Writing Courses!
Below, you can find my current court offerings with links for registration. I love teaching, and if you’re an educator or admin for any writing/arts organizations looking to build out course offerings, I’d be happy to chat further and develop something that fits your needs. I have customizable programs for short (1-3 hour) one-off courses as well as recurring weekly courses and workshops. My specialties for craft classes and workshops include speculative fiction, queer horror, speculative revision, speculative nonfiction, essay idea generation, rethinking process. I am also available for class visits and can speak to how to submit to literary journals, how to write an artist statement, and what it’s like to build a career in the writing world. I also have a special haunted houses workshop that is perfect for high school and undergrad levels.
How To Never Run Out of Essay Ideas with Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya
Tuesday, July 8, 6-9pm EST
This workshop will be recorded, and everyone who registers will receive the recording afterward so it can be done self-paced if you cannot attend the live session.
Have a biweekly newsletter that's losing steam? Itching to pitch but fresh out of exciting ideas? This workshop is designed to give you the tools to find inspiration for creative nonfiction even when you think the well is dry (spoiler alert: the well is never dry). Through readings of unconventional essays and prompts designed to help you pull inspiration from unexpected places, I'll give you the tools, confidence, and discipline to keep finding things to meaningfully write about from your everyday life, memories, and environment.
This workshop is designed to give participants the tools to find essay inspiration from unexpected, easily accessed places, whether that's the recesses of their own memories or the objects around them or the natural environment in which they exist or the books on their shelves. I present my "anti-rules" of essay writing, including my favorite: that you don't have to know what an essay is about before you begin writing it. I'll detail useful practices for "scrap collecting" — a process of roughly observing and documenting throughout one's daily life (much more chaotic and generative than traditional journaling!) that can often lead to essays. This workshop is especially fruitful for writers who have to churn out personal writing on a regular basis for a newsletter or similar project or for writers considering starting a newsletter and worried about "not having enough to say." This is a hyper-generative class, by which I mean we will write a LOT, but we'll also read, share, and discuss practical tips for making sure the creative well never runs dry.
I bring knowledge and experience to this workshop from my combined career as a freelance writer pitching personal essays for over a decade as well as half a decade as a magazine editor on the other side of the pitching and essay development process. Throughout the years, I have often had to maintain consistent essay output as part of my literal job, so I couldn't afford to run out of ideas. This workshop is crafted from the various challenges of those experiences and how I eventually overcame them.