The late Milan Kundera wrote, “Living is being happy: seeing, hearing, touching, drinking, eating, urinating, defecating, diving into the water and gazing at the sky, laughing and crying.” As writers, it can be all too easy to use our grief as fuel and to focus on our trauma as a means of proving our own unique necessity. It is also unduly demanded of writers to create a theater of their pain for the benefit of others. But what of our delights? What about the sudden ecstasies that remind us of our humanity and, by extension, our drive to create art in the first place? Now more than ever, Kundera’s words echo into the void. In this workshop, we will challenge ourselves to access the wonder of this great, terrible world. We will discuss multi-genre work from Ada Limon and Jericho Brown to Ross Gay and Emma Cline. We will also prioritize generating new work that centers our joy and provides a diving board to continue this noble pursuit of laughing and living. All are welcome, sharing is completely voluntary.