ONLINE Writing Ghost Stories: Crafting Spooky Yet Deeply Human Tales
8 weeks | Thursdays | Begins April 23, 2026
5:30pm-7:30pm PT | 6:30pm-8:30pm MT | 7:30pm-9:30pm CT | 8:30pm-10:30pm ET
Instructor: Mimi Manyin
AWCS Members: $320
Non-Members: $400
In this spine-tingling and thought-provoking course, we’ll explore ghosts and hauntings in classic and contemporary literature, unlocking hidden tales of longing, suffering, injustice, and loss. We’ll read supernatural tales by Charles Dickens, M.R. James, Shirley Jackson, Karen Russell, Mariana Enriquez, and Morgan Talty, among others, and examine how they connect the dead and the living to express grief, guilt, fear, horror, trauma, and desires. Through close reading, analysis of literary techniques and themes, and generative writing exercises, you’ll learn to write uncanny ghost stories that are both entertaining and meaningful.
This is an interactive online class using the Zoom web platform.
Mimi Manyin is an award-winning writer, editor, and Gothic scholar. Her fiction has been published in Ploughshares, Witness, Michigan Quarterly Review, Meridian, Greensboro Review, Hemingway Shorts, Fractured Lit, and elsewhere, and is forthcoming in Bennington Review. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. She has also received support from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Tin House Summer Workshop, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and Kenyon Review Writers Workshop. Mimi enjoys using ghost stories to explore human emotions and longings, and she has presented academic papers on Gothic Horror, Shirley Jackson, and Indigenous Gothic. She also enjoys hosting Silent Reading Parties and Silent Writing Parties, where she improvises on the piano to set the mood for reading and writing. To learn more about her work, visit https://mimimanyin.com/ or connect with her on Instagram @MimiManyin.
