Chapbooks are stealth books./They can slip under a door./They don’t impose. They suggest. They carry little baggage./They’re not one thing or another. They don’t take much time. They’re sly and easy to ignore. They imply, insinuate, inquire./They don’t expect an answer./They have a long history; they have no history —James Haug (from WHY I LIKE CHAPBOOKS)

This workshop is designed to give participants feedback on a chapbook of their own poems. In this workshop we will read chapbooks and discuss their structures, the arc of the their development, their voices. This workshop will run for five weeks, Tuesday nights, 5:30 -7:30, July 29 – August 26.

Week One we will examine outstanding contemporary and modern chapbooks in order to develop and inform our ideas about what we believe makes an exemplary chapbook. Weeks Two – Five we will examine and discuss the chapbooks authored by participants.

Requirements for participating in this workshop include having a chapbook manuscript of original poetry 12-30 pages in length. The manuscript is not to exceed 30 pages. The chapbook may be in-progress, but participants must have a manuscript ready to share and distribute to other participants for discussion by July 22. 

Flying Object is a unique and magical space that powerfully helps to inform our ideas, our writing, our reading. It is a laboratory. Our laboratory! And library! And listening and looking space place.

If you are interested in reserving a place, please send an email explaining why you would like to take the class, along with a little information about yourself and a writing sample of 4-10 pages of poems to ecpettit@gmail.com.

Emily Pettit is the author of GOAT IN THE SNOW (Birds LLC). She is an editor for notnostrums and Factory Hollow Press, and jubilat. Emily received her MFA in poetry from the University of Iowa.

Refund Policy

Please note that all education fees include a non-refundable enrollment deposit of 10% of the total fee that will be deducted from your refund if you sign up for, then drop, a workshop (before it begins). For LABS, there is non-refundable deposit of 10% of the total fee plus cost of materials. 

So, for example, if you sign up for Creative Writing and pay a $200 class fee, only to realize you were selected as a contestant in newest season of The Bachelor and shouldn’t have signed up after all, Flying Object will refund you $175 of your tuition payment.

Once the class begins, the class fee is non-refundable.