found in the street, etc. In that spirit of expanding definitions and possibilities, I’ll encourage but not require you to work outside the expectations of a specific genre; many of the examples we’ll look at are hybrids of various literary forms (including poetry, memoir, essay, and fiction), and some make use of strategies from the visual arts. Whatever you create in this workshop, I hope it leads you to discoveries not only about the material but about your sense of what your writing can do.
Week 1
We will look at examples that take some kind of archival material and use various strategies to interrogate it and make it yield new meanings. We will also brainstorm some ideas for selecting your own archival material and how you might approach it. I will send you instructions before the first class to let you know what to bring on the first day–it won’t be your whole archive!
Week 2
I’ll give you some prompts to help you find the most productive strategies for engaging with your archival material and you will begin creating your piece. We will also engage in some feedback activities designed to help you keep finding new ways to think about your material and new strategies for working with it. (You will need to bring your archival materials with you.)
Week 3
You will revise and refine your projects in whatever ways they require, and we will again give each other feedback. We will also discuss what you might do next with this work, both in revision and in publishing or otherwise presenting it.
Multi-Genre/ All levels welcome.
brad richard
Brad Richard is the author of Habitations (Portals Press, 2000), Motion Studies (The Word Works, 2011), Butcher’s Sugar (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2012), Parasite Kingdom (The Word Works, 2019), and Turned Earth (Louisiana State University Press, 2025). His 2022 chapbook, In Place, was chosen for the Robin Becker Series from Seven Kitchens Press. A second edition of Motion Studies, with additional poems and a foreword by Skye Jackson, was published by The Word Works in March, 2025. He has taught creative writing at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, The Willow School (whose creative writing program he founded and directed), Louisiana State University, and Tulane University, and for The Kenyon Review and New Orleans Writers Workshop. Series editor of the Hilary Tham Capital Collection from The Word Works, he lives, writes, and gardens in New Orleans.
The game of revision
(All Levels, Virtual)
Instructor: T Clark
Genre: Fiction
Number of Sessions: 1
Meets: 6-8:30 PM CT
Dates: Thursday, August 7, 2025
Where: Zoom
Cost: $70 / $62 Early Bird Sale until July 15, 2025
For many writers, there’s so much joy to be found in the drafting phase- you feel like a genius as your brain spits out what you didn’t know you had in you. Then, the horror: you have to revise. In this course, we will discuss and practice different methods of revision that can make this necessary phase of the process feel just as exciting as drafting. Writers will leave the class with new tricks and tools for revision, as well as variations on some of their own work.
T Clark
T Clark‘s debut short story collection All This Want (And I Can’t Get None) and their untitled debut novel are forthcoming from One World Press. T is from Westchester, NY. They hold an MFA in fiction from Indiana University in Bloomington. They were the recipient of a “Writer in the World” fellowship in Nepal, a Ross Lockridge Jr. Award in Fiction, a Newport News Public Library short story award, and a Mitchell Adelmann award in Fiction. They have received support and fellowships from the Omi International Arts Center in Ghent, NY, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Lambda Literary Foundation, The Elizabeth George Foundation, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and The Vermont Studio Center. Their fiction has appeared in Joyland, The Kenyon Review, American Short Fiction, The Offing, Fourteen Hills, and elsewhere. They teach and write in New Orleans.