Tuesday evenings from 6:30-8:30pm at Story Parlor
9/14, 9/21, 9/28, 10/5, 10/12
Facilitated by: Bruce Spang
Early bird $275 | Register by August 14, 2026 (discount applied at checkout)
Regular Price $299 | Effective August 15, 2026
Space is LIMITED to ensure an intimate experience. We recommend signing up early!
Refund and other policies can be found here.
In this five-week workshop, Poet Laureate and Author Bruce Spang will demonstrate different ways to focus your narrative to bring each scene to life. The lessons will look at the arc of every scene and how each one leads to the next through contrast or continuity. Each participant will delve into character, teasing out the mystery behind every action and interaction. By the end of this workshop, you will know how to confidently build a story from the inside out.
Each week, participants will present 1 - 2 single-spaced pages for review. Brice will give each one his personal attention and provide preliminary feedback prior to the class. During class, participants will discuss scenes and use writing prompts to enhance them.
This workshop/class is the second one on narrative writing. Anyone who writes a story in any genre is eligible. Advanced and beginning writers are welcome and will appreciate the lessons.
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Bruce Spang, former Poet Laureate of Portland, is the author of three novels, The River Crossed (2024), The Deception of the Thrush, and memoir No Way Back: A Young Man’s Search for Home (2026).
He has also published six poetry books, including Twist (2025), All You’ll Derive: A Caregiver’s Journey, To the Promised Land Grocery, and Boy at the Screen Door (Moon Pie Press), along with several anthologies and chapbooks.
His new book of letters with his friend Peter Orne, Dear Teen, Dear Poet: A Coming of Age in Letters, is scheduled for release in 2026.
He is a poetry editor of the Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine and staff Writer for the Asheville Poetry Review. His poems have been published in Connecticut River Review, Puckerbrush Review, Red Rover Magazine, Great Smokies Review, Kalopsia Literary Journal, Café Review, Sand Hills Literary Magazine, and other journals across the United States.
He teaches courses in fiction and poetry at the Great Smokies Writing Program at the University of North Carolina in Asheville and lives in Candler, NC, with his husband, Myles Rightmire, and their three dogs, five fish, and twenty birds.