“…it is our dreams that point the way to freedom. They are made realizable through our poems that give us the strength and courage to see, to feel, to speak, and to dare.”
—Audre Lorde, “Poetry Is Not a Luxury”
Welcome to The Dream Side
We are friends and writers who want to enter the act of creation from the dream side. Our dream is a collaboration that allows us to teach, learn, and grow together. We want to share with you the ideas, strategies, and approaches that have deepened our own writing practices, while providing opportunities to foster artistic friendships of your own. More than a writing course, The Dream Side offers a new entry into your writing practice, and encourages living creative communities. We want to invite you into the wilderness of creation and share with you the resources that will allow you to play fearlessly there.
We offer retreats and courses, both in-person and online, that create a protected space for you to take risks and generate new work, revitalize, nurture, and deepen your creative life, and help you become the writer you dream of being.
You may be an experienced writer. You may have only begun to explore this side of yourself. You might be somewhere in between. See you on The Dream Side.
Beliefs and Principles
We believe that there are as many ways to create a meaningful piece of writing as there are writers themselves. We believe that craft exists to give shape to the wildness of our dreaming. We believe that the act of writing is the act of paying attention: it is not trivial, but joyously essential. We believe that we work best entangled in the world and embedded in community. We prioritize curiosity, openness, and kindness. We practice generosity toward ourselves and others. We believe exercising our imaginations is necessary for societal change. And we are guided by playfulness and pleasure. Dreaming is hard, fun work.
Our teaching philosophy is inspired by June Jordan's Poetry for the People, Ruth Asawa’s community art engagements, Liz Lerman's “Critical Response Process,” and our own experiences as working artists and perennial students. Our offerings are unique, exploratory events that aim to inspire connection to yourself, one another, and the wider world.
“Every day is a reenactment of the creation story. We emerge from dense unspeakable material, through the shimmering power of dreaming stuff.”
—Joy Harjo, “A Postcolonial Tale”
The Dream Side is...
Meng is drawn to fiction with surprising, elegant shapes and stylish, direct sentences. She is an omnivorous reader, with tastes ranging from the documentary novels of Annie Ernaux to the fantastical worlds of Octavia Butler, an ardent admirer of poetry and a follower of Ursula K Le Guin’s “clear, clean line.” Unfortunately for her writing, she loves writing about writing (metafictions, art criticism and ars poetica, translation theory, etc). However this is fortunate for her teaching; she is often thinking about why and how we write.
Rachel is interested in the imaginative impulse that brings to being what has never existed before: whether a home-cooked meal or piece of fiction. Imagination isn’t reserved for fiction: it shapes our realities, and ultimately our world. She believes it’s imperative to practice it—ideally together. She brings her experience in space- and community-building to The Dream Side. She’s fascinated by the often contradictory foundations of art: surrender and discipline, pleasure and devotion, the mystical and practical, solitude and community.
Susanna is drawn to the connections between forms: words in a sentence, people in a city, water and land. Relationships are sites teeming with history, tension, possibility, and shape—all of which she sees as essential and thrilling elements of a written work. She’s also interested in creativity as a shifting practice of engaging with the shifting world. In her teaching, she hopes to help students cultivate their attention to that unstable world, explore interconnectedness, and move toward mystery.
As a writer and a teacher, Shruti is interested in exploring the edge between dream and reality—the world of the unconscious brought into the conscious world of language. In her own work, that’s led her to thinking about non-linear forms of storytelling. She is currently years into exploring the possibilities of the spiral as a literary form. Shruti’s background in yoga and meditation has also sparked an interest in writing as both a physical and a spiritual practice, explored through workshops that draw from the lived experience of the body.
“Everything dreams. The play of form, of being, is the dreaming of substance. Rocks have their dreams, and the earth changes.”
—Ursula K Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven
Current Offerings
September 19–20, 2026 (online)
Rewilding Craft: A Generative Writing Retreat
October 5–November 9, 2026 (online)
The Practice of Imagination: a six-week
generative course with Rachel Khong
January 2027–December 2027 [Now accepting applications]
Yes, Molecule: A 12-Month Online Novel Generator
January 2026–December 2026 [Applications Closed]
Yes, Molecule: A 12-Month Online Novel Generator
Past Offerings
March 29–April 3, 2026 in Oregon
Green Hours: A Five-Night Retreat
August 9–10, 2025 in San Francisco
Rewilding Craft: A Generative Writing Retreat
Interested in future offerings? Subscribe to our newsletter
Rewilding Craft: An Online Generative Writing Retreat
September 19 & 20, 2026
9:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. PT / 12 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. ET
Online (Zoom)
What are the essential elements of the craft of fiction? What makes a story come to life in a writer’s imagination, then enter the world as a living, breathing thing? At our online weekend retreat designed for writers of all levels, we reframe these questions to explore the elemental forces driving our need to tell and consume stories. Instead of traditional craft topics such as character, plot, structure, or point of view, we examine DESIRE, IMAGINATION, WILDERNESS, and WEATHER as your basic survival kit for rewilding craft, and telling stories that are urgent and alive.
“Rewilding” a landscape means restoring conditions for its vitality and growth; Rewilding Craft explores how we might recover our relationship to our own inherent creative vitality. Feeling stuck on a project, uninspired, or disconnected from your writing practice? Interested in trying something different? Come reconnect with your writing practice and your creative self.
First offered as a sold-out in-person retreat in San Francisco in summer 2025, The Dream Side is excited to present this accessible, online version with the same focus on craft and community building. In addition to four generative classes, there will be opportunities for structured social and writing time.
This is an offering from The Dream Side, co-led and co-taught by award-winning and bestselling authors Meng Jin, Rachel Khong, Susanna Kwan, and Shruti Swamy. Learn more about your instructors here.
Schedule
Saturday, September 19
9 to 10:30 a.m. IMAGINATION taught by Rachel Khong
Optional breakout rooms for quiet writing or socializing
12 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. DESIRE taught by Meng Jin
Sunday, September 20
9 to 10:30 a.m. WILDERNESS taught by Shruti Swamy
Optional breakout rooms for quiet writing or socializing
12 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. WEATHER taught by Susanna Kwan
1:30 p.m. to 1:45 p.m. Goodbye & parting words
By attending this retreat, you will:
- Learn unconventional approaches to fiction writing from four working writers, inspired by our own creative practices
- Generate pages of new writing with specific guided prompts
- Connect with curious and thoughtful community
- Jumpstart a new project, revitalize a stalling project
- Play, step out of your comfort zone, and take creative risks
- Come away with lasting tools to sustain a creative life
Retreat fee
Full price: $300
Scholarship rate: $100
Deadline to register: September 12
If the full price would be a financial barrier for you, please feel free to select the scholarship option—no questions asked. We trust you to choose what feels right based on your circumstances.
We are committed to making this accessible for all who wish to join, so if the scholarship rate is out of reach, please contact us at hello AT thedreamside.com! No one will be turned away for lack of funds.
Register at full price
Testimonials
“This was my first experience doing a writing retreat of any kind, and it exceeded my expectations. The Dream Side brought together such a wide-ranging group of writers, whose backgrounds and experiences led to a very communal and eclectic atmosphere. The lectures were a major highlight... THANK YOU for reminding me why I do this.”
—Rewilding Craft 2025 participant
“I loved this retreat so much and I had a great time! The retreat was the perfect balance of lecture, individual writing time, and socializing. The craft talks were all so thoughtful and inspiring and I loved all of the prompts and interactive activities, as well. This retreat was amazing. I would highly recommend it to anyone interested and I'm looking forward to participating in more Dream Side events in the future!”
—Rewilding Craft 2025 participant
“I didn’t realize it at the time, but one of the writing prompts led to a germ of an idea that I’ve been developing. I think it will be my next novel!”
—Rewilding Craft 2025 participant
Recordings
This course is conducted on Zoom and will be recorded. Recordings may capture student’s video, audio, chat messages, and shared resources, and will be shared with enrolled students in this course. Recordings from this course may also be reused in future offerings of this class, and may be shared with asynchronous students.
Live participation—whether through video, voice, or chat—is deeply appreciated and helps create a vibrant, dynamic class environment. It also makes it possible for The Dream Side to offer more financially accessible versions of this course in the future.
Students who prefer not to appear on video may keep cameras off, adjust their Zoom display name, or request reasonable edits. Please feel free to contact The Dream Side to discuss options.
Refund policy
We understand that plans can change. If you need to cancel, refunds (minus Stripe’s 2.9% processing fee) are available through September 12, 2026. After that date, we won’t be able to offer refunds.
Questions?
Send us an email: hello AT thedreamside.com
The Practice of Imagination
with Rachel Khong
A six-week online course (Zoom)
Mondays, October 5 to November 9, 2026
4 to 6 p.m. PT / 7 to 9 p.m. ET
Imagination is at the heart of fiction—yet it’s often overlooked in serious discussions of writing. There’s something elusive about it, both abstract and a little kindergarten. What is imagination, exactly? What makes for a well-imagined story? And how can we nurture our own imaginations, in order to write the fiction that is the most specific and particular to us—fiction that is original and alive?
In this six-session generative course, we’ll engage in the practice of imagination. We’ll learn to cultivate and collaborate with our own imaginations. We’ll learn to write vivid fiction that invites readers to imagine alongside us. We’ll study the craft behind well-imagined fiction from concept to imagery to structure to characterization; we’ll read the work of writers who employ their imaginations masterfully and apply those lessons to our own work. We’ll explore where our ideas come from, and learn tools for imagining our way out of mental blocks. Through in-class writing exercises, you’ll experiment with stretching yourself imaginatively; you’ll cultivate tools to exercise your own imagination and sharpen your powers of description and observation. This course is both practical and hands on, at the craft level, and zoomed out and holistic: I hope you’ll leave this course writing with greater specificity and originality, and with new imaginative practices in place.
At a time when our world feels especially hostile to individual imagination, we’ll consider its role as a tool of resistance and reinvention. Imagination isn’t just playful—it’s powerful. It’s anti-authoritarian. Our intact imaginations are necessary to creating new worlds, both on and off the page.
This class is for fiction writers at any level. This class expects your live attendance, participation, and practice. Each week, expect reading assignments, with a focus on short stories (under 20 pages), as well as timed journaling and writing prompts (30 minutes per week). Students who read the assigned materials, complete the writing exercises, and attend class regularly will get the most out of this course. You’ll have additional optional opportunities to build community with your classmates, if desired. Please note this is a generative class: expect a focus on writing assignments and prompts, rather than written or verbal feedback—though there will be opportunities to share your work with your teacher and classmates.
We’ll study how writers have used imagination to better understand and metabolize current events, and do the same in our own work. Hopefully, we’ll surprise and delight ourselves in the process.
October 5: The whys and hows of imagination
October 12: Evoking imagination in the reader
October 19: Real toads in imaginary gardens
October 26: Our world but different (reality and the speculative)
November 2: Imagination and physical space
November 9: Imagination and our lives
By taking this course, you will:
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Develop a deeper understanding of what imagination is and how to tend to your own.
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Learn practical techniques to cultivate more creativity in your busy life, and push past self-imposed limits.
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Learn the foundations of well-imagined fiction: what makes characters, concepts, and images feel alive—and tools for writing evocative fiction of your own
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Learn methods to make your fiction more vivid and original, and to encourage the reader to imagine alongside you
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Study how other writers craft compelling, unique fiction, and learn to apply their techniques to your own work
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Explore the role of imagination as a tool for personal and societal reinvention.
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Generate new writing through guided exercises that will hopefully discourage overthinking, and invite imagination
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Leave with a stronger imaginative practice that enhances your fiction
The full price for this course is $500, due upon registration. Registration will close on September 30.
Partial scholarships are available for this course. The scholarship rate is two payments of $125 (one payable at registration, the other by September 30). Please apply for a scholarship at this link: https://forms.gle/jJKu75jLmx17vQi67.
About your instructor:
RACHEL KHONG is the author of the novels Real Americans, a New York Times bestseller, and Goodbye, Vitamin, winner of the California Book Award for First Fiction. Her story collection, My Dear You, was recently published by Knopf in April 2026. From 2011 to 2016, she was an editor of Lucky Peach, a quarterly magazine of food and culture. In 2018, Rachel founded The Ruby, a work and event space for writers and artists in San Francisco’s Mission District. With The Dream Side, Rachel has taught a variety of courses for adult students. Since 2021, she has mentored emerging writers with the Periplus Mentorship Collective. She is the summer 2026 Picador Guest Professor of Literature at the University of Leipzig, in Germany.
RECORDING: This course is conducted on Zoom and will be recorded. Recordings may capture student’s video, audio, chat messages, and shared resources, and will be shared with enrolled students in this course. Recordings from this course may also be reused in future offerings of this class, and may be shared with asynchronous students enrolled in later cohorts.
Live participation—whether through video, voice, or chat—is deeply appreciated and helps create a vibrant, dynamic class environment. It also makes it possible for The Dream Side to offer more financially accessible versions of this course in the future.
Students who prefer not to appear on video may keep cameras off, adjust their Zoom display name, or request reasonable edits. Please feel free to contact the instructor to discuss options.
CANCELLATION POLICY: We understand life happens. We charge a cancellation fee of 10% of the total course fee if you cancel your enrollment before September 30. We cannot offer refunds if you cancel after September 30, or after the course has begun.
YES, MOLECULE
A 12-Month Online Novel Generator
“Everything in the world began with a yes. One molecule said yes to another molecule and life was born.”
—Hour of the Star, Clarice Lispector
Yes, I want to write a novel. Yes, I want to draft my novel in ONE YEAR. Yes, I want monthly classes to motivate, inspire, and equip me. Yes, I want to hear from four different working novelists about their varied strategies and processes. Yes, I want a writing community where we cheer on, support, and hold one another accountable. Yes, I want to feel nourished and engaged, and develop approaches I can return to throughout my writing life.
YES, MOLECULE is an intensive, one-of-a-kind 12-month novel-writing course created by four award-winning and bestselling novelists and friends. We know how difficult and rewarding the novel-writing process can be, and we know that writing in community can make a daunting prospect more joyful and enriching. YES, MOLECULE is designed to offer writers the manifold types of support and stimulation writing a novel requires: intellectual, spiritual, aesthetic, structural, and communal.
We invite writers committed to making significant progress on a novel to join us in a year-long intensive online course. Each month you’ll take part in an inspiring, practical class and meet with an accountability group to support your progress. We welcome writers of all experience levels and backgrounds, as long as you are serious about producing a draft of a novel (or making major headway on a draft of a novel) over the course of one year. This class will require considerable writing and reading. Students should be prepared to commit to writing 15–20 new pages every month and reading up to 100 pages every month.
Each month includes: one 3-hour class, optional office hours with the month’s lecturer, and a small group (cluster) meeting scheduled with your peers. Our schedule builds from beginnings to middles to endings. This is not a traditional workshop based on a critical model. Though there will be monthly opportunities to give and receive feedback, YES, MOLECULE is conceived with a radical yes philosophy. Instead of learning by a set of given rules, what is possible when your wildest and most original instincts are celebrated, nourished, and given space and direction to grow?
By joining YES, MOLECULE, you’re saying yes to a year of writing, accountability, and support.
Here’s what that looks like in 2027:
- Monthly 3-hour Zoom class including craft mechanics, guided generative prompts, discussions of preassigned readings (craft essays, novel samples and examples), assignments, and practical tips and strategies
- Monthly office hours with The Dream Side
- Opportunities for feedback, discussion, and support within a small accountability group (cluster)
- Support and materials for conducting your small group, including how to receive and offer constructive feedback
- Structure and support to generate up to 240 pages of new writing towards your novel draft
- Three one-on-one meetings with a Dream Side mentor: one at the start of the year, one at the middle, and one at the end, when you’ll share 20 pages of your novel and discuss next steps
- Skills and strategies you can carry into your writing practice beyond the course
Each writer will be expected to:
- Share 15 to 20 new pages with a five-person cluster every month
- Quickly read and give encouraging YES feedback to writing submitted by fellow cluster members every month
- Facilitate cluster meetings twice a year
Your Instructors
Learn more about The Dream Side — Meng Jin, Rachel Khong, Susanna Kwan, and Shruti Swamy — here.
Course fee & Application information
Participation is by application and acceptance only. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis, and admission is not guaranteed. Enrollment is limited to 20 writers to keep the experience personal and supportive. The deadline to apply is November 16, or until the class is full — whichever comes first. We encourage you to apply early, as spots may fill before the application deadline. Once the class is full, additional applicants will be placed on a waitlist, or invited to join the asynchronous cohort.
Course fee: $5,000
($2,500 deposit at acceptance, $2,500 by January 5; tuition is non-refundable once paid)
Scholarship & Asynchronous options
We want this course to be accessible, and are able to offer four needs-based scholarships at $167/month. These are reserved for writers who would not be able to join without financial support. Because we have a limited number of scholarships, these opportunities are competitive. If the cost is not a barrier for you, we ask that you leave these spots available for those who truly need them. You’ll have the option to indicate in your application if you’d like apply at the scholarship rate.
This year, we are also introducing an asynchronous version of the course at $100/month for those who are looking for a more accessible, self-directed option. Asynchronous students will receive monthly class recordings and will be placed in small clusters that will meet independently each month. This flexible, more affordable format is designed for writers who want to undertake the sustained, rigorous work of the course while working around their own schedules. Each month, students will be expected to watch the class recordings, submit 15–20 pages of their novel, give YES! feedback to cluster members, and meet with their cluster. Please note there is one live gathering for the asynchronous cohort, an orientation on Wednesday, January 6, 5 p.m. Apply directly for the asynchronous cohort here.
APPLICATION DEADLINE: November 16, 2026 (applications close at 11:59 p.m. Pacific time)
ONLINE INFO SESSION: October 6, 5 p.m. PST (Register here)
A NOTE ABOUT RECORDING: This course is conducted on Zoom and will be recorded. Recordings may capture student’s video, audio, chat messages, and shared resources, and will be shared with enrolled students in this course. Recording makes it possible for The Dream Side to offer a more financially accessible version of this course.
Live participation—whether through video, voice, or chat—is deeply appreciated and helps create a vibrant, dynamic class environment. Students who prefer not to appear on video may keep cameras off, adjust their Zoom display name, or request reasonable edits.
Class Schedule*
All meetings will take place over Zoom.
Three-hour lectures held Sundays 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. PST
Optional office hours held Tuesdays, 5 to 7 p.m. PST
Small group meeting (cluster) to be scheduled with your group
*Class topics subject to change, but these are the actual dates:
Jan 5
INTRODUCTION AND ORIENTATION
BEGINNINGS
Jan 10
DISCOVERY / total POSSIBILITY / modes of COLLECTING / cultivating attention
Feb 7
FIRST SENTENCES / first paragraphs / first pages / hearing a VOICE
Mar 7
NOT KNOWING / following trails / FASCINATION / getting lost / RESEARCH
Apr 11
DRIVING QUESTIONS / secrets / ENGINES / building a reality and BELIEVING
MIDDLES
May 16
SIGNS OF LIFE / maps and plans / STRUCTURE
Jun 13
DEEPENING / expanding world through character / STAMINA
Jul 11
RIVERS / placeholders / MAKING THINGS HAPPEN
Aug 8
TENSION / suspense / OPPOSITES
ENDINGS
Sept 12
LETTING GO / ego death / mystery and certainty / TRANSFORMATION
Oct 10
PLEASURE / pleasurable endings / CLIMAX AND SATISFACTION
Nov 7
DEVOTION / cultivation / seeing it through / HOW IT CHANGES YOU
Dec 5
PULLING A THREAD TAUTLY / stepping back to see / What did I make? Who am I now? / RE-VISIONING
Dec 9
CELEBRATORY READING
Questions?
Join us for our Zoom info session on October 6 (Register here.) Or send us an email: hello AT thedreamside.com