The Community of Writers is proud to present a series of one-night courses as part of its 2026 offerings. These courses are intended to be akin to high-level craft talks. They require less commitment and lower the financial burden of these course offerings. These courses also allow for us to explore a more diverse array of topics, reflecting the needs of our community. As always, limited financial aid is available. Contact us to learn more.
You can learn more about the individual courses below.
If you would like to register for all of our 2026 courses, including the Lorca and Yeats five-part courses. you can do that at the link below.
Spring Collection Pass Tuition: $175 ($65 in savings)
Register for all four one-night courses: Spring 2026 Collection
Register for the Full 2026 Season Pass – $650 ($190 in Savings)
Note: No additional discounts are available for this option.
The Courses
‘READER, YOU ALREADY KNOW’ – How to Read and Understand Contemporary Poetry
Tuesday, February 24, 2026
Led by Matthew Zapruder
In this class we will read four contemporary poems slowly, carefully, and closely. Each one will exemplify certain typical approaches by contemporary American poets. We will use these poems to talk about ways of entering into a poem that respect the words the poet has chosen, and the special nature of the poetic imagination, which is inherently metaphorical, intuitive, and leaping. We will be specific about what to do and when to do it, so that we can establish a plan for approaching any poem with respect and curiosity. We will talk about the different levels of reading — the literal, the allegorical, and the personal — and how each of those layers of reading is valid, but must be separated in order to respect the poem.
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Register for our all four courses
SECRETS OF THE SHORT STORY – Form and Content Revealed
Sunday, April 19, 2026
Led by Dana Johnson
How do short stories work? How do they provoke both questions and epiphanies despite not having the longer forms of the novel? In this two-hour course, we will read two to three short stories closely and carefully, exploring how they work and what they can reveal about the small, profound moments in our lives.
Dana Johnson is the acclaimed author of the novel, Elsewhere California and the short story collection In the Not Quite Dark, among other works. She is the Florence R. Scott Professor of English at the University of Southern California.
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Register for our all four courses
I AM A PART OF ALL THAT I HAVE MET: The Task and the Craft of Memoir
Tuesday, April 21, 2026
Led by Sands Hall
What differentiates a personal story that engages a few from one that garners a wide audience? Craft and structure certainly play their roles, but what are other qualities that make a reader flick the page, a listener to keep those earbuds in?
Perhaps one essential aspect is that the reader feels included. Even as they are drawn into a narrative larger than themselves, that narrative also feels personal—they become participants in the events being unfolded. Which brings us to craft. In this course we’ll take a look at this intersection: how the granular necessity of such things as point of view, building scene, “show” vs “tell” converges with the power of making a story not only about oneself, but about those who’ll read it.
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Register for our all four courses
THE NARRATIVE NONFICTION TRADITION – How We Learned to Write the Way We Write Now
Thursday, May 7, 2026
Led by Samuel Freedman
Whether in the form of memoir, history, or immersion reportage, the books of longform narrative that grip so many of us as readers, and try inspire so many of us as writers, come out of a tradition. It can be traced back millennia in some respects, all the way to Aristotle’s instructions about what he approvingly called a “complex plot.”
In this one-night, two-hour short course, we will trace these traditions and consider the threads that run through them, and explore aspects of the form that can benefit your own writing.
Learn More and Register
Register for our all four courses
Spring Collection Pass Tuition: $175 ($65 in savings)
Register for our all four courses
Register for the Full 2026 Season Pass – $650 ($190 in Savings)
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