IN PERSON - Sentence Craft
2-day Intensive | Friday, June 12 & Saturday, June 13, 2026
10am-3pm MT
Instructor: Scott Repass
MEMBER PRICE: $165.00
NON-MEMBER PRICE: $220.00
The sentence is the building block from which all stories are made, whether short flash fiction or a full-length novel. In this two-day intensive workshop, we’ll slow down and study the sentence on its own terms. Through close readings of work by masters of prose like Michael Ondaatje, Alice Monroe, James Salter, and Annie Proulx, we’ll explore what gives a sentence its shape, clarity, and strength—and how we can apply those techniques in our own writing. We will develop an appreciation for the impact attention to the sentence can have on the larger work.
While most workshops focus on larger elements like plot, structure, or theme, in this one, we’ll turn our attention to the sentence itself. We’ll look at how choices in diction, syntax, rhythm, and sound affect how a sentence works. In-class exercises will include writing new sentences and reworking old ones, both through generative prompts and revision practice. Writers will leave with a deeper understanding of the sentence as a tool—and how to use it with care and control.
This class is open to writers of all skill levels and in all genres.
This class takes place IN PERSON at the Alexandra Writers Centre Society in Calgary.
Scott Repass has been a bar owner, a bartender, a teacher, a carpenter, and a barista. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Houston and an MA in American Studies from the City University of New York. His fiction and non-fiction has appeared in Film Quarterly, Literature/Film Quarterly, Houston and Nomadic Voices, The Heartland Review, and Fort Necessity. His novel Last Call Lounge was co-winner of the 2012 Houston Writers Guild Novel Contest. Scott currently lives in Houston where he and his wife own Poison Girl, the best bar on the planet.
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