Lydi Conklin has received a Stegner Fellowship, four Pushcart Prizes, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, a Creative Writing Fulbright in Poland, a grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation, and fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, Bread Loaf, Sewanee, Emory, Hedgebrook, Djerassi, the James Merrill House, Lighthouse Works, and elsewhere. Their fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, One Story, McSweeney’s, American Short Fiction, and VQR. They have drawn cartoons for The New Yorker and Narrative Magazine, and graphic fiction for The Believer, Lenny Letter, and the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago. They’ve served as the Helen Zell Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan and are now an Assistant Professor of Fiction at Vanderbilt University.

Their story collection, Rainbow Rainbow, was longlisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Award and The Story Prize. Their novel, Songs of No Provenance, was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize.

Instructor Website

Workshops

Mining Your Stories Writing Retreat

• Generative Fiction Workshop
• Manuscript Consultations (by appointment for retreat participants)

Tamara Dean is an author of fiction and nonfiction whose most recent book, Shelter and Storm: At Home in the Driftless (University of Minnesota Press, 2025), weaves science and history into true tales of discovery that urge readers to live mindfully with nature and community in a time of uncertainty. Her essays have appeared in The American Scholar, The Georgia Review, the Guardian, Orion, The Progressive, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. “Safer Than Childbirth” received a 2024 Pushcart Prize Special Mention and “Slow Blues” was named a 2021 National Magazine Award finalist. She teaches workshops independently and with writing centers such as Hugo House, The Loft, Madison Writers’ Studio, and writers.com.

Instructor Website

Workshops

Mining Your Stories Writing Retreat

• Adding Dimensions to Creative Nonfiction
• Manuscript Consultations (by appointment for retreat participants)

Dasha Kelly is a writer, performance artist and creative change agent. She has authored award-winning poetry, essays and fiction. She is a mainstage storyteller and host with The Moth, an alum of HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, Poet Laureate Emerita for both the City of Milwaukee and the State of Wisconsin and a National Laureate Fellow with the American Academy of Poets. In 2024, Dasha was named a Living Legacy Honoree by the licensing agency for the legendary poet Gwendolyn Brooks.

A skilled engagement practitioner and instructor, Dasha has facilitated initiatives in Botswana, Mauritius and Beirut as an Arts Envoy for the U.S. Embassy. Her nationally-touring stage show, Makin’ Cake, serves audiences a unique conversation on race, class and equity. Her nonprofit literary arts organization, Still Waters Collective, recently celebrated its 25th anniversary.

Dasha’s recent releases are a poetry anthology, A Line Meant (Jaded Ibis Press), a 10th anniversary reprint of Almost Crimson (Traitmarker Books), and a new novel, Baker’s Dozen (Jaded Ibis).

Instructor Website

Workshops

Mining Your Stories Writing Retreat

• A Line Meant Poetry Workshop
• Manuscript Consultations (by appointment for retreat participants)

Han Raschka is a Pushcart-nominated feminist poet whose work focuses on personal and collective traumas, resilience, and queer existence. They have been published in various periodicals such as Anti-Heroin Chic, Eunoia Review, The Lake County Bloom, and CERASUS Magazine, among others. Their first collection, Splinters (Collapse Press) was released in 2022 and was nominated for the Edna Meudt Poetry Book Award. In 2023, they released a chapbook, Enamel (Bottlecap Press). They are the 2024 second place winner for the Wisconsin People and Ideas Contest. Han was a 2023 finalist for the Charles M. Hart Jr. Award and a 2024 finalist for the Therese Muller Memorial Nonfiction Award at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where they study creative writing. They currently reside in Madison, WI with their fiancée.

Instructor Website

Workshops

Mining Your Stories Writing Retreat

Drag Queens and Car Crashes: The “Big Turn”

Adam al-Sirgany is an Arab-American writer and editor, born and raised in the Driftless Midwest. He holds degrees in Creative Writing from Knox College, the University of Arizona, and Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Adam teaches Developmental Editing for the UCLA Extension Program in Writing, Editing, and Publishing. He serves as the Acquisitions & Developmental Editor for the independent press SFWP. His debut short story collection, More Hell, was published by Whiskey Tit Press in 2025.

Instructor Website

Workshops

Mining Your Stories Writing Retreat

• Don’t Shoot Yourself in the Foot: Submitting Your Book with an Editor’s Eye
• Manuscript Consultations (by appointment for retreat participants)