Tom Laichas is author of Three Hundred Streets of Venice California (FutureCycle Press, 2023), Sixty-Three Photographs at the End of a War (3.1 Press, 2021), and Empire of Eden (The High Window Press, 2019). He holds a Ph.D. in History from UCLA, and taught U.S. and world history courses for over thirty years at the high school and college levels. His recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Plume, The Los Angeles Times, The Irish Times, Blue Unicorn, and elsewhere. The featured American poet at the High Window Review (UK), his work has also won awards from Jabberwock Review, Puerto del Sol, and Prime 53. He lives with his family in Venice, California.

Lynne Thompson was Los Angeles’ 4th Poet Laureate and received a Poet Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets. In 2024, She represented the City of Los Angeles at the Marathon Poétique at the Paris Olympic Games. Thompson is the author of four collections of poetry: Beg No Pardon, winner of the Perugia Press Prize and the Great Lakes Colleges Associations New Writers Award; Start With A Small Guitar (What Books Press); Fretwork, winner of the 2019 Marsh Hawk Poetry Prize selected by Jane Hirshfield; and, Blue on a Blue Palette, published by BOA Editions in April 2024. The recipient of multiple awards, Thompson has taught for the University of Reno Low Residency Program, Napa Valley Writers Conference, and the Central Coast Writers Conference, among others. Recent work appears in Best American Poetry, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares and the anthology Dear Yusef: Essays, Letters and Poems For and About One Mr. Komunyakaa, to name a few. A lawyer by training, Thompson serves on the Boards of The Poetry Foundation and the Los Angeles Review of Books and is the current President of Cave Canem.

Handouts will be issued in conjunction with the workshop with the expectation that students will read in advance and participate in class discussions.

For Lynne Thompson’s workshop: The Making of a Poem (edited by Mark Strand and Eavan Boland), Personal Best (edited by Erin Belieu and Carl Phillips), and any volume of Best American Poetry (pay particular attention to the poets’ comments following the poems).

We will be introducing a new schedule for Writer’s Week 2026! All workshops will begin at 9AM and include a lunch break from 12-1PM, concluding the day at 4PM.

Included in the week-long programming, we will be hosting featured events such as Craft Talks and Lectures. These will be hosted twice a day: the first session starting at 2:30PM and the second session at 7:30PM.

On Wednesday, we will have a rest period. During this time, you will be able to attend optional sessions, an afternoon open mic, and Beat Nite at Middle Ridge Winery and Galleries in Idyllwild’s town center!

Julia Ingalls‘ stories, essays, reviews, and other work regularly appear in Guernica, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Los Angeles Times, Salon, BOOM California, Crimereads, KCRW, and Dwell, among other publications, anthologies, and public radio programs. Her in-person literary reading series, “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere,” has received rave reviews in The Los Angeles Times and The L.A. Weekly, and features emerging and established novelists, poets, essayists, graphic novelists, and short story writers. As a moderator and host, she relishes facilitating in-depth discussions of books and the ever-evolving role of literature in our contemporary society.

A week before class begins, please email the draft of a personal essay, memoir, or an idea for a subject you’d like to write about to subtextdesign@gmail.com. For the first day of our workshop, please bring something with which to write (a pen and paper is preferable).

We will be introducing a new schedule for Writer’s Week 2026! All workshops will begin at 9AM and include a lunch break from 12-1PM, concluding the day at 4PM.

Included in the week-long programming, we will be hosting featured events such as Craft Talks and Lectures. These will be hosted twice a day: the first session starting at 2:30PM and the second session at 7:30PM.

On Wednesday, we will have a rest period. During this time, you will be able to attend optional sessions, an afternoon open mic, and Beat Nite at Middle Ridge Winery and Galleries in Idyllwild’s town center!

I will create a packet (in PDF form) for each class that features relevant examples of excellence from a diverse group of writers. We will review the readings from the packets in class together.

Esinam Bediako is a Ghanaian American writer from Detroit. She is the author of the Ann Petry Award-winning novel, Blood on the Brain (Red Hen Press, 2024), as well as the essay/poetry chapbook, Self-Talk (Porkbelly Press, 2025). Her work has appeared in Porter House Review, Cathexis Northwest Press, Great River Review, North American Review, and Southern Humanities Review. She has worked as a high school English teacher and administrator, a creative writing and journalism instructor, a textbook editor, and, during one nerve-wracking summer, a pharmacy technician. Esi writes and edits for the Spondylitis Association of America, a nonprofit supporting people with spondylitis, a chronic inflammatory spine condition. She lives with her family in Claremont, CA.

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The lab fee covers all course readings and handouts.

A laptop or notebook and writing utensil for in-class activities.

We will be introducing a new schedule for Writer’s Week 2026! All workshops will begin at 9AM and include a lunch break from 12-1PM, concluding the day at 4PM.

Included in the week-long programming, we will be hosting featured events such as Craft Talks and Lectures. These will be hosted twice a day: the first session starting at 2:30PM and the second session at 7:30PM.

On Wednesday, we will have a rest period. During this time, you will be able to attend optional sessions, an afternoon open mic, and Beat Nite at Middle Ridge Winery and Galleries in Idyllwild’s town center!

No portfolio required. Open to all levels, from enthusiastic beginners to emerging and established writers.

Brendan Constantine is a poet based in Los Angeles. His work has appeared in many standards, including Poetry, The Nation, Best American Poetry, Tin House, Ploughshares, and Poem-a-Day.  A popular performer, Brendan has presented his work to audiences throughout the U.S. and Europe, also appearing on NPR’s All Things Considered, TED ED, numerous podcasts, and YouTube. He currently teaches at the Windward School, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Midnight Mission. Since 2017 he has been developing workshops for writer living with Aphasia and Traumatic Brain Injuries. His fifth collection of poems, ‘The Opposites Game,’ is forthcoming 2026 from Red Hen Press.

The lab fee covers all workshop materials and printed handouts

Bring your preferred means of writing – pen and paper, laptop, etc.

Poetry:

• Fear, Some by Douglas Kearney (Red Hen Press)
• Alive Together by Lisel Mueller (Louisianna State University Press)
• Selected Poems of Gwendolyn Brooks (Harper Perennial)
• Song by Brigit Pegeen Kelly (Boa Editions)
• The Oblivion HA-HA by James Tate (Carnegie Mellon)
• Cold Pluto by Mary Ruefle (Carnegie Mellon)

On Writing Poetry:

• The Uncertain Certainty by Charles Simic (University of Michigan Press)
• Glitter in the Blood by Mindy Nettifee (Write Bloody Publishing)
• Figures of Thought by Howard Nemerov (D.R. Godine)

We will be introducing a new schedule for Writer’s Week 2026! All workshops will begin at 9AM and include a lunch break from 12-1PM, concluding the day at 4PM.

Included in the week-long programming, we will be hosting featured events such as Craft Talks and Lectures. These will be hosted twice a day: the first session starting at 2:30PM and the second session at 7:30PM.

On Wednesday, we will have a rest period. During this time, you will be able to attend optional sessions, an afternoon open mic, and Beat Nite at Middle Ridge Winery and Galleries in Idyllwild’s town center!