Great Smokies Young Writers Workshop: forms of Poetry & Writing Essays, Memoirs, & Auto-Fiction
Hone your literary skills through workshops with experienced local authors and poets. Generate new pieces, revise works-in-progress and critique works of others in a collaborative workshop setting.
The Many Forms of Poetry: Each day we’ll explore a different classic or contemporary poetic form — the sonnet! the ghazal! the golden shovel! — by reading exemplary models of the form and exploring it from within, figuring out how it works, and writing our own imitations. In the process students will discover some of the expressive freedoms that can emerge from rules and constraints — and sometimes the benefits of breaking them.
Personal, Lyric, Braided: Writing Essays, Memoirs, & Auto-Fiction: Whether you’re drafting a college essay, translating your personal experience into semi-fictional prose, or telling the story of an important time in your life as only you can tell it, this course will help you hone your craft by focusing on voice, tone, and what makes your first person perspective distinctive and unique. We’ll discuss narrative arc, stakes, language, and the depth of thought and feeling that result in writing that’s compelling, insightful, and potentially transformative—for the reader and writer both. Whether you’re concerned with social, political, or philosophical issues; the human condition, daily life, or affairs of the heart, exploring personal, lyric, and braided essays, memoirs and auto-fiction will support you in developing the skills you need to articulate your experience with power and precision and develop a style that’s all your own. Students will receive feedback from the instructor and fellow writers, revising towards 5-8 pages of prose.
Registration opens december 2025:
- June 21-26, 2026
- $1,470
- Pre-College Programs are open to rising high school sophomores, juniors, and seniors.
- Price includes lodging, meals, all course materials, activities, and excursions
- A $500 deposit is required at the time of registration, with the remaining balance due by May 1, 2026. After that date, full payment is required at registration. Click here to see our cancellation policy.
- Students reside in campus residence hall and dine in campus dining hall
- Enrollment is open until spaces are filled
- Registration is through the Camp Doc platform. Detailed registration instructions can be found here.
- Exploring various poetic forms
- Developing voice, tone, and first person perspective
- Discuss narrative arc, stakes, and language
- Participating in peer workshopping sessions to give and receive feedback on work-in-progress
- Students are encouraged to participate in an end-of-week reading for an audience of family and friends
Topics and schedules are subject to change
Sample Schedule:
Morning
- 8 a.m. – Breakfast
- 9 a.m. – Memoirs and Auto-Fiction Workshop
- 12 p.m. – Lunch & free time
Afternoon
- 1 p.m. – Poetry Workshop
Evening
- 5 p.m. – Dinner
- 6:30 p.m. – Activities / Recreation / Free Time
Options could include: sand volleyball, Asheville Tourists game, game night, movie - 11 p.m. – Lights out
Topics and schedules are subject to change
Meet Your Faculty
Brit Washburn is the author of the essay collection Homing In: Attempts on a Life of Poetry and Purpose (Alexandria Quarterly Press, 2023), and the poetry collections Notwithstanding (Wet Cement Press, 2019) and What Is Given (Wet Cement Press, 2025). She is a graduate of the Creative Writing Program at Interlochen Arts Academy in Northern Michigan, where she was born and raised, and of Goddard College in Vermont. Brit has been awarded an artist’s grant by the Vermont Studio Center and for many years served on the boards of the Poetry Society of South Carolina and the Low Country Initiative on the Literary Arts (LILA). She co-directed the salon Poets House South and has worked as a freelance writer, editor, and indexer, a Montessori teacher, and instructor in the Great Smokies Writing Program at University of North Carolina Asheville. Her work can be found in print and online via www.britwashburn.com.
Evan Gurney is a professor of English at the University of North Carolina, Asheville. He has published widely on the literature of Renaissance England, and his poems and essays have recently appeared in Appalachian Review, The Hopkins Review, New Ohio Review, storySouth, Tar River Poetry, and elsewhere.
Questions? Please contact us at precollege@unca.edu.
