UPCOMING EVENTS

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• WS301 Bones of Storytelling

  • Start
    30 Sep 2025
  •  
  • End
    02 Dec 2025
  •  
  • Schedule
    10 sessions
  • Location
    Zoom
  • Spaces left
    5

  Bones of Storytelling

  

  Course Description

  Bones of Storytelling is a fun "thinking/practicing” series for writers of fiction (novel/short story) and creative non-fiction (memoir/essay). It draws from literature and classic storytelling models, as well as screenwriting.

  Structure

  Classes are organized in a progressive manner and are divided into two parts. Part 1: Pre-watch video teaching/assignment, and Part 2: Join the online meeting to debrief. Total investment of time: about ninety minutes prior, and then a two-hour on-line meeting.

  Expanded explanation

  Once you sign up, you are guided to a site page with the recordings and are asked to watch the first teaching. At the end of the video, you are given an assignment and instructed to bring that assignment to the class for debrief. You will then share your experience with a fellow writer and the class, and you will be given support information when needed. It is the same formula each week.

  Outcome

  You will walk away with a comprehensive plan for either a work in progress(a revision plan) or an idea you’ve been considering (draft plan). You will also discover crossover opportunities in creative writing. A lived experience doesn’t always have to be a memoir but can be shifted into fiction. A fictional idea, often born from a lived experience, might find its best expression in memoir.

  This class is on ZOOM.

  About the Instructor

  

  With degrees in journalism and creative writing, Jennifer Lauck is the New York Times and London Times bestselling writer of the memoirs Blackbird, Still Waters, Found and The Summer of ’72.

  She has also published a series of interlocking essays in the collection titled Show Me the Way and has had essays published in several anthology collections, including Knitting Yarns. She teaches creative writing in the US and abroad.

  
  

  • https://blackbirdstudiopdx.com/
  • https://jenniferlauck.substack.com/

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• LD201 Tea and Tattered Pages: Adventures in Poetry

  • When
    20 Dec 2025
  •  
    3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
  • Location
    Impact Café, Salle 3, 67 rue Beaubourg, 75003
  • Spaces left
    6

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  Tea and Tattered Pages: Adventures in Poetry

   “Poetry is the journal of the sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air.”  -Carl Sandburg

  Program Description:

  Tea and Tattered Pages is a multi-faceted program designed to bring poetry closer to the fore in our lives, and perhaps create a small community around it. Our activities include reading, writing, discussing, reciting, and trying to live poetry.

  You can get a sense of what sorts of activities we will be doing on the program's web page:

  Tea and Tattered Pages

  December Agenda

  December will be our first foray into writing poetry. Our poet-in-residence, Heather Hartley, will lead the session with readings and provide writing prompts that will serve as departure points for creating a poem. The goal is to prepare us for a measured, step-wise process over the coming months that leads to us writing the one poem we have inside us that we've always wanted to write.

  This session will accommodate sixteen attendees: eleven in person, and five on Zoom. We've set up a pricing structure that acknowledges the two different modes. Cancellation with a refund is only available until Monday, 15 December.

  Note: This is the first of four inter-connected poetry writing sessions that will culminate in May 2026. Due to this modality, the sessions are only open to 1-year WICE members and WICE volunteers. 

  If you have any questions, please contact literature@wice-paris.org

  Our Poet-in-Residence: Heather Hartley

  

  Heather Hartley’s poetry collections include Adult Swim and Knock Knock, both published by Carnegie Mellon University Press. She was Paris Editor for Tin House magazine for over fifteen years.

  Her short fiction, poems, essays and interviews have appeared in or on PBS Newshour, The Guardian, The Literary Review and other venues. She teaches creative writing at the University of Kent’s (UK) Paris School of Arts and Culture and has also taught at the American University of Paris and the University of Texas El Paso MFA program.

  www.heatherhartleyink.com

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• WJ221 Mastering Scene

  • Start
    22 Jan 2026
  •  
  • End
    12 Mar 2026
  •  
  • Schedule
    8 sessions
  • Location
    ZOOM
  • Spaces left
    17

  Register

  

  
  

  Mastering Scene

  Course Description

  Being “in scene” is where storytelling comes alive on the page. It’s where readers feel, understand, and enter a story’s world—where we experience deeper emotional truths. Where magic happens.

  Structure

  This eight-week workshop teaches you the essential elements of compelling scene construction—the foundation of memorable storytelling. You will learn to create authentic characters, weave exposition seamlessly into narrative, and build scenes that draw readers into the story world and keep them engaged page after page.

  Each class session will include:

  • Study of effective published scenes
  • Analysis exercises mapping scene and expository techniques
  • Scene writing practice
  • Supportive read-alouds of new work
  • Collaborative workshopping of participants' pieces
  • Q&A on scene craft and technique

  Course Outcome

  By the workshop's end, you'll have developed a compelling narrative scene and gained the confidence to craft stories that invite readers in and hold their attention.

  Prerequisites: Open to writers of all levels working in fiction, memoir, or creative nonfiction. Some previous writing experience helpful but not required.

  This class is on ZOOM. We will send you the link.

  About the Instructor

  Becky Ellis's debut memoir, Little Avalanches (Regalo Press, 2024), won the Rubery Book Award for Best Nonfiction Book of the Year and was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. Her work has appeared in Northwest Review, The Ethel, Best Small Fictions, Psychology Today, and others. 

  Find out more about her at beckyellis.net.

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• WJ301 The Craft of Writing

  • Start
    30 Jan 2026
  •  
  • End
    13 Feb 2026
  •  
  • Schedule
    3 sessions
  • Location
    Impact Café, lower level (salle 3), 67 rue Beaubourg, 75003
  • Spaces left
    12

  Register

  The Craft of Writing

  3 sessions, 3 teachers

  Friday afternoons from 2:00 to 4:00PM

  All genres  and writers of all levels are welcome!

  
  

  January 30 Ellen Bryson – Seeing Your Work Clearly
  February 6 Janet Sleslien Charles – Setting the Tone
  February 13 Noah Weisz – Writing Children’s and Young Adult Fiction

  Seeing Your Work Clearly — Too often, what you see in your head, or what you think is on the page is not obvious to your reader. Move your work to a higher level by understanding how confusion happens. We will work with a few of your pages, looking at them carefully to see how to improve them through cutting the unneeded, lifting up your verbs, and seeing where not enough (or too much) is on the page.

  Setting the Tone — As writers, establishing tone is a subtle but important way in which we move plot forward and raise the stakes for our characters - and for readers. This practical workshop will explore how we can use tone to strengthen our scenes. We will explore fiction and nonfiction excerpts to learn how authors have created the unique tones for their stories and characters, then try our hand at finding the pitch perfect tone for our own work.

  Writing Children’s and Young Adult Fiction -- What, if anything, makes a story for young readers different from a story for grown-ups? We'll dive into this tricky question with a broad yet practical approach, exploring concrete technical elements of writer’s craft as well as larger questions about education, ethics, and responsibility. By the time the workshop is over, you’ll have written the beginning of your own story for young readers—and you’ll have acquired tools to keep going on your own.

  About the Instructors

  1. Ellen Bryson, author of The Transformation of Bartholomew Fortuno  ellenbryson.com 

  2. Janet Skeslien Charles, author of The Paris Library and in 2024 The Librarians of Rue de Picardie JSkeslienCharles.com                                   

  3. Noah Weisz, past winner of the F(r)iction Short Story Contest, the Katherine Paterson Prize, the Patty Friedmann Writing Competition, and the Sydney Taylor Manuscript Award. His short stories for children, teens, and adults have been widely published.

  
  

  If space is available, you can take a single class for 50 euros.

  Email creativewriting@wice-paris.org to register for a single class.

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• WF171 Intensive Fiction-Writing Workshop

  • Start
    17 Feb 2026
  •  
  • End
    19 May 2026
  •  
  • Schedule
    12 sessions
  • Location
    Remote on Zoom
  • Spaces left
    8

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  Advanced Intensive Fiction Workshop

  Description

  This fiction workshop (meeting weekly via Zoom) is designed to help you make significant progress on a project you’re already working on and raise your craft to the next level. Whether you’re exploring short-story writing or knee-deep in a novel manuscript, you’ll have ample opportunity to workshop your writing and troubleshoot obstacles. We will supplement participants’ own works-in-progress with published pieces of fiction carefully selected based on the specific genres and craft issues participants are grappling with, analyzing the ways other authors have tackled those challenges themselves.

  In a supportive, generous, intellectually curious, and motivating atmosphere, we’ll dive into stories aiming to understand how they work, what they’re trying to achieve, and how to more fully realize their vision.

  The extended 12-week format will allow for greater investment in each other’s writing, more occasions for each writer to receive peer and instructor feedback, and a stronger sense of community and mutual support among participants. 

  Instructor

  

  Noah Weisz has an M.F.A. in Fiction from the University of Texas at Austin and over a decade of experience teaching creative writing. A past winner of the F(r)iction Short Story Contest, the Katherine Paterson Prize, and the Sydney Taylor Manuscript Award, his short stories for children, teens, and adults have been widely published in literary magazines. Based in Paris, he regularly teaches creative writing to undergraduates at Sciences Po as well as to American study-abroad students through CEA CAPA.

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