Writing Co-Lab

It’s the New Year, and that hits us all differently! Whether it’s a spirited season for you or a gloomy one, the tumult of January can still be a space for you to turn inward, renew your writing goals, or start them over altogether—if you choose it.

This open-genre workshop will offer you the opportunity to honor your own work with a group of like-minded writers. Perhaps you have an old poem, or essay, or short story you’re ready to dust off and return to. Maybe you’ve been thinking about an idea for a piece, and simply haven’t been able to sit down and get some words on paper. Perhaps this is your first time taking a writing workshop at all! Whatever your needs, whatever your ambitions, this session will set you up to make a short-term writing goal, and accomplish it. We’ll discuss why we write, what mentally and logistically keeps us from the page, and how we can work to abolish the judge in our heads.

This 1-session workshop will have three components:

1) In-group discussion

2) A writing goal worksheet brainstorm session

3) A generative writing period for you to work on your chosen piece of writing.

Students are encouraged to come with a piece of writing they wish to work on, if they have one.

Writing prompts will be provided, but are not compulsory for use.

Who says you can’t kick off the year with a bang? Let’s get in our seats and just write the thing.

About the Instructor

Natasha Oladokun is a Black, queer poet and essayist from Virginia. She earned a BA in English from the University of Virginia, and an MFA in creative writing from Hollins University. She holds fellowships from Cave Canem, The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, the Jackson Center for Creative Writing, Twelve Literary Arts, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she was the inaugural First Wave Poetry fellow. Her work has appeared in the American Poetry Review, Academy of American Poets, Image, Harvard Review Online, Kenyon Review Online, Harper’s Bazaar, Catapult, and elsewhere. She currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin, and is working on her first collection of poems.

Student Testimonials

• “Natasha is awesome. I really love her classes and find her really helpful with seeking depth, and analyzing the starting point, or catalyst, to a poem. She has a keen ear for what is truly magical.”
• “Natasha is wonderful! Her consideration of language permeates her instruction in the most beautiful way. The class was well paced and well constructed. Would take another workshop with her without hesitation!”
• “In addition to being excellent at her craft, Natasha Oladokun is an exceptional teacher. She modeled incredibly compassionate and constructive feedback that never held back in its striving for excellence.”
• “Natasha facilitated conversation and workshops with care and expertise, and was very generous with her time and knowledge.”
• “[T]hat’s what made the workshop structure so different from others Natasha has taught. Whereas normally workshop feedback tends to focus too heavily on the minutiae of the poem’s structure —“Why did you break the line here?” — Natasha’s First Wave workshop cut straight to the meat of the process: “Looking at what the poem is saying as opposed to how it is behaving,” and saving the minutiae for the final review process.”