Learn more about the 2013 conference faculty and what to expect from each workshop. Have you already decided which workshop is best for you? Click here to register online. If you prefer to mail-in your registration, download the form here.
Poetry: Katharine Coles
In this workshop members will both generate new poetic material through exercises and, through exercises and discussion, work through ways of seeing their poems differently. Through this changed vision, workshop members will identify habits of mind that are productive and unproductive for their work, confront and (with help) abandon fears about unsettling or ruining poems, and find new, even startling ways to revise. They will leave the class with a set of tools for thinking through both the composition and the revision processes.
- 6 original poems that are not as successful as you wish (prose poems or sudden fictions are fine);
- 3-5 newspaper or magazine articles or short nonfiction excerpts you find compelling in language use and subject matter. Katharine uses the New York Times, especially the science sections and also Opinionator blogs on mathematics (Strogartz), philosophy (The Stone), anxiety (various), and nature (Coniff); as well as nonfiction from explorers and natural historians–the important thing is that this be material that gives you poetry moodiness.
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Fiction: John Dufresne
We’ll discuss the stories you’ve written, and we’ll address your own concerns about writing and storytelling. I will lecture on narrative techniques and the fiction writing process. We’ll do writing exercises designed to give our imaginations opportunities. You’ll come to the conference with an agenda—what it is you hope to learn—and we’ll do our best to see that your agenda is met.
So that’s workshop. Discussion, writing, lectures. Some of these “lectures” will evolve from our discussions of the stories. We’ll talk about narrative techniques like plot, point of view, tone, setting, and so on. This is important: You ought to come to workshop with your own agenda. You ought to know what it is you hope to and expect to learn in the week we’ll be together. And you ought to express those desires in our sessions. So, if you want to know about agents and publishers, we’ll talk about them. If you want to know about grammar and mechanics, we’ll talk about that.
- Submit your twelve-page maximum manuscript to me and to the other members via email by May 1.
- All manuscripts should be double-spaced, one inch margins, 12-point font.
- Read and prepare responses to other attendees work prior to arriving at the conference.
- More details about preparing for this workshop will be sent to members as they complete registration.
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Nonfiction: Christopher Merrill
Broaden your sense of the aesthetic possibilities in the literature of fact–essays, memoirs, travel narratives, literary journalism, nature writing, sports vignettes, war stories, and on it goes. We’ll generate new writings and critique your work-in-progress. The goal is to work together to deepen our understanding of what’s possible in the next pieces we write.
- Patricia Hampl’s I Could Tell You Stories;
- Ryszard Kapuscinski’s Shah of Shahs;
- W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn.
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Multi-Genre: Michael Martone
Instead of looking at each piece individually and holistically as in the traditional workshop, the Cross-Section Workshop will look at all the pieces at the same time. We will take “cuts” through each work, beginning with the title, then first line, then first paragraph, first page, etc. The discussion will be more about process instead of product, more strategic instead of tactical. The traditional “gag” rule where the writer of the work is asked to listen and not speak during the critique will be relaxed. In this workshop all of the writers will be asked to talk at all times, attempting to focus on the aesthetic choices and theories that operate behind and before the performance on the page.
Have you already decided which workshop is best for you? Click here to register today.
