Writing Obsession Generative Zoom Seminar with Sara Reish Desmond on Wednesday, August 27th, 2025

Wednesday, August 27th, 2025 Live Seminar via Zoom from 7PM - 9PM ET Note: If you can't attend live, this class will be recorded.  Any questions about this class? Use the Chat Button (lower left) to talk with us.  Sara Reish Desmond’s short story collection, WHAT WE MIGHT BECOME, was published in October by Cornerstone Press. Her fiction has appeared in The Kenyon Review, Los Angeles Review, Water~Stone Review, Cutthroat, Front Porch, and elsewhere. Sara earned her MFA in fiction from Vermont College of Fine Arts, and her stories have been finalists for the Rick DeMarinis Award, the Copper Nickel Award, and have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.  Learn more about Sara in our Meet the Teaching Artist series. In this generative workshop intended for writers of fiction and non-fiction alike, we'll explore the deep well of obsession that drives so much of our unconscious mind.  Using Steve Almond's essay "Truth is the Arrow, Mercy is the Bow," we'll explore the extent to which our obsessions drive our most creative instincts. We'll look at additional excerpts from published pieces, including works by Toni Morrison and Vladimir Nabokov. We'll dissect explicit narrative "moves," generate new scenes, and draw deep connections between our writing and our psyches. COURSE TAKEAWAYS: A list of obsessions. At least one (but likely 2) new seed/ scene(s). Greater insight and understanding about how individual obsessions drive our most creative ideas and can shape our narrative voice. SEMINAR OUTLINE: Discussion of the Almond essay. Generative exercise-- listing current/ childhood obsessions. Examination of published excerpts (Nabokov, Morrison, Almond). "Explicit moves" in the context of Obsession. Generative exercise/ prompt. Read aloud/ encouragement. TAKE THIS CLASS IF: You're finding the constraints of your current writing practice too limiting. You want exposure to a range of new approaches to bring to your writing practice. You want an expanded sense of what is possible in your work in 2025 and beyond! PRAISE FOR SARA: "Sara has a way of distilling both the art form of writing and the principles that drive us to want to write into consumable pieces. I always sign up for her classes when I see her post them." Joanna "Her creative prompts always have me generating something I'll continue to work on after I leave her class." Maggie "From the very first class I took with Sara, I could tell she was a teacher and that her students must love her. She is a master of the story craft, that's for sure. But not every great writer also knows how to teach. She walks alongside her students in their classes: teaching, listening, helping students unlock their potential." Andrew “The cadence of the sentences, the probing, unsettling voice of her narrators, and the dark conclusions she reaches about the underside of contemporary American life. . . Desmond writes with quiet fury.” – JESS ROW, author of The New Earth “What We Might Become maps the spaces left in the wake of grief, and all the ways we hunger and search, in that aftermath, to connect, heal, and belong. I will return to these haunting, perfect stories, and their evocative landscapes, again and again.” – ROBIN MACARTHUR, author of Heart Spring Mountain “These stories are vivid and taut, and one of Desmond’s great virtues is that she doesn’t get in the way of her characters. She lets them breathe.” – STEVE YARBROUGH, author of Stay Gone Days “At the heart of Desmond’s stories are characters living lives of quiet desperation. . . To consider our own quiet desperation, who it causes us to harm, who it impels us to love. You will not shake these stories easily. I certainly have not.” – NEEMA AVASHIA, author of Another Appalachia ONLINE COURSE STRUCTURE: Wednesday, August 27th, 2025. Live Seminar via Zoom from 7PM - 9PM ET. Note: If you can't attend live, this class will be recorded. PAYMENT OPTIONS: You can pay for the course in full or use Shop Pay or Affirm to pay over time with equal Monthly Payments. Both options are available at checkout. Instructor: Sara Reish Desmond Wednesday, August 27th, 2025 Live Seminar via Zoom from 7PM - 9PM ET Note: If you can't attend live, this class will be recorded.