Locals, can you help me brainstorm / assess need? As many of you know, I’ve been a professional writer for 30 years (and my day job is teaching writing and lit. at UIC, in their English department.)
I’ve been frustrated for a while that the western suburbs have so little in the way of writing classes locally. There are great options at StoryStudio, but that’s all the way in Ravenswood — it takes a solid hour to get there most of the time. There’s also Off Campus Writers Workshop, which is great, but that’s in Winnetka, which is also a hike). Other than that, I only know of occasional one-offs in Oak Park.
I’d like to develop something like the StoryStudio program out here, initially hosted at the Berwyn Shops (6931 Roosevelt Road, at the intersection of Clinton and Roosevelt, near The Pile Bookstore and Kinslahger). It’d probably move into Oak Park in 2026.
I run a non-profit, the Speculative Literature Foundation, so it would be initially based out of that, though eventually I’d like to have us teaching memoir, poetry, nonfiction, as well as speculative and mainstream fiction, mystery, romance, etc. (This is an ambitious project, I know!)
We ran a few long weekend workshops pre-COVID, that went well, but we paused those, and are only picking the teaching up again now. We’re offering a 5-day SF/F short story workshop August 4-8 to start: https://speculativeliterature.org/…/writing-sf-and-fantasy
Here’s my initial questions (I’m sure I’ll have more!):
1) is there an interest in having SF/F writing classes for high school students / middle school / elementary? The middle school and elementary would have an art component.
2) are there people here who can advise me on what we’d need to do, license & safety-wise, to teach these classes with kids in our care? (For example, if we were teaching a one-hour class, with parents present on-site, would we still need some kind of licensing? If we’re teaching a full summer-camp week, providing lunch, what do we need to think about in terms of allergies, liability, etc.?)
3) we’re tentatively planning to host some workshops on Friday August 15th — we’re looking at a day like this:
10 – 10:45 a.m. – creating magical creatures (ages 5-8)
11 – 11:45 a.m. – creating magical creature (ages 8-13)
12 – 12:45 p.m. – creating magical stories (ages 8-13)
1 – 1:45 p.m. – comic book artist Yorli Huff talks about her creative process (free event, all are welcome) — she writes Superhero Huff, a magical Black girl, whose adventures are based on her own life
2 – 4:45 p.m. – intro to SF/F writing for teens and adults (three 45-minute sessions)
5 – 7 p.m. – writers’ meet-and-greet (hoping to co-host this with Kinslahger and maybe a local fried chicken place?, free event)
7 – 9 p.m. – Deep Dish reading (of local SF/F writers) and open mic (free event)
Is that of interest? (NOTE: This is outdoors — we’ll have a tent and fans, but it may be quite warm.)
4) If we’re doing that day, I could, in theory, offer the same morning and afternoon classes all of that week (you’d be doing something different each day). Would there be interest in that? (So Mon – Fri Aug 11 – 15, there’d be a 10 a.m. class, 11 a.m., etc. — people would sign up for the entire week at that time slot) Is that of interest?
(NOTE: This is outdoors — we’ll have a tent and fans, but it may be quite warm.)
5) Last one — if you’re a professional (or aspiring professional) writer interested in helping to get this project off the ground, I’d love to talk to you. A few of us locally were thinking that even something like a monthly writer meet-up would be great. If you’re interested in that, let me know in comments? (Please don’t DM — I get slammed with DMs, and things get regularly lost in there.)
Whew! Okay, those are all my initial questions! Any help / advice you can give would be very welcome. Thanks!!!
