Great Smokies Writing Program Classes

Instructor: Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle
In-person at UNC Asheville’s Reuter Center

April 11, 2:00-4:00pm
Cost: $75

From flash to fairytales to long-form fiction, our goal as storytellers is to create a spell that binds us to our readers. This workshop will focus on casting this spell through the cultivation of essential craft ingredients, understanding the measurement of literary devices, and how to stir the pot without it boiling over.

Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle is an enrolled citizen of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and lives in Cherokee, North Carolina. A graduate of Yale University and the College of William & Mary, Clapsaddle is the author of Even As We Breathe (UPK, 2020), the first novel published by an enrolled citizen of the Eastern Band of Cherokee. The novel was a finalist for the Weatherford Award, winner of the 2021 Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award, and named one of NPR’s Best Books of 2020.

Clapsaddle currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Museum of the Cherokee People and is an editor for the University Press of Kentucky’s Appalachian Futures series. In 2025, she was named Appalachian Heritage Writer-in-Residence at Shepherd University.

Parking: Parking is located in front of and behind the Reuter Center. Visitors to UNCA campus will need to purchase a $3 visitor parking permit.

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Instructor: Jennie Malboeuf
Online via Zoom

3 sessions: June 8, 15, & 22, 6:00-8:00pm
Cost: $150

We will examine and utilize the work of three 20th-century master poets: Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath, and Lucille Clifton. Through close reading of their poems, we will explore the ways they both employ Confessional techniques and buck against them. How does each writer approach the self and restyle our understanding of revelation and intimacy in poetry? Can we employ their inventive methods and craft techniques in our own poems?

Jennie Malboeuf is the author of jump the gun, part of the American Poets Continuum Series (BOA Editions, 2025), and God had a body (Indiana UP, 2020), selected by Adrian Matejka for the Blue Lights Book Prize. Her poems have appeared in Pleiades, The Southern Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Harvard Review. Born and raised in Kentucky, she received a BA at Centre College and an MFA at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and is the recipient of a 2020 NC Arts Council Fellowship.

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Instructor: Todd Boss
In-person at UNC Asheville

July 11, 1:00-4:00pm
Cost: $75

Poetry’s engines run on sound. By attending to the reader’s “ear,” we control their breath, and all the effects of their experience with our words. This generative course from a “master of internal rhyme” (Georgia Review) will start with the preverbal musical fundamentals of syntax and rocket through the rhythmsphere into the spooky ether of aural energy. We’ll sound the hammers and anvils of ear-training while attuning to breath, buried and slant rhyme, sonic echo, rhythm-bending, and vocality to recall how poetry is ultimately a sonic/somatic pleasure, built on waves.

You will need: 1. a recording device (smartphone okay), 2. at least two of your own poems (works in progress okay), 3. writing tools of your choice, and 4. one piece of music you love (ready to play aloud, optional).

Todd Boss is the producer of over 150 poetry films, an internationally acclaimed augmented-reality installation artist, and the author of four poetry collections from W. W. Norton as well as a children’s book and Emmy-winning and Grammy-nominated librettos that have premiered at Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall. He hosts the podcast “There’s a Poem in That,” in which he writes poems for complete strangers. His work has appeared in Poetry, The New Yorker, and on NPR.

Parking: Visitors to UNCA campus will need to purchase a $3 visitor parking permit.

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Instructor: Halle Hill
CRN: 30107
Meets online via Zoom
Thursdays, 6:00-8:30pm: June 4, 11, 18, 25, & July 2

This generative workshop will be focused on precision and attunement in short stories. We will learn how to work small and attend to short stories at the line level for effective somatic craft, aiming for polished stories that push toward the possibility of publication. Students will workshop with one another. Each week, we will have lessons broken up by topics such as place, dream logic, family of origin influence in stories, voice, and revision. We will read stories from authors including Edward P. Jones, Gayl Jones, Jean Toomer, and Carson McCullers.

Halle Hill is a 4th generation Affrilachian from Knoxville, Tennessee. She’s the author of GOOD WOMEN (Hub City Press, 2023) which was named a best book of the year by Kirkus Reviews, Electric Literature, Oprah Daily, and the Southwest Review. Her stories have been translated into French and published in journals including Joyland, New Limestone Review, Southwest Review, Atlanta Magazine, Ursa Short Fiction and The Oxford American.

Instructor: Grey Wolfe LaJoie
CRN: 30108
Meets online via Zoom
Fridays, 6:00-8:30pm: June 5, 12, 19, 26, & July 3

This workshop explores storytelling that moves between language and image. Students will experiment with a range of visual narrative forms—including comics and graphic scenes, collage and found-text pages, image-led lyric narrative, photo & text sequences, and other hybrid approaches that use the page (or screen) as a storytelling space.

The course welcomes writers, artists, and curious beginners. No specialized art training is required. The focus is on narrative craft: how to build a scene, create momentum, manage time, and shape a voice while also making visual choices about framing, juxtaposition, pacing, and emphasis.

Each week will combine brief examples, craft discussion, and guided generative work, with optional sharing/feedback. By the end of the course, students will leave with multiple short experiments and at least one more developed piece (or a strong start on a larger project), along with a practical toolkit for continuing.

Materials: Simple supplies are fine (paper + pen/pencil). Digital tools welcome but not required.

Born in Western North Carolina, Grey Wolfe LaJoie’s writing has been featured in numerous journals and anthologies, including The Threepenny Review, Crazyhorse, Shenandoah, Copper Nickel, the 2024 Pushcart Prize Anthology, and the 2023 PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories. They hold an MFA from the University of Alabama, and currently work for Auburn University’s Alabama Prison Arts & Education Project organizing and teaching creative writing classes in correctional facilities throughout the state.

Instructor: Whitney Waters
CRN: 30109
Meets at UNC Asheville’s Reuter Center
Wednesdays, 6:00-8:30pm: June 3, 10, 17, 24, & July 1

How do poems sustain our attention? How does a poet build momentum and maintain a poem’s energy? We will discuss how syntax, structure, tension, and associative leaps can propel a poem. Using contemporary poems as examples, we’ll examine how poets navigate pacing in effective ways that engage and sustain the reader’s attention. In this generative workshop, students will write new material and receive feedback for revision.

Whitney Waters has lived in Western North Carolina since 2010. Originally from Atlanta, Georgia, she came to North Carolina to study at Elon University, where she earned her BA in English with concentrations in Literature and Creative Writing. She later earned her MA in English Literature from Western Carolina University, where she focused on Ecofeminist literature. She graduated from the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College with a concentration in poetry and is currently working on her first full-length manuscript. She loves spending time in the outdoors, running, paddle boarding, and hiking with her dog.

Instructor: Liam Danzis
CRN: 30110
Meets at UNC Asheville & Asheville Botanical Gardens
Saturdays, 10:30am-1:00pm: June 6, 13, 20, 27, & July 11

When you hear the phrase “nature writing” what do you think of? Vivid landscape descriptions from naturalists like John Muir? Haunting and urgent warnings from scientists like Rachel Carson? Groundbreaking environmental philosophy from conservationists like Aldo Leopold?

When juxtaposed with nature writers of today–such as J. Drew Lanham, Margaret Renkl, and Robin Wall Kimmerer–it’s evident that the genre has shifted along with the crises facing our planet. But what exactly are these changes, and what do they signify?

Through close readings, natural observations, generative exercises, and workshop sessions, this course will act as a field study of 21st century nature writing. We’ll explore common forms and themes, the relevance of the genre in the face of today’s environmental issues, and how we can use both our lived experiences and skills as writers to incite change within ourselves and our communities.

Liam Danzis is the author of the essay chapbook The Heretic’s Bestiary (Bull City Press 2024). Other work has appeared or is forthcoming in Kelp Journal, Orison Books’ 2025 Best Spiritual Literature Anthology, and Divinity in the Margins: Transgender and Gender- Nonconforming Writers on God. They hold a BA in Creative Writing from UNC Asheville (where they have worked since 2019 with the Great Smokies Writing Program) and currently serve as President of the NC Writers’ Network Board of Trustees. Their favorite WNC critter is the spotted salamander.

Instructor: Eric Nelson
CRN: 30111
Meets at UNC Asheville’s Reuter Center
Tuesdays, 6:00-8:30pm: June 2, 9, 16, 23, & 30

Nature has always been a source of inspiration for poetry, but the city—a human construct–has a strong claim to the poetic imagination, too. In this workshop, we will focus on reading, discussing, and writing poems that delve into the rich complexities of the city and city life—the bright windows and the dark alleys, the jarring noise and the soothing music, the stunning wealth and the shocking poverty, the literal images and the abstract ideas. Each class member will write at least four poems for workshop, and we will discuss a variety of contemporary and classic “city” poems, including work by Whitman, Millay, Brooks, O’Hara, and William Carlos Williams.

Enrollment is limited to 10 participants.

Eric Nelson’s most recent book is Horse Not Zebra, published in April 2022, by Terrapin Books. His six previous poetry collections include Terrestrials, chosen by Maxine Kumin for the X.J. Kennedy Award; The Interpretation of Waking Life, winner of the University of Arkansas Poetry Award, and Some Wonder, which won the 2015 Gival Press Poetry Award. His poems have appeared in many print and online venues, including The Sun, Poetry, The Oxford American, Poetry Daily, and Verse Daily. For more, visit ericnelsonpoet.com.