Live & Recorded Classes

Find community and grow your craft in our online workshops. Whether you’re a new writer or a well-published pro, you’ll find motivation, structure, constructive criticism, and a dedicated cohort.

Upcoming Classes

Recorded Classes

Cleaver Clinics

Workshop Faculty

Upcoming Class Calendar:

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ASS IN CHAIR: Commit to Your Writing Practice


Sunday, Oct 5, 2-3:30 pm ET on Zoom
Sunday, Nov 9, 2-3:30 pm ET on Zoom
Sunday, Dec 7, 2-3:30 pm ET on Zoom

Cost: $5. Open to: All Writers

Are you struggling to find writing time? Showing up for your writing practice is the hardest part—life knocks you off track. 

Cleaver Magazine to the rescue! You don’t have to go it alone. Join us for our monthly Ass in Chair Sessions, a once-a-month, 90-minute commitment to your writing practice. With the communal energy that comes from writing together, you will make progress towards your writing goals, one word, one paragraph, one page at a time—by getting your Ass in Chair time. We’ll offer an optional prompt at the beginning—who knows where it will take you?

Each session costs $5 (because you’re more likely to show up for yourself if you have some skin in the game), and happens on the second Sunday of every month. Make the commitment to yourself. Register here. These sessions are not recorded.

Spontaneous Combustion: A Sunday Brunch that Packs a Punch

Instructor: Kathryn Kulpa

Date: Sunday, October 19th, 12-4pm ET

Class Size: 8

Cost: $100. Open to writers of: Flash

This quick but intense one-day workshop combines spontaneous writing in a community Zoom session with a follow-up workshop to share and discuss completed pieces. Here’s how it works:
Sunday, 12 noon (East Coast)/9 am (West Coast): about 1 hour & 15 minutes) We’ll meet online for a brunch writing session (coffee optional). I’ll provide three prompts and set the timer for three real-time writing sessions ranging from 10 to 30 minutes, with short breathers in between. Time: about 1 hour & 15 minutes.
Sunday, approximately 1:30 pm -2:30 pm (ET)/10:30-11:30 am (PT): Continue to hone and shape your new pieces, and post one (or all) of them in a shared but private online space where only members of the workshop can read them.

Sunday, 3 pm (East coast)/12 noon (West coast): about 1 hour & 15 minutes) Meet for a live Zoom discussion where writers can share one of their new pieces for group feedback. We’ll talk about what’s working in these pieces, questions we have as readers, and areas for possible revision or expansion. Everyone will have a chance to have at least one story or poem workshopped, and perhaps more, depending on class size. We may also talk about submission strategies, suggest places to publish, and share other writing news and opportunities. The stories posted online will remain up for one week, so any work not shared during the Zoom meeting can still get written feedback.

For writers of flash (fiction and CNF), poetry, and prose poetry/hybrid work. Open to all levels.

Adaptations: If you are nervous about writing with time limits, or you have a schedule conflict, you can skip the first Zoom session and I will send you the prompts. (You can also participate with your camera off.) You can also skip the second Zoom session if you have a conflict and just get written feedback, although it’s recommended that you attend because live discussion allows for real-time questions and responses that can be helpful.
 
Read more about Kathryn Kulpa here.

Writing The Body

Instructor: Marnie Goodfriend

Date: Sunday, November 23rd, 2-4 pm ET on Zoom

Can’t make it on November 23rd? No problem. A recording will be sent to all registrants.

Cost: $60. Open to writers of: All genres

We all live in and through our bodies. How we perceive ourselves—and how the world perceives us—is inseparable from the vessel we inhabit. Bodies can be political battlegrounds, sacred spaces, sites of pleasure, or crime scenes. Writing the body allows us to tap into experiences that shape identity, memory, and voice, creating work that feels urgent and alive—whether we are writing from personal experience or building characters on the page.
This workshop will use guided exercises and short readings to generate new material from lived experiences, such as eating, politics, aging, gender, health, intimacy, trauma, and crime. Writers will come away with new entry points into their work and craft tools for deepening the essential relationship between body and story across genres.
—
Marnie Goodfriend is a health writer, journalist, trauma-informed writing coach, and creative nonfiction author. She has spent over a decade covering women’s health, as well as writing about topics including wellness, gender politics, travel, relationships, as-told-to stories, and profiles of celebrities and underrepresented voices. A contributing writer for SheKnows, HealthyWomen, and Flow Space, her work has also appeared in GQ, TIME, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Rumpus, and other publications. Previously, she was essays editor at The Nervous Breakdown and creative nonfiction editor at Angels Flight • literary west. Fellowships and residencies include PEN America Emerging Voices, Community of Writers, New York State Summer Writers’ Program, and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She writes frequently about her own health journeys and is currently working on two memoirs. Learn more about Marnie at www.marniegoodfriend.com.

EXPANDING A DIGITAL PRESENCE: Extend Your Website's Reach with SEO

Instructor: Jackson Tatge

Date: Sunday, January 25, 2026, 2-4 PM ET on Zoom 

Can’t make it on January 25th? No problem. A recording will be sent to all registrants.

Cost: $60. Open to writers of: All genres

Now that your author website is live, it’s time to help readers—and search engines—find it. This workshop dives deeper into search engine optimization (SEO), equipping you with the tools and strategies to increase your site’s visibility and grow your audience. Tailored specifically for writers, this hands-on class will demystify how search engines work and teach you how to use keywords, content structure, metadata, and analytics to your advantage. You’ll learn how to attract organic traffic, improve your site’s ranking, and build a long-term presence online without paid ads. Whether you’re launching a new book, growing your newsletter list, or simply hoping to connect with more readers, this class will help you turn your website into a powerful discovery tool. Bring your existing site, and leave with a plan to make it work even harder for you. Read about Jackson here. 

BROWSE OUR LIBRARY OF RECORDED CLASSES

Beth Kephart: FIRST PERSON: Writing About Yourself with Complexity and Power 

Are we ever really objective when we write ourselves onto the page? This class offers tips for writing about yourself with complexity and power.

Beth Kephart: The Art of the Telling Detail

In this class, we’ll take note as details evolve across pages, and discuss the additive impact. Generative prompts will also be offered.

Beth Kephart: Writing Advanced by Categories: Obsessions into Stories 

In this class, we’ll be thinking about how to make the most of our obsessions in our writing practice and in our storylines. 

Beth Kephart: Transcending the Tumult: Write Right Now 

In this master class, Beth Kephart will share brief passages from writers who have offered written proof of beauty and meaning during the noisiest times.

Megan Stielstra: Let Others Carry It: Publishing as Practice

This class reframes publication as a vital and informative part of the writing practice, as opposed to rejection/acceptance roulette.

Megan Stielstra: Get Out of Your Head

In this class, we’ll take our writing out of the head and into the body, generating new work and digging into material you’re already exploring.

Megan Stielstra: Urgency and the Personal Essay

In this class, we’ll engage in activities to get experiences out of the body and onto the page, encourage risk and discovery, and examine literary craft in new ways. 

Megan Stielstra: Building a Successful Rewriting Practice

We write what is urgent to us; we rewrite to make it urgent for others. This lightning-bolt session examines rewriting as an invitation to invite other people—readers—into your writing practice and, in many ways, your own head and heart.

Tricia Park: Writing Fiction From Life: Finding Your Story Through Spoken Words

Through guided exercises in talking your stories aloud before writing them down, we’ll unlock natural rhythms, authentic emotions, and the freedom to shape our narratives intuitively.

Sarah Freligh: Sewing Clothes for a Mouse: Believable Characters in Very Short Prose

Students will leave this class with an understanding of character development and the aspects of craft involved in creating characters on a small canvas.

Kathryn Kulpa: Submit Your Flash (and Get It Published)!

This class will help writers at all levels untangle the sometimes daunting process of taking your flash and microfiction from private to public.

Francine Witte: Sharpen, Shift, Surprise: Revising Flash Fiction

You’ve written the draft. Now what? This interactive session explores revision as a creative act, not just a clean-up job.

Kathy Fish: Ready! Set! Write!

 Expect to leave this session with three exciting flash drafts and an abundance of tools and tricks to call upon the next time you face the blank page. 

Sheree L. Greer: Point of View as Play and Practice

In this class, writers explore point of view as a craft element, an opportunity for play, and a portal of exploration in prose and in creative practice.

Sara Levine: Delusions of Grammar

This class is a high-energy exploration of the rhetoric of grammar. We’ll look at how writers make decisions when they confront a sentence.

Sophie Lucido Johnson: Write Funny

In this class, we will focus on the nuts and bolts of humor writing, and practice ways to incorporate levity into all types of compositions.

Andrea Caswell: Revision Revolution

This class reframes revision as a dynamic collaboration between writer and text, rather than a combat sport. 

Jackson Tatge: Crafting A Digital Presence: Create Your Author Website From Scratch

In this hands-on workshop, you’ll create a professional website tailored to your unique voice and brand as a writer.

Morgan Larocca: Be Your Book’s Best Advocate

In this masterclass, we’ll peel back the curtain and look into how publicity works to advance your book at every stage in your writing process.

Sophie Lucido Johnson: Building a Writing Practice with Substack

In this interactive workshop, you’ll learn how to create, grow, and monetize a successful email newsletter using Substack.

Anni Liu: Behind the Covers: Publishing Your Book

In this class, we will provide insight into the journey of publication –  from both the writer’s and the editor’s perspective.

Jess Silfa: Show Us Your Best: A Guide to Creative Writing MFA Applications

This two-hour masterclass will equip aspiring writers with the skills, insights, and strategies to craft compelling MFA applications.

Jen Mathy: YOU, INC.: Building Your Writing Brand

In this class, we’ll talk about your small-business “must-haves,” and look at best practices across the literary community.

Chris Callison Burch: What Writers Need to Learn about AI and Large Language Models

This masterclass explores the impact of AI on the writing profession, from creative possibilities to practical concerns.

CLEAVER CLINICS

Would you like personal editorial feedback for your work-in-progress?

Nonfiction Clinic
1-on-1 with Sydney Tammarine

Short Story Clinic
1-on-1 with Andrea Caswell

WORKSHOP FACULTY

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