Have you ever dreamed of writing a book, polishing a poem, sharpening your reporting skills or simply learning how to turn a scattered idea into a compelling story? A series of free monthly writing workshops hosted by NAU’s Thin Air Magazine might help you do just that.
The literary magazine run by creative writing master’s students has been hosting writing workshops since May 2025. Their goal: to provide a space where students, faculty, staff and community members can get together, practice writing and learn new skills with different themes, guests and locations in Flagstaff.
Danielle Hedquist, a creative writing master’s student and community director at Thin Air, said the workshops are designed for anyone eager to grow on the page.
“Our last workshop was on comedy writing through improvisation, led by local improv performer and artist Bryan Cooperrider at the Beaver Street Theater,” said Hedquist. “It was a great time! Bryan led us through some improv exercises that had us think about ways that we discover characters, backstories and plot in our writing. We discussed the element of surprise both in performance and in writing to create intrigue in our stories. In between improv activities, the workshop participants had time to write in response to them.”
Keegan Grau, a physics senior, attended the workshop and said it was a fascinating and fun way to learn how to apply improvisation knowledge to his writing.
The workshops run for about two hours. Hedquist said that people take away different approaches to creative writing based on the different prompts and exercises they work on.
“We have had very informative workshops,” she said. “We had a developmental editor give a talk on what developmental editing is and what that could look like as a career path for people interested in editing or what that looks like for people who are trying to get their work published but need some extra help. We try to cover a lot of themes to help writers break patterns of thinking and help them generate new ideas.”
The next workshop on nature writing is scheduled 4:30-6:30 p.m. on March 31, (location TBD) with science writer Melissa Sevigny. Two workshops are scheduled for April; the first one will cover comics and will be hosted by Geetha Iyer, assistant professor at the English Department (date and location TBD). The second, a workshop on the science of storytelling, will be hosted by Mare Schumacher from 5:30-7:30 p.m. April 28, at Lowell Observatory.
“We’re trying to get the word out because we would love for more people to attend and learn about Thin Air and just have fun with creative writing,” Hedquist said.
For more information about the magazine and its workshops, please visit the Thin Air website.
Mariana Laas | NAU Communications
(928) 523-5050 | mariana.laas@nau.edu