Seattle-based Writer, Author, Poet, Writing Teacher
EVENTS 2025
Chuckanut Writers Conference, June 26, 27, 28, 2025. Bellingham, WA.
This is a fabulous conference. The best!
Thurs, June 26, 2025. 1 p.m. – 4 p.m., Sehome High School

Master Class
Writing Color: A Far-Reaching Craft Skill with Priscilla Long

Writers who write in color—rose, blueberry, ebony—possess a key to making their prose or poetry more visual, more vivid, more entrancing. Developing a color sense is an observational skill, a lexicon skill (getting beyond red, yellow, blue), and a plain old writing skill that enhances the words on the page. We will work on portraits, scenes, and sentences. Bring a couple of your pieces in draft (on any subject, in any form) and a notebook to write in. Be prepared to have fun!

On Friday and Saturday I will be teaching breakout sessions, as will other fabulous presenters.

Writing Courses Offered

Note: For the writer, the journey from wishful to virtuoso is one whose alchemical transformations occur entirely within a process of work. In our classes we work very hard. Are you ready to work and have you cleared enough time to do every assignment to the best of your ability? That is the question to ask yourself as you consider taking one or another of these courses. Oh, yes, we do have fun. But we groan too, and we work.

June Intensive 2025

Held on ZOOM. We now welcome writers who can’t get to Seattle without driving (or flying) for six hours.

Six evenings, 7–9, Pacific Time, Cost  $410.  Zoom opens at 6:30 for conferring and chatting.   I send the link shortly before class and am available on Zoom at 6:30.

 In this seminar we will compose, as usual, two new pieces (can be short fiction or nonfiction) and revise a work-in-progress to completion. We will work on sentences, as we do. We do all sentence work from week to week. This time all (or most) of our sentence work will be working on our skill at making metaphors.

The portfolios (three pieces plus the List of Works) are due postmarked on Monday September 8, 2025.

Form: You may choose a form. It must be named. Possibilities: abecedarian, diptych or triptych, enumeration, titled theme, A/B. Or another.
Theme: Place.
Craft Focus: metaphor.
Required books:
The Writer’s Portable Mentor, second edition.
Two Books:
1. Ira Sukrungruang, Southside Buddhist
2. jhumpa Lahiri, Roman Stories
We will meet:
Class 1: Monday June 2 2025, 7-9 p.m.  (Zoom open at 6:30)
Class 2: Monday June 9, 2025, 7-9 p.m. (Zoom open at 6:30)
Class 3: Monday June 16, 2025, 7-9 p.m. (Zoom open at 6:30).
Class 4: Monday June 23, 2025, 7-9 p.m. (Zoom open at 6:30)
Skip Monday June 30
Class 5: Monday July 7, 2025, 7-9 p.m. (Zoom open at 6:30)
Skip March 3, 2025
Class 6: Monday July 14, 2025, 7-9 p.m. (Zoom open at 6:30)
Portfolios containing three pieces and the List of Works due postmarked Monday September 8, 2025.