Get Lit! Festival 2025

Memory as Material with Maggie Smith

In this generative nonfiction class, we’ll work on creating art from life, using our memories as material. How do we get to the heart of a lived experience on the page? How can we feel comfortable and confident sharing our personal lives with a public audience? What craft elements can we lean on? If you’ve ever asked yourself these questions, this workshop is for you. We’ll discuss short pieces of creative nonfiction, and we’ll use those models as inspiration as we begin our own pieces. Don't miss this amazing chance to hone your craft with Maggie Smith! Purchase Maggie's books via Auntie's Bookstore!

*This event is ticketed ($35+fees). Tickets are on sale via this link! Please note that the link will take you to our Humanitix event page where you can select this specific event along with any other ticketed events you would like to attend. This system allows you to check out once for multiple tickets, and does not require registration.

Please fill out our festival survey after you have attended this event. The information you provide will help us obtain critical grant funding and will help make next year’s festival even better!

Personal Machines: Invented Form with Danez Smith

Poets often reach towards specific forms in order to propel or control a poem, they also might be reaching for a bit of challenge or exploration, but what if we go beyond sonnets or sestinas and instead choose an experiment of our own design? For myself, while I have found that while free verse poetry has always been a succulent wilderness to venture into in search of a poem, the constraints and encouragements of form – particularly those of my own design – have allowed for reverberations between myself and the work that would not have been found unless constructed the limits of invented form. In this workshop, we will explore wonders found in recently invented forms like the bop, the burning haibun, and the Molotov sonnet before turning our attention to forms we will pattern ourselves. This workshop is for those looking to push the limits on their work as well as those looking to take the brakes off completely. In times of great violence and hope, can we break from the received forms of the times and become fugitives into new shapes and possibilities? In this workshop, we will trouble those answers together. Don't miss this amazing chance to study the craft of poetry with Danez Smith! Purchase Danez's books via Auntie's Bookstore. 

*This event is ticketed ($35+fees). Tickets are on sale via this link! Please note that the link  will take you to our Humanitix event page where you can select this specific event along with any other ticketed events you would like to attend. This system allows you to check out once for multiple tickets, and does not require registration. 

Please fill out our festival survey after you have attended this event. The information you provide will help us obtain critical grant funding and will help make next year’s festival even better!

Join renowned poet Li-Young Lee for an intimate conversation on craft. Please come with questions about his work, your own work, and the questions we all face about how and why we write — and read — poetry today. This will be less formal than a traditional craft class, and there will be time for freewriting on different prompts as topics come up in the conversation. Don't miss this unique opportunity to talk with and write with the legendary poet Li-Young Lee! Purchase Li-Young's books via Auntie's Bookstore.

*This event is ticketed ($35+fees). Tickets are on sale via this link! Please note that the link  will take you to our Humanitix event page where you can select this specific event along with any other ticketed events you would like to attend. This system allows you to check out once for multiple tickets, and does not require registration. 

Please fill out our festival survey after you have attended this event. The information you provide will help us obtain critical grant funding and will help make next year’s festival even better!