The Writing Lab: Playful Experiments to Unstuck Your Writing. Tricia Park, Instructor

Registration opens on Wednesday, January 22, 2025.

 

IOWA SUMMER WRITING FESTIVAL

 

Spring 2025

 

The Writing Lab: Playful Experiments to Unstuck Your Writing (Four-Week Workshop)

 

Tricia Park, Instructor

 

 

Dates/Time

 

Saturdays on Zoom, May 3–24, 2025 

 

• 11:00 am–1:30 pm Iowa/Central Time
• 12:00 pm–2:30 pm Eastern Time
• 9:00 am–11:30 am Pacific Time
• 10:00 am–12:30 pm Mountain Time

 

 

Fee: $500

 

 

Course Description

 

Does your writing feel stale? A little stuck? In this class, we’ll (re)discover the play of writing, with exercises to get you unstuck and boost your writing into high gear. In our writing laboratory, you will experiment and take chances in your writing. We’ll generate new writing through exercises and assignments as well as provide and receive feedback on writing you produce in our workshop. We welcome new and experienced writers who are looking for structure, guidance, and support with their writing practices.  

 

Each week, we’ll explore exercises and prompts that I hope will generate work to surprise and delight you. There will be space to share your work and receive feedback on your writing. I’ll provide clear guidelines for constructive feedback on new and early drafts. We’ll also read and discuss texts as examples to emulate. Most of all, I’m looking forward to the community we’ll create together as we take new, playful risks in our writing. 

 

This class is open to writers of all levels and genres, and includes a 30-minute one-on-one conference with the instructor. 

 

Class Overview: 

 

Week One: Freewriting and Playfulness 

Elizabeth Gilbert writes, “I made a decision long ago that if I want creativity in my life—and I do—then I will have to make space for fear, too.” We’ll find ways to move through resistance as we approach our writing with playfulness and curiosity. We’ll dive into freewriting and whimsical exercises and prompts. 

 

Week Two: “Gaming” our Writing  

We will explore ways we can “game” our writing, approaching it obliquely with a lighthearted touch. We’ll see how prioritizing play through constraints and rules can, paradoxically, free up our writing. 

 

Week Three: Following Our Obsessions 

We all have core obsessions that keep us up at night, occupying our minds in a constant and regular way. Why not put our obsessions to good use? Rather than controlling our fascinations, we’ll channel them into our writing.  

 

Week Four: Writing Down Memory Lane 

Lois Lowry says, “I’ve always been fascinated by memory and dreams because they are both completely our own. No one else has the same memories. No one has the same dreams.” We’ll delve into our unique memory banks to mine our past and present, generating writing that is bound to surprise us. 

 

 

Instructor

 

Tricia Park is a writer and violinist. A Juilliard graduate, she received her MFA in Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Currently, she is pursuing her PhD at the University of Illinois Chicago’s Program for Writers and is Associate Director of Cleaver Magazine Workshops. Her writing has appeared in Cleaver Magazine, F Newsmagazine, and Gathering: A Women Who Submit Anthology. Since her concert debut at age thirteen, Tricia has performed on five continents and has received the Avery Fisher Career and Fulbright Grants. She has a podcast called “Is it Recess Yet? Confessions of a Former Child Prodigy” and is working on her first book. 

 

 

Registration & Fees

 

The fee for this course is $500. Payment in full is required to register.

Registrations are accepted on a first-come, first-served basis.

Class size is limited to 12.

 

Note: Your credit card payment will be processed by an external provider and will appear on your credit card statement as “UI Writing—Magid Center.”

 

Refund & Cancellation Policy

 

If you need to cancel your enrollment, please let us know as soon as possible. We can only offer full refunds if you cancel one week prior to the start of class. After that, before the start-date of class, we can offer a 50% refund. We cannot refund day-of cancellations, and we cannot refund or partially refund registration fees once the class has begun.

 

Terms & Community Policy

 

1.  The Iowa Summer Writing Festival is a program for adults. You must be at least 18 years old to enroll in Festival workshops.

 

2.  The Iowa Summer Writing Festival is a community built on an assumption of shared enterprise, in the spirit of mutual respect. We reserve the right to a) revoke the registration of or b) dismiss from the program any person who disrupts the learning/working environment of others. Participants in the Festival are subject to all University of Iowa policies governing conduct in our community, whether online or in person.

 

Questions?

 

Contact the Iowa Summer Writing Festival: iswfestival@uiowa.edu. Phone: (319) 335-4160.

 

Our small staff is out and about. If you phone and we miss you, please leave a detailed message!