The Workshop prides itself on being a safe, nurturing space for writers of all levels and ethnicities to develop artistically and professionally. Novelists Min Jin Lee, Ed Lin, and Monique Truong first began to find their ways as writers via our writing workshops and literary enrichment programs. Our writing workshops are affordable and intimate, a space where one builds friendships that often last longer than the duration of the class. Former Poet Laureate of Queens, Ishle Yi Park has said, "The Workshop nurtured and raised me. A home away from home, a nest, a gathering place, a refuge, a resource. Word."

How to Sign up for a Creative Writing Workshop

(1) If you're interested in signing up for a writing workshop, you can do so either at the website for that specific workshop (see below) or by calling us at (212) 494.0061. We want you to be able to try out a class to see if you like it, so your credit card will be charged a non-refundable deposit for the first class only. (For one-day sessions, you will pay the full price of the session.) Unless otherwise noted, workshops are at The Asian American Writers' Workshop, 16 W. 32nd Street, 10th fl.

(2) Assuming you like the class, we'll then charge you for the remainder of the fee for the course.

- If you paid via telephone, your credit card will be charged the remainder of the fee for the course, unless you bring an alternative form of payment (cash or check) on the first day of class.

- If you paid online, please bring your preferred form of payment to the first class (credit card, cash, or check).

In either case, receipts will be given to you at the second session. Should you decide to drop the class, please notify us via telephone by 7pm on the business day following the first class. There are no refunds for classes missed voluntarily. We hope you enjoy the class!

Was one your New Year's resolutions to write more? No one sets out to be a bad writer, but sometimes it can be hard to give the things we value our full attention. This course with Ken Chen, the Executive Director of The Asian American Writers' Workshop, focuses on how to maintain better writing habits and how to make friends with your writing. The class will focus on how to create successes in your writing practice, manage your writing time, and balance it against your other obligations. We'll discuss building momentum, remaining committed to your writing (and stopping a stop-start pattern), and conquering perfectionism and writer's block-through low commitment exercises in and out of class.

Ken Chen is Executive Director of The Asian American Writers' Workshop. His debut poetry collection, Juvenilia, was selected by Pulitzer Prize winner Louise Gluck as the 2009 recipient of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award, the oldest annual literary award in the United States. Ken wrote much of the manuscript while a student at Yale Law School and working as a full-time attorney. His work has been accepted or recognized by Best American Essays 2006, Best American Essays 2007, The Boston Review of Books, The Yale Anthology of American Poetry, Fence, and Jubilat.

@ The Workshop
16 West 32 Street
Suite 10A
btw Broadway and Fifth Avenue

$160 General / $140 Members
$40 General Deposit / $36.00 Members

Saturday, February 20, 2010, 1-4PM
Quick Love - A One-Day Workshop on the Heart’s Poetry with Purvi Shah

“…Does it extinguish — this grief
for the buds that never were,
even as others are ready to bloom?
Some are always left behind —
with matters of the heart,
we can assume sorrow...”

(from “Songs of Spring,”
Terrain Tracks, Purvi Shah)

Exhilaration. Angst. Joy. Despair. Part tornado, part inertia. Getting a handle on love can be as difficult as generating a good love poem. Not that these formidable barriers have stopped us from loving or any poet from trying to express the jumble of emotions, the ineffable we call love. If you ever wanted to write a good love poem, here’s your chance. This special one-day love poetry workshop in honor of Valentine’s Day – and the days that come after – is for poets and non-poets alike, those who disdain love, and those who relish in it. Through a series of group exercises and individual rapid writing, our goals in this workshop will be to discuss what makes a good or bad love poem and get to writing so that each of us comes away with a polished draft of a poem evoking whatever kind of love or unlove we presently harbor. Workshop participants will be able to share writing with attendees, produce a poem, and have fodder to continue writing for weeks to come!

Purvi Shah is the author of Terrain Tracks (New Rivers Press 2006), which won a Many Voices Project prize. Her debut poetry collection, recognized across Asian American and women’s communities, explores migration as potential and loss. She is preoccupied with the many facets of love, including its temporality and mathematics, concepts she explores in her current poetry project, Love Time(s).

@ The Workshop
16 West 32 Street
Suite 10A
btw Broadway and Fifth Avenue

$40 General/ $36.00 Members