Teaching

Ryan teaches classes on creativity, mix-genre writing, and poetry to students of various ages. He works as a workshop instructor and facilitator through The Porch, a Nashville-based literary community center. He designed and taught introductory and intermediate undergraduate courses as a Graduate Teaching Assistant and Adjunct Professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. He worked with students ages 6-12 at the Northwestern University Center for Talent Development.

Community, self-advocacy, self-care, and cultivating curiosity are all critical to my pedagogy. I hope that when students feel that their voices are the focus of our work in the classroom, they feel welcomed regardless of their race, gender, neurodivergence, or any other multitude they contain. As a workshop facilitator, I serve as a translator connecting the student’s work to their readers. I want my students to consider me an advocate who guides them through self-discovery as writers, rather than the arbitrator of craft-related doctrine. I want them to feel comfortable and confident, and able to speak authentically with me and each other.

“Teaching is a performative act. And it is that aspect of our work that offers the space for change, invention, spontaneous shifts, that can serve as a catalyst drawing out the unique elements in each classroom.”

— bell hooks

Upcoming Classes

April is the Coolest Month: A Poetry Writing Challenge

Tuesdays, April 1st -April 22nd

6:00 - 8:00 PM CT

We're Doomed: Using the Droids in STAR WARS to Craft Good Sidekicks

Sunday, May 4th, 2:00 - 4:00 PM CT

April is National Poetry Month, a perfect time to write poems! In this four-session course, you’ll be challenged to draft one new poem each week for an entire month. We’ll do so as a community, holding each other accountable for writing consistently and forming weekly habits. Each week, you’ll have the chance to share work with your peers and receive feedback in “mini-workshop” conversations. Through writing exercises and reading examples, we’ll discuss where to find inspiration and how to stay motivated every week despite our busy lives. This course is perfect for anyone looking for the motivation to write poems more often with the support of other writers looking to do the same.

May the Fourth be with you! Even if you aren’t a Star Wars mega-fan, you’re probably familiar with the universe’s two most iconic robotic sidekicks: R2D2 and C3PO. What makes these two goofballs so memorable? How do their small roles help our heroes solve galaxy-sized conflicts? In this class, we’ll discuss what makes these droids perfect secondary characters and why they are crucial to the narrative of the original Star Wars trilogy. Through movie clips and generative prompts, you’ll learn to craft sidekicks that give your protagonists depth and propel your plots to new heights.

Writers of all levels and all genres are welcome, and you don’t need to have seen any Star Wars media to enjoy this class. You’ll be able to apply these lessons to any storytelling, not just stories set in a galaxy far far away.

Previous Classes

How to Write a Love Poem

Virtual Workshop @ The Porch
Tuesday, Feb 4th, 2025
Just in time for Valentine's Day, this one-day workshop will guide you through the art of expressing love through poetry. Whether you're writing for a partner, family member, or friend, we'll explore techniques to capture affection in its many forms—romantic, platonic, or familial. You’ll learn how to avoid clichés, embrace vulnerability, and craft heartfelt poems that speak to the unique connections in your life. Through writing exercises and reading examples from classic and contemporary poets, this class will help you tap into your emotions and shape them into a poem that feels both personal and universal. No prior experience with poetry necessary—just bring your heart and pen!
Borrowing from the Neighbors: Poetry Through the Lens of Other Forms of Art

Virtual Workshop @ The Porch
Oct 30th - Nov 20th 2024
Poetry is an ancient art form dating back to some of our most ancient civilizations. In ancient Greece, poetic epics weren’t just read, they were performed to huge crowds in banquet halls and set to music. There is a kind of magic that connects everything to poetry. All this is to say: you already know more about poetry than you might think. By looking at poetry through the lens of other types of art you might find more familiar, we can get at what all art has in common, and what makes poetry unique. You are already a poet; this class will just help you learn how to harness it.
In each session of this four-week course, we will explore poetry through the lens of a different art form (drama, storytelling, visual art, and music). We’ll use these frameworks to sift through poems of contemporary writers such as Matthew Olzmann, Layli Long Soldier, and Courtney Lamar Charleston for “non-poetic” techniques that make their writing more vibrant. Then, we’ll try our hands at these techniques in our own poetry through in-class generative writing and revision prompts.
Poetry As Witness

Virtual Workshop @ The Porch
July 20th, 2024
In 1993, the poet Carolyn Forché coined the phrase “poetry of witness” to describe a kind of writing that marries the urgency of “political” writing with the depth of “personal” writing. These days, the amount of hardship we can see—down the street, in another state, across the ocean—can be overwhelming. It feels like everything is happening everywhere all at once. What does it mean to bear witness to the world around us? How do we resist the urge to crawl into a hole and hide? How can poetry help us make something beautiful out of the darkness? We’ll explore these questions as we look at poems by Forché and other contemporary writers. Then, we’ll try crafting the beginnings of our own “poetry of witness” through a series of generative prompts.