With over 25 years’ experience, Brit offers reading recommendations, manuscript review, editorial critique, and constructive feedback on poetry and prose projects by writers in various stages of their development. For more information, rates, and availability, please briefly describe the nature of your work and needs by completing the contact form provided.

University of North Carolina Asheville Great Smokies Young Writers Workshop Summer 2026

Creative Writing Pre-College Summer Program for High School Students: Forms of Poetry & Writing Essays, Memoirs & Auto-Fiction

Personal, Lyric, Braided: Writing Essays, Memoirs, & Auto-Fiction: Whether you’re drafting a college essay, translating your personal experience into semi-fictional prose, or telling the story of an important time in your life as only you can tell it, this course will help you hone your craft by focusing on voice, tone, and what makes your first person perspective distinctive and unique. We’ll discuss narrative arc, stakes, language, and the depth of thought and feeling that result in writing that’s compelling, insightful, and potentially transformative—for the reader and writer both. Whether you’re concerned with social, political, or philosophical issues; the human condition, daily life, or affairs of the heart, exploring personal, lyric, and braided essays, memoirs and auto-fiction will support you in developing the skills you need to articulate your experience with power and precision and develop a style that’s all your own. Students will receive feedback from the instructor and fellow writers, revising towards 5-8 pages of prose.

UNCA Great Smokies Writing Program Spring 2026

Portrait of the Artist:

Artists' Statements, Ars Poetica, Manifestos and Self-Portrait Poems

In this generative workshop, we’ll explore artists' statements, the ars poetica, manifestos, and self-portrait poems both philosophically and as literary forms. Readings will include Drafting an Artist Statement, The Poet’s Manifesto: Three Ars Poeticas, and “The Self-Portrait Poem,” by Maggie Queeney, as well “Artistic Statement” by Denise Duhamel, “Ars Poetica” by Archibald MacLeish, James Baldwin’s “Manifesto,” “Things You Didn’t Put on Your Resumé” by Joyce Sutphen, “Self-Portrait with Sylvia Plath’s Braid” by Diane Seuss, “Self-Portrait,” by Edward Hirsch, “Likeness: A Self-Portrait” by Kimiko Hahn, “canvas and mirror, ” by Evie Shockley, and “Skill Set” by Leath Tonino, among others. We’ll take these writers and their works as models, and begin to consider what our bodies of work are “similar to,” what they “often employ” (aspirationally or in fact); what our work is and/or what we hope it to become. We’ll consider the form or forms our work takes or might take, how our identities and backgrounds might or might not inform our work, what we are “drawn to” and “interested in,” and what we believe a poem (story, essay) should (or should not) do/be. We’ll consider who we are and/or what we’ve done or do in addition to or apart from writing; what we love; what we do not like and what we (would) “insist on.” We’ll explore what we “must do” and what our (greatest) responsibilities are—as artists and otherwise. We’ll debrief and share either what we’ve written or what the experience of attempting to write has brought up for us, and how we might go about revising this work and expanding upon it in the future. Whether a fledgling writer or a seasoned veteran, these reflective exercises are bound to support you in orienting yourself according to where you are, where you've been, and where you're going as an artist.

Great Smokies Writing Program Fall 2023

https://greatsmokies.unca.edu/fall-2023-classes/

Instructor: Brit Washburn
Meets in-person at UNC Asheville, Karpen Hall, Room 243

Thursday evenings starting 10/19, 6:00-8:30 

Nobel Laureate Louise Gluck has said, “I started working on something and it was really bad, it was crummy, but I was really so happy just to be working on a little crummy thing.” Even as our anxieties, our preoccupations with fear and regret, can dominate our consciousness, so too, can our preoccupations with creative work, but for the better. The practice of fiddling with “crummy little things”—on the page, or in our heads—can serve as salve and salvation in times that might otherwise be characterized by psychic anguish. In this workshop, we will explore the life-giving, life-sustaining nature of poetry as both readers and writers through the close examination of texts and exercises in observation, composition, and revision, as well as the sheer pleasure of the process and practice of writing itself. Readings will include work by Gluck, as well as Matthew Arnold, W.H. Auden, Wendell Berry, Hayden Carruth, and others. 

Register with University of North Carolina