Price: $80

Ready to get writing again after a long winter? This generative workshop will offer three writing prompts to get you going. We’ll also look at how to make up original prompts, for yourself or others. The longer you write, the more likely it is that you will be asked to offer writing prompts for groups of friends, school classes, or prisons. While there are fine collections of writing exercises that you can draw from, there’s also a pleasure in creating your own exercises which you can tailor for the particular occasion. What makes for an effective writing prompt? Where do they come from? We’ll offer some exercises we’ve created and then talk about how we came up with them. Come prepared to generate new work. This class is open to writers of every level. Although we are both poets, these exercises are designed to be useful for prose writers as well.

Ted Deppe is the author of seven books of poems, including The Wanderer King (Alice James), Orpheus on the Red Line (Tupelo), Liminal Blue (Arlen House) and Cape Clear: New and Selected Poems (Salmon). After working as an RN for twenty years, he has taught in Master’s programs in Ireland, England, and the U.S. since 2001. He won a Pushcart Prize and has twice received NEA fellowships.

Annie Deppe is the author of Sitting in the Sky and Wren Cantata (both from Summer Palace) and Night Collage (Arlen House). She has received grants from the Arts Councils of Ireland and Northern Ireland, and she was selected by Poetry Ireland to read in their Introductions series. She assisted Ted in running the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast MFA in Ireland from 2006 to 2021. She and Ted are dual citizens of the US and Ireland and have lived on the west coast of Ireland since 2000.