Upcoming Events
Second Annual Iota of a Retreat
Running the week after the Iota Short Forms Conference, Iota of a Retreat Is an opportunity to continue experiencing the peace and inspiration of the conference. Allow yourself the gift of processing all you’ve engaged with during the conference and having space to WRITE! The retreat will be set at your own speed, and you may tailor the day’s activities to your own schedule.
Write, read, relax, explore the region and/or venture no farther than the Institute’s fifty acres of forest and former farmland via the many trails awaiting you there and beyond. Register here
Iota Short Forms Eighth Annual Writing Conference
Participants come to Iota to study all forms of short prose writing, including essays, prose poems, short stories, flash fiction and nonfiction, micro-essays, and much more. “Short” is a relative term, of course, and our students work onsite on pieces that vary in length from flash to novellas. The conference is generative, and we know that some pieces begun at Iota have grown into much longer projects once the authors got back home.
Iota is designed to help writers break from questions about genre. When is a piece a micro essay and when is it a prose poem or when does it turn into flash fiction? Iota posits that it doesn’t matter: just write it.
Workshop Leaders:
Internationally best-selling author and essayist Ann Hood
Iota Founder/Co-Director, memoirist and essayist Penny Guisinger
Conference Leader:
Suzanne Strempek Shea
Register here
Pyramid Life Center Fall WriterFest 2024
Fall WriterFest offers you the opportunity to learn from successful writers in a retreat setting. Small classes focused on craft will take your fiction, memoir, poetry, or creative nonfiction to the next level. A recent participant described the program as “Excellent! So much more than I thought it would be.” Your registration fee pays for a 5-day workshop, room and board, presentations from guest speakers, and writing time. After registration, you will be contacted for your workshop selection. PLUS, Fall WriterFest participants may remain the following weekend to enjoy the unique beauty of Pyramid Lake for a small additional fee.
Learn more here
Summer Writing Seminar in Coastal New England
SOLD OUT! Please email Leanna James Blackwell ljblackwell@baypath.edu to be added to a waitlist.
Full information can be found here
Iota Short Forms Online Proposal Workshop
Ready to pitch that book? Join me as we hunker down for a trio sessions in which we'll study and work on the six crucial elements necessary for a successful book proposal. And, of course, we'll do the same work toward your successful query letter. Expect assignments, feedback and helpful handouts.
Details forthcoming at https://cobscookinstitute.org/iota-online-courses
Iota Short Forms Online Proposal Workshop
Ready to pitch that book? Join me as we hunker down for a trio sessions in which we'll study and work on the six crucial elements necessary for a successful book proposal. And, of course, we'll do the same work toward your successful query letter. Expect assignments, feedback and helpful handouts.
Details forthcoming at https://cobscookinstitute.org/iota-online-courses
Iota Short Forms Online Proposal Workshop
Ready to pitch that book? Join me as we hunker down for a trio sessions in which we'll study and work on the six crucial elements necessary for a successful book proposal. And, of course, we'll do the same work toward your successful query letter. Expect assignments, feedback and helpful handouts.
Details forthcoming at https://cobscookinstitute.org/iota-online-courses
Iota Short Forms Online Writing Workshop
Join Elizabeth Searle and me for our popular lecture/workshop "Flashing Through the Genres", in which we'll spend time exploring a variety of writing genres in short form. In-session exercises will provide a chance for you to create a full flash piece of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, pop, scriptwriting and more, or to start a piece to complete at home.
https://cobscookinstitute.org/iota-online-courses/flashing-across-the-genres
Iota Short Forms in-person Conference
Write in marvelous Maine with Monica Wood and me as Iota's in-person conference returns. Generative workshops with both of us will give you lots of opportunities to explore the short form in your choice of genres.
Featuring a reading by Debra Marquart.
https://cobscookinstitute.org/iota/the-conference
The Sense of Using the Senses in Memoir
Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance
You've lived your story. Let others enter the experiences in your memoir as fully as possible by including those ever-enriching senses. We'll look at great examples, and there'll be time to write some of our own. Work to be done prior to the session will help get you started. This is an online event.
https://www.mainewriters.org/calendar/thesenseofusingthesensesinmemoir
Workshop: Hobart Book Festival of Women Writers
Suzanne will be co-leading an afternoon-long intensive workshop at the tenth annual in-person Hobart Book Festival of Women Writers in New York State's beautiful Catskills.
Bay Path University Summer Writing Seminar
July 30 to Aug. 6, Suzanne will be co-leading and teaching at the sixth annual Bay Path University Summer Writing Seminar in Dingle, Ireland. https://www.baypath.edu/academics/graduate-programs/creative-nonfiction-mfa/seminar-in-ireland/
Memoir Workshop
Suzanne will be leading a memoir workshop at the Maine Writers and Publishers' Alliance annual in-person Black Fly Retreat at https://www.mainewriters.org/black-fly-retreat in Saco, Maine.
This workshop is full. Please email Gibson at gibson@mainewriters.org to be added to the waiting list.