The Writer's Center Workshop and Event Guide - Summer 2015

EVENTS 14

BOOK TALK 37

WORKSHOPS 18

Workshop & Event Guide

Summer 2015

Celebrating Emerging Writers

The Writer’s Center Workshop & Event Guide Summer 2015

www.writer.org

DEPARTMENTS DIRECTOR’S NOTE

Editor

INSTRUCTOR BIOS

Vanessa Mallory Kotz

EVENTS

vanessa.mallorykotz@writer.org

BOOK TALK

WORKSHOPS:

Contributors

REGISTRATION

Schedule

Joan Hua Sherry Goldstein-Askwith Vanessa Mallory Kotz Jane McClary Oakley Geert van der Kolk Christy Wise

Descriptions

FEATURES 6 On Being an Emerging Writer

Graphic Design

Winners of The Writer’s Center awards offer advice to new writers.

Virtually Detailed, Inc. Copyeditors

12 Adam Tavel

Laura Spencer Ellyn Wexler

A conversation with the emerging poet offers insight into fatherhood, the publication process, and becoming a poet.

Cover Image

34 Poetry as Protest

Shutterstock Poet and translator Maryam Ala Amjadi on war, peace, and finding meaning.

Contact Us

4508 Walsh Street Bethesda, MD 20815 301-654-8664 (p) 240-223-0458 (f) Writer.org Join the conversation: Facebook.com/writerscenter Twitter: @writerscenter Photo by Thomas Langdon

The Writer’s Center cultivates the creation, publication, presentation and dissemination of literary work. We are an independent literary organization with a global reach, rooted in a dynamic community of writers. As one of the premier centers of its kind in the country, we believe the craft of writing is open to people of all backgrounds and ages. Writing is interdisciplinary and unique among the arts for its ability to touch on all aspects of the human experience. It enriches our lives and opens doors to knowledge and understanding. The Writer’s Center is a 501 (C) (3) nonprofit organization. Donations are tax deductible. A copy of our current financial statement is available upon request. Contact The Writer’s Center at 4508 Walsh Street, Bethesda, MD 20815. Documents and information submitted to the State of Maryland under the Maryland Charitable Solicitations Act are available from the Office of the Secretary of State for the cost of copying and postage.

Workshop & Event Guide Summer 2015

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ABOUT US

The Writer’s Center

Other Locations Annapolis Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts 801 Chase Street Annapolis, MD 21404 marylandhall.org

Capitol Hill The Hill Center 921 Pennsylvania Ave., SE Washington, DC 20003 hillcenterdc.org

Glen Echo Glen Echo Park 7300 MacArthur Blvd.

Glen Echo, MD 20812 glenechopark.org

Executive Director

Marketing & Comnmunications Manager

Stewart Moss

Vanessa Mallory Kotz

Assistant Director

Managing Editor of Poet Lore

Sunil Freeman

Genevieve DeLeon

Program Manager

Office Manager & Graphics Assistant

Laura Spencer

Judson Battaglia

Development Manager

Night Receptionist

Rachel Colombana

Andrew Brooks

Board of Directors

Leesburg Leesburg Town Hall 25 West Market Street Leesburg, VA 20176 leesburgva.com

Chair: James Mathews

Vice Chair: Naomi Collins

Treasurer: Margaret Meleney

Secretary: Patricia Harris

Chair Emer: Sally Mott Freeman Ken Ackerman • Margot Backas • Linna Barnes • Mark Cymrot Michael Febrey • Les Hatley • John M. Hill Jeff Kosseff • Howard Lavine • C.M. Mayo • Jim McAndrew Ann McLaughlin • E. Ethelbert Miller • Joram Piatigorsky Bill Reynolds • Mier Wolf • Wilson W. Wyatt, Jr.

Poet Lore is the oldest continuously published poetry journal in the United States. We publish it semi-annually, and submissions are accepted year-round.

Subscription and submission information is available at poetlore.com.

Honorary Board Kate Blackwell • Dana Gioia • Jim & Kate Lehrer Alice McDermott • Ellen McLaughlin • Howard Norman

Supported in part by:

Book Gallery TWC’s book gallery carries an extensive collection of literary magazines and books on craft.

4508 Walsh Street Bethesda, MD 20815

The Writer’s Center also gratefully acknowledges the support we receive from: The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation, The TauFoundation, The Omega Foundation, and The Bydale Foundation.

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View online at www.writer.org/guide

DIRECTOR’S NOTE and recognizing writers who are just past this stage of their careers who can serve as mentors and success stories for others.

Stewart Moss

Photo by Kyle Semmel

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his issue of the Workshop & Event Guide celebrates just some of the efforts that The Writer’s Center makes to encourage new and emerging writers by giving them the feedback and recognition they need to improve their craft and make their work available to readers. In fact, a way of defining emerge is to move out of obscurity and come into view.

Guided by our workshop leaders, participants discover the stories, poems, novels, and memoirs that have been residing within their imaginations, often for years, and become visible words set down on the page to be read and critiqued by others. And through our Emerging Writers Fellowships, the Center helps recipients sustain their visibility so that more words can be brought forth. Similarly, our Undiscovered Voices Scholarships make our workshops accessible to local writers who are on the threshold of emerging.

These fellowships (which you can read about in more depth on page 6) were founded on the premise that they perfectly fit the Center’s mission. We’re dedicated to serving writers, taking developing writers and helping them move their work toward completion and publication,

We also present in this issue our second installment of “From the Workshops,” a space that gives the opportunity to workshop participants to see their work in print. In addition, an interview with poet Adam Tavel describes the experience of an emerging writer’s journey through publication.

A great deal of space on the Internet is dedicated to the multitude of programs, organizations, and publications that provide services and offer advice to the growing population of emerging writers. Among the best advice I’ve read is included in an article titled “10 Things Emerging Writers Need to Learn,” by Michael Nye, which appeared a couple of years ago in the online version of the highly regarded Missouri Review.

Read the original article at www. missourireview.com/tmr-blog/ • You’re Talented, But Talented is Overrated—Your talent can only flourish when you work hard and consistently on your writing.

• Ignore the Clock—Take your time to make your work the best it can possibly be.

• Put Down The Phone—If you want your work eventually to be recognized by the public, take the time to engage in person with the local literary community by attending readings and other events.

• Throw The Book Across The Room—Don’t feel obligated to finish books just because they’ve been highly praised. If they don’t meet your own standards, stop reading them.

• Both the Size and Quality of Your Network Matter—Surround yourself with good people whose judgment and honestly you respect … and work hard to maintain this network of support.

• You Need At Least Three Professional Mentors—These should be individuals who can help you work through problems and offer you sound advice.

• Pick an Idol & Act “As If”—As you work to overcome the obstacles you encounter in your own writing, think “as if” you were a writer whom you greatly admire and try to imagine a strategy this individual would follow.

• Read More Books—Reading is a simple reminder of why you write in the first place. Allow yourself to be inspired by immersing yourself in the books you admire.

As you work on your own emergence as a writer, The Writer’s Center is here to offer you the support, guidance, and inspiration you need to be successful. In this spirit, I wish you a wonderful summer of writing and look forward to seeing you at our workshops, Open Door readings, and other events.

Sincerely,

• Don’t Wait To Be Told What (or When) To Write—Carve out a few hours each week to work on your writing and protect this time from distractions and unnecessary commitments.

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On Being an Emerging Writer Advice from The Writer’s Center Award Winners

By Vanessa Mallory Kotz

S

tarting a career as a writer is no easy task. Finding the time to work while earning a living for yourself or a family, gathering resources, and building a support network take perseverance and determination. The Writer’s Center is, of course, a great place to find a community of other writers and a place to get down to work. The Center also provides an annual Undiscovered Voices Scholarship and two annual Emerging Writers Fellowships to help advance writers early in their careers. We talked to the winners about their experiences and asked them to share their advice for aspiring writers.

Poet Caitlin Reid is the recipient of the 2014–15 Undiscovered Voices Scholarship. In this initiative, The Writer’s Center provides up to eight free workshops to a promising writer earning less than $25,000 annually. At a time when economic challenges make it difficult for many writers to pursue their literary goals, The Writer’s Center’s Undiscovered Voices program aims to provide that extra professional boost for talented writers like Reid.

“The title poem of my version of Almagest came from the first workshop I took at The Writer’s Center in 2013,” she said. “After moving to D.C., I found a copy of Stanley Plumly’s 1977 Out-of-

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the-Body Travel and carried it around for weeks. It’s a beautiful book.” She subsequently took Plumly’s master class. “That first class taught me I could be a better writer if I was ready to really hear feedback.”

During the course of her scholarship year, Reid plans to take workshops that will help her write a full-length poetry manuscript by her thirty-second birthday in May. “I have found both mentoring and community at The Writer’s Center,” Reid said.

Reid advises other writers to keep a work log. “It’s an organized record of applying for opportunities and sending poems out. I started highlighting successes in yellow and rejections in blue,” she explained. “I’m averaging three or four setbacks for every good thing. It’s helpful to see the rejections as a positive effort instead of getting discouraged.”

Reid’s poetry has earned scholarships to The Gettysburg Review Writer’s Conference, Wesleyan’s Conference for Writers, and a Murphy Writing Seminar in

Caitlin Reid

Wales. She was also a finalist for the 2014 Larry Neal Award. One of her poems was a finalist for the 2014–2015 James Wright Poetry Award from the Mid-American Review.

The winners of the 2014–2015 Emerging Writer Fellowships are Tanya Olson and Karina Borowicz. This annual award comprises a reading at the Center and a cash honorarium.

Requirements for the fellowship include the publication of one or two full-length single-author books in a single genre and no more than three books published to his or her credit (including as editors of anthologies) in any genre.

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“We are so pleased to offer this opportunity to two such talented writers,” said Sunil Freeman, assistant director of the Center.

Tanya Olson lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, and is a lecturer in English at University of Maryland Baltimore County. Her first book, Boyishly, was published by YesYes Books in 2013 and received a 2014 American Book Award. In 2010, she won a Discovery/Boston Review prize and was named a 2011 Lambda Fellow by the Lambda Literary Foundation.

Tanya Olson

Olson emphasized the importance of building a system of support. “I was a long-standing member of a writing group in Durham, the Black Socks, and I learned so much as a beginning writer from the other poets in the group,” she said. “I also have a partner who comes to readings, doesn’t bat an eye when I get up in the middle of the night to write things down, and is generally very patient with my moody poet tendencies.”

The second winner this year, Karina Borowicz, is the author of two poetry collections, Proof (Codhill Press, 2014) and The Bees Are Waiting (Marick Press, 2012), which won the Eric Hoffer Award for Poetry and was named a Must-Read by the Massachusetts Center for the Book. Her poems have appeared widely in journals and have been featured on the

web and in radio. Trained as an historian, Borowicz also holds an M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of New Hampshire.

She makes her home in the Connecticut River Valley of Western Massachusetts.

Borowicz works at Springfield College’s writing and resource center for returning students.

She also occasionally leads poetry workshops as a writerin-the-schools, but for most of her career, she earned a living teaching English as a Second Language, which also allowed her to travel. “Before that, I worked as a baker, cook, and caterer,” she said. “I’m pretty serious about food.”

“Throughout all these various jobs and careers, I always made time for writing, trying to fit it in during spare moments, often in the evening or even during a lunch break,” she continued.

“These days, however, writing time is my top priority and I make sure to put in at least an hour first

Workshop & Event Guide Summer 2015

Karina Borowicz

thing in the morning, five days a week, before the world starts making its demands.”

As someone who has had to eke out writing time for many years, Borowicz has advice for other emerging writers. “Read widely and deeply in your chosen genre, which will not only provide valuable lessons in craft, but also sharpen your instincts about what works and what doesn’t,” she said.

But don’t hole up as a bookworm all the time. “Be sure to engage with the world in a concrete way, because we experience the world through our senses and the best writers know that,” she said.

“Tolstoy took up shoemaking.

Bake bread, learn bookbinding, keep bees, grow vegetables. Get your hands dirty—your writing will be the richer for it.”

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FROM THE WORKSHOPS

The Writer’s Center

Many talented writers pass through The Writer’s Center’s halls, taking multiple workshops and honing their craft. We present here a small sampling of the amazing work they produce. In this issue, they explore the impact of poetry and literature on their lives.

The Reason for Rhyme

By Jane McClary Oakley

P

erhaps it was my fascination with my elegant second grade teacher that made me love Robert Frost. She, of the turquoise ankle boots topped with matching faux fur. She of the updo. She, whose southern lilt spread the words out like jam. “I’m going out to clean the pasture spring . . .” she read aloud. Whatever Mrs. Statler said sank right into my soul.

There was something, too, in the simplicity of the language.

Something that imprinted the picture of that baby cow “tottering” beside her mother that left a warm quiet inside me. The shy beginnings of my love affair with his language and my own love of what farmer/poet Wendell Berry calls “the peace of wild things.”

And then, there was the temptation in the last line, “You come too.”

Admitting you loved poetry was never cool. Not in my small, Midwestern town where farming and football held sway. It was different at home. No other dads I knew delighted in reciting the entirety of “The Ride of Paul Revere.” A dad who not only liked to read poetry, but also, on the sly, wrote it. Inspired, I penned my first poem in his honor:

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There are daddies here, And daddies there, And daddies everywhere . . ., He adored the work.

Our mother was more obviously guilty for our family’s poetry appreciation. As a former leading lady of every play at The College, she had gone on to teach high school speech. She was often asked to give a talk at one of the local clubs or at church. A favorite was her discourse on Missouri superstitions: “Now they say a sure way to fetch a son is for the husband to sit on his roof for seven hours.” She always paused at this point and with a conspiratorial smile would add “I’m not sure . . . but the year after putting a new roof on our house, we got two boys.”

By the time I was in high school, I was the lead in the school plays.

She got me invited to give the occasional speech to a group of assembled adults eager to absorb the insights of an adolescent girl.

One of my first engagements was to perform “The Road Not Taken” from memory. Wearing my white flute solo dress, I stood in front

of my mother’s women’s group.

It met twice a month for a long business meeting followed by a luncheon displayed on gleaming silver platters, and then by an educationally uplifting program.

On that day, me.

As per my classical training at the foot of my folks’ four-poster, I had memorized not only the poem, but each gesture and each silence. “That was wonderful inflection but this time, slow down even more.” As rehearsed, I stood in front of the audience, one foot slightly in front of the other. I took the requisite pause, then slowly scanned the audience, making brief eye contact with my beaming, biggest fan. Then I methodically reversed the pan and began, “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler (pause), long I stood.” It was, by all accounts, brilliant.

At my fancy Chicago college I flirted with Whitman, dallied with Dickinson, and trifled with Yeats.

I dutifully dismembered poor old Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “Carrion Comfort.” I spent long hours at the listening library where Sylvia Plath’s sad, dead voice lured every coed into dark despair.

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FROM THE WORKSHOPS By the time I was routinely dropping lines from “The Wasteland” in the dorm cafeteria, my two best friends were actual poets: nineteen-year-old Clifford, from a tony Cleveland suburb, smoked a pipe. Bradford, eighteen, wore a beret. The three of us read our desultory poems aloud, sitting on a single bed, periodically passing a bottle between us. It was the pinnacle of intellectualism.

There wasn’t much call for poetry in my job as a local TV talk show producer. On lonely, hungry nights, I would pull out my ragged Norton’s in search of the turned down corners of a vaguely remembered poem. More than once I lingered on Frost’s “The Need of Being Versed in Country Things.”

Although I admitted my Missouri roots, I outwardly disdained all things country. My snooty

diploma and my city-fication took me far away from home to my own “desert places.”

When love arrived in the form of a dashing radio producer, I found poetry in his pockets. He neither read nor wrote it, but meaning and pleasure and joy exploded from his touch. He was poetry. And he introduced me to his first love, Maine.

There I caressed the stone fences of “Mending Wall” and stroked the peeling bark of birches. Here was Frost’s New England, the land that “was ours before we were the land’s.” World of apple picking, woods full of snow, and the road not taken. Here it was okay to love poems again and even to say them out loud.

And it was a damn sight like old Missouri. Our hikes through silent woods and our rowboat excursions with croaking oars filled me with a familiar peace.

After a while, and a baby, I worked from home pre-interviewing guests and writing up interviews for Dick Cavett. I never actually spoke to him, and rarely even his producer, so I felt like Anais Nin writing poetic porn for her secret client. I only knew if he used what I wrote by watching his show. In my writer’s solitude, I dared to sneak a bit of poetry into the scripted introductions of guests like Pat Sajak: ‘Breathes there a man with soul so dead who never to himself hath said, ‘I’d like to buy a vowel’?”

Like a second glass of wine, poetry takes the edge off but it doesn’t pass through. It lingers in the lines in my face and the dark spots on my hands. And when the chemo took “darling, diminutive” me to a dark and deadly place, my sister sent me Cummings to renew me. And it did.

Little Women

By Sherry Goldstein-Askwith

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n a cold, snowy day, the seven-year-old me is curled up on the cot in our sparsely furnished living room, wrapped in a blanket. Grandma has brought me a cup of hot tea but I’m too engrossed in what I’m doing to thank her. A thick book— my first-ever chapter book—is on my lap. Or, it’s a hot, humid Washington August day, and that thick book is on my lap as I sit in the

grass under a tree behind our apartment, hoping for a breeze.

Or, I’m under the covers in my fuzzy pajamas, trying to read by the glow of the night light in my bedroom, one ear tuned to my mother’s probable whereabouts.

Since I received this book for my birthday, it has steadfastly triumphed over all other books as my ongoing favorite. Like chocolate, I ration it a bit at a time. Also Workshop & Event Guide Summer 2015

like chocolate, I often consume more of it than I plan to. I try not to read it too often—what if I get tired of it? Even so, I once computed that I read Little Women more than a hundred times in the first four years I owned it. I never wearied of the story.

I’ve had the book for sixty-two years. It still occupies pride of place on my bookshelf. A real old-fashioned paper book, it has

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FROM THE WORKSHOPS a cloth cover with corners that are now a bit stringy. The black silhouettes on the cover represent a lost era to me. The pages have yellowed. The print is tiny. As I said, a real old-fashioned book.

The world of Little Women is the one I escaped to with relish during my formative years.

Sisters with few resources other than their own abilities overcame and prospered because of their strength of character. This meant there was hope for me.

I identified with Jo—didn’t we all? I could relate to her bookishness and independence, but I also saw parts of myself in Meg’s bossiness and Amy’s artistic bent and skill in acting, although Amy was the selfish one, the one most concerned with money, which, for my own reasons, I preferred not to be. I didn’t want to see any of myself in Beth, either—Beth dies.

I wasn’t prepared to deal with death yet, even though Beth was the most unselfish and supportive of all the girls, which I admired.

So Jo it was, the bookish, clumsy, well-meaning, independent sister.

I could be like Jo, even though I did wish she was prettier, more ladylike, less awkward.

From the second line of the first page, “It’s so dreadful to be poor!” sighed Meg, looking down at her old dress, the book had me in its grasp.

The sisters are talking about what they might buy themselves for Christmas with the dollar apiece they have managed to save. Amy wants Faber’s drawing pencils, which are some of my favorites. I am impressed that something I have seen in the

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art store is in this book from an earlier time, but I still resist being Amy. Jo plans to buy a book. Still the most like me. In the end, they spend their dollars to buy gifts for their mother and forego their own pleasures. Lesson here? Take pleasure in giving pleasure. Lesson learned.

Soon the girls are invited to a Christmas dance. Although they experience an assortment of selfdoubts—nothing pretty enough to wear, no good accessories, people will look askance at them, the rich girls will make fun—these doubts don’t seem strange to me at all. They seem uniquely mine.

How did Louisa May Alcott know?

Since I am living the kind of life in which not having the right clothes is usual and significant, this book grabs me and holds on.

Jo will sit quietly most of the time at this party so the burned spot on her skirt will not show. Wow! But she’s still going to go? Did I like the book because of my life or did I create my life because of the book?

When Jo accidentally burns Meg’s hair with the curling iron while trying to style it, Meg’s rejoinder is, “Serves me right for trying to be fine.” These girls really understand. This is what my life is like. This is what I tell myself. I accept the fact that I should not try to “be fine.”

Old Mr. Laurence, the kindly rich man in this book, is a revelation to me. I am surprised that kind and rich are words that can be used together. The rich people I know are rather self-absorbed, but here is a wealthy gentleman with whom they may just ex-

The Writer’s Center change thoughtful gestures. Could it ever really work like that or is it just a story? Life and literature compete for primacy.

Then Jo begins writing and I realize that this can be a satisfying task. When Amy burns Jo’s journal in revenge for a perceived slight, I feel desperate along with Jo. She will never be able to recreate those exact words. After this, I keep at least two copies of every story I write, one hidden in the safest place I can think of, my bottom desk drawer. I don’t think my little brother would harm my stories, but it’s better to be safe . . . And when Jo sells her articles to a local newspaper, I consider whether that will be a possibility for me some day. Jo uses her money in such a caring way, saving to take Beth to the mountains in hopes of improving her poor health. (Is it here I learn about futility?)

Is there any writer alive who would not relate to Jo’s words, “I’ve no heart to write, and if I had, nobody cares for my writing.”

Or to Marmee’s response, “We do; write something for us, and never mind the rest of the world.”

Is it possible that the books we read influence us as much as the people we live with? Is that especially likely when the characters possess the qualities we long for and sometimes suffer without? “Never mind the rest of the world,” helps when you don’t feel good enough.

The extended family in which I was raised valued money and social position. Clothes were important. Status was important.

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FROM THE WORKSHOPS Education was not. I did not learn until many years later how many members of that family wanted an education and did not have the money for it. They were busy supporting parents and siblings. It is not surprising that they disparaged college degrees, although I did not understand their motivations back then.

I needed a book that downplayed the role of money and belongings, that told me that my efforts would be what would make the difference in my life. Jo became a teacher; I became a teacher. Jo wrote; I wrote. Jo read; I read. Jo tried to take care of the people around her and I did the same in my own life.

Was all of that an accident? Or was I as influenced by Jo’s persona as I was by my aunts and uncles?

At one point in my adulthood, I decided I would like to study the effect that the literature of various generations had on the people who grew up reading it. Since that didn’t fit too well with a master’s degree in social work, I put it off.

It’s still in my mind, though, with all of the other projects I have not yet given up. Although Little Women is no longer the compulsory and popular book for girls it once was, I would like to investigate those of us who read and loved it with an eye toward our character development and values. I imagine there are many Jo Marches in this world.

Trail Cairns

By Christy Wise I peered into the mist, looking for my teacher’s faith in me and saw only my own confusion reflected back.

“Stay close to the text,” he’d said when we first talked about my thesis.

That seemed easy because Ovid’s verses were vivid and compelling.

The poems spoke to me across an expanse of time.

My advisor believed that I could write something meaningful about Ovid’s exile from Rome.

Me? My weak voice joining the giants of the past two millennia?

I was skeptical, but said nothing.

I continued reading and writing; walking through fog, searching for a clearing and firm ground.

Every once in a while, I came upon a trail cairn left by Professor McNelis.

Those small rock piles provided profound relief and hope.

On the marked trail, I hiked vigorously.

But before long, more mist closed in again.

I stumbled.

Months passed. I turned in a draft. Rejected.

And another draft. Also rejected.

In the deepening murkiness, I pulled on my hiker’s headlamp and black fleece jacket.

This path was steeper, rockier, colder than I expected.

And lonely.

On a December morning, frustrated, and weary from traveling in the dark, I turned in another draft.

Would this, too, be trashed?

I had lost all my bearings.

“Look at this,” he said. “You’ve drawn a map!”

I examined the pages. He was right.

I’d found a route forward.

I took a long, deep, breath.

Across the gray horizon, heavy with slate clouds, a rosy hue warmed the thin winter sunrise.

Beneath my boots I felt the hard earth of a solid path.

I picked up my hiking pole and started walking.

The stories published here have been nominated by workshop leaders Ellen Herbert and Nan Fry and were selected by the editor. We gratefully received many excellent submissions this period, but are limited by space.

Workshop & Event Guide Summer 2015

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Adam Tavel on Fatherhood, Publishing, and the Beauty of the English Language

By Vanessa Mallory Kotz

W

riting poetry is not only for the special few. Adam Tavel believes that Americans mythologize the creation of poetry, and it’s important to him as a poet and a teacher to debunk that idea. The Clinton, Maryland, native began writing poems at age twelve under the direction of his sixth grade teacher, David Hillenburg. “I felt liberated at the permission to write whatever I wanted.” He has been doing so ever since.

Tavel recently won the inaugural Permafrost Book Prize for his collection Plash & Levitation, from the University of Alaska Press. The prize is awarded by the literary journal Permafrost, which is associated with the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The award includes publication and distribution of a book-length collection of poems and $1,000.

Plash & Levitation is a confessional meditation on Tavel’s personal experience as a father interspersed with persona poems.

The 42 pieces in the book include musings from Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman, rock legend Keith Moon, the Redskins logo, and the Wolfman. “The poet doesn’t always have to write about his or her own moment,” he said.

When Tavel writes in the voice of a historical character through the lens of his own experiences, he thereby writes about two moments at once.

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Encouragement for a writer can come from surprising sources.

Tavel earned an undergraduate degree in history, so he didn’t study with published poets until graduate school. Until then, he shared his poems with mentors who took the time to encourage him, including his history professors. “They read my awful poems,” he laughed. He aims to show the same level of involvement by investing extra time into his own students.

Tavel is inspired by the gift of the English language. “English is a musical scale, a vast array of colors,” he said. His grasp of this rainbow of possibilities is evident in work like “What Creature,” from Plash & Levitation.

What Creature At bath tonight my boy reclined beguiled by a gamboge pufferfish that squeezed a tablespoon of suds into its cheeks.

Suspended in the glinting light of tile he marveled at its heft, his bubbly hand outstretched so for a moment he could mark a creature such as this is called a shark.

He giggled at the tinkling bursts that fanned across the tub each time he clenched his fist to drain his little bliss right from its source.

Pufferfish, I said, as he sprayed the mist of its final droplets against my course in lexicon. Shark all empty now he grinned.

I watched his beast sprout razor teeth and fins.

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Tavel has learned a lot during the production of his first book-length publishing project.

“Publishing is excruciatingly slow—a long process that can be frustrating, but patience is something that writing teaches us,” he said.

“Very few publishers want to publish unknown poets,” he added. “I got lucky and won the Permafrost Book Prize,” leading to a publication deal with University of Alaska Press, which has given him a great deal of control over the look of the layout and cover.

“Usually you don’t have a lot of say over how your book looks,” he said.

After twenty years as a writer, Tavel recommends constantly pushing yourself toward the new.

“You have to be careful not to write the same poem over and over again,” he said Tavel is an associate professor of English at Wor-Wic Community College in Salisbury, Maryland, and the author of The Fawn Abyss (Salmon Poetry, forthcoming) and the chapbook Red Flag Up (Kattywompus).

Workshop & Event Guide Summer 2015

He won the 2010 Robert Frost Award and his recent poems appear in Massachusetts Review, The Journal, Quarterly West, Passages North, Southern Indiana Review, Crab Orchard Review, and Salamander, among others. Adam Tavel earned degrees from Lebanon Valley College, The University of Toledo, and The Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Tavel will read from his new book at The Writer’s Center on June 14.

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EVENTS

The Writer’s Center

EVENTS

We host more than 50 events annually, including free Sunday Open Door readings and ticketed theatre productions in our historic black box theatre. For more information, visit our website www.writer.org/events.

OPEN DOOR READINGS - SUMMER 2015 MAY 2 p.m.

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Abdul Ali reads from Trouble Sleeping. He is joined by Kyle Dargan, who reads from Honest Engine.

MAY 2 p.m.

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Katherine Freese reads from and discusses The Cosmic Cocktail: Three Parts Dark Matter. She is joined by John Gaudet, author of Papyrus: The Plant That Changed the World.

Katherine Freese

Abdul Ali

MAY 2 p.m.

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7:30 p.m.

Kyle Dargan

Celebrate Poet Lore’s 126th birthday with a reading by Letras Latinas Poets. Introduction by Francisco Aragon.

Readings by Elizabeth Acevedo, Carmen Calatayud, Carlos Parada Ayala, Maritza Rivera, and Dan Vera.

Visiting poet Cynthia Marie Hoffman, whose most recent book is Paper Doll Fetus, joins rec NNeva Herrington, who reads from her ccollection of poems, Open Season.

John Gaudet

MAY

31

Reading by writers published by Broadkill River Press and Broadkill Press. Readers include Susanne Allen, Michael Blaine, Buck Downs, Howard Gofreed, Gary Hanna, and H.A. Maxson.

2 p.m.

Michael Blaine

Herrington Open Season

ficity,

David Robert Book

MW ,a ve r d

s

Open Season Poem s Neva by Herring ton

Cynthia Marie Hoffman

Buck Downs

MAY 6 p.m.

7

The Writer’s Center welcomes editor Le Hinton and authors published in 2 p.m.

Fledgling Rag Issue #14. Readers will include Abdul Ali, Mary-Sherman Willis, Tafisha Edwards, Hiram Larew, Erin Dorney, Sid Gold, and Stacy Cartledge.

JUNE

1

Neva Herrington

16 ArtSherylOpening Massaro: Earth & Spectrum Tafisha Edwards

POETRY & PROSE OPEN MIC Sign-up begins at 1:30 p.m.

Readings begin at 2 p.m.

MAY 10

JUNE 21

AUGUST 2 14

JUNE

14

Poet Adam Tavel reads from Plash & Levitation. He is joined

by Kayla Williams, author of Plenty of Time When We Get Home. Read an interview with Tavel on page 12.

2 p.m.

View online at www.writer.org/guide

Adam Tavel

EVENTS

9 a.m.

JUNE 11 a.m.

13

Publish Now: Find Your Path to Publication

AUGUST 2 p.m.

9

Join Maritza Rivera and poets who have read at Mariposa or in the Mariposa writer retreats.

27 Novel Year Information Session

Learn about our latest initiative to help authors workshop an entire novel over the course of a year.

Maritza Rivera

AUGUST 2 p.m.

JUNE 2 p.m.

28

EVENTS

JUNE

16

Visiting writer Richard Hoffman, whose most recent book is the memoir Love & Fury, is joined by May Rihani, author of Cultures Without Borders.

Novelist Tom Glenn reads from No Accounts, and Patricia Valdata rea reads from Where No Man M Can Touch, her recent re collection of poems. p

Patricia Valdata Richard Homan

May Rihani

Tom Glenn enn

JULY 2 p.m.

12

Novelist Susan Coll reads from The Stager and poet Frederick Pollack reads from A Poverty of Words.

Lettice and Lovage

by Peter Shaffer

April 17 - May 17, 2015 Susan Coll

JULY 2 p.m.

JULY 2 p.m.

19 26

Frederick Pollack

Directed by Louis Pangaro

Lauren Acampora reads from her linked story collection, The Wonder Garden. She is joined by Emily Mitchell, author of Viral.

This Lime Tree Bower

The Writer’s Center presents a reading by members of the Federal Poets. Readers include Jacqueline Jules, Judith McCombs, Don Illich, and Michael H. Levin.

July 10 - August 9, 2015

by Conor McPherson

Directed by Jack Sbarbori

quotidiantheatre.org quotidiantheatre@comcast.net

301-816-1023 Jacqueline Jules

Judith McCombs

Don Illich

Michael H. Levin

Workshop & Event Guide Summer 2015

15

LEESBURG EVENTS

The Writer’s Center

THEME FOR 2015: ACTION! EVENTS

MAY 1: KEEPING YOUR READER ORIENTED Val Patterson and Linda Budzinski

As you tell a tale, you draw your readers into an often unfamiliar world, filled with unfamiliar people and places. How can you guide them through your story and keep them oriented without sacrificing momentum?

Leesburg Town Hall

LEESBURG FIRST FRIDAYS 7:30 p.m.

In this session, Val Patterson will discuss the importance of setting in fiction and how to ground your story in time and place, and Linda Budzinski will examine how raising (and resolving) questions in your readers’ minds can both build interest and serve as a navigational tool.

TWC Leesburg 2015 First Friday Programs Lower Level Meeting Room Leesburg Town Hall 25 West Market Street Leesburg, Va. 20176 $4 TWC members & residents of Leesburg $6 General admission More info at Writer.org

JUNE 5: LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT: HOW TO CREATE CHARACTERS THAT WILL CAPTURE AN EDITOR’S ATTENTION AND YOUR READERS’ HEARTS Erika Ettin

Erika Ettin is the founder of A Little Nudge, an online dating consulting business focused on helping people put their best foot forward online.

Her self-help book, Love at First Site (www.loveatfirstsitebook.com), shows readers how to increase their odds for connections by marketing themselves well. Her advice includes pointers for writing a winning profile and crafting emails that catch someone’s attention. Ettin will talk about how you can use these skills to craft engaging characters for your novel or memoir and how to write PR pitches to capture an editor’s attention. Ettin holds a B.A. in economics from Cornell University and an M.B.A. from Georgetown University. A Little Nudge has been featured in The Washington Post, NPR, Good Day Philadelphia, News Channel 8, and Ask Men. She currently writes a regular dating column for Philly.com and JDate. (http://www.alittlenudge.com/) and Kripalu.

At the Studio

By Geert van der Kolk

W

hen I recently came back from East Africa with five notepads full of material for a new book, I started looking for a place to sit down and write, and do nothing else. I have a study at home, but it’s full of unfinished business, and in our house, there’s a lot of deferred maintenance. So I trolled the internet for an office (found nothing under $500/ month), or a shared work space (not quite as expensive, but you have to put up with hopeful new entrepreneurs Skyping away at the desk next to you). Then I called

16

The Writer’s Center’s Assistant Director Sunil Freeman.

I’ve known Sunil for more than twenty years. When The Writer’s Center was still on Old Georgetown Road, he and Al Lefcowitz gave computer classes to writers who were trying to make the transition from the Underwood and the fountain pen. “I’m looking for a work space,” I said. “Any ideas?”

“Well,” he said, “it’s funny that you mention it. While you were away in Africa, we’ve completely rebuilt the lower level, and turned it into a writers’ studio.”

So that’s where I’ve been these several months, happily writing my 1,000 words a day.

Ernest Hemingway did some of his best writing in cafes in Paris and Madrid. He preferred large, airy rooms that were not tomb-silent like a library, but places where people talk in low voices and leave you alone when they pass your table. He even wrote a story about it. He called it “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” and that’s exactly what I’ve found at the new Studio on Walsh Street.

View online at www.writer.org/guide

WORKSHOP GUIDELINES WORKSHOP GUIDELINES Learning to write is an ongoing process that requires time and practice.

Our writing workshops are for everyone, from novices to seasoned writers looking to improve their skills, to published authors seeking refinement and feedback, to professionals with an eye on the competition. Group settings encourage the writing process by teaching writers to prioritize and to help each other using many skills at once.

From our workshops, participants can expect: • Guidance and encouragement from a published, working writer; • Instruction on technical aspects such as structure, diction and form; • Kind, honest, constructive feedback directed at individual work; • Peer readers/editors who act as “spotters” for sections of your writing that need attention, and who become your community of working colleagues even after your workshop is completed; • Tips on how to keep writing and integrate this “habit of being” into your life; • Tactics for getting published; • Time to share work with other writers and read peers’ work, and • Help with addressing trouble areas and incorporating multiple, sometimes conflicting, ideas into the revision.

BEGINNER LEVEL We strongly suggest that newcomers start with a beginner level workshop. They are structured to help you discover the fundamentals of creative writing, such as:

• Getting your ideas on the page; • Choosing a genre and the shape your material should take; • Learning the elements of poetry, playwriting, fiction, memoir, etc.; • Identifying your writing strengths and areas of opportunity and • Gaining beginning mastery of the basic tools of all writing, such as concise, accurate language, and learning how to tailor them to fit your style.

smaller groups with distinguished writers on a specific project or manuscript.

Workshop leaders select participants from the pool of applicants; selection is competitive.

REGISTRATION Workshop registration is available online at www.writer.org, in person at The Writer’s Center, via mail, online or by phone at (301) 654-8664.

INTERMEDIATE LEVEL

REFUND POLICY

These workshops will build on skills you developed in the beginner level, and are designed for writers who have: • Critiqued some published works; • Taken a beginner-level workshop; • Achieved some grace in using the tools of language and form and • Have projects in progress they want to develop further.

To receive a credit, you must notify TWC by e-mail ( judson.battaglia@ writer.org) within the drop period.

• Full refunds are given only when TWC cancels a workshop.

• Workshop participants who have enrolled in and paid for a workshop and choose to withdraw from it within the drop period (see below) will receive a full credit to their account that can be used within one year to pay for another workshop and/or a membership.

ADVANCED LEVEL Participants should have manuscripts that have been critiqued in workshops at the intermediate level and have been revised substantially. This level offers: • Focus on the final revision and completion of a specific work; • Fast-paced setting with higher expectations of participation and • Deep insight and feedback.

MASTER LEVEL Master classes are designed for writers who have taken several advanced workshops and have reworked their manuscript into what they believe is its final form. Master classes are unique opportunities to work in

Find Your Niche The Writer’s Center recognizes that all writers and styles are unique!

Our staff can help you find the right course(s) for your level of experience, preferred genre and overall goals.

Call us at (301) 654-8664.

Drop Period for Credit 5 or more sessions: 48 hours notice required before the second meeting 4 or fewer sessions: 48 hours notice required before the first meeting Workshop & Event Guide Summer 2015

17

SUMMER WORKSHOP SCHEDULE

The Writer’s Center

SCHEDULE

FICTION (PAGES 21-23)

LEADER

DATES

DAY

TIME

LEVEL

Thriller! How to Build a Story No Reader Can Put Down

Kathryn Johnson

5/20–6/17

W

7–9:30 p.m.

ALL

Fiction: The Business of Revising

Donna Hemans

5/21–6/25

Th

7–9 p.m.

A

The “New” Literary Novel

Kathryn Johnson

5/23

S

10 a.m.–12:30 p.m.

ALL

The Facts of Fiction

Robert Friedman

5/25–7/13

M

7–9 p.m.

ALL

Workshop Your Novel!*

Aaron Hamburger

5/26–7/14

T

7–9:30 p.m.

ALL

Fiction I: Story Writing

Con Lehane

5/28–7/2

Th

7–9:30 p.m.

B/I

The Telling Detail

Ann McLaughlin

5/30–7/18

S

10 a.m.–12:30 p.m.

B/I

Creating Mystery and Suspense in Fiction*

Con Lehane

5/30–6/27

S

12–3 p.m.

ALL

Advanced Crime Fiction

Con Lehane

6/1–7/6

M

7–9:30 p.m.

A

Writing the Bare Bones: Literary Minimalism*

Simon Ward

6/3–6/24

W

7–9 p.m.

B/I

Manuscript in Progress

Ben Farmer

6/3–7/15

w

6:30–9 p.m.

I/A

Fiction II: Gaining Perspective and Finding Your Angle

Nicole Miller

6/4–7/16

Th

6–9 p.m.

B/I

Demystifying Dialogue

Lynn Schwartz

6/6

S

9:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m.

B/I

Beginning in the Middle

Kathleen Wheaton

6/8–7/27

T

1 p.m.–3 p.m.

B/I

Beginning Fantasy Fiction

Brenda W. Clough

6/18–6/25

Th

7:30–9:30 p.m.

B

Self-Editing for Fiction Writers

Kathryn Johnson

6/20

S

10 a.m.–12:30 p.m.

ALL

Intro to the Novel: Writing Compelling Fiction

Alan Orloff

6/20–7/25

S

10 a.m.–12:30 p.m.

B

Getting Started: Fiction Intensive

Elizabeth Poliner

6/22–7/13

M

7–9:30 p.m.

B

Whodunnit? How to Write a Mystery

Alan Orloff

6/27

S

2–4:30 p.m.

All

The Extreme Novelist

Kathryn Johnson

7/8–8/26

W

7–9:30 p.m.

I/A

Fiction II

Jennifer Buxton

7/8–8/26

W

10 a.m.–12:30 p.m.

I

Beginning Fiction

Jennifer Buxton

7/9–8/27

Th

7–9:30 p.m.

B

The Novella: New Kid on the Block?

Kathryn Johnson

7/11

S

10 a.m.–12:30 p.m.

ALL

Conflict & Tension in Fiction

Kathryn Johnson

8/8

S

10 a.m.–12:30 p.m.

ALL

NONFICTION (PAGE 23)

LEADER

DATES

DAY

TIME

LEVEL

Polishing Travel Stories for Publication

Christine Koubek

5/20–5/27

W

7–9:30 p.m.

B/I

Crafting The Short Narrative Essay

Pam Gerhardt

6/2–7/14

T

7–9 p.m.

B/I

Where and How to Pitch Your Travel Story

Christine Koubek

6/3

W

7–9:30 p.m.

B/I

Personal Essay Workshop

Tiffany Hawk

6/20

S

10 a.m.–4 p.m.

ALL

Discovering Your Stories*

Solveig Eggerz

7/18–8/22

W

10 a.m.–12:30 p.m.

ALL

Looking Back, Moving Forward

Jessica Handler

8/8

S

10 a.m.–2 p.m.

All

B—beginner

I—intermediate

A—advanced

M—master

ALL—all levels

* Indicates workshops held at one of our satellite locations. Please see descriptions for more information.

18

View online at www.writer.org/guide

MIXED GENRE (PAGE 24- 25)

LEADER

DATES

DAY

TIME

LEVEL

Prose Style Workshop

Nicole Miller

5/30

S

10 a.m.–4 p.m.

ALL

Contemporary Publishing: Theory & Practice

Kelly Forsythe

5/20–6/24

W

7–9 p.m.

ALL

Blurred Lines: Telling Lives in Autobiografiction

Ron Capps

5/26–7/14

T

7–9:30 p.m.

I

Erotica in Real Life

Mary McCarthy

6/1

M

7–9:00 p.m.

ALL

The Real Deal

Kathryn Johnson

6/6

S

10 a.m.–12:30 p.m.

ALL

Wired for Story: Using New Discoveries in Brain Science to Hook Your Reader*

Laura Oliver

6/6

S

10:30–11:30 a.m.

ALL

The Writing Staycation

Zahara Heckscher

6/8–6/12

M-F

10 a.m.–5 p.m.

ALL

Getting Started: Mixed Genre

Elizabeth Poliner

6/17–7/29

W

7–9:30 p.m.

B

Using Creativity Tools to Discover Your Story’s Core*

Lynn Schwartz

6/23

T

6–9 p.m.

ALL

Let’s Talk About Sex: How to Use Eroticism Effectively in Prose*

Aaron Hamburger

6/25

Th

6:30–8:30 p.m.

ALL

Applying Standup Comedy Techniques to Your Writing

Basil White

6/27–6/28

S/S

1–5 p.m.

ALL

Writing with Woolf

Nicole Miller

7/11

S

10 a.m.–4 p.m.

ALL

How to Write a Lot

Kathryn Johnson

7/25

S

10 a.m.–12:30 p.m.

ALL

POETRY (PAGES 25-26)

LEADER

DATES

DAY

TIME

LEVEL

6 Weeks, 100 Poems

Christopher Goodrich

4/25–5/30

S

10:30 a.m.–12 p.m.

ALL

Short Poetry

Hailey Leithauser

5/23–7/11

S

2–4 p.m.

I/A

Poetry Workshop

Mark Cugini

5/25–6/29

M

7–10 p.m.

B/I

Getting Your Poetry Published

Michele Wolf

5/30

S

2–5 p.m.

ALL

Poetry Tune-Up

Nan Fry

6/9

T

10:30 a.m.–1:30 p.m.

I/A

The Poem Starts HERE!

Marie Pavlicek-Wehrli

6/16–7/21

T

10:30 a.m.–1 p.m.

I

Reading As Apprenticeship: Inger Christensen’s “alphabet”

Marie Pavlicek-Wehrli

6/18–6/25

Th

10:30 a.m.–1 p.m.

I

Making It Whole: Poetry Chapbook Workshop

Anne Becker

6/27–8/15

S

10 a.m.–1 p.m.

A

Re-envisioning Your Poems

Nan Fry

7/7–8/11

T

10:30 a.m.–1 p.m.

I/A

Poetry Workshop

Mark Cugini

7/15–8/19

W

7–10 p.m.

B/I

Poetry Tune-Up

Nan Fry

8/29

S

10:30 a.m.–1:30 p.m.

I/A

ONLINE (PAGES 26-28)

LEADER

DATES

LEVEL

Plotting Your Novel

T. Greenwood

5/22–6/12

ALL

Creating Novel Characters

T. Greenwood

5/22–6/12

ALL

Online Poetry Workshop I

Bernadette Geyer

5/25–6/15

ALL

Introduction to the Short Story

Christopher Linforth

5/25–7/13

B/I

Advanced Short Fiction

Christopher Linforth

5/25–7/13

A

4 Essays/Memoirs, 4 Weeks

Dave Singleton

5/26–6/16

ALL

Workshop & Event Guide Summer 2015

19

SCHEDULE

SUMMER WORKSHOP SCHEDULE

FALL WORKSHOP SCHEDULE

The Writer’s Center

SCHEDULE

ONLINE (continued)

LEADER

DATES

LEVEL

Another Time, Another Place: Writing Historical Fiction

Lisa Lieberman

6/1–6/22

ALL

The Awesome World of Comic Arts

Bianca Stone

6/1–7/20

ALL

Generative Poetry and Radical Revision

Bianca Stone

6/1–7/20

I/A

Serial Poems

Tony Mancus

6/2–7/21

I/A

Introduction to Poetry

Erin M. Bertram

6/2–7/21

B

The 5th Genre: Literary Collage

Erin M. Bertram

6/3–7/22

I

The Big, Bad World of the Prose Poem

Erin M. Bertram

6/4–7/23

I

Fiction’s Foundation

Tiffany Hawk

6/8–7/27

ALL

Crafting Short Stories: Intermediate Fiction

Christopher Linforth

6/15–8/3

I

Creative Nonfiction II

Dave Singleton

6/23–7/14

I/A

Writing as Ritual: Building a Daily Poetry Practice

Mathias Svalina

7/13–8/17

ALL

Fiction II: Intermediate Novel

T. Greenwood

7/17–9/4

I/A

4 Essays/Memoirs, 4 Weeks

Dave Singleton

7/21–8/11

ALL

PROFESSIONAL WRITING (PAGE 28)

LEADER

DATES

DAY

TIME

LEVEL

Writing the Dreaded Query Letter

Alan Orloff

6/20

S

2–4:30 p.m.

ALL

How to Write a Grant Proposal

Cara Seitchek

8/1–8/15

S

1:30–4 p.m.

ALL

Write Like the News

Hank Wallace

8/20

Th

7–9 p.m.

ALL

SONGWRITING (PAGE 28)

LEADER

DATES

DAY

TIME

LEVEL

The Art of Songwriting

Mary Alouette

6/11–7/1

Th

6:30–9:30 p.m.

ALL

STAGE AND SCREEN (PAGES 28-29)

LEADER

DATES

DAY

TIME

LEVEL

The Art and Craft of Screenwriting and Adaptation*

Khris Baxter

5/9

S

10 a.m.–4 p.m.

ALL

Your First Ten Pages: In The Trash or On The Screen?

John Weiskopf

6/9–7/28

T

7:30–10 p.m.

ALL

The Art and Craft of Screenwriting and Adaptation*

Khris Baxter

6/20

S

10 a.m.–4 p.m.

ALL

Building Your Screenplay World

John Weiskopf

7/9–8/13

Th

7:30–10 p.m.

ALL

The Invisible Structure of a Great Script

John Weiskopf

7/18–7/25

S

10 a.m.–1 p.m.

ALL

Playwriting: The Writing Process

Richard Washer

8/6

Th

7:30–10 p.m.

B/I

Playwriting: Character

Richard Washer

8/20

Th

7:30–10 p.m.

B/I

Playwriting: Exposition

Richard Washer

8/29

S

10 a.m.–12:30 p.m.

B/I

YOUNGER WRITERS (PAGE 29)

LEADER

DATES

DAY

TIME

LEVEL

Write a Winning College Essay

Pamela Toutant

6/20

S

10 a.m.–12 p.m.

ALL

Write a Winning College Essay

Pamela Toutant

8/22

S

10 a.m.–12 p.m.

ALL

ADULTS WRITE FOR CHILDREN (PAGE 29) LEADER

DATES

DAY

TIME

LEVEL

Writing for Young Children

Mary Quattlebaum

5/21–6/4

Th

7–9:30 p.m.

ALL

Creating Your Book for Children: Shape it, Submit it, See it in Print

Peter Mandel

6/22

M

7–9:30 p.m.

ALL

20

View online at www.writer.org/guide

WORKSHOPS FOR MORE DETAILED CLASS DESCRIPTIONS, PLEASE VISIT WRITER.ORG NOTE: TWC will be closed for Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day. Thriller! How to Build a Story No Reader Can Put Down Kathryn Johnson Novels, novellas, short stories, and movies that keep readers on the edge of their seats are called thrillers.

They can be tales of romantic suspense, mysteries, fantasies, Westerns, science fiction, historical epics, espionage or paranormal adventures, or even family sagas. But if it’s a page turner with a breakneck pace, it’s also a thriller! Discover specific techniques for writing within your chosen genre while building in elements that turn an average plot into a fastpaced, emotionally gripping tale that no reader can put down. Participants will bring one or more plot ideas to the first session for class discussion and feedback, then work individually with the instructor to build and launch a story that will include the ingredients and pacing necessary to engage the imagination and steal away the breath of readers. By the final class, each participant will have developed a structure to support at least one story, book length or shorter, and will have written an opening scene that sets the style and tone for the entire project.

5 Wednesdays Bethesda

7–9:30 p.m.

All

5/20–6/17 $225

Fiction: The Business of Revising Donna Hemans Revising a novel can be a daunting task. This workshop focuses on the process of revising a full-length novel: how to step back and read your work objectively, parse through reader feedback to find the comments that will let your best work shine through, trim extraneous descriptions and scenes, strengthen your characters and plot, and rewrite. Each writer will submit 25-50 double-spaced pages for critique.

6 Thursdays Bethesda

7–9 p.m.

A

5/21–6/25 $215

The Facts of Fiction

The Telling Detail

Robert Friedman

Ann McLaughlin

This workshop is for writers who want to use reallife characters in their fiction. Each writer comes to class with a “newsworthy” character he or she would like to “novelize” as we explore the nexus between journalism and novel-writing. We will discuss how journalistic principles may apply as the writer researches and writes a factual article about the character, then creates a fictional piece putting the character in a central role. In the process, the writer will (hopefully) intuit a fictional “truth” about the character, as filtered through her or his research, imagination, and soul. After the first session or two, the workshop will be heavy on critiquing the writing of the participants.

This eight-week workshop will study the use of detail in novels and short stories. Participants will discuss character, setting, and plot, and read and discuss a novel by a well-known writer. Each participant will have the opportunity to submit work at least two times for group discussion and will receive written critique. Writers can expect thoughtful consideration of their work and motivation from other workshop members, who are also working to improve their skills and care about the art of writing. No meeting July 4.

8 Mondays Bethesda

Creating Mystery and Suspense in Fiction

7–9 p.m.

All

5/25–7/13 $290

8 Saturdays Bethesda

10 a.m.–12:30 p.m.

B/I

5/30–7/18 $360

Workshop Your Novel!

Con Lehane

Aaron Hamburger

This workshop will cover such craft elements as character, plot, point of view, description, dialogue, setting, pacing, and voice, as well as the importance of substance and structure to a story, with a special emphasis on techniques for creating suspense and mystery, the elements of fiction that keep readers turning pages. Participants will workshop each other’s writing and be assigned exercises and some reading. The workshop is open to both beginning and seasoned fiction writers, whether of stories or novels. By the end of the class, participants will have written scenes that are suspenseful and mysterious and will feel comfortable bringing these elements of craft to their own writing.

While most fiction classes give budding novelists the chance to critique individual scenes, in this workshop, participants will focus on how their book-length project works as a whole. Participants will submit an overview of their book-in-progress (including parts that may have yet to be written but are planned) as well as two scenes from the book.

One scene should be an example of the book’s strongest parts, the ideal you are working toward, and the other should be an example of where you think the writing needs the most help. Focused writing activities will be offered each session to address craft issues. Toward the end of the workshop participants will learn how to get their book out into the world and in the hands of readers.

8 Tuesdays Capitol Hill

7–9:30 p.m.

All

5/26–7/14 $360

5 Saturdays Capitol Hill

12–3 p.m.

All

5/30–6/27 $270

Advanced Crime Fiction

Fiction I: Story Writing

Con Lehane

Con Lehane

At one time, genre fiction (also called “commercial fiction”) such as mysteries, science fiction, and romance, were considered plot-driven while literary fiction was thought of as the sophisticated, character-driven older cousin. Today, these once divergent genres have blended, due to cross-over readers who simply read what appeals to them without regard to labels. Mysteries and romances can be written in beautiful prose. Literary novels, like Donna Tartt’s award-winning book, The Goldfinch, make use of such borrowed elements as suspense, art theft, and characters on the run from danger. Discover how to write to both camps and thereby attract a broader readership while adding (or retaining) a sophisticated edge to your work-in-progress.

This course will concentrate on writing stories.

Whether you’re writing a short story or novel, comedy or tragedy, mystery, suspense, adventure, ‘the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself,’ or something else, certain elements of story writing are universal. You’ll examine such craft elements as character, plot, point of view, description, dialogue, setting, pacing, and voice, as well as the importance of substance and structure to a story.

The basic format of the class will be a workshop, but will also include exercises and an occasional reading. As long as you’re willing to write, it doesn’t matter where you are on the writer’s path.

At the end of the course, participants should have written a story, come up with a draft of a new story or a revision of an existing one, or made significant progress on a novel.

This workshop is intended for writers well along in the creation of a crime fiction novel—from the village cozy to hard-boiled to the darkest noir, from suspense to intrigue to the page-turner action thriller. Those polishing a completed draft, looking for encouragement to finish a draft, or “stuck in the middle” needing a push to get going again, should find themselves among kindred spirits.

Participants should expect to spend time reading, thinking about, and commenting on the work of others, as well as on their own work. This workshop will review the essential elements of fiction writing that apply to all genres: story, plot, character, and their sub-elements: action, dialogue, setting, with an emphasis on revision. Participants should leave this workshop with renewed determination to finish their work-in-progress and a refined set of tools to get there.

1 Saturday Bethesda

6 Thursdays Bethesda

6 Mondays Bethesda

The “New” Literary Novel Kathryn Johnson

10 a.m.–12:30 p.m.

All

5/23 $50

7–9:30 p.m.

B/I

5/28–7/2 $270

Workshop & Event Guide Summer 2015

21

7–9:30 p.m.

A

6/1–7/6 $270

WORKSHOPS

FICTION

WORKSHOPS

participants’ work. Oh, and it will be fun, too! No meeting July 4.

Writing the Bare Bones: Literary Minimalism

Demystifying Dialogue

Simon Ward

Good dialogue is a great tool for both fiction and nonfiction writers, yet many writers avoid it.

This workshop will help participants explore “real talk” versus written conversation, analyze what characters should say and how they should say it, and understand how speech creates action and propels a story forward. The appropriate use of tags, dialects, and direct and indirect dialogue will also be examined.

“It’s...the things that are left out, that are implied, the landscape just under the smooth (but sometimes broken and unsettled) surface of things.”

Raymond Carver, “On Writing”

WORKSHOPS

This course will examine the various facets of literary minimalism, with the aim of recognizing how the devices of the form can create a subjective reading experience that gives greater depth to a work. Each week will be devoted to particular aspects of the style: from diction to dialogue to syntax to narrative voice. Participants will be required to read selected short stories that demonstrate minimalist techniques by writers such as Hemmingway, Carver, and McCarthy, and to participate in class discussion and weekly workshops. Participants should expect to come away from this class with a selection of their own edited work, and with a greater understanding of the power of the ‘things that are left out.’

4 Wednesdays Annapolis

7–9 p.m.

B/I

6/3–6/24 $135

Lynn Schwartz

1 Saturday Bethesda

9:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m. 6/6 B/I $50

Beginning in the Middle Where to begin? That’s the dilemma all writers face when confronted with the blank page. In this class, participants will consider various ways to get a running start on a short story, and how to keep the momentum going to the end. In-class prompts and exercises should increase mastery and lead to a finished story by the end of the workshop.

1 p.m.–3 p.m.

B/I

6/8–7/27 $360

Ben Farmer This course aims to aid writers with the delicate task of generating new material during the middle or later stages of a longer work. Both novels and collections of linked stories are welcome. Participants will read and discuss short excerpts from (potentially) familiar novels each week, but critique will absorb most of each meeting. Every participant can expect two workshop opportunities. All genres of fiction are welcome. Please bring a summary of an existing draft to the first meeting.

7 Wednesdays Bethesda

6:30–9 p.m.

I/A

6/3–7/15 315

Beginning Fantasy Fiction Brenda W. Clough The first session of this workshop will be devoted to the basics of fiction and story construction. In the second session, participants will do a start-up exercise to help get them started on a possibly longer work.

2 Thursdays Bethesda

7:30–9:30 p.m.

B

6/18–6/25 $80

Self-Editing for Fiction Writers Kathryn Johnson

Fiction II: Gaining Perspective and Finding Your Angle Nicole Miller Pinning down a story’s point of view remains one of the core challenges for a fiction writer. Once you grasp it, many other pieces of the puzzle—voice, dialogue, consciousness, description and setting— often fall into place. In this seven-week series, participants will write stories with focus on this most slippery aspect of craft. Writers will produce one story written in two perspectives, and workshop it twice. This course will also offer numerous shorter exercises to encourage experimentation with second-person, choral, and epistolary points of view, in the flash fiction form. While one can acknowledge Mary McCarthy’s confession that “The whole question of point of view…tortures everybody,” this workshop will also show how a change of perspective can make, as well as break, a story, and lift it to new heights. Please bring a copy of the anthology Points of View, edited by James Moffett and Kenneth R. McElheny, to class.

7 Thursdays Bethesda

6–9 p.m.

I

6/4–7/16 $360

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“How do I know when my story is done?” It’s not really finished—and ready for the eyes of a literary agent or publisher—until you’ve edited it. But how does an author go about editing his/her own work, beyond the spell-check? Learn the most common (and often invisible) flaws and how to avoid or fix them before the pros review your work. Manuscripts that are less than polished, even when the story and writing are appealing, may not get a fair read.

1 Saturday Bethesda

10 a.m.–12:30 p.m.

All

5 Saturdays Bethesda

6/20 $50

Intro to the Novel: Writing Compelling Fiction Alan Orloff Have you started a novel—or have a great idea for one—but need some direction and feedback?

In this workshop, participants will learn about the building blocks—plot, characters, setting, dialogue, conflict—and how they all fit together to create a solid foundation for page-turning fiction. Sessions will include instruction and writing exercises, with an emphasis on giving and receiving critiques of

10 a.m.–12:30 p.m.

B

6/20–7/25 $225

Getting Started: Fiction Intensive Elizabeth Poliner In this four-week workshop, those new to fiction will explore the basic elements of writing stories: characterization, plot, setting, point of view, dialogue, and scene. After a laying a foundation with these elements, participants will put them together and write a short story. You’ll be surprised at how much you can learn and do in just four weeks.

4 Mondays Bethesda

Kathleen Wheaton

8 Tuesdays Bethesda

Manuscript in Progress

The Writer’s Center

7–9:30 p.m.

B

6/22–7/13 $195

Whodunnit? How to Write a Mystery Alan Orloff If you’ve always wanted to write a mystery novel but didn’t know where to start, this workshop is for you. Learn about writing fundamentals as they apply to the mystery. You’ll examine characteristics of the many subgenres (thrillers, too!) and learn about mystery-specific conventions and pitfalls such as TSTL syndrome, macguffins, red herrings, killer twists, wacky sidekicks, and smooth clue-dropping. Fun, educational, and… mysterious!

1 Saturday Bethesda

2–4:30 p.m.

All

6/27 $50

The Extreme Novelist Kathryn Johnson Can’t find the time/energy/inspiration to get your novel written? This popular course will help writers complete a rough draft in just eight weeks, with the encouragement of professional writing coach and author of more than 40 published books Kathryn Johnson. Participants commit to an aggressive writing schedule and learn the tricks pros use to create a productive working environment and meet their deadlines despite life’s distractions (e.g., the dreaded day job). Each class will include troubleshooting discussions, a brief lecture and handouts from the instructor, in-class writing time, and the opportunity to submit portions of work-in-progress to the instructor for individual feedback and guidance. (Note: This is not a work-shopping course.

It’s all about getting your book written. Further information will be sent to registered participants, in advance of the first class. Please check your junk mail!)

8 Wednesdays Bethesda

7–9:30 p.m.

I/A

7/8–8/26 $360

Fiction II Jennifer Buxton This intermediate fiction workshop focuses on student work. Each class member is guaranteed to workshop one full-length piece. The instructor will also offer weekly prompts and assignments for inspiration and practice. Participants will read outside

View online at www.writer.org/guide

WORKSHOPS

8 Wednesdays Bethesda

10 a.m.–12:30p.m.

I

and discuss what hooks readers, then apply some of those same techniques to their own stories.

Workshop participants should have a 1,000-1,500 word draft ready to submit a week prior to the workshop (to an email address provided then).

Everyone will have an opportunity to workshop one piece in class.

7/8–8/26 $360

Beginning Fiction

2 Wednesdays Bethesda

Jennifer Buxton This workshop is designed for people new or returning to fiction. It will offer weekly assignments, generative prompts (right in your email!), outside readings, and an in-depth class discussion of at least one story by each participant. The course will cover the basic elements of story writing, giving writers a sense of where they want the writing to go next. You’ve been thinking about doing this, haven’t you? Let this summer be the one when you start to write.

8 Thursdays Bethesda

7–9:30 p.m.

B

7/9–8/27 $360

The Novella: New Kid on the Block?

Kathryn Johnson Although novellas have been around for as long as any other form of fiction, they are receiving a lot of attention today due to the increase in digital readers. This medium-length format is a boon to writers who enjoy working in shorter formats, but want the room to fully develop characters and round out plots. Novellas also help a novelist gain recognition and stay in the public eye between book-length works. But there’s an art to them. Join us for a Saturday coffee klatch and discover ways you can benefit by writing this just-right story—to add to a collection of short stories, freshen up your portfolio, submit to literary journals or popular fiction magazines, or to build a fan base.

1 Saturday Bethesda

10 a.m.–12:30 p.m.

All

7/11 $50

Conflict & Tension in Fiction Kathryn Johnson Arguably, without conflict, there is no story. But how does a writer know whether the conflict in the story is strong enough to carry a whole novel or even a short story? How do we build a believable source of conflict and then sustain it throughout a story to hold a reader’s attention? This Saturday workshop will enlighten authors and provide a worksheet that individualizes the process for each writer, regardless of the type of story. Additional tools and tips for creating tension and a bond between reader and protagonist will be provided.

1 Saturday Bethesda

10 a.m.–12:30 p.m.

All

8/8 $50

NONFICTION

5/20–5/27 $100

Crafting The Short Narrative Essay Pam Gerhardt Ever wonder how to write one of those short but thought-provoking essays that appear in places such as The New York Times “Modern Love” column? In a fun and relaxed setting, learn the tools to create short, publishable narrative essays -- narrative arc, plot, theme, character development, catchy beginnings and endings -- in five pages or less.

Read and discuss sample published essays; write your own essay; receive helpful feedback from the instructor and classmates; learn to edit your own work with a specific audience in mind. Remember: Writing is editing, and no sentence comes out perfect the first time.

7 Tuesdays Bethesda

7–9 p.m.

B/I

6 Saturdays Capitol Hill

6/2–7/14 $270

Where and How to Pitch Your Travel Story Christine Koubek You’ve written a travel piece and are searching for a potential place to publish that story—newspaper travel section, travel, regional or specialty magazine, travel website, or literary magazine? In this workshop, you’ll look at a variety of publications and the types of stories they run, then discuss how to determine if your story idea is a potential fit. You’ll also learn where to find in-depth writer’s guidelines and how to use that information to write a pitch letter that best sells your story. Bring the first three paragraphs of your travel story to class and a short summary of the piece you’d like to pitch.

1 Wednesday Bethesda

7–9:30 p.m.

B/I

6/3 $50

Personal Essay Workshop Tiffany Hawk We all love a good story, but when it comes to our own, we wonder why anyone would care. And if they do -- gasp-- what will they think? In this fullday workshop, you will learn why personal essays do matter, what the good ones are made of, how to write yours, and how to get it published. Come in with an idea and leave with a solid plan for sharing it with the world.

1 Saturday Annapolis

Polishing Travel Stories for Publication

7–9:30 p.m.

B/I

figure drawing, and free writing to unleash the stories that live within, participants will write and have the opportunity to share writing during each session. This means discovering and developing a main character, and creating scenes and dialogue for that character. Using examples from published authors, participants will focus on and create conflict, the dual narrator, and the mystery of time in memory and story. After each of the six sessions, everyone will have the rough draft of a story to be revised and perfected at home. Bring paper and pen or pencil plus three crayons or colored pencils.

10 a.m.-4 p.m.

All Levels

6/20 $115

Discovering Your Stories

Christine Koubek In this two-session workshop, writers will revise and polish their travel stories for pitching. In the process participants will look at various story leads

Solveig Eggerz Draw on memory and imagination to create stories. Using prompts, oral storytelling, stick

Workshop & Event Guide Summer 2015

10 a.m.–12:30 p.m.

All

7/18–8/22 $270

WORKSHOPS

stories, both classic and contemporary, and talk about what makes stories work and how to make their own the best they can be.

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WORKSHOPS Looking Back, Moving Forward

Contemporary Publishing: Theory & Practice

Jessica Handler A well-written memoir that addresses grief, loss, or trauma proves to the writer that he or she has moved forward enough to look back. But how does a writer’s “back” shape his or her “forward?” If we intend to write well about what’s changed us, looking back on positive and negative experiences involves more than just capturing slippery memory on the page. Looking back creates forward motion in the story. In this workshop, participants will discuss examples from classic literature, and generate their own new material from writing prompts generated by the instructor and group discussion.

Participants will come away with the tools to write well about difficult subjects.

1 Saturday Bethesda

10 a.m.–2 p.m.

All

8/8 $80

MIXED GENRE WORKSHOPS

Nicole Miller Vladimir Nabokov once said, “style and structure are the essence of a book. Great ideas are hogwash.” This one day workshop will focus on the smaller units which make up great writing—the right word, the elegant turn of phrase, the startling epithet, the apt figure of speech. Particpants will analyze the sharp, staccato, lyrical, and down-tempo lines from authors ranging from Shakespeare to Stein, Orwell to Hemingway. This workshop will teach participants to note the pauses, predicates, parallel structures, and punctuation of sentences that endure, and spend time imitating the syntax of writers whose style contrasts with their own.

The opening lines and paragraphs of classic works and contemporary prize-winners will form a special focus. Participants will also dissect a page of nonfiction from The New Yorker to reveal the elements of “house style.” Part of the workshop will be dedicated to a critique of participant paragraphs, and the metrical test of reading aloud. The goal will be to stretch the limits of people’s set form of expression, to strive for clarity, subtlety, and power, one word at a time.

10 a.m.–4 p.m.

All

This workshop will be a comprehensive overview of what to do with your book manuscript, from selfpublishing and pitching trade publishers to launching your own printing press. Discussion-based with practical “how-to-submit” exercises and examples, in this workshop writers will explore today’s publishing landscape from a variety of angles, charting the advancement of printed work–be it on paper or in pixels–from its beginnings to the possibilities of its future, and examining how its evolution has informed the culture of the contemporary publishing world and literature itself. As we acquaint ourselves with this landscape, we’ll shift our vantage to include not only the view of a writer, but also that of an editor and literary magazine curator, giving a 360-degree view of the publishing world.

6 Wednesdays Bethesda

Prose Style Workshop

1 Saturday Bethesda

Kelly Forsythe

5/30 $115

7–9 p.m.

All

5/20–6/24 $215

Blurred Lines: Telling Lives in Autobiografiction Ron Capps Recently we’ve seen a number of memoirists brought down for writing fictional tales and calling them fact--Herman Rosenblatt, Margaret Jones, and James Frye come to mind. But there is a long literary tradition of writing true lives’ stories as fiction, using the style of autobiografiction. In this workshop, participants will read and discuss works of this genre, and write some of their own. Participants should be interested in memoir and have some experience writing both fiction and non-fiction.

8 Tuesdays Bethesda

7–9:30 p.m.

I

5/26–7/14 $360

Erotica in Real Life Mary McCarthy Bestselling author Mary McCarthy will describe writing an erotica-filled romance trilogy while also existing in the real world as an editor and mom of four. The mysterious cross-section between fiction and nonfiction and the journey from novel idea and getting a literary agent to book contract and the bestseller list is the focus. She will read an excerpt

The Writer’s Center from her novel The Scarlet Letter Society and have books available for signing.

1 Monday Bethesda

7–9:00 p.m.

All

6/1 $40

The Real Deal Kathryn Johnson The success of a novel or short story depends upon how believable it seems to the reader. Manuscripts that lack realism are rejected by publishers and found uninteresting by readers. Learn the many ways to saturate your fiction with lush, realistic, appealing detail in this Saturday workshop accompanied by pastries and coffee. Support your plot and beloved characters with a vivid world of your own making that is perfectly in balance with your plot, characters, setting, and theme.

1 Saturday Bethesda

10 a.m.–12:30 p.m.

All

6/6 $50

Wired for Story: Using New Discoveries in Brain Science to Hook Your Reader Laura Oliver Learn from fascinating new discoveries in brain science how to write both fiction and memoir pieces your readers can’t put down. Participants will learn how to hook a reader from the very first sentence and sustain that tension through to the story’s end.

This workshop is packed with a wealth of new information that will inspire you to meet your reader’s hardwired expectations in a way that intrigues, satisfies, and delights.

1 Saturday Annapolis

10:30–11:30 a.m.

All

6/6 $40

The Writing Staycation Zahara Heckscher Do you dream of participating in a writing retreat, but can’t get out of town? This workshop, a non– residential week–long retreat at The Writer’s Center, is for you. Join us for an intensive, supportive, exhilarating, focused week of writing. Each day begins with a short reading, writing warm-up prompt and brief discussion. After that, you’ll have tons of time for working on your own writing–whether it is a poetry chapbook you are compiling, a novel you are starting, a nonfiction work in your brain, or a manuscript that needs some final polish. Optional lunch speakers, afternoon walks, and one-on-one sessions with our skilled and inspiring special guests will be available. The days include unlimited coffee, tea, and healthy snacks. We nurture you so you can focus on your writing and make a great leap forward in your priority writing project!

Monday-Friday Bethesda

10 a.m.–5 p.m.

All

6/8–6/12 $430

Getting Started: Mixed Genre Elizabeth Poliner If you’ve always wanted to write but haven’t known where to start, this is the workshop for you. Working in fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, participants will gain an understanding of the foundation of

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View online at www.writer.org/guide

WORKSHOPS

7 Wednesdays Bethesda

7–9:30 p.m.

B

6/17–7/29 $315

Using Creativity Tools to Discover Your Story’s Core Lynn Schwartz Do you want to begin a new writing project, need to quiet your inner critic, or develop new habits to keep you on course? Let’s explore how acting exercises, creative journaling, collage, vision boards, and writing prompts can inspire, focus, and energize writers. Each creativity technique presented is designed to connect authors to the core of their stories and the essence of their characters.

1 Tuesday Annapolis

6–9:00 PM All

6/23 $50

whether the medium was fiction or non-fiction. Out of the fearless, flowing fabric of observation and feeling, Woolf composed short stories, literary criticism, novels, biography, and memoir that altered the bounds of these genres. In her view, the tools for capturing “what we call life or spirit, truth or reality” (“Modern Novels”) evolved with history, language, social change, psychology, and perception. Writing which streamed with impressions, “the incessant shower of innumerable atoms,” (“Modern Novels”) became her trademark—a mode which heralded modernism. Many of her methods have still not been surpassed. This one-day workshop will introduce writers to a number of Woolf’s lyrical shorter works, and use her experiments in point-of-view, time, consciousness, and character to embolden participants in their own explorations of form. This course will dip into her playground of expression—diaries and letters—to get in touch with “the soul or life within us. . . which is always saying the very opposite to what other people say” (“Montaigne”). In-class exercises will be designed to inspire.

Let’s Talk About Sex: How to Use Eroticism Effectively in Prose

1 Saturday Bethesda

Aaron Hamburger

How to Write a Lot

Writing about sex can cause many of us a lot of grief. Some people try to dance around the topic, perhaps out of fear that if they include too much sex in their work or write about sex in the wrong way, they won’t be taken seriously. Others are eager to write about sexual subjects openly, but sometimes what seems erotic and authentic in the imagination can turn out childish and cringe-worthy when it appears on the page. If any of these descriptions sound like you, don’t worry; you’re in good company. In this workshop, participants will take a look at how the finest writers in the English language have struggled with these same problems when writing about sex and ultimately found original ways to deal with this charged topic. An in-class creative writing exercise will help participants with integrating eroticism with traditional concerns of characterization.

1 Thursday Capitol Hill

6:30–8:30 p.m.

All

6/25 $40

If you can read this and you can laugh, you can write humor! Learn to apply the basic psychology of how your brain gets a joke to discover what’s “gettable” about your subject matter, real or fictional, for humor writing or other ironic purposes. This class also works as a fun introduction to the fundamentals of workshopping for those new to the expectations of creative workshops. Before class, read the handout at basilwhite.com/comedyworkshop

Writing with Woolf Nicole Miller Virginia Woolf maintained that the writer’s job was to represent life and the experience of living,

Kathryn Johnson You may think you don’t have the time, energy, or inspiration to write because of your hectic lifestyle.

Wrong! Join us for Saturday coffee and pastries, and learn about organizing your time, establishing a productive writing routine, and getting your stories written. We’ll share methods many professional writers use to complete their books in months instead of years, their short stories in mere weeks. Become the dedicated author you’ve always dreamed of being.

1 Saturday Bethesda

10 a.m.–12:30 p.m.

All

7/25 $50

6 Saturdays Bethesda

2–4 p.m.

I/A

5/23–7/11 $215

Poetry Workshop Mark Cugini In this class, students will write, workshop, and critique six new poems. Class discussions will focus on poetic devices, modes, forms, and techniques, and writers will be given weekly prompts to “jumpstart” their writing. The goal of this course is to complete six new poems.

6 Mondays Bethesda

7–10 p.m.

B/I

5/25–6/29 $315

Getting Your Poetry Published Michele Wolf Whether you have yet to submit your first poem to a literary journal or are ready to offer a publisher a book-length manuscript, this intensive one-day workshop will give you advice on how to succeed, tailored to your work’s strengths. Get tips on placing poems in print and online journals, why anthologies are such an appealing platform, how to publish chapbooks and books, the pros and cons of contests, the etiquette of poetry submission, how to develop your poetry network, and how to keep your morale high while facing rejection in a highly competitive field. Magazine handouts will be provided.

1 Saturday Bethesda

2–5 p.m.

All

5/30 $50

Poetry Tune-Up Nan Fry

POETRY Christopher Goodrich

Basil White

6/27–6/28 $135

7/11 $115

6 Weeks, 100 Poems

Applying Standup Comedy Techniques to Your Writing

Saturday/Sunday 1–5 p.m.

Bethesda All

10 a.m.–4 p.m.

All

the not-quite-good. Participants will study the techniques of both form and free verse in the works of classical and contemporary poets such as Hopkins, Moore, Ryan, and Videlock. Please bring a favorite short poem for discussion. No meeting on June 13 and July 4.

William Packard once assigned his students to bring in one hundred poems to class THE FOLLOWING DAY! It seems that if your life depended on it, you could write one hundred poems in a single evening. In the spirit of “A Novel in a Month,” our task will be to create two manuscripts in a six week period. By stressing quantity over quality, perhaps, just perhaps, after six weeks we will walk away with half of them being workable.

6 Saturdays Bethesda

10:30 a.m.–12 p.m.

All

4/25–5/30 $270

Short Poetry Hailey Leithauser This workshop will focus on the short poem and what can be encompassed within only a handful of well chosen lines. Learn what a poem must accomplish to be deemed successful, and how to increase the potency of your own work by identifying and cutting the unsuccessful, the weak, and

Workshop & Event Guide Summer 2015

William Carlos Williams wrote that “There’s nothing sentimental about a machine, and : A poem is a small or (large) machine made out of words. When I say there is nothing sentimental about a poem, I mean that there can be no part of it that is redundant.” In this one-day workshop, each participant may bring in a poem that seems both promising and unsatisfying. With feedback from the group and the instructor as well as a consideration of such revision strategies as tightening, shaping, and reordering, participants will come away with some new approaches to streamlining their work. Participants are invited—but not required—to submit their poems before the workshop begins so the instructor may determine if there are common craft issues that may be useful to discuss. Please send your poems by June 6 to laura.spencer@writer.org.

1 Tuesday Bethesda

10:30 a.m.–1:30 p.m. 6/9 I/A $50

The Poem Starts HERE! Marie Pavlicek-Wehrli Honoring William Stafford’s dictum: “Writer’s block? Lower your standards!” in this workshop participants will put together a toolbox of exercises

25

WORKSHOPS

these genres, practice elements of each form through exercises and prompts, and craft stories and poems. This is a great course to loosen you up and quickly immerse you in writing creatively.

WORKSHOPS and strategies for jumping into the poem’s first draft without hesitancy or over-thinking. Revising these drafts toward finished poems to be shared in workshop will open discussion on matters of craft and the often mysterious and unpredictable ways that language itself works to lead the making of the poem forward.

6 Tuesdays Bethesda

10:30 a.m.–1 p.m.

I

6/16–7/21 $270

Reading As Apprenticeship: Inger Christensen’s “alphabet” Marie Pavlicek-Wehrli

WORKSHOPS

2 Thursdays Bethesda

10:30 a.m.–1 p.m.

I

6/18–6/25 $100

Making It Whole: Poetry Chapbook Workshop Anne Becker In this seven week intensive workshop for participants ready to put together a chapbook (must have 30 pages of strong poetry), we’ll explore how groups of poems can work together to create a focused and whole experience. During the first six weeks, participants read model chapbooks and consider various strategies of organization, prepare their chapbook manuscripts, have them critiqued by the group and in turn critique the chapbooks of the other participants, revise their chapbooks and have the final draft critiqued. The seventh meeting consists of an hour-long private session with the instructor. Please submit five poems before June 20 to laura.spencer@writer.org. No meeting July 4.

7 Saturdays Bethesda

10 a.m.–1 p.m.

A

6/27–8/15 $360

Nan Fry To revise your poems in a way that is a true re-envisioning can be as creative and challenging as writing the first draft. How can we recapture that initial spark? In this six-week workshop, participants will read and discuss sample revisions by well-known poets and consider their own work. In addition to investigating common rewriting strategies such as tightening, reshaping, reordering, and changing the point of view, the course will also explore finding the core or heart of each poem and re-envisioning it in the light of that essence. Participants can expect to come away with new approaches to revision and to their own work.

10:30 a.m.–1 p.m.

I/A

Online Poetry Workshop I

Mark Cugini

Bernadette Geyer

In this class, students will write, workshop, and critique six new poems. Class discussions will focus on poetic devices, modes, forms, and techniques, and writers will be given weekly prompts to “jumpstart” their writing. The goal of this course is to complete six new poems.

Don’t just sit around waiting for the muse. For four weeks, this workshop will provide inspiration for generating new poems. Lessons will be posted weekly, featuring example poems and links to additional reading. Participants will share and comment on each other’s work and will receive individual feedback from the workshop leader.

6 Wednesdays Bethesda

7–10 p.m.

B/I

7/15–8/19 $315

Poetry Tune-Up

1 Saturday Bethesda

7/7–8/11 $270

26

10:30 a.m.–1:30 p.m. 8/29 I/A $50

ONLINE These on-line workshops were inspired by the late Robert T. McElwaine, writer and friend of The Writer’s Center.

Plotting Your Novel T. Greenwood Whether you are a planner or a writer who flies by the seats of your pants when it comes to plot, your novel still needs structure. In this workshop, we will study the architecture of a novel and devise a plan for plotting your novel.

N/A All

4 Weeks Online

N/A All

5/25–6/15 $195

Introduction to the Short Story

William Carlos Williams wrote that “There’s nothing sentimental about a machine, and a poem is a small or (large) machine made out of words. When I say there is nothing sentimental about a poem, I mean that there can be no part of it that is redundant.” In this one-day workshop, each participant may bring in a poem that seems both promising and unsatisfying. With feedback from the group and the instructor as well as a consideration of such revision strategies as tightening, shaping, and reordering, participants will come away with some new approaches to streamlining their work. Participants are invited—but not required—to submit their poems before the workshop begins so the instructor may determine if there are common craft issues that may be useful to discuss. Please send your poems by June 6 to laura.spencer@writer.org.

4 Weeks Online

Re-envisioning Your Poems

6 Tuesdays Bethesda

Poetry Workshop

Nan Fry

A two-session conversation on the book-length poem “alphabet” by Danish poet Inger Christensen, translated by Susanna Nied. Structured on Fibonacci’s mathematical sequence, it is a “poet’s encyclopedia of natural history and its destroyers…sung at the speed of a May Day dance in a topsy-turvy take on Old Norse alliteration…” Participants will examine form and structure as well as the poem’s compelling meditation on human presence in the natural world. Please read the book in preparation for workshop.

The Writer’s Center

5/22–6/12 $195

Christopher Linforth Participants will read classic and contemporary short stories, and develop their own theories and opinions on the constituent elements of the genre.

That is: what makes a short story, and more importantly, what makes a good short story. Through a set of writing exercises, explore the craft of short fiction and establish a sound grasp of the essential building blocks: character, point of view, dialogue, setting, plot, structure, theme. By the course’s end, participants will have a written, workshopped, and revised a complete story and have plenty of material for others.

8 Weeks Online

N/A B/I

5/25–7/13 $360

Advanced Short Fiction Christopher Linforth This advanced class will attempt to answer two questions: Why did that story get published? And what does my fiction need to get there? Over eight weeks, participants will distinguish between familiar workshop-type stories and the ones that achieve publication. With writing prompts and in-depth critiques on sentence-level writing, as well as plot, character, and depth of point of view, participants will have a body of work close--if not ready--to submit.

8 Weeks Online

N/A A

5/25–7/13 $360

4 Essays/Memoirs, 4 Weeks Dave Singleton

When writing a novel, you must know your primary characters inside and out. You need to understand their desires, motivations, and frustrations, their histories and their futures. This workshop will focus on the development of authentic characters. Participants will examine character as both autonomous and residing within the context of the other novelistic elements, and the challenge of creating and integrating these various elements into a cohesive and credible whole. Participants will explore the main character(s) in their novels-in-progress.

What’s your story? What are the tales that you’ve been dying to tell, but haven’t had the time or structure to put pen to paper? Get started and write about your life in this hands-on, practical course in which you’ll write four pieces in four weeks and get individual feedback from the workshop leader on each.

Whether you have family stories you’d like to record for posterity or various moments of your life you want to capture, you’ll learn new strategies every week to help you write effectively about your life. The class will focus on exercises that will help you develop disparate memories and thoughts into a meaningful and organized form. Take advantage of practical tools and get supportive feedback from your workshop leader and fellow writers. Deadlines make you write, so give yourself four weeks of deadlines.

4 Weeks Online

4 Weeks Online

Creating Novel Characters T. Greenwood

N/A All

5/22–6/12 $195

View online at www.writer.org/guide

N/A All

5/26–6/16 $195

WORKSHOPS Another Time, Another Place: Writing Historical Fiction

Introduction to Poetry: Moment & Mood

Fiction’s Foundation

Lisa Lieberman

Erin M. Bertram

Immersing ourselves in another era is one of the pleasures of reading -- and writing -- historical fiction. How do writers bring past times and places vividly to life? Participants will learn how to capture the lived reality of other periods and places, adapting the tools of a cultural historian to suit their own needs. Weekly prompts to spark “research” into an unfamiliar era will be critiqued in a supportive and constructive forum.

Each week, participants will explore a different element of this compressed and charged genre via writing exercises, assigned readings, mindfulness exercises, YouTube videos, and maybe even self-guided micro-field trips, reading work by poets like Sappho, George Herbert, Ono no Komachi, and Carl Phillips. This workshop will help participants consider how elements like diction, tone, imagery, and repetition work within poems to produce meaning—sometimes quite profound, resonant meaning—in a relatively small space. By the end of this workshop, writers can expect to have a basic understanding of poetry, as well as four completed drafts of their own poems.

No prior experience with poetry is needed for this workshop.

A fulfilling writer’s life is not built on the frenzied use of social media. It is built on craft, community, and wholehearted discipline. Start laying that foundation here. You’ll work on technique (clarity, scene development, dialogue, plot), explore the publishing process, and develop a mindset that will weather inevitable setbacks like writer’s block and rejection. By the end of this course, you will have a deeper understanding of craft, a polished short story or chapter, and a plan for moving forward.

N/A All

6/1–6/22 $195

The Awesome World of Comic Arts Bianca Stone In this eight week workshop, we will look at the comic book/graphic novel form, drawing from a range of examples, both classical and contemporary. While looking closely at how comics are made, how they function, and what we find engaging, we will build-up toward making our own comics, with our own creative writing. Participants need not be proficient in visual arts, but we will explore different ways to express things visually, how to choose the right text, and how to bring them together in an engaging way.

8 Weeks Online

N/A All

6/1–7/20 $360

Generative Poetry and Radical Revision Bianca Stone In this workshop writers will have two goals: to write powerful new poetry, and to become masters at editing and expanding on old work. Writing intensive and critique-driven, the first half of the class will give participants rich new ideas inspired by writing prompts, and aim to produce one poem a week, for four weeks. The second half of the workshop will focus on radical revision. Participants will be required to show all their work, and to comment constructively on their peers’ work. Writers are guaranteed to leave this class stronger, more confident poets and readers.

8 Weeks Online

N/A I/A

6/1–7/20 $360

8 Weeks Online

N/A B

6/2–7/21 $360

The 5th Genre: Literary Collage Erin M. Bertram Each week, participants will explore a different element of this fascinating genre via writing exercises, assigned readings, mindfulness exercises, YouTube videos, and maybe even self-guided micro-field trips, reading work by writers like Frank Bidart, Claudia Rankine, and Anne Carson.

This workshop will help participants consider how elements like connective tissue, negative space, and organization work within literary collages to address some of life’s biggest questions surrounding identity, power, connection, and memory—the stuff we feel most profoundly in the gut and the heart. By the end of this workshop, writers can expect to have a basic understanding of literary collage, as well as a completed draft of their own literary collage that explores a topic of their choice. Some previous creative writing experience will prove helpful.

8 Weeks Online

N/A I

6/3–7/22 $360

The Big, Bad World of the Prose Poem Erin M. Bertram

In this workshop, participants will look at what makes poems cohere in groupings - how they build together and off of each other. The course will focus on a different author each week, and try to sort out what wiring makes their series work. Participants will also review and critique each others’ work every workshop. By the end of the workshop, each participant will have written a short series of interrelated poems. For the first week, please have an example of a series that interests you.

Each week, participants will explore a different element of this hybrid, lyrically-driven sub-genre via writing exercises, assigned readings, mindfulness exercises, YouTube videos, and maybe even self-guided micro-field trips, reading work by writers like Charles Baudelaire, Tove Jansson, Bhanu Kapil, and Arianne Zwartjes, and trying various approaches to the prose poem. By the end of this workshop, writers can expect to have a more nuanced understanding of the possibilities of the prose poem, as well as four completed drafts of prose poems themselves. Previous experience writing poetry will prove helpful in this workshop.

8 Weeks Online

8 Weeks Online

Serial Poems Tony Mancus

N/A I/A

6/2–7/21 $360

N/A I

6/4–7/23 $360

Workshop & Event Guide Summer 2015

8 Weeks Online

N/A All Levels

6/8-7/27 $360

Crafting Short Stories: Intermediate Fiction Christopher Linforth This workshop will examine the qualities of good writing and good storytelling. After a recap of the constituent elements of short fiction, participants will then take a fresh look at contemporary and classic stories alike. Each week everyone will write short pieces (longer, too) and offer feedback to fellow participants. By the course’s end, several stories will have been workshopped and then revised with an eye toward publication.

8 Weeks Online

N/A I

6/15–8/3 $360

Creative Nonfiction II Dave Singleton Ready to focus on your writing? Get creative this summer with creative nonfiction. Simply put: creative nonfiction is writing about real events and telling a story. It’s a hybrid genre that pulls in elements of fiction (literary techniques), the writer’s perspective, and factual information. It allows you to be poetic and journalistic simultaneously. You’ll get plenty of personal attention as you work on a variety of assignments. In addition to weekly lessons and assignments, the class will receive and explore pieces by some of the greats - Joan Didion, Sarah Vowell, David Sedaris, Jon Krakauer, Susan Orlean, and Gay Talese, to name a few. Writers will prepare three finished pieces and receive individual comments and suggestions from the teacher and constructive feedback from the class. Deadlines make you write, so give yourself four weeks of deadlines.

4 Weeks Online

N/A I/A

6/23–7/14 $195

Writing as Ritual: Building a Daily Poetry Practice Mathias Svalina In this poetry workshop, participants will devise their own daily writing practice that is meditative, fun, and productive. This practice could be writing in response to physical activities, to works of art, to a focused idea, to a form, any daily work that merges writing and ritual. The first week will introduce participants to daily writing practices and ask

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WORKSHOPS

4 Weeks Online

Tiffany Hawk

WORKSHOPS them to propose a practice. Each following week writers will post and critique each other’s poems, and discuss work by poets or artists who use a repetitive practice. By the end of the workshop each participant will have produced a large body of work and explored the following themes: 1. Bringing poetry into one’s daily experience and vice versa; 2. Discovering the instructive edges of form, to use and break beyond; and 3. Finding one’s individual balance between inspiration and routine;

how to entice your dream agent into reading your masterpiece by writing a tight query that really sings (while avoiding those pitfalls that will land your query in the trash). Bring four copies of a draft query and a red pen with lots of ink!

In workshopping and critiquing poems the instructor seeks to identify the work of the writing and discuss ways to expand upon and develop it. The workshop will not include negative critique that diminishes the poet or arbitrarily imposes the instructor’s aesthetics.

Cara Seitchek

6 Weeks Online

N/A All

7/13–8/17 $270

Fiction II: Intermediate Novel T. Greenwood

WORKSHOPS

In this workshop, participants will expand upon what they have learned in Fiction I about the key components of novel writing. The focus will be on character development, scene building, narrative structure, and the process of writing a first draft.

Participants will be encouraged to submit a chapter of their work for peer review. Please purchase a copy of John Truby’s Anatomy of Story.

8 Weeks Online

N/A I/A

7/17–9/4 $360

4 Essays/Memoirs, 4 Weeks Dave Singleton What’s your story? What are the tales you’ve been dying to tell, but haven’t had the time or structure to put pen to paper? Get started and write about your life in this hands-on, practical course in which you’ll write four pieces in four weeks and get individual feedback from the workshop leader on each.

Whether you have family stories you’d like to record for posterity or moments of your life you want to capture, you’ll learn new strategies to help you write effectively about your life. The class will focus on exercises that will help you develop disparate memories and thoughts into a meaningful and organized form. Take advantage of practical tools and get supportive feedback from your workshop leader and fellow writers. Deadlines make you write, so give yourself four weeks of deadlines.

4 Weeks Online

N/A All

1 Saturday Bethesda

2–4:30 p.m.

All

6/20 $50

How to Write a Grant Proposal Learn how to write proposals to request grants from funders. This workshop will cover how to research prospective funders, the elements of a good proposal, and how to approach funders. Proposal writing is a practical skill that applies to those who work or volunteer for non-profit organizations and can be a good source of freelance income. Please come to the class with a non-profit or project in mind to use as the focus of your research and proposal. This workshop meets in-person for the first and third sessions, and online via email for the second.

3 Saturdays Bethesda

1:30–4 p.m.

All

8/1–8/15 $135

Write Like the News Hank Wallace Lead with the future -- rather than with background.

That’s the most important of eight journalism skills that will transform your queries, proposals, and manuscripts. The others: write your readers’ language, be positive (to be both clear and upbeat), lay out logically, be consistent, be precise, be brief, and choose strong verbs. Highlights: master crisis communication, correct errors the correct way, choose between absolute numbers and ratios, and write around generic “he.” Emulate the striking news examples you’ll see in this workshop, and you’ll strengthen your writing voice with lively, engaging news style.

1 Thursday Bethesda

7–9 p.m.

All

8/20 $40

The Writer’s Center

SONGWRITING The Art of Songwriting Mary Alouette Have you ever had a tune in your head and wanted to know how to turn it into a song? Perhaps you have written songs before but want to make them even better than they already are. In this workshop, participants will study musical form, melody, and style, looking particularly at pop and contemporary songwriting to discover what makes a song a hit.

Participants will begin or refine a song through writing exercises, research music software programs like Logic and Pro Tools that aid in the recording process, and learn about social media sources like YouTube to get the songs heard. You don’t need to be an experienced songwriter to join; all you need is an idea and a desire to write music. However, if you are already a songwriter with a solid grasp on the craft of songwriting and the music industry, there is certainly opportunity to hone your skills.

If you would like to bring your own instrument to class, you are more than welcome, and there will also be a guitar available for your use. It is recommended that you bring a notepad and pen and a portable audio recording device to document the workshop sessions.

6 Thursdays Bethesda

6/11–7/16 $315

STAGE AND SCREEN The Art and Craft of Screenwriting and Adaptation Khris Baxter This intensive (yet fun) workshop will guide participants through the entire process of crafting a professional grade screenplay (or television pilot): idea, story, structure, scenes, dialogue, and description. Participants will also explore proven methods for adapting novels, nonfiction, short

7/21–8/11 $195

PROFESSIONAL WRITING Writing the Dreaded Query Letter Alan Orloff You’ve spent months (or years) of your life—not to mention copious amounts of blood, sweat, and tears—writing a dynamite novel. Don’t simply spend five minutes slapping together a weak query letter; you owe it to yourself to write a great one that will break through the slush-pile at top literary agencies. In this workshop, you’ll learn

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6:30–9:30 p.m.

All

View online at www.writer.org/guide

WORKSHOPS

1 Saturday Glen Echo

10 a.m.–4 p.m.

All

5/9 $115

winning film and its screenplay to understand exactly how a great screenplay seamlessly unfolds.

This course will teach participants how to become good storytellers. Please watch the film American Beauty before the workshop.

2 Saturdays Bethesda

10 a.m.–1 p.m.

All

7/18–7/25 $115

essay questions from colleges to which they are planning to apply, writing materials or a laptop.

1 Saturday Bethesda

10 a.m.–12 p.m.

All

6/20 $40

1 Saturday Bethesda

10 a.m.–12 p.m.

All

8/22 $40

Your First Ten Pages: In The Trash or On The Screen?

Playwriting: The Writing Process

ADULTS WRITE FOR CHILDREN

John Weiskopf

Richard Washer

Writing for Young Children

Hollywood studios, agents, and producers are busy with stacks of screenplays piled on their desks. A writer has two to three pages to grab the executive, producer, and agent’s interest, and ten pages to set the hook. If you don’t, then your script goes into the trash. This workshop will study Academy Award-winning scripts, teach the writer how to grab and hold the reader on the first page, and how the first ten pages sets up the entire plot. Participants will write, and re-write, the first ten pages of their script(s).

8 Tuesdays Bethesda

7:30–10 p.m.

All

6/9–7/28 $360

This intensive (yet fun) workshop will guide participants through the entire process of crafting a professional-grade screenplay (or television pilot): idea, story, structure, scenes, dialogue, and description. Participants will also explore proven methods for adapting novels, nonfiction, short stories, and stage plays, since much of the professional screenwriter’s time is spent adapting original material. Essential strategies for marketing your screenplay and your talent will also be discussed.

6/20 $115

Characters set in motion a series of events and actions that become the engine of your play. In this workshop, participants will look at strategies for exploring and developing characters in the early stages of writing a play, and discuss ways to assess the potential of the characters to drive action in the story. In addition, the course will take a look at character through the eyes of actors and directors seeking to interpret and portray a character to see how this informs our process of creating developing characters.

1 Thursday Bethesda

7:30–10 p.m.

B/I

8/20 $50

Richard Washer

John Weiskopf How the film world unfolds affecting the characters is one of the prime creative forces in a riveting script. Participants will learn and analyze how different film worlds impact and reflect the characters, and how the characters directly act upon and use the film world itself, so that the world becomes a character in itself. Participants will design and write screen stories with carefully-designed worlds that reflect the characters and plot of the story.

7:30–10 p.m.

All

8/6 $50

Playwriting: Exposition

Building Your Screenplay World

6 Thursdays Bethesda

7:30–10 p.m.

B/I

Richard Washer

Khris Baxter

10 a.m.–4 p.m.

All

1 Thursday Bethesda

Playwriting: Character

The Art and Craft of Screenwriting and Adaptation

1 Saturday Glen Echo

In this workshop, participants will discuss, explore, and attempt to demystify one of the more personal and varied aspects of a creative writer’s craft: process. The course will highlight some strategies for getting started, exploring a first draft, self-criticism, and revision. A brief discussion will follow about the opportunities available once a draft is ready for readings, workshops, rehearsals, and productions.

Although the focus in will be on playwriting, writers of all genres are welcome.

7/9–8/13 $270

What does your audience need to know and when do they need to know it? You only have a couple of hours (often less) to tell a story onstage, so there isn’t much time for providing back stories. In this workshop, participants will consider various strategies for managing exposition and look at examples in historical contexts to better understand how to handle this in their own writing.

1 Saturday Bethesda

10 a.m.–12:30 p.m.

B/I

John Weiskopf You cannot make a good film from a bad screenplay. Great films are born from great scripts. Understanding the twenty key pressure points in your script make the difference between having it read by a producer or V.P. of development at a studio or not. Participants will analyze one Academy Award-

Each session will begin with a short discussion of some aspect of writing for children, including story openings and arcs, characterization, plot/pacing, rhythm/sound, and marketing. The workshop will focus largely on picture books but may touch on early readers and poetry as well. Suggested readings, prompts, and feedback will be provided. By the end of the workshop, participants should have written and/or revised part or all of a picture book and have a better sense of how to create one in the future. Feel free to bring work to the first class (typed and double-spaced and with enough copies for all participants).

3 Thursdays Bethesda

7–9:30 p.m.

All

5/21–6/4 $135

Creating Your Book for Children: Shape it, Submit it, See it in Print Peter Mandel Having a children’s book published in today’s tough market can seem like an impossible dream.

But, in reality, getting your book idea into shape and into print can hinge on just the right advice and a timely critique from a pro. Do you need an agent?

Should you connect with an artist? What about selfpublishing? In a D.C.-area exclusive one-session workshop, nationally-known author Peter Mandel will pass on the insiders’ tips writers need to know in order to create a marketable first book and get it into the hands of exactly the right gatekeepers in the publishing world.

1 Monday Bethesda

7–9:30 p.m.

All

6/22 $50

8/29 $50

YOUNGER WRITERS

The Invisible Structure of a Great Script

Mary Quattlebaum

Write a Winning College Essay Pamela Toutant An award-winning essayist and seasoned college essay tutor, Pamela Toutant, will hold a morning workshop to jump-start a college admissions essay that reflects your strengths and authentic voice.

This workshop is an opportunity to receive guidance on the elements of great college admissions essays, brainstorm potential essay themes, and develop an essay outline. Participants should bring

Workshop & Event Guide Summer 2015

Are you an artist or collective looking for a place to show your work?

Maybe The Writer’s Center is the right venue for you.

For more information, please send inquiries to vanessa.mallorykotz@writer.org

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WORKSHOPS

stories, and stage plays, since much of the professional screenwriter’s time is spent adapting original material. Essential strategies for marketing your screenplay and your talent will also be discussed.

WORKSHOP LEADERS MARY ALOUETTE won Washington Area Music Association’s (WAMA) PASS songwriting competition. In 2012, she won WAMA’s New Artist of the Year and Best Debut Album.

A former Artist in Residence at Strathmore, Mary performs original music as Alarke.

KHRIS BAXTER is a screenwriter, producer, and the founder of Boundary Stone Films, a film and television development company based in Washington, D.C. He has been a screenwriter and story consultant since 1992, and has taught screenwriting since 2002.

ANNE BECKER, author of The Transmutation Notebooks: Poems in the Voices of Charles and Emma Darwin, and The Good Body (chapbook), has presented programs at Johns Hopkins, University of Connecticut, Folger Library, and Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum.

ERIN M. BERTRAM is the author of several chapbooks, most recently Memento Mori.

She’s a Chancellor’s Fellow in the Ph.D. in Creative Writing program at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

LEADERS

JENNIFER BUXTON has an M.F.A. in fiction from the University of Virginia. Her fiction has appeared in Epoch, Puerto del Sol, and Blue Penny Quarterly, among other places.

She has taught writing in a variety of venues, including the University of Virginia, and the UVa Young Writers Workshop.

RON CAPPS’s memoir, Seriously Not All Right: Five Wars in Ten Years was published in 2014 by Schaffner Press. His fiction has appeared in numerous literary journals. Ron teaches writing at the University of Maryland.

He is a graduate of Johns Hopkins and the founder of the Veterans Writing Project.

BRENDA W. CLOUGH has been publishing science fiction and fantasy for thirty years.

She has been a finalist for the Hugo and the Nebula awards MARK CUGINI, M.F.A., is the author of I’m Just Happy To Be Here (Ink Press, 2014) and Good Ass Job (forthcoming from Publishing Genius). His work has appeared in The Lifted Brow, Sink Review, Barrelhouse, NOÖ, Hyperallergic, and Hobart, among others. He is a founding editor of Big Lucks and a strategist for the lit blog Real Pants.

SOLVEIG EGGERZ, author of the awardwinning novel, Seal Woman, she holds a PhD in comparative literature and has published stories and essays in The Northern Virginia Review, Palo Alto Review, Lincoln Review,

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Midstream, The Christian Century, and in two anthologies.

BEN FARMER is a graduate of Kenyon College and George Mason’s M.F.A. program. He has taught writing and humanities courses at George Mason, Catholic University, the University of Arkansas at Little Rock—and edited more than twenty novels already in print. His first novel, Evangeline, was published in 2010

by Overlook Press.

KELLY FORSYTHE holds an M.F.A. from Columbia College and is the current Director of Publicity for Copper Canyon Press. Her poems and reviews have appeared in The Huffington Post, Columbia Poetry Review, American Poet, and the Minnesota Review.

ROBERT FRIEDMAN was a reporter, columnist, city editor, and Washington correspondent for the San Juan Star, and a correspondent in Puerto Rico for the New York Daily News. He is the author of four published novels—The Surrounding Sea, Under a Dark Sun, Shadow of the Fathers, and Caribbean Dreams.

NAN FRY, PH.D., is the author of two books of poetry: Relearning the Dark and Say What I Am Called. Her work has appeared in numerous journals, anthologies, and textbooks.

She received an EdPress Award for excellence in educational journalism and taught at the Corcoran College of Art + Design for more than twenty years.

PAM GERHARDT has written professionally for 30 years for a variety of newspapers and magazines, including 40 pieces for The Washington Post. Her memoir, Lucky That Way, won the 2014 American Society of Journalists and Authors Outstanding Book Prize. She holds an M.F.A. from VCU and a journalism degree from the University of Missouri.

BERNADETTE GEYER is the author of The Scabbard of Her Throat and What Remains.

Geyer’s poems have appeared in Oxford American, Poet Lore, Verse Daily, and elsewhere.

She freelances as a writer, editor, and social media consultant in Berlin, Germany.

CHRISTOPHER GOODRICH recently published his second book of poetry, No Texting at the Dinner Table (NYQ Books). In addition to not texting at the dinner table, Chris is also a fan of not texting at the bowling alley, the disco, and during conversations with his wife.

T. GREENWOOD is the author of nine novels including The Forever Bridge, Two Rivers, Bod-

The Writer’s Center ies of Water, and Grace. She is the recipient of an NEA Literature Fellowship and a Maryland State Arts Council grant.

AARON HAMBURGER is the author of Faith For Beginners: A Novel and The View From Stalin’s Head, winner of the Rome Prize in Literature. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Poets & Writers.

JESSICA HANDLER is the author of Braving the Fire: A Guide to Writing About Grief and Loss, and Invisible Sisters: A Memoir. Her nonfiction has appeared on NPR, in Tin House, Creative Nonfiction, Drunken Boat, Brevity, Newsweek, The Washington Post, and More Magazine. www.jessicahandler.com TIFFANY HAWK’S debut novel, Love Me Anyway, was published in 2013 by St. Martin’s Press. Her work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Potomac Review, National Geographic Traveler, StoryQuarterly, and on NPR’s “All Things Considered.”

ZAHARA HECKSCHER, M.A., is the coauthor of the book How to Live Your Dream of Volunteering Overseas and the inventor of the Poetry Game. Her articles have appeared in books and the travel magazine www.

TransitionsAbroad.com, where she serves as contributing editor. Vist her website at: zaharaheckscher.com DONNA HEMANS is the author of River Woman. Her short stories have appeared in numerous publications including Crab Orchard Review, Witness and Caribbean Writer.

KATHRYN JOHNSON’s 40+ novels (nominated for the prestigious Agatha Award, winner of the Heart of Excellence and Bookseller’s Best Awards), include Victorian thrillers and a new romantic-suspense series, “Affairs of State.” Her author’s coaching service (www.

WriteByYou.com) aids individual writers in reaching their publication goals.

CHRISTINE KOUBEK, M.F.A., is an awardwinning travel and essay writer. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, Ladies’ Home Journal, Coastal Living, Washingtonian, Budget Travel, and more. She is a regular contributor for TripAdvisor subsidiaries’ CruiseCritic.com and FamilyVacationCritic.com, and her bimonthly “Get Away” column appears in Bethesda and Arlington magazines.

CON LEHANE holds an M.F.A. in fiction writing from Columbia University. He is the author of the forthcoming Murder at the 42nd

View online at www.writer.org/guide

WORKSHOP LEADERS

HAILEY LEITHAUSER is the author of Swoop, winner of the Poetry Foundation’s Emily Dickinson Award. Her work appears in Poetry, The Gettysburg Review, The Yale Review and in Best American Poetry 2010, 2014 and 2015.

LISA LIEBERMAN’S debut historical noir, All The Wrong Places, involves blacklisted Hollywood people in postwar Europe. She blogs about old movies at Deathless Prose.

CHRISTOPHER LINFORTH holds an M.F.A. from Virginia Tech. His debut short-story collection, When You Find Us We Will Be Gone,was released last year. He has published fiction and nonfiction in dozens of literary magazines.

TONY MANCUS is the author of a handful of chapbooks. He is co-founder of Flying Guillotine Press and co-curator of In Your Ear, a monthly reading series in D.C. PETER MANDEL is a travel journalist for The Washington Post and The Boston Globe and the author of eleven books for kids, including Jackhammer Sam (Macmillan), Bun, Onion, Burger (Simon & Schuster), and Zoo AhChoooo (Holiday House), a PBS Reading Rainbow selection. He is a regular contributor to National Geographic Kids and The Huffington Post. www.petermandel.net.

MARY MCCARTHY’S first novel The Scarlet Letter Society releases in print in May 2015 after the digital edition reached #4 on Amazon’s Erotic Romance bestseller list above Fifty Shades of Grey. Her new novel The Scarlet Letter Scandal releases in fall 2015 and she is working on the third book.

ANN MCLAUGHLIN, PH.D., has published eight novels, including most recently Amy & George: A Novel, and is working on her ninth.

Earlier novels include Lightning in July, The Balancing Pole, Sunset at Rosalie, Maiden Voyage, The House on Q Street, and Leaving Bayberry House.

NICOLE MILLER is the winner of the 2014 Dorothy Cappon prize. She has been published in The May Anthology of Short Stories. At The Oxford English Dictionary, she has served as a scholarly reader for British Dialects since 2002. www.inthesmallhours.com.

LAURA OLIVER, M.F.A., is the author of The Story Within: New Insights and Inspiration for

Writers. Her essays and stories appear in The Washington Post, Country Living, and Glimmer Train. Nominated for a Pushcart Prize, her work has won numerous distinctions. thestorywithin.com.

MATHIAS SVALINA is the author of five books, including Destruction Myth (Cleveland State University Poetry Center) and Wastoid (Big Lucks Books). He is an editor for Octopus Books.

ALAN ORLOFF’s first novel, Diamonds for the Dead, was an Agatha Award Finalist. He also wrote Killer Routine and Deadly Campaign for Midnight Ink. Writing as Zak Allen, he’s published The Taste, First Time Killer, and Ride-Along. His latest is Running from the Past from Kindle Press. www.alanorloff.com

PAMELA TOUTANT’S work has appeared in Salon, Redbook, Ms., The Washington Post Magazine, Washingtonian, Applause, and Bethesda Magazine. Pamela was a 2006 Pushcart Prize nominee, and is a three-time Virginia Center for the Creative Arts fellow. www.pamelatoutant.com.

MARIE PAVLICEK-WEHRLI’S poems have appeared in Ekphrasis, About Place, Anon, Blast Furnace, Poet Lore, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Beloit Poetry Journal’. www.mariepavlicek.com.

ELIZABETH POLINER, M.F.A., J.D., is the author of Mutual Life & Casualty, Linked Stories, and Sudden Fog, a poetry chapbook. Two books are forthcoming: a novel, As Close to Us as Breathing, and a poetry collection, What You Know in Your Hands.

MARY QUATTLEBAUM is the author of twenty award-winning children’s books (Pirate vs. Pirate, Jo MacDonald Saw a Pond, Jackson Jones and The Puddle of Thorns). She also writes nonfiction for children and adults.

LYNN SCHWARTZ is a story development editor and ghostwriter. Her plays have been performed in NYC, including Lincoln Center.

She founded the Temple Bar Literary Reading Series in NYC, has received two Individual Artist Awards in Fiction from the Maryland State Arts Council.

CARA SEITCHEK has written grant proposals for local, state, and national nonprofit organizations. In addition, she evaluates proposals for the Institute of Museum and Library Services, American Association of Museums, and the Maryland State Arts Council.

DAVE SINGLETON is the author of The Mandates and Behind Every Great Woman, and an upcoming anthology, CRUSH: Writers Reflect on Love, Longing, and the Lasting Power of Their First Celebrity Crush. His work has appeared in the New York Times, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, PBS’s Next Avenue, AARP Media, Washingtonian, and Harper’s Bazaar. www.davesingleton.com BIANCA STONE is the co-founder and editor of Monk Books, as well as the author of Someone Else’s Wedding Vows (Tin House/Octopus Books 2014), and Antigonick (New Directions 2012, a collaboration with Anne Carson.)

Workshop & Event Guide Summer 2015

HANK WALLACE, a Columbia Law School graduate, was a government reporter for New Jersey’s Middletown Courier and Red Bank Daily Register, and the assistant director of law-school publishing for Matthew Bender. www.wsln.com.

SIMON WARD holds an MLitt in creative writing and an M.A. in English literature from the University of Glasgow. He writes short fiction and poetry, and his work has appeared in literary journals in the US and the UK. RICHARD WASHER, M.F.A., is a playwright, director, a founding member of Charter Theater, and currently works with First Draft as a playwright and director. His plays have been produced in the Washington D.C. area and elsewhere.

JOHN WEISKOPF teaches screenwriting at American University. He received an M.F.A. in Film Production from UCLA; he wrote eleven screenplays and appeared on Oprah Winfrey for a documentary that he executive produced, directed, and filmed.

KATHLEEN WHEATON’s fiction has appeared in Narrative, The Baltimore Review, and Potomac Review, as well as two anthologies. Her collection, Aliens and Other Stories, won the 2013 Washington Writers Publishing House fiction prize.

BASIL WHITE is a speechwriter, a published joke writer, public speaker, and business humor consultant. Basil helps people add humor to presentations, advertising, movie scripts, and user manuals. www.basilwhite.com.

MICHELE WOLF is the author of Immersion (Hilary Tham Capital Collection), Conversations During Sleep (Anhinga Prize for Poetry), and The Keeper of Light. A Poet Lore contributing editor, she has published poems in Poetry, The Hudson Review, North American Review. www.michelewolf.com.

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LEADERS

Street Library, as well as three hard-boiled detective novels: Beware the Solitary Drinker, What Goes Around Comes Around, and Death at the Old Hotel.

The Novel Year

By Vanessa Mallory Kotz

Amin Ahmad

W

riting a novel is thrilling and daunting all at once.

Workshop leader Amin Ahmad is intimately aware of all that goes into creating a novel-length piece.

He has published two books thus far—The Caretaker (2013) and The Last Taxi Ride (2014), both suspense novels from St. Martin’s Press, and he is currently working on a literary novel. Fueled by his personal writing experience and inspired by similar courses at other literary centers, Ahmad is taking the lead on a new endeavor at The Writer’s Center—The Novel Year program, which will launch in September.

The program will allow ten participants to workshop their entire novel over the course of a full year. It will meet weekly during fall, winter, and spring, and more sporadically in the summer.

During the summer, participants will have the opportunity for one-on-one sessions with Ahmad to address specific issues in their novels. They will be motivated by regular writing deadlines, studying aspects of craft, and creating a supportive community. In addition, they will be introduced to the publishing process and

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have the chance to meet experts in the industry, including literary agents. Panels of visiting writers will offer their thoughts on craft and their publishing experiences as well. Participants will be able to use the Studio at The Writer’s Center twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. To be admitted into the program, potential candidates will need to submit a cover letter and a twenty-five page writing sample for review between July 1 and August 30.

Partial scholarships will be available.

Each week, the class will workshop a large portion of a student’s novel, as well as deal with a different craft issue, such as dialogue. Participants will read examples, discuss and dissect them, and then focus on their own related writing exercises.

Comparing writing to other crafts, Ahmad said, “There is a big difference between reading as a reader versus reading as a writer.

Like a master carpenter, you must learn how to take the writing apart and put it back together.”

“You learn a lot by reading other people’s work in that you can return to your own work with a critical and informed eye,” said Ahmad. Developing an inner editor is the next step. “When I’m looking at my work I’m hearing the voices of my former writing teachers. It’s become part of my self-editing.”

Ahmad attended courses at GrubStreet literary center in Boston, New York University, and The New School, all of which influence the way he teaches the intensive twelve-week Master Novel class at The Writer’s Center.

That class has been a great success. “Students kept signing up over and over,” he said. “They got to know each other’s work and created a supportive community.

They also learned a lot about the publishing industry.” Establishing a year-long workshop was the next logical step. Ahmad and Stewart Moss, the director of the Writer’s Center, spent more than two years talking to other writers centers and developing the format for the Novel Year program.

The program may be especially appealing to students who want to experience the rigor and structure of an M.F.A. program, but without the financial commitment and two-year time frame.

And while M.F.A. programs are modeled around writing and revising short stories, Novel Year will focus exclusively on writing a novel. There is no other program in the Washington area that will give multiple rounds of feedback on an entire novel in progress.

Vickie Fang was working toward her M.F.A. when she took Ahmad’s Master Novel class.

“Amin shows us all respect as members of a community of writers and he works to bring

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ON THE SCENE in authors and agents to discuss the paths they’ve taken. He gives a sense of having wider possibilities while still preparing us for the often grim realities of publishing.” She found his style of critique to be particularly helpful. “Although I was already attending a very good M.F.A. program that was workshop-based, Amin taught me new, more helpful ways to critique. Through the practice of critiquing other people’s work, I became much better at analyzing and revising my own. As a result, I have the tools to improve my writing when I’m not happy with it.”

Clockwise from left: Artists and their guests enjoy the opening of Painters 12; Lois Kampinsky in front of her painting; Randon Billings Noble reads from her work in the Delmarva Review; Board member Joram Piatigorsky signs a copy of his book; author Patrick Ross gave a talk during the Writing Staycation led by Zahara Hecksher; Workshop leaders Nan Fry and Ellen Herbert catch up at the Center’s potluck; Workshop leader Carolyn Clark and workshop leader and board member Ann McLaughlin during the potluck.

This is perhaps the most important lesson writers will learn from the Novel Year. Aspiring novelists will discover how to recognize what “works” and what doesn’t in their writing and be given a set of tools, like an artisan, to fix problematic areas. This program will focus on how to develop an individualized writing process. Some make up their novels as they go along, but others use outlines, plot summaries, index cards, and other methods to structure their novels and stay on track. “It’s no longer scary when you have tools,” Ahmad said.

Want to know more?

To learn more about the Novel Year program, you are invited to attend an informational session. There will be two opportunities: June 13, during the Publish Now seminar, and June 27 at 11:00 a.m.

Contact Laura Spencer for questions and pricing: laura.spencer@writer.org.

Workshop & Event Guide Summer 2015

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Poetry as Protest A Conversation with Maryam Ala Amjadi

By Joan Hua

Maryam Ala Amjadi; Photo by Thomas Langdon

oet Lore’s Spring/Summer 2015 issue features a portfolio of Rira Abbasi poems in translation by Maryam Ala Amjadi. In the following interview, Ala Amjadi confesses that she cannot recall whether she first read Abbasi in Farsi or English. “I often think that I am in a constant state of translation,” she said.

Ala Amjadi was born in Tehran, Iran, and has lived in multiple countries since. Her perception of words and meanings embodies a truly cosmopolitan insight, tuning in to the shared human experiences of struggle and wellbeing. While studying in India six years ago, concerned with the representation of war embedded in everyday language and “the rhetoric of world powers,” she sought dialogue with fellow writers through such forums as

P

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Poets Against the War (PAW). Thus began her on-going conversation with Rira Abbasi, who is a known peace activist.

An award-winning poet, Ala Amjadi is the poetry editor of Hysteria, a periodical of critical feminisms, and a current Ph.D. fellow in Text and Event in Early Modern Europe (TEEME) at University of Kent and Universidade do Porto. I conducted the following interview and shortened for print during Ala Amjadi’s relocation from Canterbury to Porto, Portugal.

— Joan Hua How did you come across Rira Abbasi’s work? Did you first read her in English or in Farsi? What were your first impressions?

I first came across Rira’s work when I started to contemplate the vocabulary of peace in contemporary Iranian poetry.

At the time I was a twenty-fiveyear-old student of literature in India, I set out to look for Iranian poets who were engaged with a pro-peace/anti-war discourse… [and connected with] the Poets against the War (PAW) movement.

In searching for Iranian poets to translate for the PAW, I came upon the website of Iran’s International Peace Poetry Festival, the brainchild of Rira Abbasi.

The festival’s charter stated that “Poetry for peace is affiliated to humanity, regardless of race, religion, sex, and geography.”

I was really intrigued by those lines, and I immediately sent Rira an email asking if she would be interested in an interview. That was the beginning of our ongoing conversation in poetry and friendship.

Honestly, I don’t recall whether I first read Rira in Farsi or English.

I sometimes read a writer in one language and remember or quote them in another. I often think that I am in a constant state of translation. But we all are.

We render the world around us constantly in the languages we think and speak in. When I first read Rira’s work and started to translate her, I found that her voice remains with me as the reader long after I have left the page. Her poetry adheres to our shared and human experiences of pain, survival, and [the need for] collective joy and well-being.

Rira Abbasi is a peace activist. In what way is Abbasi’s poetry an extension of her activism? What do you feel Abbasi’s poems do?

Poetry, as I once heard the Marathi language poet Dilip Chitre say, is protest. The pen gives us the opportunity to cross

View online at www.writer.org/guide

out words as much as it gives us the power to write them. Rira’s poetry provokes the reader with an unfamiliar rendering of often axiomatic questions that pertain to our immediate human experiences and emotions. A poem first and foremost is a linguistic probability; it begins with a question, a fear, a concern and often concludes with a sense of uncertainty. The first question is, “How do I pass this void (the blank paper) and land in meaning?”

And then you ask yourself, “Is the poem finished?” Does a poem ever finish? How could it, when everything around us, when the boundaries of meaning creating experiences and encounters are in a constant state of flux? I think writing, reading, and translating poetry is to practice a form of tolerance for ambiguity. Poetry is looking at the world from a thousand other windows, or rather as many windows as possible, in the awareness that our vision is fragmented in our human condition, and that we need to envision a less disintegrated world regardless, that it is tremendously important to proactively imagine a different world, to make it a part of our mental and psychic landscape, to believe that kindness and affection and understanding are not mere textual ideals to pay lip service to, but integral to a healthy life experience that is the right of each and every living body in this world. This conviction is one of the underlying reasons why I translate poetry.

This is how I feel about Rira’s poetry at a primary level. I feel pleasurably compelled as a

translator to imagine another existence for her words, a new platform for the questions she evokes, the voices she summons by transcending her personal experiences and the inquisitive urges she provokes in the face of power, always treading in love and keeping kindness in the center and close to the heart of her poems.

Some of the Abbasi poems to be published by Poet Lore seem to be a hybrid of social poems and love poems. How do you see the tension between these forms play out in this work?

Life has only one direction to go: ahead, even in times of war and conflict. Often even more forcefully in desperate times.

Many of the Iranians of my generation were born during the Revolution and the Iran-Iraq war.

People got married and celebrated their weddings and other life events (under different and often dire circumstances, of course) in Tehran and other big cities while other parts of the country were bombed. Both Rira and I have often shared stories of women in war who told us that they found that they had to dance, make love, laugh, and strive to create a sense of stability in those unstable times.

So, I think those sentiments of love and justice are not contradictory, but of quite a complementary nature that manifest more passionately and forcefully in desperate times.

Translation is, of course, very different from appropriation, which could be one of the hazards that translators face while

Workshop & Event Guide Summer 2015

rendering core concepts from one culture to another. It is crucial for me as a translator to educate myself and acquire an overall awareness of the history and cultural contexts of core concepts both in the source and target languages as much as possible in order to understand the sociocultural implications of the words I employ and the power they entail.

A couple of the poems in this portfolio are deeply rooted in a specific locale, for example, the city of Tehran. Tell us more about the relationship between the poet and the locale from your perspective.

Poets often write about places they have never visited or places that don’t exist, geographically speaking. What makes our experiences of borders and places meaningful are people. The power of imagination negates this orthodoxy that creative experience is bound by time and place, although it may be informed and challenged by it. The experience of writing and reading across languages is evidence that people can transcend the boundaries of cultures, race, class, and gender and make meaningful connections.

Rira’s poems may often be set in a specific locale like Tehran, as you noted, but what I focused on during the translation was how the lived experiences of these spaces have shaped her poetic and political trajectories, how the poet associates and registers emotions and meanings with a particular landscape and how successful I

35

could be as translator to reflect and reproduce those nuances in the target language.

You edit Hysteria, a journal of critical feminisms, and write poems bearing strong social messages. How do you see your poetic work overlap with Abbasi’s? How has translating Abbasi’s work influenced you as a poet?

I write poetry in English.

Poetry first happened to me in English. I have often said that the language that you sigh in is your mother tongue. I sigh in Farsi,

most of the time, but I think, dream, and write in both English and Farsi. So, I often find that I have to translate my own poems into Farsi, specifically during conversations and discussions with Farsi-speaking poet friends like Rira. Hearing each other read out poems in different languages has enriched our sense of rhythm and poetic perception beyond these languages. Translating a poem is like rewriting that poem and arming it with lexical and semantic survival skills for a new form of existence, a chance to redeem what was perhaps left unsaid at the turn of a new phrase

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7RQ\ +RDJOO DQG +HQU LN ,EVHQ &ROHWWH ,QH] +RQRR UpH -HIIHU V 7HG .RRVHU 0D[LQH .XPLQ (PPD /D]DU XV 1DWKDD QLHO 0DF NH\ 6 W p S K D Q H 0 D O O D U P p 3 D E O R 0 H G L Q D : L O O L D P 0 H U H G L W K America’s original poetry journal, ) UHGHULF 0LVWUDD O *DEULHOD 0LVWUDO 1DQF\ 0RUHMy y Q 'DYLG 0XUDD discovering new writers since 1889. + RZDUG 1HPHURY ' 1XUNVH 1DRPL 6KLKDE 1\\ H GM QDQRXN RNSS L N 6KDURQ 2OGV 0DU\ 2OLYHU /LQGD 3DVWDQ &DUO 3KLOOLSV 0DUU J H 3LHUF\ &KULVWRSKK H U 3UHVILHOG $OH[[ D QGHU 3XVKNLQ 'DYLGG 5 D\ / L D P 5 H F W R U 5 D L Q H U 0 D U L D 5 L O NH $ U W K X U 5 L P E D X G $ O E H U W R 5 t R V 6 K H U R G 6 D Q W R V - D Q H 6 K R U H poetlore.com 5 7 6 P L W K $ X J X V W 6 W U L Q G E H U J 9 L U Published J L O 6 XbyiThe U HWriter’s ] Center, - R K Qwriter.org 6\QJH 5DELQGUDQDD W K 7DJRUH 6DUD 7HDVGDOH 'DQ 7XUqOO 3 D XO 9HUODLQH

36

or sentence in the source language, to live that unlived life and to ritualistically resurrect the sensual memory of the poem with a new taste, a new sound, a new life.

It is vital for a healthy living to strengthen solidarity (whatever that means) and stay connected with those who are proactively open to dialogue and change.

While we all may not walk the same path, it energizes us to be able to stay connected with fellow artists and human beings who are headed in the same direction, those who decenter manufacturers of violence and their allies (those who rationalize it) in their dialogues, arguments, and imagination. Those who remember to keep and remind us to keep kindness at the center of our hearts all the time, despite all that is going on. Every day. All day. It’s a practice. A necessity.

For me. It is wonderful and heartening to be able to share these experiences with a friend and fellow poet like Rira. And to have the honor of co-creation and collective contribution with more passionate and concerned people in a platform and movement like Hysteria. A huge share of my sense of creative hope and resilience is nourished and strengthened by such connections.

Joan Hua’s work has appeared in Poet Lore and Asymptote Journal. She is currently the guest editor for Smithsonian Folkways Magazine.

The Spring/Summer issue of Poet Lore can be purchased at poetlore.com. A full version of this interview will be available at poetlore.com, as well.

View online at www.writer.org/guide

BOOK TALK The Drowned Phoenician Vintner

Businessman First

White Bird

By Harley Mazuk

By Maurice Dorsey

by Ruta Sevo

ISBN: 978-1503180277

ISBN: 978-149311478

ISBN: 978-0299227203

Private dick Frank Swiver faces mystery women and double-crosses in 1949 San Francisco while on a routine case to verify the authenticity of a wine collection in this novelette. Is the widowed Helene Richter a blonde who can’t keep her clothes on? Or a dangerous ex-Nazi nympho? Can Frank save himself or is he doomed to meet the same fate as . . . The Drowned Phoenician? harleymazuk.com Earthbound: Poems

By Dee LeRoy ISBN: 978-0692264881

Whether drawing on observations in the garden, discoveries about the universe, stories told in paintings, or the lore of minerals and gems, the poems in this volume remain meditations on what it means to be human. They are bittersweet and subtle, conveying as much between the lines as within them. Kirkus Reviews has called this collection “a stunning poetic debut.” Paperback only. Available from amazon.com, barnesandnoble. com, and other booksellers.

More than his ad “More Parks Sausages Mom” “Please” Henry G. Parks, Jr. was a man before his time. Pioneering in the American free enterprise system he embarked on a journey leading to a multi-million dollar industry. Park’s Sausage was the first African American owned business to issue stock publicly.

This is the story of a businessman who was African American and was optimistic and determined while achieving ultimate success.

NewAcademia.com

A novel with Tibetan Buddhist themes. Thomas lands bewildered in Kathmandu, to find a place to scatter the ashes of his older brother Paul, who was a Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal. His visit prompts the surprising revelation that Paul is the father of girl who grew up in Kathmandu and became an unlikely Buddhist shaman, or healer. The novel is in the tradition of writers bringing the East to the West, like E.M. Forster, Alexandra David-Neel and Madam Blavatsky. momox.org/whitebird.html

The Survivor Tree: Inspired by a True Story

Advertise Your Book in Book Talk!

Talk

By Cheryl Somers Aubin ISBN: 978-0983833406

Cheryl Somers Aubin’s book, The Survivor Tree: Inspired by a True Story, takes the reader on a journey of hope and healing by imaginatively describing the experiences, memories, and feelings of the 9/11 Survivor Tree.

Illustrations by Sheila Harrington. Available on amazon.com. All profits go to charity. thesurvivortree.com

$50 ($45 Members) Fall Issue Deadline: June 20, 2015 judson.battaglia@writer.org We distribute 15,000 copies of the Workshop & Event Guide throughout the D.C.-metro area. Our readers find us in City Paper, at Metro stations, libraries, art centers, cafes and more!

Rise of Hypnodrome

by Matt Fuchs ISBN: 978-1939987266

Half speculative fiction and half marriage thriller, Rise of Hypnodrome explores how future generations might draw from the realm of epigenetic engineering to eventually control their own biology.

Whether human or robot, the characters in this cutting-edge work of fiction have one thing in common: an irrepressible desire to evolve. www.goodreads.com/book/ show/23574080-rise-ofhypnodrome

Write from the Comfort of Home With a growing selection of online workshops in fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction, our online courses are ideal for busy writers of all genres.

Online workshops offer 24-hour access to lectures, assignments & critique via Moodle, an online course management platform with customizable classrooms.

Browse a free sample online workshops to get a feel for how they run.

onlinetwc.org/workshop

Workshop & Event Guide Summer 2015

37

THANKS TO OUR DONORS

The Writer’s Center

We Are Grateful Thank you to all of those whose generous contributions make the workshops and events possible at The Writer’s Center.

For a list of donors to the Center, please visit www.writer.org/donors.

The he hottest ottest litera literary ary event in the regio region region! o

The 6th Annual Gaithersburg

Book Festival Saturday, May 16, 2015 10 a.m. – 6 p.m.

FREE Admission

Gaithersburg City Hall Grounds Meet dozens of today’s best-selling, award-winning and up and coming authors, presenting on 10 stages: Jeffrey Deaver, Anne Enright, Clarence Page, Kwame Alexander, Robert Sabuda, Gene Luen Yang, Maureen Corrigan, Sherrilyn Kenyon

2015 “Be a Better Freelancer” conference

for writers, editors, proofreaders, indexers, graphic artists and more!

Also enjoy free writing workshops, book sales and signings, and a world of activities for kids.

www.gaithersburgbookfestival.org Also find us on

(@GburgBookFest)

In Partnership with

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September 25–26, 2015 Rochester, NY

www.communication-central.com

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