Karen Auvinen – Yearlong Workshop

Learn more about the 2022-2023 Yearlong Writers Workshop and instructor Karen Auvinen here.

What makes Fishtrap’s Yearlong program unique from other distance learning programs is how it begins and concludes with a week of in-person instruction at the annual Summer Fishtrap Gathering of Writers. Summer Fishtrap is a weeklong writers’ conference featuring workshops, craft talks, readings, conversations, and opportunities to connect. The Yearlong program is modeled after low residency MFA programs at about half the cost. So if you don’t need a degree but want high-quality sustained support for your writing, this program could be the perfect fit for you. Learn more about the upcoming Yearlong Writers Workshop and how to apply here.

The Year of Writing Generously
Your Book From Inception to Full First Draft with Karen Auvinen

Generosity is the foundation of any book-length writing adventure: writers of books must be generous not only with their readers in order to keep them engaged and turning pages, but with themselves through the whole process from inception to full draft. How do we position our project for success and how do we sustain the all-important juice necessary to write along the way? Join us for this Yearlong workshop intent on fostering an atmosphere of big-hearted support for you and the work at hand through workshop partnerships and a scaffold of deadlines. Using generosity as our guiding principle, we’ll cultivate curiosity for our narratives and write generatively and for discovery. We’ll begin our adventure by sharing ideas and stories, and plotting where we think we want to go, before sketching outlines, thematic foundations, and arcs, and working to develop key points and/or characters in our narratives. Then we’ll learn flexibility as our ideas develop beyond what we imagined and push with fresh perspective through the all-important middle passages as we write to the end, chapter by chapter, story by story. The goal is finishing a full first draft and celebrating the sense of accomplishment that comes with it. 

Fishtrap’s Yearlong Writers Workshop is open to writers of all experience and open to novel and memoir writers, as well as those working on a book- length collections of short fiction. The Yearlong program begins and ends with attendance at Summer Fishtrap where students and faculty meet together as a group for a week of workshops, events, and readings at Wallowa Lake. During the year, participants work closely with their instructor, exchanging monthly packets of writing. With each packet the writer moves toward the development of a full-length manuscript with a goal of completing a draft by the end of the year.

2022 Summer Fishtrap dates: July 11-17
2023 Summer Fishtrap dates: July 10-16

Karen Auvinen is an award-winning poet, mountain woman, life-long westerner, writer, and the author of the memoir Rough Beauty, finalist for the Colorado Book Award and the Willa Award. 

Her work has appeared in The New York Times, LitHub, Real Simple, Westword, The Colorado Sun, as well as numerous literary journals. She earned an MA in poetry from the University of Colorado under the mentorship of Lucia Berlin and a Ph.D in fiction from the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee. Karen teaches writing workshops at Lighthouse Writers Workshops and film, pop culture, and storytelling to first-years at CU – Boulder. Past gigs include Writer-in-Residence for the State of Colorado, editor, book-buyer, rural postal route driver, caterer, clinic assistant, landscaper, summer camp director, and guest chef. She lives in the Colorado mountains with the artist Greg Marquez, their dog River, and Dottie the Cat. More at karen.auvinen.com. Follow Karen on Twitter @karenjamestown or Instagram @awomansplaceisinthewild and on Facebook: KarenAuvinenAuthor

The 2022-2023 Yearlong Writers Workshop with Karen Auvinen

Yearlong Writers Workshop Tuition

$7,250 or $6,750 if paid in full by July 11, 2022
A $558 non-refundable deposit is required to hold your spot in the class.
Tuition is due in monthly payments of $558 starting July 11, 2022.

Yearlong Writers Workshop Tuition Includes

• Registration and Workshop instruction for the 2022 and 2023 Summer Fishtrap Gathering of Writers.
• All individual monthly instruction during the Yearlong Writers Workshop course.

Tuition does NOT include

• Lodging or meals for the 2022 and 2023 Weeklong Summer Fishtrap Gatherings
• Transportation to or from Summer Fishtrap
• Materials and postage expenses
• Communications expenses

Here is a look at our 2021-2022 Yearlong Workshop with Sharma Shields.