Classes — Jessica Franken

Writing communities & classes

Generative writing communities will return in summer 2025.

Generative Writing 1

BEGIN BY BEGINNING
This is not a classroom. This is a nurse log—a mossy, fecund medium to generate new life. Daily writing prompts, weekly raw-work sharing, readings, and discussions. A playful space to take your art seriously.
A four-week guided artistic community. Online and asynchronous.
Flash Nonfiction

COMPRESS, TRANSGRESS
A generative space for play with short-form creative nonfiction. We’ll explore voice, form, image, and more with daily writing prompts, work sharing, readings, and discussion.
A four-week guided artistic community. Online and asynchronous.
Generative Writing 2

AUDACITY, EMBODIMENT
Later, the time will come for peer critique. For the tenth revision, the fact check. Now, we play! Turn off your critical mind and generate. Writing prompts, discussions, and readings to spark ideas.
A four-week guided artistic community. Online and asynchronous.
Fine Fragments

LET’S GET EXTRALITERARY
A generative space to explore zuihitsu, crônicas, observations, collages, casual list-making, looseness, dailiness, jumbles, found text, spontaneous scribbles, and other associative forms and nonforms.
A four-week guided artistic community. Online and asynchronous.
Generative Writing 3

AN END-OF-YEAR CONVENING
A gift for Future You—the one with the writing resolutions. When you sit down in January, ready to work, you won’t start from scratch. December You generated a bounty of seeds, waiting to sprout.
A four-week guided artistic community. Online and asynchronous.

Jessica’s teaching is brilliant, playful, sensitive and welcoming. Her generative convening was pure magic. It helped me write lots of new work, make progress on long-term projects, and feel a wonderful sense of community with fellow writers.

Generative Writing participant
Jess is such a brilliant, thoughtful holder of space for writing. She provided the perfect balance of structure and open-endedness, craft guidance and ease -- ultimately fueling SO MUCH writing and fostering a warm, supportive community.

Generative Writing participant
Jessica Franken is a remarkable facilitator, curator, and creative guide. Her generative writing course helped me reestablish my daily writing practice, reinvigorate my work, and break new aesthetic ground. The creative community she cultivated was deeply supportive and caring while maintaining a high level of craft and rigor. She created an incredibly fertile artistic environment that’s nurtured my whole artistic self.

Generative Writing participant
I came into this month extremely cranky and blocked and dreading my writing. I left this month feeling powerful, creative.

Generative Writing participant

Writing communities & classes

Generative Writing 1

Flash Nonfiction

Generative Writing 2

Fine Fragments

Generative Writing 3

Jessica’s teaching is brilliant, playful, sensitive and welcoming. Her generative convening was pure magic. It helped me write lots of new work, make progress on long-term projects, and feel a wonderful sense of community with fellow writers.

Jess is such a brilliant, thoughtful holder of space for writing. She provided the perfect balance of structure and open-endedness, craft guidance and ease -- ultimately fueling SO MUCH writing and fostering a warm, supportive community.

I came into this month extremely cranky and blocked and dreading my writing. I left this month feeling powerful, creative.