Writing Workshops

The Hardest Parts: Writing Beginnings and Endings with Joe Wilkins (March 2025)

$125

1 Session

Out of stock

Sunday, 2:00 pm EDT - 6:30 pm EDT March 30, 2025

Online via Zoom

Beginnings and endings—in novels, short stories, essays, and memoirs—are hard. An arresting beginning is your one chance to capture a reader, and a just-right ending sends a reader back into the world forever changed. In this generative lesson, we’ll read a number of examples, from both fiction and nonfiction, and ultimately highlight four strategies for crafting good beginnings and endings. Attendees are asked to have a story or essay in progress handy for in class revision work.

Course Outline:

Introductions
Keys to a Good Beginning or Ending
The Four Strategies
Writing Time
Sharing

This course is held online via Zoom.

Led by

Joe Wilkins

Joe Wilkins

Joe Wilkins is the author of the novels The Entire Sky and Fall Back Down When I Die, both of which have garnered wide critical acclaim. He is also the author of a memoir, The Mountain and the Fathers, winner of the GLCA New Writers Award, and five collections of poetry, including Pastoral, 1994; Thieve; and When We Were Birds, winner of the Oregon Book Award. Born and raised on a sheep and hay ranch north of the Bull Mountains of eastern Montana, Wilkins lives with his family in the foothills of the Coast Range of Oregon, where he directs the creative writing program at Linfield University.

About this series

Writing Workshops

We strive to make our classes the most inviting and rewarding available, offering an intimate environment to study with award-winning, world-class writers. Each class is specially designed by the instructor, so whether you’re a fledgling writer or an MFA graduate polishing your novel, you’ll find a perfect fit here.

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