About the Workshop

All writing involves relationships—between people, with place, between warring stories. This generative workshop, which focuses on uncovering and rendering dynamic relationships, is open to writers of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction.

Participants will work to recast place from its role as mere “setting” and make it another actor in a drama, an alive entity with its own personality. They will experiment with turning “minor” characters into more than a static backdrop, will practice activating them as beings who also hunger, hate, despair, and sometimes clash with the needs of the protagonist. Finally, participants will look closely at the central narrative of their pieces to see how its “truth” relies on inevitable entanglement with other stories, and practice building with these counternarratives.

Through sample texts and writing exercises, we will explore what juices lurk behind the façade of place, how our protagonist’s interaction with another character reveals their own, and how we can discover and render the complex layers of story. Participants will create new work and have the opportunity to workshop one draft.

About the Instructor

Kimberly Blaeser, founding director of Indigenous Nations Poets and past Wisconsin Poet Laureate, is a multi-genre author. Her six poetry collections include Ancient Light, and Résister en dansant/Ikwe-niimi: Dancing Resistance. Her debut short fiction collection, Red Ants, is forthcoming in fall 2026. Blaeser’s honors include the 2025 Poets & Writers’ Writer for Writers Award, Zona Gale Short Fiction Award, and Lifetime Achievement Award from Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas. An enrolled member of White Earth Nation, Blaeser is an Anishinaabe activist and environmentalist, Professor Emerita at UW–Milwaukee, and MFA faculty member at Institute of American Indian Arts.