In this 90-minute session led by writer Sara Reish Desmond, you'll consider the significance of place in your writing. How does it serve and shape a narrative, how does it function like its own character? In this generative writing session, we'll explore the idea of place by engaging with various prompts and taking a look at examples by writers who do it so well.
This class is intended for writers of all genres and experience levels.
About Sara
Sara Reish Desmond’s debut short story collection, WHAT WE MIGHT BECOME, won the Storytrade Award in short fiction as well as an Independent Publishers Award. The 11 stories within the collection center on liminal characters and experiences: adolescence, grief, loss, becoming. Sara’s stories have appeared in The Kenyon Review, Los Angeles Review, Water~Stone Review, Cutthroat, Front Porch and elsewhere. Sara earned her MFA in fiction from Vermont College of Fine Arts and was the 2025-2026 Gish Jen Fellow at Writer’s Room of Boston. She is at work on a novel and a new collection of fiction centering on violence in America. She teaches regularly and writes in a very old house just north of Boston. You can learn more at her website: https://sarareishdesmond.com
We are grateful to Sara for supporting this fundraiser benefitting the Newburyport Literary Association
and its 22nd Newburyport Literary Festival on April 23–25, 2027.