Rosemont Writer’s Studio
The Writers' Studio courses and one-day Masterclasses are non-credit offerings of Rosemont College’s MFA Program. Our mission is to offer MFA graduates, from any program, and other members of the larger Philadelphia writing community an opportunity to take focused writing and publishing workshops at a reasonable cost.
space is limited: register today
Fall Masterclasses
Stacey Kucharik - Reading Critically for Revision: Understanding Manuscripts and Story
Elements from the Ground Up
- Date/Time: Saturday October 12th from 10-3
- Price: $75 in person or online, includes lunch (Rosemont Students are FREE)
- Location: the President's Boardroom in the Hirsh Community Center
Course Description: How do you know that a book is good? Can you define what makes it good?
A good manuscript is greater than the sum of its parts. Many story elements and literary
devices meld together to make the reader experience. The best writers think critically
about words and meanings understanding that language and symbolism are important to
a great story. What does your manuscript have and what does it lack?
In this masterclass, we will explore writing and storytelling at a granular level. We will:
- Read manuscripts critically
- Review foundational principles of literary devices
- Focus on narrative elements and their importance
- Critically evaluate writings
- Learn to revise your own manuscript
Stacey Kucharik began her editing company, Polished Print, fourteen years ago. She has worked with hundreds of authors to polish their manuscripts into publishable novels. Though her background began with academic editing, Stacey works with fiction authors exclusively and edits between ten and fifteen novels per year and recently celebrated the 300th novel in her professional career. Stacey holds two Bachelor’s degrees in English with a focus on creative writing and Communications as well as a Master’s degree in Publishing with a focus on editing from Rosemont. Polished Print aspires to educate authors and posts frequent educational videos about the publishing process and improving writings on Facebook. Stacey has participated in multiple writing and publishing conferences in the past five years and has taught collegiate-level courses on editing and self-publishing. For more information about Stacey, visit www.polishedprint.com or find us on Facebook.
Margo Rabb - The Creative Notebook: How to Get Unstuck, Break Through Blocks, and Take Your Writing to the Next Level (A Multi-Genre Workshop)
- Date/Time: Saturday November 16th from 10-1 & lunch from 1-2
- Price: $150 (workshop is limited to 10 students)
- Location: Wilson Conference Room in the Main Building
The writer and artist Melissa Sweet advises writers: “Go out and play!” How do we reclaim that sense of play in our work? How do we access new ideas and make our work feel alive? This class will show how a fresh, blank notebook can serve as a life-changing creative space: a place that can generate ideas for fiction, memoir, essays, poetry, and articles; a place where we can dive more deeply into our work; and a place where we can break rules. Every day, we will do writing and creativity exercises, and read poetry and prose for inspiration. Weather permitting, the class will take place partly outdoors; we’ll discuss how writing in nature can inspire ideas and help us revise. The class will also include advice on submitting our work for publication, navigating the process of finding an agent, and strategies to manage interruptions and get our creative work completed.
Margo Rabb’s essays, journalism, book reviews, and short stories have been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Smithsonian Magazine, Slate, Salon, The Rumpus, Zoetrope: All-Story, Best New American Voices, New Stories from the South, One Story, Poets & Writers, and Marie Claire, and have been broadcast on NPR. She is the author of the novels Lucy Clark Will Not Apologize, Kissing in America, and Cures for Heartbreak, all published by HarperCollins; all have been named to multiple best-of-the-year lists. She received the grand prize in the Zoetrope short story contest, first prize in The Atlantic fiction contest, first prize in the American Fiction contest, and a PEN Syndicated Fiction Project Award. Margo grew up in Queens, New York, and now lives in the Philadelphia area with her family. Visit her online at www.margorabb.com.
Jim Zervanos - Writer’s Choice—Crafting the Truth in Nonfiction and/or Fiction
Date/Time: Saturday December 7th from 10-3
Price: $75 in person or online, includes lunch (Rosemont Students are FREE)
Location: the President's Boardroom in the Hirsh Community Center
An extraordinary life experience might seem destined to become a work of nonfiction—just
tell what happened, right?—but principles of fiction can guide our choices about what’s
essential in our true stories. In the same way, our fiction can be infused with the
kind of artful introspection we might otherwise reserve for the memoirist. A broad
appreciation for craft—in both nonfiction and fiction—can turn obstacle into opportunity,
self-examination into revelation. This class will be led by a fiction writer who never
expected to write a memoir, let alone two memoirs—the crafting of which was guided
by principles of fiction—and whose fiction is now guided by principles of nonfiction.
Jim Zervanos is the author of the memoir That Time I Got Cancer: A Love Story and the novel LOVE
Park. His award-winning essays and short stories have been published in numerous literary
journals, magazines, and anthologies. He is a graduate of the MFA Program for Writers
at Warren Wilson College and Bucknell University, where he won the William Bucknell
Prize for English and was an Academic All-American baseball player. He teaches at
a high school in the suburbs of Philadelphia, where he lives with his wife and two
sons and has risen in the baseball pantheon as coach of two Little League teams. Visit:
jimzervanos.com.
Terena Elizabeth Bell - EXPERIMENTAL WRITING – FORMS AND FUNCTIONS
Date/Time: Monday Nights, 6-8 PM October 14 - November 18, 2024
Price: $450 (Rosemont Alumni $375)
Location: On Zoom
Course Description: From formatting crime fiction as mortuary reports to including interview transcripts in memoir or using images instead of words, experimental writing can be anything. At its best, it truly is a creative experiment — not a rehashing of techniques that used-to-be avant garde but are no longer. How do you know if this ever-evolving genre is for you? And how do you write it? We'll start by talking about what experimental writing is — and isn't — then look at present-day examples from writers who are truly pushing the edge of craft. Sessions will then focus on generating new experimental prose, poetry, and what lies between, with final sessions culminating in an honest and positive workshopping of one another's art with actionable feedback for students moving forward.
Terena Elizabeth Bell has written for more than 100 publications, including The Atlantic, Playboy, Yale Review, and others. Her short fiction has won grants from the Kentucky Foundation for Women and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Whiskey Tit Books published her debut short story collection, Tell Me What You See, December 8th. Buy direct-from-publisher or wherever books are sold. Originally from Sinking Fork, Kentucky, she lives in New York.
Grant Clauser - WRITING NATURE POETRY AND ECOPOETRY
Date/Time: Wednesday Nights, 6-8 PM October 23 - November 27, 2024
Price: $450 (Rosemont Alumni $375)
Location: On Zoom
Course Description: Nature has long been used as setting and inspiration for poems, and as metaphors
for exploring personal and social issues. Ecopoetry also uses natural world themes,
but goes beyond just appreciation and experience to probe our responsibility for the
environment and how our presence has impacted it. This workshop will explore how the
non-human world can provide language, metaphors, and models for examining our place
in the universe. We’ll look at classic and contemporary models, discuss theories and
poetic practices for using nature as a subject in poetry, and work together on strategies
for writing new poems.
Grant Clauser is the author of the several books including, Temporary Shelters (Cornerstone Press,
2025), Reckless Constellations (winner of the Cider Press Review Book Award), The
Magician's Handbook, Necessary Myths (winner of the Dogfish Head Poetry Prize) and
The Trouble with Rivers. His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Kenyon
Review, Greensboro Review, Tar River Poetry and anthologies including Ghost Fishing
and The Literary Field Guide to Northern Appalachia. His poem “Blessings of a Dog”
won the 2023 Verse Daily Poem Prize. He received his MFA from Bowling Green State
University where he was a Richard Devine Fellow. He teaches in Rosemont College’s
MFA program and is also a senior editor at the New York Times/Wirecutter.
Sawyer Lovett - ANSWERING THE CALL: WRITING THE MONOMYTH
Date/Time: Thursday Nights, 6-8 PM October 17 - November 21, 2024
Price: $450 (Rosemont Alumni $375)
Location: On Zoom
Course Description: In this generative, hybrid course students will explore the history and modern adaptations of the Hero’s Journey. We’ll talk about feminist adaptations and responses to Carl Jung’s ideas about collective unconscious and archetypes and the practical applications of Joseph Campbell’s seventeen stages. We’ll examine how character and setting can push boundaries and add nuance to the story model. Each class will be divided into a small lecture, a conversation about the material, and a generative workshop portion.
Sawyer Lovett is a writer who lives in Tazewell County, VA by way of Philadelphia. He is a writer and professor, a dog dad, an occasional bookseller, barista, and balloon artist who makes zines, mistakes, and messes frequently and enthusiastically.