Grackle and Grackle’s creative writing classes are led by accomplished writers who love to teach.

Thursday Aug 20 to Sept 24 // 6:30-8:30 p.m.

Playwriting is where architecture and alchemy joyfully meet. Participants will have the chance to develop ten minute play scripts as viable blueprints: stories that can leap forward to become a collaboration with future actors, directors, and designers.

During this eight-week workshop course, we will build a supportive writers’ room focused on the creation of brand new, romantic comedy, 10 minute scripts. Classes will feature guided, generative exercises, mentor texts, and group workshopping of plays written by the participants. Students will also receive recommendations of potential submission and production opportunities, both locally and nationally, at the conclusion of the class.

This beginner level class will provide its writers with a dedicated space to develop their own unique voices, and enjoy all the powerful, hopeful feels of the classic rom-com.

Elizabeth A. M. Keel is a Houstonian playwright, director, actress, dramaturg, producer, screenwriter, and novelist. Her plays have been read, commissioned and/or produced by The Alley Theatre, Flexible Grey, Fresh Produce’d (NYC), Haven Arts Theatre, Houston Contemporary Dance Company, Otherworld Theatre Company, Shattered Globe, Squeaky Bicycle, Stages, The Studio Theatre at Tierra Del Sol, Tokyo International Players, Voxfest, and Wordsmyth, among others. Several of her plays have been published by Smith & Kraus and Stage Partners. She currently works as a teaching artist for Writers in the Schools, Grackle & Grackle, Kinder HSPVA, and the Alley. She is a double alumna of University of Houston's School of Theatre & Dance. Upcoming projects may be found at www.elizabethamkeel.com.

Sunday Sept 20 to Oct 11 // 2:30-4:00 p.m.

Forty years ago, Bob Ross guided painters on a PBS TV series called The Joy of Painting. He believed everyone had inherent artistic talent and famously said, “We don’t make mistakes; we just have happy accidents.” Like Bob, I invite you to discover writing as an act of generation and new approaches to writing. We will experiment and play with language using a variety of prompts. We will focus on creating language in images and sentences that you can use in poems or other genres, and we will explore the “happy trees” in poems by Houston-based poets. Come play on Sunday afternoons in September! Each session will be 90 minutes long, broken into two 40-minute sessions with a ten-minute break. If you are interested in sharing your writing with the group and/or me, there will be opportunities to do so. You are welcome to attend one, two, or three sessions.

In 1992, Rebecca Danelly Oxley, recently discharged from the Air Force, encountered Houston poetry at an open mic downtown. In the following years, she met and worked with Tamara Nicholl-Smith, Marcell Murphy, and Bucky Rea, among many other Houston poets, who guided her, not just in poetry, but in how to be human. After attending the University of Houston and years of working and raising children, she attended workshops at Grackle and Grackle. In 2023, she received an MFA in poetry from Texas State University. She has work forthcoming at Blood Orange Review, and her poems have been published in Grist, equinox, Kestrel, Whale Road Review, and Zócalo Public Square, among other journals and anthologies. She resides on unceded Akokisa, Atakapa, Karankawa, and Sana land with her partner, Jeremy, and her dog friend, Professor Daisy, and teaches First Year Composition at the University of Houston–Downtown.

GRACKLE ART BY: Sergio Pérez Corella

Sun xTBA // 6:30-8:30 p.m.

The LONG Project is a 4-5 person class for writers who have completely or nearly finished a draft book or long project, and want the whole thing read for workshop.  Your peers will serve as beta readers, cheerleaders, and critics.

In the first hour we will discuss questions all the writers have, and we will have a writing prompt meant to help add scenes, ideas, and fill out a work. The second hour is reserved for workshopping.  We’ll have twenty minutes of breaks/snack/lunch so those skipping out on the workday don’t return hungry, and I’ll be available to chat with during that time. Every week we will have one workshop.

Workshops may help writers seriously face problems of structure, character arcs, and forward momentum. We help reconceptualize the story that may have come out in fits and starts, with an eye for the end. We will discuss plot holes, sags in the pacing, and problems with characters who may seem one thing in the writers eyes but seem something else to early readers. Again, we will talk out problems the writers face as they iron out the flaws and problems they identified in their earlier drafts.  This is a time for tightening, for writers to discover where readers find themselves most engaged, and when they lose interest or belief in the story and why. To see if the story they intended is the story that is received.

This class meets 6 or 7 times, depending on whether 4 or 5 people sign up. During the weeks of full novel workshopping, it focuses on one novel, every other week.  The last class involves turning in outlines and early revisions for a new draft, and during the first class we’ll discuss outside reading, how to give each other feedback, and we’ll make a schedule for our work.

Week One: 1.5 hours for schedule & introductions
2 weeks later: 2.25 hours novel workshop
2 weeks later: 2.25 hours novel workshop
2 weeks later: 2.25 hours novel workshop
2 weeks later: 2.25 hours novel workshop
2 weeks later:  2.25 hours (revision; possible last class, depending on number of students)

At least two weeks before the first class:

a) Buy Hyssop by Kevin McIlvoy. Read it before class. It is a short, imperfect novel not everybody will like, but that has a lot of great lessons everybody could learn from. It has elements to teach both memoir and fiction within it.
b) your title, the word count, and what draft this is (first, third, seventh…don’t overthink it, just tell me what you think it is)
c) genre (literary, adventure, romance, sci fi, coming of age, ya, etc, maybe a mix)
d) form (book of essays or short stories, memoir, novel, play, other…
e) audience (who you expect will enjoy and buy the book)
f) a one page summary of your work
g) assurance you have read the cost.

COST:
If you have not taken a previous LONG Project class, it costs $750; if your novel is longer than 350 double-spaced, 1.5 inch margins, 12 point font Times New Roman pages, it is $1 a page extra. Email me if it is longer.

If you have taken a previous LONG Project class for this novel, it costs $600.  You can bring a check to the first class or pay by Venmo. Email me if you have problems.

This class will have 4 or 5 students.

Miah Arnold is the principal and founder of Grackle and Grackle. She has taught creative writing for over twenty years at nonprofits and she has also taught in universities including the University of Houston (where she received her Ph.D. in Creative Writing). Her essay “You Owe Me”, about teaching children at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, was collected in Best American Essays in 2012. Her first novel, Sweet Land of Bigamy, was published in 2012. She is currently working on a book of essays and a book of poetry.


GRACKLE IMAGE by artist Phillip Wade.

Ongoing Tuesdays & Thursdays // 10-1 // with Miah Arnold
Because sometimes, even the most dedicated introverts need to hear the sound of other folks clicking and scratching away to help keep them motivated, and to remind them they're not alone. If you crave a calm yet inspiring atmosphere for some completely independent, generative free-writing, this is your chance.

We'll have short check-ins and check-outs with each other, and a snack break mid-class to walk around the block or have a coffee or chat before heating back into our work. This class is pay what you want: you can venmo to @Grackle, or leave something in the tip jar in studio! Miah will write alongside you, along with the other members of our community who want to commit to a day, time, and each other.

However, register online for the class below, so I can alert you if there are changes to the schedule! It costs a dollar just to get the registration to work, sorry!

This is a pay what you want event, arrive anytime, any week. Drop-ins are welcome. Send payments to @Grackle via Venmo or to miah@grackleandgrackle.com via Paypal or put cash in the tip jar if you wish!

Image by Charles Wallis.