Check out the lineup for Black Lawrence Press events!
Drama without Dragons: Writing Lightly Plotted Fiction
Craft Workshop
Instructor: Kevin Fenton
Date: 9/8/2026
Fee: Free!
You love what you’re writing but there’s not much happening. How do you make this compelling to readers—and to publishers? In this workshop, we’ll explore strategies for invigorating your story without losing its essence. We’ll apply some unconventional lenses, look for opportunities for invention and disruption, see what we can take from Charles Baxter’s essay “Captain Happen: Notes on Narrative Urgency,” and glean inspiration from lightly plotted masterpieces by Nicolson Baker and Samantha Harvey.
Hello My Name Is: Tension and Tenderness of Naming in Poetry
Generative Workshop
Instructor: Livia Meneghin
Date: 9/13/2026
Fee: Free!
The Harlem Book Fair
Date: 9/29/26
Time: 10 AM – 6 PM
Location: Harlem State Office Building Plaza 163 West 125th Street, Harlem, NY
Fee: Free!
Signings: Jacob M. Appel (11 AM – 12 PM) and Raina J. León (1 PM – 2 PM)
What are You So Afraid Of?: The Poetics of Turning Inward Toward Fear
Generative Workshop
Instructor: Kyla-Yen Giffin
Date: 10/4/2026
Fee: Free!
Writing Your Memoir in Essays: Discover, Uncover, Recover
Workshop Series
Instructor: Christopher Locke
Date: October 4, 11, 18, 25 and November 1, 8
Fee: $295
Personal essays are revelations. In this workshop, we will explore how a memoir-in-essays is an exacting and viable artform capable of contradiction, vulnerability, inquiry, grief, humor, memory, rage, longing, landscape and beauty, all at once. Talk about your heavy lifting.
Through generative writing, experimentation, and discussion, workshop members will develop 4-6 substantial new essays or hybrid pieces. We will take multiple contemporary essays as models, discuss revision strategies, and cover the various techniques for building essays and fragments into a cohesive manuscript.
In addition to their completed essays, workshop members will leave the course with blueprints for their manuscripts along with submission and publication strategies.
Form-enomenon: Celebrating Queer Subversions of Poetic Forms
Craft Workshop
Instructor: Anne Marie Wells
Date: 10/13/2026
Less Is More: Structuring a Short Story
Craft Workshop
Instructor: Piper White
Date: 11/9/2026
Found Poetry
Generative Workshop
Instructor: Christine Huang
Date: 12/6/2026
Courage and Questions: Writing into the Unknown
Craft Workshop
Instructor: Allison Macy-Steines
Date: 12/8/2026