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February Workshops
Project Management for Writers
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INSTRUCTOR: Ynes Freeman
TIME: Saturday,February 1, 9:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. pm CST/CDT PRICE: Early bird price: $45 for members, $60 for nonmembers. The deadline for early bird pricing is Sunday, January 26. After Sunday, January 26: $55 for members, $70 for nonmembers. Become a member here. Apply for a scholarship here. LOCATION: Writespace, 1907 Sabine Street, #125, Houston, TX 77007 (map). LEVEL: All levels CAP: 15 Taming wild horses? Why not try fitting a creative project into a schedule on deadline while you're at it? Join us at this Writespace workshop to take your manuscript creation to the next level! Led by indie publisher, author, and Writespace board member Ynes Freeman, this workshop will bring business discipline to your project with concrete examples and personal attention to what makes a project come in under (mental) budget and on time. Ynes Freeman is an award-winning gothic fiction author, and the publisher of Memento Vivere Press. She believes writing is the secret to immortality and that authors live forever through their books, changing the lives of people they will never meet. Her wish is for all creatives to believe in themselves and that their stories are worth telling. Under a variety of pen names, Ynes’s work has appeared in Everyday Fiction, Primal Elements, The Order of Us, Dragons Within, and other anthologies. Learn more about Freeman by visiting @ynesfreeman on most social media. |
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Poetics For Prose Writers
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INSTRUCTOR: Cassandra Rose Clark
TIME: Saturday, February 1, 2025 1pm - 4pm CST PRICE: Early bird price: $45 for members, $60 for nonmembers. The deadline for early bird pricing is Sunday, December 1. After Sunday, December 1: $55 for members, $70 for nonmembers. Become a member here. Apply for a scholarship here LOCATION: Online via Zoom LEVEL: All levels CAP: 15 What can a prose writer learn from a poet? Well, how to flow! Join author and former director of Writespace Cassandra Rose Clarke for this workshop examining the ins and outs of using poetry to enhance your prose and bring your authorial voice to the next level. Cassandra Rose Clarke's work has placed in the Rhysling Awards and been nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award, the Romantic Times Reviewer's Choice Award, the Pushcart Prize, and YALSA's Best Fiction for Young Adults. She grew up in south Texas and currently lives in Virginia, where she writes and tends to multiple cats. She holds an M.A. in creative writing from The University of Texas at Austin, and in 2010 she attended the Clarion West Writer’s Workshop in Seattle. |
Photo by Kyle Glenn on Unsplash
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Worldbuilding Like a Pro
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INSTRUCTOR: AP Hawkins
TIME: Sunday, February 2, 1-4 pm CST/CDT PRICE: Early bird price: $45 for members, $60 for nonmembers. The deadline for early bird pricing is Monday, January 27. After Monday, January 27: $55 for members, $70 for nonmembers. Become a member here. Apply for a scholarship here. LOCATION: Writespace, 1907 Sabine Street, #125, Houston, TX 77007 (map). LEVEL: All levels CAP: 15 Expansive and detailed worldbuilding is the bread and butter of science fiction and fantasy, but every genre needs worldbuilding on some level. Setting, culture, and how those elements affect the plot and characters (the most basic elements of worldbuilding) are things that every author must consider to make their book come alive for their readers. But anchoring readers in an unfamiliar world can be a tricky prospect. Too much exposition can bog the story down, too little and readers won’t have enough information to understand what’s going on. So how can authors ensure their worldbuilding is effective and properly balanced on the page? Join science fiction and fantasy author A.P. Hawkins for a detailed workshop on the finer points of worldbuilding, from plot scaffolding and POV to incluing and “book bibles”. With plenty of examples and writing exercises to get your creative juices flowing, you will learn how to anchor your readers in the unfamiliar and make your invented worlds feel like home. A.P. Hawkins is a biologist turned speculative fiction author and editor based in Houston, Texas. Her short fiction has appeared in various magazines and anthologies, including Analog Science Fiction and Fact and The Librarian anthology series from Air and Nothingness Press. In 2024, A.P.’s short fiction earned a semi-finalist award in the Writers of the Future Contest. A.P. is a co-host of Writers Lunch, a weekly online writing workshop, and a co-founder of Tomeworks, an editing collective dedicated to helping genre authors build better books. She volunteers as a first reader for Hexagon Magazine. When she’s not writing or editing, A.P. enjoys gaming, crafting, and spending time outdoors. She dabbles in cosplay, quilting, baking, and painting minifigures for tabletop role playing games. For updates on her writing and other endeavors, you can follow A.P. on social media (@ahawkwrites) or visit her website, aphawkinsauthor.com. |
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Fantastic Characters in Speculative Fiction
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INSTRUCTOR: Patricia Flaherty-Pagan
TIME: Wednesday, February 5, 6:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. CST PRICE: Early bird price: $45 for members, $60 for nonmembers. The deadline for early bird pricing is Thursday, January 30. After Thursday, January 30: $55 for members, $70 for nonmembers. Become a member here. Apply for a scholarship here LOCATION: Online via Zoom LEVEL: All levels CAP: 15 Join author Patricia Flaherty-Pagan in this Writespace workshop for a primer on building rounded characters in speculative fiction that can carry a story from the first page through to your climax! Whether you're writing a romance or science fiction, fantasy or horror, there are rules and tropes that will determine the shape of your plot and motivations of your characters. Whether you're bucking trends or writing to market, learning convention is always the first step. Patricia Flaherty-Pagan lives in a brown house near the sea with her family and three mischievous rescue cats. She is the award-winning author of Trail Ways Pilgrims and Enduring Spirit: Stories and her flash fiction has been published in journals such as Cleaver Magazine, The Ocotillo Review, The Sirens Call, and is forthcoming in The Fabulist. Flaherty-Pagan counts herself fortunate to have run feminist indie publisher Spider Road Press for a decade and she is a proud member of the Horror Writers Association, Sisters in Crime, and the Salem Writers. |
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Writing is Like Running
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INSTRUCTOR: Sean Morrissey Carroll
TIME: Saturday, February 8, 1-4 p.m. CST PRICE: Early bird price: $65 for members, $80 for nonmembers. The deadline for early bird pricing is Sunday, February 2. After Sunday, February 2: $75 for members, $90 for nonmembers. Become a member here. Apply for a scholarship here LOCATION: Online via Zoom LEVEL: All levels CAP: 15 This workshop will examine writing through the lens of running, and you don't have to be a runner to enjoy it. From ups and down to setbacks and personal triumphs, the life of an author can mirror the trevails of a runner in many ways. With generative prompts and interactive elements based on readings from Murakami's book, we will look at how authors can set themselves up for the marathon of publishing a book rather than a series of sprints that will leave you exhausted. Every attendee will receive a copy of What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, from Haruki Murakami, the author of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Norwegian Wood, from Brazos Bookstore! In 1982, having sold his jazz bar to devote himself to writing, Murakami began running to keep fit. A year later, he’d completed a solo course from Athens to Marathon, and now, after dozens of such races, not to mention triathlons and a dozen critically acclaimed books, he reflects upon the influence the sport has had on his life and—even more important—on his writing. Equal parts training log, travelogue, and reminiscence, this revealing memoir covers his four-month preparation for the 2005 New York City Marathon and takes us to places ranging from Tokyo’s Jingu Gaien gardens, where he once shared the course with an Olympian, to the Charles River in Boston among young women who outpace him. Through this marvelous lens of sport emerges a panorama of memories and insights: the eureka moment when he decided to become a writer, his greatest triumphs and disappointments, his passion for vintage LPs, and the experience, after fifty, of seeing his race times improve and then fall back. Sean Morrissey Carroll is an author in Houston, Texas, programming director for Writespace Writing Center, and co-host of Writers Lunch. He’s been a bookseller, photography teacher, butcher, cartoonist, waiter, art critic, crepemaker, vintage fashion grader and sign painter. Published in Art in America, Artforum.com, Bullshit Literary, Defunkt Magazine, Houston Press, Punt Volat, Nebo, Space City Underground, and Gulf Coast magazine, Sean’s story “Future Floods of Houston” was nominated for a PEN/Dau Award. |
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Editing Poetry
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INSTRUCTOR: Melissa Huckabay
TIME: Saturday, February 8, 4:30 - 7:30 p.m. CST PRICE: Early bird price: $45 for members, $60 for nonmembers. The deadline for early bird pricing is Monday December 2. After Monday, December 2: $55 for members, $70 for nonmembers. Become a member here. Apply for a scholarship here. LOCATION: Writespace, 1907 Sabine Street, #125, Houston, TX 77007 (map) LEVEL: All levels CAP: 15 Join poet and professor Melissa Huckabay, and bring your poems to revise! Getting words down may seem like the biggest hurdle when you're staring at a blank page, but it's just the beginning. Editing poetry is an important step along the way to expressing yourself and your emotions in the clearest way possible. With various techniques and concrete examples, we will look at the how and why as well as engage in generative creation. Melissa McEver Huckabay is a graduate of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Texas State University, an adjunct college instructor, and an experienced writer in a wide range of fields.. She also has taught English Language Arts and creative writing at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. Melissa’s creative work has appeared in SWWIM, Thimble, Poetry South, Sweet: A Literary Confection, and elsewhere, and her short fiction has won the Spider’s Web Flash Fiction Prize from Spider Road Press. She was a 2023 Contributor to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. |
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Writing Rapidly to find your Gems
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INSTRUCTOR: Joyce Boatright
TIME: Tuesday, February 11, 6-9 pm CST/CDT PRICE: Early bird price: $45 for members, $60 for nonmembers. The deadline for early bird pricing is Friday, January 17. After Friday, January 17: $55 for members, $70 for nonmembers. Become a member here. Apply for a scholarship here. LOCATION: Writespace, 1907 Sabine Street, #125, Houston, TX 77007 (map). LEVEL: All levels CAP: 15 If you struggle to get inspired, if you can't keep on task, sometimes you just need to push the words out. Join us at this Writespace workshop for an inspiring exercise in writing rapidly that will reveal how practice makes perfect and the only way to make an omelette is to crack some literary eggs! One challenge we have as writers is quieting the negative committee in our heads that constantly criticizes. This workshop will show us how to silence those internal critics and find the gems in our prose and poetry that keeps us engaged on the page. Borrowing from writing guru Natalie Goldberg and others, we’ll learn to write fast—ahead of the Internal Critic. By trusting the creative process, we’ll soon find the gold in our work. Joyce Boatright is a writer, teacher, and storyteller with several decades of experience. Published in literary journals and anthologies, she is also the author of Telling Your Story: A Basic Guide to Memoir Writing (available at the Jung Center Bookstore, Houston). She has been teaching and writing memoir since 1991. Joyce is an active member of the writing community, holding memberships In the National Association of Memoir Writers, Story Circle Network, Writers League of Texas, and Writespace Writing Center. Visit her online at JoyceBoatright.com. |
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Short to Long - Expanding on Ideas
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INSTRUCTOR: Michael Hagerty
TIME: Saturday, February 15, 9:30 am to 12:30 p.m. CST PRICE: Early bird price: $45 for members, $60 for nonmembers. The deadline for early bird pricing is Saturday, February 9. After Saturday, February 9: $55 for members, $70 for nonmembers. Become a member here. Apply for a scholarship here LOCATION: Writespace Studio, 1907 Sabine St #125, Houston TX LEVEL: All levels CAP: 15 Memoir and non-fiction writers, you're in for a treat! Hot off the presses and into Writespace's studio, join Michael Hagerty of Houston Matters (weekdays 9 am on Houston Public Media) for a deep dive into how to expand ideas into stories.Using field methods and generative prompts, students will have the opportunity to build narratives from the ground up and hear expertise on how journalists paint scenes with words and find the story behind the story. Michael Hagerty is the senior producer for Houston Matters. He’s spent more than 20 years in public radio and television and dabbled in minor league baseball, spending four seasons as the public address announcer for the Reno Aces, the Triple-A affiliate of the Arizona Diamondbacks. |
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Secondary Characters - Reflections
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INSTRUCTOR: Jessica Raney
TIME: Friday, February 21, 6:00 p.m. to 9 p.m. CST PRICE: Early bird price: $45 for members, $60 for nonmembers. The deadline for early bird pricing is Saturday, February 15. After Saturday, February 15: $55 for members, $70 for nonmembers. Become a member here. Apply for a scholarship here LOCATION: Online via Zoom LEVEL: All levels CAP: 15 Secondary characters are usually created with broad strokes, merely a means to an end for the plot. Does the house happen to be spooky? Then perhaps the owner is sneaky and untrustworthy. Is the headmistress mean? Maybe she has her hair pulled too tight and her perfume is overbearing. But how do you breathe life into these characters, who may only be on the page for a few chapters or just a scene? Join us as we explore Secondary Characters and see how they can function as reflections for your protagonist and the world they live in! Jessica Raney is an author living in Houston, Texas. Originally from southeastern Ohio, she later studied Forensic Chemistry at Ohio University and took a brief 20 year detour from writing to be a responsible do-er of science. She moved to Texas in 2008 and began writing again. Jessica is the author of seven books. Her latest novel, Rack and Ruin is the final book in her Appalachian-Supernatural-Noir series. Her other works include a zombie Apocalypse adventure, These Violent Delights, and two collections of short stories, Oddballs and Dreadful Pennies. Jessica is active in the Houston Writer’s Guild and Writespace organizations. When not writing or navigating Houston traffic, she’s enjoying the Gulf Coast with friends and her cat/dog/demon/baby, Gimli. |
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Protagonists that Break Down Walls
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INSTRUCTOR: Tanya Aydelott
TIME: Sunday, February 23, 1-4 pm CST/CDT PRICE: Early bird price: $45 for members, $60 for nonmembers. The deadline for early bird pricing is Monday, January 17. After Monday, January 17: $55 for members, $70 for nonmembers. Become a member here. Apply for a scholarship here. LOCATION: Zoom LEVEL: All levels CAP: 15 Genre-defying, gender-bending, expectation destroying heroes and anti-heros have both existed forever and are the hot new thing! Join us at this Writespace workshop led by author Tanya Aydelott to explore all the ways you can defy expectations and build rounded characters that smash the system and make readers see themselves in your characters. Tanya Aydelott is Pakistani American and spent most of her childhood in the Middle East. Since then, she has followed stories as though they were a ley line: she wrote her first fairy tale in 3rd grade, centered her undergraduate thesis on the uses of fairy tales in poetry, pursued an MA in anthropology and education (tracing stories and storytelling as an academic exercise), and finally decided to make time for her own creative writing. She earned an MFA in writing for children and young adults at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her short fiction has been published in FORESHADOW: Stories to Celebrate the Magic of Reading and Writing YA, Tales & Feathers Magazine, and Flash Fiction Online. |
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Details, Details, Details; Filling your World with Life
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INSTRUCTOR: Tanya Aydelott
TIME: Sunday, February 23, 1-4 pm CST/CDT PRICE: Early bird price: $45 for members, $60 for nonmembers. The deadline for early bird pricing is Monday, January 17. After Monday, January 17: $55 for members, $70 for nonmembers. Become a member here. Apply for a scholarship here. LOCATION: Zoom LEVEL: All levels CAP: 15 Genre-defying, gender-bending, expectation destroying heroes and anti-heros have both existed forever and are the hot new thing! Join us at this Writespace workshop led by author Tanya Aydelott to explore all the ways you can defy expectations and build rounded characters that smash the system and make readers see themselves in your characters. Tanya Aydelott is Pakistani American and spent most of her childhood in the Middle East. Since then, she has followed stories as though they were a ley line: she wrote her first fairy tale in 3rd grade, centered her undergraduate thesis on the uses of fairy tales in poetry, pursued an MA in anthropology and education (tracing stories and storytelling as an academic exercise), and finally decided to make time for her own creative writing. She earned an MFA in writing for children and young adults at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her short fiction has been published in FORESHADOW: Stories to Celebrate the Magic of Reading and Writing YA, Tales & Feathers Magazine, and Flash Fiction Online. |
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