Elizabeth Winder | Writers.com https://writers.com/instructor/elizabeth-winder Your voice is a gift. Share it. Mon, 13 Oct 2025 12:42:13 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.3 Scents and Sensibility: Elevate Your Writing with the Power of Scent https://writers.com/course/scents-and-sensibility-elevate-your-writing-with-the-power-of-scent Sun, 09 Feb 2025 14:47:53 +0000 https://writers.com/?post_type=product&p=28802 Capture the sense of scent on the page. Discover how olfactory detail can create a visceral bond with readers, and learn to create unforgettable sensory experiences in writing. 

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Our cerebral hemispheres were originally buds from the olfactory stalks. We think because we smelled.

—Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses

Whether we realize it or not, we are constantly immersed in scent. Yet writers often struggle to capture the sense of smell on the page, relying on vague descriptions like “fresh” or “sweet,” or avoiding it altogether. But scent is a powerful literary tool—it can bend time, unlock memories, and transport readers to new realities. Think of the way a familiar smell can stop you in your tracks: the sharp zest of freshly grated lemon, the green leafiness of summer tomatoes, the acrid sweetness of autumn woodsmoke. While visual descriptions paint a scene, olfactory details evoke an immediate, instinctive response, connecting directly to the emotional, pre-cognitive part of the brain. Scent can create a visceral bond between readers and characters, and even help to suspend disbelief.

In this workshop, we’ll explore how to craft vivid olfactory experiences in writing. How do we build a rich vocabulary for describing scent? How can we use it to deepen our storytelling? We’ll begin with the natural world—the elusive scent of rain (petrichor), the earthy loam of a forest floor, the bracing sharpness of mountain air, the almondy softness of kitten fur, the hay-and-cumin warmth of a horse, the smoky tang of saddle leather. We’ll also study how writers from Marcel Proust to Keith Richards harness the power of scent to create unforgettable sensory experiences.

Who This Course is For

This workshop is for writers of all levels and genres—poets, fiction and nonfiction writers—who want to deepen their sensory descriptions and harness the evocative power of scent in their work. Whether you’re looking to create more immersive settings, develop vivid character experiences, or simply expand your descriptive toolkit, this course will help you bring your writing to life.

Zoom Schedule

We will meet over Zoom on Thursday, September 4th, from 7-10 PM Eastern. 

Learning and Writing Goals

Learning Goals

  • Cultivate your sense of smell, heightening everyday experiences.
  • Explore the beauty of scent and fragrance, from the mundane to the sublime.
  • Learn the practice of paying attention to smell in the natural (and unnatural) world.
  • Learn about a raw material or element, learn its name, then recognize it in the wild.
  • Build a scent vocabulary.

Writing Goals

  • Use your new scent vocabulary to edit ordinary sentences.
  • Complete three writing exercises in your genre to infuse your writing with vivid olfactory descriptions.

Workshop Breakdown

  • Introduction, with literary examples
  • Fragrant Fiction–a whole novel written in fragrance
  • The Scented Sentence
  • Build your scent vocabulary
  • Writing exercises—rewrite and infuse
  • Sharing our work
  • Questions
  • Suggested reading
Scents and Sensibility: Elevate Your Writing with the Power of Scent
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]]> Nature’s Muse: Finding Inspiration through the Changing Seasons https://writers.com/course/natures-muse-finding-inspiration-through-the-changing-seasons Thu, 10 Oct 2024 18:55:24 +0000 https://writers.com/?post_type=product&p=23598 Galvanize your creative practice by deepening your connection to the natural world. Discover inspiration in the changing seasons, and generate fresh new writing.

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]]> How have writers through the ages found inspiration in all seasons, from the winter stars, the earliest spring buds, the blue vastness of the summer sky, to the lush bounty of harvest time? And how can we find this inspiration in our own writing? Kickstart your creativity by drawing inspiration from the changing seasons in this generative course. 

We will investigate how nature’s cyclical rhythms have inspired writers as varied as Thomas Hardy, Pablo Neruda, Li-Young Lee, Donna Tartt, Zora Neale Hurston, Sylvia Plath and T.S. Eliot. We’ll explore how the environment—from summer’s sunbaked sensuality to late autumn’s fading light and frost-scented air—reflects itself in their emotions. We’ll also look to the stars, examining how ancient peoples marked time through solstices, equinoxes, and lunar cycles.

Each week, you’ll dive into video lectures, readings from literature, and a variety of writing prompts. A suggested bibliography will be provided for those looking to explore further. You’ll submit one piece of writing—poetry or prose—each week and receive comprehensive feedback from me, as well as insights from your fellow writers.

Throughout the course, you’ll be encouraged to write outdoors whenever possible, capturing the quality of light, the sounds (or silence) of the natural world, and the tactile feel and scent of the air around you.

Whether you’re a poet, essayist, memoirist, or fiction writer, this course will help you deepen your connection to the natural world and galvanize your creative practice.

Who this Course is For

This course is for writers of all genres interested in deepening their connection to nature, and exploring nature as a muse for their creative practice. This course will also appeal to writers looking for new and unique ways to be inspired. All levels are welcome!

Learning and Writing Goals

Learning Goals

In this course, you will: 

  • Develop a deeper understanding of how the natural world and seasonal changes can inspire and shape creative writing across genres.
  • Explore the work of historical and contemporary writers who drew inspiration from the seasons, including Thomas Hardy, Pablo Neruda, and Zora Neale Hurston.
  • Expand your knowledge of literary traditions tied to nature through readings, lectures, and suggested resources for further study.

Writing Goals

In this course, you will:

  • Hone observational writing skills by incorporating sensory details from the environment, such as light, sound, and atmosphere, into your poetry or prose.
  • Reflect on and write about your own connection with nature, and how it influences your writing.
  • Write one new piece of poetry or prose each (up to 500 words) inspired by nature and the changing seasons. 
  • Receive extra writing prompts to continue your writing practice after the course ends. 

Weekly Syllabus

Week One: A Host of Golden Daffodils

 We’ll explore the budding life and renewal of spring, as well as the ancient traditions of Beltane and May poles. We’ll look at TS Eliot’s prologue to The Wasteland and how he captures the violent rush of early spring, and the practice of mindful attention to early flowers and changes in birdsong. Texts include T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland, Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, Frances Hodgson Burnett’s In the Garden and The Enkindled Spring by DH Lawrence.

Writing Prompt: Draw inspiration from Eliot’s frostbitten flowers and Igor Stravinsky’s The Rites of Spring. Write 500 words (poetry or prose) on the chaotic seasonal changes of March and April.

Week Two: Great Bursts of Leaves

Summer the solstice celebrations of midsummer, the mythological meanings of meteor showers, the verdant vibrancy of life at its peak. We’d investigate the lushness and vitality of summer, rose- festooned May Queens, and the season’s ancient rituals of agricultural abundance.  How do writers use the languid warmth of summer to amplify their character’s emotions? Texts include Li-Young Lee’s From Blossoms, Sylvia Plath’s Collected Journals, Tess Taylor’s Solstice, Edith Sitwell’s Fireworks, Pablo Neruda’s Sonnet XL, and Sarajni Naidu’s June Sunset.

Writing Prompt: Write 500 words (poetry or prose) exploring the sweltering days of summer, where time seems to stretch, and the air is thick with unspoken words, and memories and desires seem to intertwine.

Week Three: Fire in the Fall

Autumn brings obvious themes of harvest and transformation. Ancient harvest festivals like Samhain or the autumn equinox may be introduced as ways to consider the balance between light and dark. Writing prompts could include observation of the changing leaves, migrating animals, and how nature prepares for winter. Texts include Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, Edith Wharton’s Autumn Stars, Flora Thompson’s Lark Rise to Candleford, Gerard Manley Hopkins’ Inversnaid, John Keats’ To Autumn and E.M. Forster’s Where Angels Fear to Tread.

Writing Prompt: On the autumn equinox, day and night hang in perfect balance, a fleeting moment of harmony before the world shifts. Write 500 words on the blurring boundaries between light and dark.

Week Four: The Star's Winter 

As the days grow shorter and the year draws to a close, we begin our journey with the long nights and starry stillness of winter.  Explore the ancient solstice festivals of light (Yule), the symbolic rebirth of the sun after the darkest day. We’ll discuss the ancient practice of star mapping, the constellations visible during winter, and how different cultures interpreted the winter sky.  Texts include Claude McKay’s The Snow Fairy, Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Linda Gregg’s Winter Love, Thomas Hardy’s The Darkling Thrush and Wallace Stevens’ The Snow Man.

Writing Prompt: Write 500 words (poetry or prose) in response to the winter solstice or exploring the wintry themes of silence and introspection.

Why Take a Nature Writing Course with Writers.com?

  • We welcome writers of all backgrounds and experience levels, and we are here for one reason: to support you on your writing journey.
  • Small groups keep our online writing courses lively and intimate.
  • Work through your weekly lectures, course materials, and writing assignments at your own pace.
  • Share and discuss your work with fellow writers in a supportive course environment.
  • Award-winning instructor Elizabeth Winder will offer you direct, personal feedback and suggestions on every assignment you submit.
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]]> Experiments in Poetry https://writers.com/course/experiments-in-poetry Thu, 29 Feb 2024 20:59:46 +0000 https://writers.com/?post_type=product&p=20453 See poetry in a totally new light! Draw inspiration from the most radical, innovative, and imaginative poets in literary history, master their techniques, and write new exciting poems of your own.

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]]> Are you ready to see poetry in a totally new light? Join me for a deep dive into the wild world of experimental poetry. Each week, you’ll draw inspiration from the most radical, innovative, and imaginative poets in literary history, master their techniques, and write new exciting poems of your own!

Create wild, baroque worlds with the visionary Lucie Brock-Broido, sleep with the dictionary like Harryette Mullen, experiment with Japanese syllabics, wordplay and jazz. Descend into the urban underworld with Arthur Rimbaud and Alice Notley, explore the world of visual poetry, landscape poetry, and altered books.

See old poets through fresh eyes: how Gerard Manley Hopkins’s radical syntax influenced Bob Dylan, Anne Carson’s wildly unconventional take on Greek mythology, and Myriam Gurba’s queer interpretation of the groundbreaking Modernist juggernaut Tender Buttons.

Elevate your writing and expand your understanding of what poetry can do. Experiment with syntax and subject. Try your hand at techniques like collage and pastiche. Learn about poetic movements like Italian Futurism, French Surrealism and New York Dada, and experiment with their generative word games like Exquisite Corpse. (We’ll play that one as a class!)

Above all, cultivate a sense of possibility, experimentation, and play!

This is a weekly course where we’ll explore new poets and their innovative approaches, as well as workshop each other’s poems. You’ll write a new poem each week, using fresh techniques discussed in class. I’ll give you individual weekly written feedback on WetInk.

By the end of these ten weeks, you’ll have expanded your creative and linguistic imagination, mastered several experimental poetry techniques and refined your writing craft in poetry and beyond. You’ll never look at poetry the same way again!

Who This Course is For: 

If you want to expand your mind and elevate your poetry, this class is for you. This is a generative class and we will be writing one poem a week.

Zoom Schedule

Zoom calls will be held on Wednesdays from 7-8pm U.S. Eastern Time. 

Learning and Writing Goals

Learning Goals

In this course, you will:

  • Cultivate a more engaged and critical relationship with language.
  • Learn to spot cliches and predictable phrases and pairings.
  • Experiment with vocabulary, grammar, titles, syntax, shape and subject matter.
  • Develop syntactical and lyrical skills that will elevate your future writing in poetry and prose.

Writing Goals

In this course, you will:

  • Write ten original poems using fresh techniques discussed in class.
  • Collaborate as a class using innovative Surrealist games to compose new poems.
  • Have two poems revised and ready for publication.

Weekly Syllabus 

Week One: Curiosity and Subject—Mary Jo Bang, Brenda Hillman, Cole Swensen

Get creative with poets who approach subject through the lens of reinvention and discovery with topics as diverse as the Cathars, silent movie stars, and seventeenth century gardens.  

Assignment: Select a historical document, a photograph, old map, film clip or artifact and write a poem that that delves into the artifact’s layers of meaning. Or simply immerse yourself in a subject that fascinates you and write a poem that plays with the findings of your research.

Week Two: Sleeping With the Dictionary—Myriam Gurba, Harryette Mullen, Gertrude Stein

Break with traditional forms, experiment with syntax, play with rhythm and repetition, explore themes of identity, perception, and language itself.

Assignment: Select a short passage from a book, a newspaper, a snippet of overheard conversation. Apply Mullen’s technique of linguistic collage by dissecting and rearranging the words and phrases, playing with syntax, grammar, and vocabulary to create a new poetic composition.

OR

Write a poem inspired by Gertrude Stein’s exploration of repetition and linguistic experimentation. Choose a single word or short phrase and repeat it throughout your poem, allowing its meaning and sound to shift and evolve with each repetition.

Week Three: The Visionaries—William Blake, Lucie Brock-Broido and Brenda Shaughnessy

William Blake famously wrote about the importance of imagination as a creative and visionary force. Explore Brenda Shaughnessy and Lucie Brock-Broido’s baroque landscapes, liminal spaces and sonically rich verse.

Assignment: Explore the labyrinthine corridors of the imagination and write a poem that invites readers to peer beneath the surface of the ordinary.

Week Four: Rebels from Hell—Arthur Rimbaud, Charles Baudelaire, Alice Notley, Pattie Smith

French poets Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud were no strangers to the darker aspects of human experience. Similarly, The Descent of Alette by Alice Notley immerses the reader in a hallucinatory subterranean landscape, where the protagonist embarks on a journey through a fantastical underground realm.

Assignment: Drawing inspiration from Baudelaire’s exploration of urban melancholy and Alice Notley’s unusual rhythms, write your own cityscape poem.

Week Five: L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E Poets—Ron Silliman, Leslie Scalapino, Susan Howe

Embrace the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poet’s radical experimentation and disrupt conventional syntax, grammar, and vocabulary. 

Assignment: Write a poem that plays with syntax, grammar, and typography to create a poem that defies conventional narrative or lyric structures. Or borrow Ron Silliman’s modular structure, organizing your poem into discrete units or “blocks” of text.

Week Six: Concrete, Collage, and Visual Poetry—Lenora des Barros, Rosemarie Waldrop, Amanda Berenguer Ian Hamilton Finlay, George Herbert, Augusto Campos, Henri Chopin

Explore the interplay between visual and textual elements in poetry. Learn to shape and transform language by experimenting with form, space, and typography.

Assignment: Write a poem inspired by the concrete poets, where visual elements enhance and interact with textual meaning.

Week Seven: Radical Syntax—Gerard Manley Hopkins, Sylvia Plath and Bob Dylan

Gerard Manley Hopkins’  sprung rhythm, compound adjectives, revitalization of Middle-English, and other linguistic innovations have influenced writers (and musicians) from Bob Dylan to Sylvia Plath.

Assignment: Write a poem drawing on Hopkins’ love of compound adjectives and neologisms to create fresh and unexpected images.

Week Eight:The Surrealists and Their Friends—Andre Breton, Mina Loy, Robert Desnos, Man Ray, Tristan Tzara, William S Burroughs

Unlock the creative potential of the subconscious mind with the experimental games of the Surrealists!

Assignment: In the avant-garde spirit of the Surrealists, write a cut-up, Derive, or automatic poem. 

Week Nine: Tom Phillips, Mary Ruefle, Isobel O'Hare

By repurposing existing texts, blackout poetry challenges traditional notions of authorship by creating a dialogue between the original source material and the vision of the poet.

Assignment: Unlock hidden meanings and associations within the confines of existing text and write your own blackout poem.

Week Ten: Experiments in Address-—Lucie Brock Broido, Anne Carson

In Autobiography of Red, Anne Carson reinterprets the story of Hercules, while Lucie Brock-Broido addresses Emily Dickinson and Miss Havisham in The Master Letters.

Assignment: Write your own poetic interpretation of an ancient, historical or fictional narrative, adding your own layers of meaning and allusion.

Why Take an Experimental Poetry Writing Course with Writers.com?

  • We welcome writers of all backgrounds and experience levels, and we are here for one reason: to support you on your writing journey.
  • Small groups keep our online writing courses lively and intimate.
  • Work through your weekly lectures, course materials, and writing assignments at your own pace.
  • Share and discuss your work with fellow writers in a supportive course environment.
  • Award-winning instructor Elizabeth Winder will offer you direct, personal feedback and suggestions on every assignment you submit.
Experiments in Poetry
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]]> The Lyric Essay: Invitation to Play https://writers.com/course/the-lyric-essay-invitation-to-play Mon, 04 Sep 2023 17:41:45 +0000 https://writers.com/?post_type=product&p=17993 Create dynamic, genre-bending works of musical prose in this playful and exploratory lyric essay workshop. 

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]]> When author Beth Peterson was looking for a different type of nonfiction, she wanted something that “made room for gaps and silences.” She found it in the lyric essay, a literary hybrid of poetry and essay that enables the author to explore those gaps and silences in a uniquely personal way. The lyric essay is an invitation to play and experiment with form, words, and ideas.

This ten-week course will examine the lyric essay, its growing popularity, and how it draws upon literary forms like poetry, memoir, and nonfiction to create dynamic, genre-bending works. A video lecture posted on Wednesday morning explores the week’s craft element in detail, supplies short readings from literature, offers multiple writing prompts, and suggests a bibliography for further exploration. Students will share one piece of writing weekly (up to 500 words), receiving comprehensive feedback from Elizabeth, as well as thoughts from their fellow writers. By the end of the course, students will create original writing using each of the techniques explored in class and complete two to three lyrical essays ready for publication. 

Whether you’re a poet, essayist, memoirist or fiction writer, this course will open your mind and galvanize your creative writing practice.

Learning & Writing Goals

Learning Goals:

  • You will gain an understanding of the genre of creative writing known as the lyric essay.
  • You will practice different writing techniques and try different forms of the lyric essay.
  • You will practice varied forms of narrative and poetic devices.
  • You will gain proficiency in writing lyric essays.

Writing Goals: 

  • You will write up to 500 words a week in response to prompts and receive feedback from Elizabeth as well as your fellow students.
  • You will revise your own work using lyrical techniques.
  • You will complete two to three lyric essays ready for publication.
  • You will develop a list of publications to read for inspiration submissions for your own work.

Zoom Component

We will meet for one hour on Zoom two times during the duration of the course to build community and discuss our work.  This is an optional component of the course.  The date and time for these calls will be scheduled after the course begins.

Weekly Syllabus

Week 1: Meet the Lyric Essay

What is a lyric essay? How does this slippery form blend poetry, prose, memoir and even recipes to create something entirely unique? Mark Doty, Elisa Gabbert, Zadie Smith, John D’Agata

Homework: Write up to 500 words inspired by one of this week’s writing prompts or any of the lyric essays discussed in class.

Week 2: Weaving at the Loom

This week we consider various forms like the braided essay, hermit crab essay and more avant-garde forms like the list lyric essay. Emily Geminder, Roxane Gay, Jenny Boully, Zadie Smith

Homework: Write up to 500 words inspired by one of this week’s writing prompts or any of the lyric essays discussed in class.

Week 3: Tell It Slant

Find your own voice— and it can be as quirky as you like with the lyric essay. Do you hover on the peripheral edge of things or cut straight to the emotional core? Joan Didion, Claudia Rankine, Truman Capote, David Foster Wallace

Homework: Write up to 500 words inspired by one of this week’s writing prompts or any of the lyric essays discussed in class.

Week 4: Glorious Detail

Powerful, sensory imagery does more than transport the reader— it indirectly evokes emotional experiences. Heidi Czerwiec, Diane Ackerman, Elizabeth AI Powell

 Homework: Write up to 500 words inspired by one of this week’s writing prompts or any of the lyric essays discussed in class.

Week 5: Poetics

Dip into the poetry tool kit with alliteration, consonance, syntax, white space, sentence lengths and more. Anne Carson, Mary Ruefle, Maureen Thorson

Homework: Write up to 250 words inspired by one of this week’s writing prompts or any of the lyric essays discussed in class.

Week 6: Cut and Paste

Go deeper into the collage essay and borrow from the specialized lexicons of philosophy, perfumery, anthropology, history, cookery, and the natural world. Maggie Nelson, Susan Howe, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha

Homework: Write up to 500 words inspired by one of this week’s writing prompts or any of the lyric essays discussed in class.

Week 7: The Flaneur

The discursive nature of the lyric essay lends itself particularly well to the urban wanderings of the flaneur. Charles Baudelaire, Jean Genet, Pattie Smith

Homework: Write up to 500 words inspired by one of this week’s writing prompts or any of the lyric essays discussed in class.

Week 8: Consider the Prose Poem

Focus on the musicality and imaginative sense of play unique to lyric essay’s twin form—the prose poem. Charles Simic, Sandra Lim, Martha Ronk

Homework: Write up to 250 words inspired by one of this week’s writing prompts or any of the lyric essays discussed in class.

Week 9: Writing Your Icons

Write your own celebrity profile within the freeing form of the lyric essay. Alana K Massey, Hilton Als, Kim Morgan, Gail Crowther

Homework: Write up to 500 words inspired by one of this week’s writing prompts or any of the lyric essays discussed in class.

Week 10: Remembrance of Things Past

Expand and elevate your own personal experience beyond traditional memoir. MFK Fisher, Jennifer Cheng, Aurvi Sharma

Homework: Write up to 500 words inspired by one of this week’s writing prompts or any of the lyric essays discussed in class.

Why Take a Lyric Essay Writing Course with Writers.com?

  • We welcome writers of all backgrounds and experience levels, and we are here for one reason: to support you on your writing journey.
  • Small groups keep our online writing courses lively and intimate.
  • Work through your weekly lectures, course materials, and writing assignments at your own pace.
  • Share and discuss your work with fellow writers in a supportive course environment.
  • Award-winning instructor Elizabeth Winder will offer you direct, personal feedback and suggestions on every assignment you submit.
The Lyric Essay: Invitation to Play
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