Piper Writers Studio

The Piper Writers Studio offers classes for writers of all levels. In-person courses (eight-week, four-week, one-day) meet at the Piper Writers House on the ASU Tempe campus. Four-week online courses are also available. Each course is led by an experienced writer and teacher.

Participants in all of our courses will be invited to an end-of-session celebration at the Piper Writers House.

Piper Friends members receive a 10% tuition discount. Click here for more information about becoming a Piper Friend.

FALL 2011 COURSE OFFERINGS

(Information for Fall 2012 Offerings Will Be Posted in the Summer)

8 WEEK SESSION (September 15 - November 3) REGISTRATION IS CLOSED FOR THIS SESSION
Thursdays, 6:00-8:00 PM
Piper Writers House, ASU Tempe Campus
Cost: $400 / $360 for Piper Friends

POETRY
"Snow on the Mountain: Breathing in New Sources for Poems"
Instructor: Gregory Donovan
Course Description: Accomplished writers are always welcoming new sources of inspiration and excitement into their own writing process. In this course we will seek out new and unique sources of inspiration for your poems as well as fresh ways to tap more familiar sources. We will then engage in workshop discussions of new work produced by participants, encouraging everyone to write more poems with greater fluidity and a sense of adventure.  Finally, we will approach the revision process as one that can and should be as creative and open as the initial act of your creating your own poems.

4 WEEK SESSIONS
Format Description: New York Times bestselling author Michael A. Stackpole offers two four–week courses designed to guide writers from first draft to selling their writing. While the goal of the course is for a writer to produce commercially viable work and offer it for sale, the route to getting there involves intensive emphasis on fundamental writing and editing techniques. These two four–week workshops are offered back–to–back and can be taken separately or as one seamless eight–week experience. These courses are for writers who are serious about writing and about establishing a career in the 21st century world of publishing.

Cost: $400 / $360 for Piper Friends if registered for together. Individually, $250 / $225 for Piper Friends per session.

SESSION 1 (September 15 - October 6) REGISTRATION IS CLOSED FOR THIS SESSION
Thursdays, 6:00-8:00 PM
Piper Writers House, ASU Tempe Campus

FICTION
"Word One to Done"
Instructor: Michael A. Stackpole
Course Description: This course will be a mix of lecture and in-class exercises. The class will cover characterization, conflict, world building, plotting, outline, execution and editing. By the end of the class the student will have completed a work of fiction somewhere between 6,000 and 30,000 words in length.

SESSION 2 (October 13 - November 3) REGISTRATION IS CLOSED FOR THIS SESSION
Thursdays, 6:00-8:00 PM
Piper Writers House, ASU Tempe Campus

FICTION
"Perfection to Collection"
Instructor: Michael A. Stackpole
Note: A student must have a work of fiction to process during the class which is at least 6,000 words in length. In the case of a novel, the class will focus upon the first 30,000 words.
Course Description: This course will be a mix of lecture and in-class exercises. The class will explore such topics as dissecting the story, rebuilding the story, attention to detail and internet marketing. By the end of the class the students will have everything they need to successfully publish a work to the internet, and to build from there into a career.

ONE-DAY CLASSES
Saturday, October 8, 10 AM - 3 PM - REGISTRATION IS CLOSED FOR THIS SESSION
Piper Writers House, ASU Tempe Campus
Cost: $125 / $110 for Piper Friends

POETRY
"Memory vs. Imagination: Essential Forces in Poetry"
Instructor: Gregory Donovan
Course Description: Frequently developing writers are advised to “write what you know,” but this suggestion is both doubtful and misleading.  In this workshop we will explore the two great powers, memory and imagination, which are always involved in writing, and examine the possibility that greatly respecting and expanding the power of the imagination, may well be essential to the growth of a poet’s mind and work.

FICTION
"The Art of the Very Short Story: Sudden Fiction, Flash Fiction, & Short-Shorts"
Instructor: K.L. Cook
Course Description: Sudden fiction, flash fiction, short-shorts, blasters—whatever you want to call them—are simply very short stories, typically between 250-1500 words.  They have become an incredibly popular sub-genre in the last couple of decades.  Magazine editors are eager to publish them because they take up fewer pages; numerous anthologies have been published, and more writers seem to be penning them.  Yet sudden fiction is not a new phenomenon.  Brief narrative forms have been around for centuries, and we have developed many ways of defining and classifying them: anecdotes, jokes, parables, yarns, fables, prose poems, dramatic monologues, stand-up routines, dream stories, meditations, epiphanies, speculations, true experiences, legends, myths, fairy tales, confessions, vignettes, etc.  Whereas most fiction depends on more expansive narrative strategies—such as plotting, characterization, suspense, setting, and thematic development—short-short stories also rely on the poetic techniques of compression, suggestion, and experimentation.  In this seminar, we'll explore these techniques and strategies, discuss published examples of the form, and write short-short stories of our own in an exciting and supportive workshop environment.

Writers of any level and experience are invited to participate in this course and its supportive, encouraging environment. Short periods of directly relevant writing exercises are designed to tap into inner and perhaps unsuspected wells of creativity.

ALL GENRE
"Action is Character"
Instructor: Mary-Rose Hayes
Course Description: To truly resonate with the reader, a fictional character must be fully realized, and inhabit a real world. We must know and understand their background, needs, ambitions and passions as though they're our own. In a similar vein to the course on Sense of Place, but separate and distinct of itself, we shall discuss how best to create a real person from whole cloth and bring him or her to life on the page through the ever important 'telling detail'—moving beyond superficialities of age, height, hair and eye color and size of nose to more revealing details such as how this person acts and reacts during life's obstacles and crises, how he or she is perceived by others, and what we learn through style of dress, articles in the bedroom, even what is carried in a purse. We shall also explore how our own memories, when adapted and applied to fictional situations and characters, offer a vital touchstone to core experiences and universal emotions, and will consider examples from the work of Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and my personal favorite Rumer Godden to see how they make their characters leap from the page into our own lives.

All writers are invited to participate. The material will not only be applicable to fiction, but to all writing. The course will include short written exercises.

Saturday, October 22, 10 AM - 3 PM - REGISTRATION IS CLOSED FOR THIS SESSION
Piper Writers House, ASU Tempe Campus
Cost: $125 / $110 for Piper Friends

POETRY
"Engaging the Reader with Fact"
Instructor: Josh Rathkamp
Course Description: Reader engagement is one of the tough draws about writing poetry. Most think poems are ambiguous and are desperately in need of a decoder ring to make heads or tails of what is happening. We know sound and imagery are important, but this class will focus on using fictional techniques and universal “fact(s)” to find new ways to engage our audiences. We will discuss hands-on ways to employ these new techniques, study some contemporary poems and their effectiveness, and write two of our own poems.

Writers of any level and experience are invited to participate in this course and its supportive, encouraging environment. Please bring five interesting “facts” (true things in the world: could be scientific, geographical, astronomical, anatomical, etc), and watch your imagination produce startling and engaging poems.

FICTION
"Tools for Writing Dynamic Characters"
Instructor: Patrick Michael Finn
Course Description: This session will focus on discussing and developing fictional techniques to make the characters on the pages of your novels and stories more than characters—make them living people we'll know and care about, people we'll never forget.  In addition to reading a few published excerpts of successful character-driven stories, participants will complete and share writing exercises to guide them through the practice of character development.

ALL GENRE
"Are We There Yet? Yes We Are!"
Instructor: Mary-Rose Hayes
Course Description: How does an author describe a place or a situation with enough power and richness so readers feel they really are walking the muddy bank of a dangerous South American river; attending a funeral on a hot afternoon in Nairobi; or in Brooklyn, standing with the neighborhood busybody behind her lace-curtained window and gazing through the same pair of binoculars?   A truly vivid description can provide a near out-of-body experience, when we seem to leave our everyday lives and become somebody else, somewhere else, with the memory living on even when the story is over.  We have been there! The focus of this class is on the sense of place and its creation through details of vision, taste, touch, sound, and most evocative of all, the sense of smell.  We'll look at examples from writers as diverse as Barbara Kingsolver, Robert Stone and John LeCarre to see how cleverly they place you at the scene.  We'll try it ourselves with short in-class written exercises.  Perhaps, for added inspiration, we'll access our dreams!

Writers of any level and experience are invited to participate in this course.  It will be fun and challenging, and readily adaptable regardless of whether you are writing a story, a memoir or a poem.

CURRENT PIPER FRIENDS MEMBER
Register HERE if you are currently a Piper Friends member. Piper Friends receive 10% off the cost of registration.

NEW PIPER FRIENDS MEMBER
Register HERE if you want to purchase a Piper Friends membership as part of your registration and receive 10% off the cost of registration.

NON MEMBER
Register HERE if you are not a Piper Friends member and do not wish to become one at this time. A reminder that Piper Friends also receive a 10% discount off the price of registration to the upcoming Desert Nights, Rising Stars Writers Conference.

ASU FACULTY, STAFF and STUDENT
Register HERE if you are a current ASU faculty or staff member, or a current ASU student. You will be asked to provide your ASU ID number

PARKING
On-campus parking options and policies. Note: The Fulton Center structure is closest to the Piper Writers House.
Off-campus parking options.

REFUND POLICY
Click here to read Piper Writers Studio Refund Policy.

FAQs
Click here to read Piper Writers Studio Frequently Asked Questions.

Piper Writers Studio workshops have been made possible by a generous donation by Jonathan and Maxine Marshall.