MWC Press wishes you happy reading this holiday season! To celebrate, we’re selling all the titles below for just $7 (including shipping). Click on the cover image to open the purchase link (please note – you do not need a PayPal account to order):
Announcing the selections for the 2025 Foster-Stahl Chapbook Series
MWC Press, the publishing imprint of The Midwest Writing Center, announces the latest selections in its Foster-Stahl Chapbook Series, which features exciting poetry, prose, and hybrid work from around the Midwest. Two manuscripts have been selected for publication:
Un-Difficulting Poetry: A Reading & Writing Workshop
If you have ever thought poetry is “difficult” or “hard” in some way you couldn’t quite place, the Midwest Writing Center has just the thing: a reading and writing workshop focused on identifying, reading through, and working with different kinds of “difficulty” in a four-week workshop series facilitated by poet and MWC Executive Director Ryan Collins.
The workshop will ground itself in the essay “On Difficulty in Poetry” by the seminal American poet Reginald Shepherd (1963-2008), which breaks difficulty in poetry down into several categories (lexical, allusive, syntactical, semantic, formal, modal). Each week, we will look at 1-2 of these categories of difficulty, while reading poems that demonstrate them. We will discuss the Shepherd essay, the sample poems, and try writing our own work using the understandings we arrive at via our readings, discussions, and experience.
Memory Keepers: Next Meeting Thursday 10/22 at Butterworth Center
One of the greatest gifts you can give to your children and future generations is to keep your family stories alive. Please join our new Memory Keepers Group as we come together with a common interest and goal to preserve our family stories through the written word.
The next meeting will be Thursday, July 16 from 1:00-2:30pm at Butterworth Center, 1105 8th St., Moline, IL (new graphic coming soon).
YA First Pages Workshop with Stephanie Guerra
The Midwest Writing Center is hosting a writing class on YA novels, led by author Stephanie Guerra. This workshop will support the creation of books for teens and help writers to better understand how to write gripping openings for YA novels.
This two-hour workshop will focus on the craft of writing the first five pages of a YA novel. Through instruction, demonstration, reading analysis, group discussion, and generative writing, participants will work through how to establish compelling plot hooks in the first five pages of a YA novel.
This workshop also includes manuscript review from instructor and children’s author Stephanie Guerra. Participants may send the first five pages of their YA manuscript any time in the two weeks following the workshop in order to receive feedback.