The idea for this course springs from Frank O’Hara’s legendary collection, Lunch Poems, which, as the story goes, O’Hara composed on lunch breaks from his work as a curator at MoMA. The collection’s poems are filled with imagery, idea, fun, and spontaneity. Yours will be, too, if you follow O’Hara’s simple rules: “You just go on your nerve, … you take your chances and try to avoid being logical.” Beginning June 1, NYWW will offer synchronous zoom session lunchtime workshops. The sessions will last 50 minutes, from 12N to 12:50 (EST), leaving participants enough time to stop at the hot dog or pretzel stands on their way back to – where do people go these days, because it’s not the office. Anyway, four 50 minutes sessions per week, M-T-W-Th, with a rotating roster of workshop leaders, each of whom will determine the week’s focus (poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, memoir, or a mix). Each session will begin with a short craft talk, a short craft sample, a prompt, exercise-writing time, and time at the end for a few shares. The clock will be watched, you’ll be in, out, and on your way back to work or the pool with a notebook full of drafts.
 
Instructors and schedule as follows:  

• Week 1: June 1-4*, Tim Tomlinson

• Week 2: June 7-10, Frances Kai-Hwa Wang

• Week 3: June 14-17, Dawn Raffel

• Week 4: June 21-24, Ravi Shankar

• Week 5: June 28–July 1, Vasilis Manousakis

• Week 6: July 6-9*, Ruth Danon

 
*Sessions each week run M-T-W-Th, except Weeks 1 & 6, which run T-W-Th-F.
 
Cost: $20 per session, $70 for one week (four sessions), $395 for all six weeks (twenty-four workshops total).
REGISTER*: Buy tickets for NYWW Lunch Poems, Lunch Prose
​CONTACT: newyorkwritersworkshop@gmail.com 
(*If registering for one week, please specify which instructor/week you'd like to attend.)