These workshops will follow the traditional creative writing workshop model in which students discuss, and critique each other’s work in small groups led by the instructor.

Description of Maaza Mengiste’s Fiction Workshop, (re)Visions: I want this workshop to push you in directions that you didn’t expect. I want your character and scenes to disrupt and surprise. In short, I want to use our time together to shake things up in your writing. I don’t think this comes from what you imagine you want to do. It comes from what you haven’t thought of yet. It comes from a blank page, from setting aside what you think you know and plunging ahead into the unknown. It comes from something slightly radical, even revolutionary. This doesn’t happen without hard work, but it can happen. It comes through focused attention on the particulars of a story: POV, characters, setting, structure, etc. It comes from setting aside ego and fear. If you are willing to make the leap, I believe that you will move towards a richer, more complicated story that only you could tell.

More workshop leaders and detail descriptions coming soon!

M/W/F, 10 am - 12:30 pm Centro Nacional de Cultura

Description of Erica Dawson’s Workshop: In this workshop, we will spend time discussing the poems you submit before coming to Lisbon and the poems you’ll write during your stay.  We will talk about the importance of spontaneity and examine place as inspiration. Each session will begin with a look at a contemporary poem embracing travel, whether to a far-off land or simply the space of a new idea.

M/W/F, 10 am - 12:30 pm Centro Nacional de Cultura

Description of Molly Antopol’s Workshop, Finding Your Form: Exploring Storytelling through Fiction and Memoir

The techniques of powerful storytelling are similar in all varieties of the stories we tell — whether in fiction or memoir. In this workshop, we’ll explore how to choose the form that’s best suited to your material, and we’ll use exercises, published stories and essays to explore elements such as image, voice, and narrative arc, that are essential to all storytelling. You’ll leave Lisbon with a new story or essay.

M/W/F, 10 am - 12:30 pm Centro Nacional de Cultura

A multi-genre workshop for writers of Portuguese descent.

M/W/F, 10 am - 12:30 pm Centro Nacional de Cultura

We’ll use your submitted work as the springboard for four sessions devoted to the how-tos and what-fors of writing satire and parody – exploring the similarities and differences between the two genres, and how they frequently overlap.  We’ll exchange first drafts (one-to-five pages maximum as a starting point) before our first meeting in Lisbon. You should write in one of these general categories:

• A pastiche of a famous (or infamous) author or poet;
• A satiric essay or short story (Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” or Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” are notable examples);
• A “fake news” article or other spurious document (à la The Onion or Andy Borowitz);
• A script for a satiric comedy sketch (think Tina Fey skewering Sarah Palin, or the Pythons’ incomparable “Semaphore
• Version of Wuthering Heights”);
• A parody or satiric song lyric (there are plenty of excellent models out there, from Tom Lehrer, Randy Newman, and the Muppets, to Weird Al and beyond).

We’ll draw upon some of the most inspired and outrageous works in each of these categories (sharing, I suspect, more than a few laughs as we do so), all in the service of helping your project reach its greatest comic/satirical potential.  (You won’t be confined to your initial category if you decide to change it during the course.  The workshop is designed for you to leave with a second, polished draft that will either continue as a work-in-progress or feel complete.)

T/TH, 10 AM - 12:30 PM Centro Nacional de Cultura

Structured writing time is a chance to schedule yourself some time to reflect, revise, or generate new material while in Lisbon. In the middle of a busy program, this is an oasis for you and your writing, complete with writing prompts for anyone looking for extra inspiration. Disquiet provides the time and space; you provide the content.

T/TH, 10 AM - 12:30 PM Centro Nacional de Cultura

The Fernando Pessoa Game is composed of a series of creative prompts that invite participants to engage their own practice (in writing, visual arts, performance, etc.) along with their sensitive and physical surroundings. We will examine text in terms of site-specificity, the body, its sensorial reception–and the production of art as a response to scores, to maps, to sets of open-ended instructions.  Encounters will be anchored in brief historical overviews of transdisciplinary and contemporary experimental art. This is an opportunity to expand your artistic vocabulary, to try strategies outside your routine, to adventure yourself into a wonderful world of creative possibilities, all  in the spirit of Fernando Pessoa and in his beloved city.

T/TH, 10 am - 12:30 pm Centro Nacional de Cultura

Storytelling. From the dawn of humanity to the Nobel Prize, storytelling as cultural narrative has been one of the primal functions of the human condition; gathering folk around the sacred fire and passing on essential cultural knowledge. It is through narrative, through storytelling, that we make sense of our lives and our world – and the primal principles of storytelling are still central to literary achievement. From doing dramatic readings to performance poetry and narrative innovation, this seminar will explore the dynamics of effective presentation and performance, the relationship between performer and audience, and the role of storytelling on the stage and in the text.

T/TH, 10AM to 12:30PM Centro Nacional de Cultura

In this workshop, we will study poetic forms as a means of exploration and adventure. We will try unusual forms and see how more familiar forms might be used in new ways, whether in conjunction with new subjects or in new combinations.  Each session will consist of discussing examples and writing exercises based on what we notice. This workshop is open to poets and non-poets alike.

T / Th, 10:00 AM - 12:30 PM Centro Nacional de Cultura