Creative Writing Workshops
Welcome to the cozy core of Firefly.
These small group workshops are our deepest offering, opportunities to carve out real time and space for your writing in a small, committed community of support.
Some of these are for absolute beginners and others are for seasoned writers. Some are themed and some are wide open. What they all share is encouragement, laughter, inspiration and a deep dedication to helping every participant realize their own creative power.
We believe that writers find their power through sharing and feeling heard, so we keep these workshops small. If you’re looking for something lighter, check out our large group writing programs.
Whatever it is, we hope you find just what your writing needs.
Workshops that are open for registration
Begin Here
A fun and easy creative writing workshop for absolute beginners.
This short workshop is for anyone who has the urge to write and isn’t sure where to start. Feeling nervous about taking the plunge? We made this for you.
Online: Tuesday evenings
In-Person: Thursday evenings
BRIEF BURSTS: The Memoir Edition
A workshop about writing short, true things
In this 5-week workshop, we’ll explore the art of conciseness, contraction and brevity in writing non-fiction. By the end of this course, you’ll have a handful of flash pieces in your collection and many ideas for more.
Online: Tuesday mornings
EXPLORING OUR RACIALIZED IDENTITIES
A life story writing workshop exclusively for people of colour
A 5-week workshop for anyone who identifies as Black, Indigenous, a person of colour, racialized or mixed-race to write and share personal stories on themes like identity, colonialism, resilience and racism.
Online: Thursday evenings
Fat Joy
A workshop for fat folks exploring how to find joy in an anti-fat world.
In this 5-week workshop, we’ll use writing to gently explore some of the harms, biases, and oppressions we’ve experienced while living in a world that marginalizes fat bodies. And then write ourselves deeply into resilience, courage, community, and audacity — claiming and celebrating our fat joy.
Online: Wednesday evenings
THE WORD PLAY WORKSHOP
For writers who want to connect to the joy of words.
In this 5-week workshop we’ll dive into the mind-bending lives of contranyms, homonyms, idioms, slang, and made up words. We’ll write tongue twisters, guess the meaning of extinct words, and explore words we want to use more.
In-Person: Wednesday evenings
Flight paths
A poetry workshop dedicated to playing with forms
Each week, we’ll get busy exploring at least one new form such as Pantoums, Haibuns, Tankas, Golden Shovels, Cinquains, blackout poems, and more. This is a great workshop for people who have previously taken our beginner poetry workshop, Lift Off, but there’s no pre-requisite.
Online: Saturday afternoons
The Life Stories Workshop
A memoir writing workshop for anyone with stories in their heart
A 6-session workshop for people who want to get their life stories out on paper. We’ll work from a new theme every week, writing lots between sessions and sharing deeply.
Online: Monday mornings
Focus and Flow
A writing workshop for busy brains
In this 6-week workshop, we'll experiment with using writing to cultivate flow state as a counterbalance to the state of constant distraction around us. Together we’ll step out of the noise and clear space to hear our own ideas, our own thoughts, our own voices… And then create from there.
Online: Monday mornings
The Art of Revision
A workshop for learning and practicing the process of revising our work
A 6-session workshop that cracks open a new approach to revision, starting with big questions around themes and structure, and then narrowing in on scenes or chapters, and finally line-by-line editing.
Online: Saturday mornings
Keep Your Pen Moving
A wide-reaching writing workshop for beginner and seasoned writers.
This 8-week workshop covers a little bit of everything — life stories, poetry, character development and more. A perfect place to start, or a great follow up to Begin Here.
Online: Wednesday evenings
Tiny Worlds
A writing workshop dedicated to the love of short fiction
Fascinated by short fiction but not sure where to start? This 8-week workshop will cover all the basics to get your first (or 100th) short story written.
Online: Monday afternoons
The Further Shore
A workshop for writing about death, loss and dying
In this 8-week workshop, we’ll use writing as a tool to explore dying, loss, and the bittersweet corners of the experience of mortality. Together, we’ll excavate our feelings and beliefs around this huge topic with honesty and compassion in a community of people who actually want to talk about it too.
Online: Thursday mornings
Stranger Horizons
A speculative fiction workshop devoted to creating otherworldly realities
This 8-week workshop is designed for writers who have a spec fic project started or visioned, and want to get busy writing, imagining and sharing their worlds with others.
Online: Tuesday evenings
The Novel Writing Toolkit
A workshop to help you take your novel idea from seed to scene
In this 12-week workshop, we’ll explore this amazing and expansive form. You’ll leave with a deep picture of what you’re making, some completed scenes, and a new, deeper understanding of the novel form. You’ll also have loads of tools to keep going through the full first draft and into revisions.
Online: Tuesday mornings
The Big One
A deep and wide writing journey for writers ready to hunker right down
Our deepest course ever, this workshop stretches over nine months! To ensure balanced groups with a range of genres and approaches, it’s by application only.
Online: Monday evenings
Applications are closed
Imagine a cabin
A cozy winter writing retreat from home sweet home
Online: Friday January 31st to Sunday February 2nd
Workshops that are closed for registration (and coming back soon!)
Brief Bursts: The Fiction Edition
A workshop about how to write short, fun, untrue things.
In this 5-week workshop, we’ll explore the joy of bite-sized world building and character development. We'll play, imagine, and delete, delete, delete, bringing our ideas into their smallest possible parcels.
Lift Off
A poetry workshop for people who don’t think they are poets
Drawn to poetry but no idea where to start? We made this for you. We’ll spend 6 weeks enjoying poems, writing poems, sharing poems and dismantling everything you’ve been taught in order to bask in the wide field of freedom that poetry offers.
Hearts on Paper
A writing workshop for folks who want to write romances
In this 6-week workshop, a small group of eight writers will dive into different areas of writing romance. From the first meeting (the meet-cute) to steaming up the windows (however explicit you want to get), we’ll talk about plot theory, dive into character development, play with dialogue, and write lots.
Joy Ride
Looking for a pack of pals for a writing adventure?
This workshop is designed as a joy ride of support and productivity to help writers rocket something forward in the fall. It’s for folks who want just enough community and accountability to keep their tanks fuelled and the tunes blaring.
Getting Out of Our Own Way
A writing workshop about loosening the hold of our inner critics
Tired of procrastinating, overwhelm, and doubt? This workshop is for you. Over 8 weeks we’ll examine all the things that hold us back from the writing life we dream of, including fear, ego and the inner critic.
Permission Slip
A workshop for writing as a doorway to softness
This 6-week workshop is a big, bright invitation to change gears, even just for a couple hours. We’ll step out of giving and into receiving, out of doing and into being. We’ll use writing, mindfulness and word-play to come back to our bodies, our hearts and our spirits, and to commit to giving them what they need.
The Fiction Workshop
For fiction writers who want to write and write and write.
An 8-week workshop for writers with a fiction project. We’ll focus on productivity rather than the mechanics of fiction (for that, check out Tiny Worlds).
Rising Tides
A studio-style workshop for anyone longing to lavish a writing project with attention
This 8-week workshop is designed for people with projects on the go, who need a place and a process to get their words down.
Writing Towards the Body
A writing workshop that draws from the body as a source of creativity
An 8-week workshop where we’ll use writing exercises, contemplative practices, and visualization to spark new connections between our physical forms and our creative expression.
Deeper Waters
A writing workshop for projects that are ready to go far
12 weeks to go deep! This season-long workshop is for people with projects on the go or ideas that are ready to be explored and expressed more fully.
Worlds of Words
A workshop for teens to explore their writing voices
A fun and engaging workshop for teens. We’ll explore the freedom of the writing process and focus on building our unique voices and visions.