|
|
| Fall 2004 |
| All classes and workshops are held at the Hudson Valley Writers' Center (Philipse Manor Railroad Station building) and are limited to 10 students unless otherwise indicated.
Spring 2005 Class Schedule CLASSES
& WORKSHOPS Monday: Tuesday: Wednesday: Thursday: Friday: Saturday:
| |
| Sunday Workshops
Getting the Cow Out of the Barn: The Importance of Narrative
Flow
Simple Book-Binding: A Hands-On Workshop
| |
|
LIVING
THE POET'S LIFE It’s now or never! Whether you are an experienced poet who feels “stuck” or one fairly new to the craft, this workshop will help you get your poetry life on track with exercises and advice designed to get you writing poetry—and keep you writing poetry.
| |
|
FLASH
FICTION & PROSE POETRY Feeling timid, bored, lost or otherwise stalled in your writing—or just looking for a new way to spark your creativity? This class, which emphasizes play and experimentation as ways to jump-start the creative process, is led by a poet whose novel is composed of fractals (short pieces that mirror the shape of the whole). It will focus on the latest literary fashion—prose poetry and flash fiction—through brief exercises that explore elements of craft: voice, point of view, time frame, characterization, etc. The course will also show how to use these approaches as inspiration for longer forms, such as stories or novel chapters. Open to writers at all levels, the class will encourage new work and support ongoing projects.
| |
| FABLES
and FANTASIES Does your writing have as much to do with invention as with memory? Does “write about what you know” mean you can write about cross-dressing mermaids? Butter-fat brides? Men who are eaten by giant clams and live? Does your idea of story extend from the oral tradition through the gothic and detective through the postmodern and the comic strip and back again? If the answer to one or more of these questions is Yes, then you might like this workshop. Included are brief readings from such writers as Calvino, Kafka, and the New Fabulists and exercises suitable for both beginning and experienced writers.
| |
|
WRITING
CHILDREN'S BOOKS AND STORIES Writing a book for children—or planning to? Don’t miss this chance to discuss your project with one of our country’s most honored writers of books for children. Come with some knowledge of what kind of children’s books you like and what good writers in this field are doing today. The sessions will be informal and tailored to the needs of the group.
| |
|
THE
ART OF THE ESSAY More than any other kind of non-fiction writing, the essay offers the opportunity to express, in a short and conversational form, the whole range of thoughts and feelings, from intimacy and grief to joy and epiphany. This once-neglected form, now in renaissance, allows for the most satisfying and polished examination of ideas, beliefs, troubles and pleasures by writers beginning, renowned, and (like most of us) in between. Class limited to 8 students.
| |
|
EXPERIMENTS
IN CREATIVE NONFICTION This workshop focuses on creating new nonfiction pieces and shaping them for the reader’s eye. Although some time will be spent responding to works in progress, we will also study model contemporary essays and discuss issues of process and creativity. Textbook: The Best American Essays, College Edition (fourth edition, edited by Robert Atwan, Houghton Mifflin, 2004).
| |
|
EXPERIMENTS
IN POETRY This workshop focuses on writing contemporary poems in both traditional and free verse forms. Although some class time will be spent responding to works in progress, we will also study model poems, write exploratory drafts, and discuss issues of process and creativity. Textbooks: The Teachers & Writers Handbook of Poetic Forms, edited by Ron Padgett (1987, paperback) and Poetry Daily, edited by Boller, Selby, and Yost (Sourcebooks, 2003, paperback).
| |
|
CREATIVE
WRITING FOR AGES 8 - 10 Using writing challenges, lively activities, and children’s literature, this workshop will inspire children to write from their hearts, tap their imaginations, and find their voices in their written words. This is a unique opportunity for children to write and learn in a non-competitive and nurturing atmosphere in a beautiful facility devoted exclusively to the craft of writing. The small group setting allows for maximum individual attention. Sign up for 3, 4, 5 or 6 weeks, indicating preferred dates.
| |
|
MEMOIR
WRITING Write stories taken from your own memories and experiences and free your voice as you shape the stories you want to tell in a relaxed, supportive environment. Subjects may range from early childhood memories to the transforming events of adulthood. Participants will read aloud and discuss their work each week. Class limited to 9 students.
| |
|
INTRODUCTION
TO FICTION WRITING Designed for writers at all levels, this course introduces you to various narrative strategies that will help you find your voice as a writer and bring your material to life on the page. You will look at how other writers have unlocked their imaginations and then try these techniques in writing exercises and peer-group critiques that sympathetically develop the skills needed to create more imaginative and emotionally rich work. This course is both for people who are beginning to write fiction and for more experienced writers who have never taken one of Mr. Surface’s workshops.
| |
|
CONTINUING
FICTION WRITING For this course, Mr. Surface has developed an entirely new set of writing exercises that challenge students’ imaginations at a higher level, expanding on the skills developed in the introductory fiction class. This course is recommended for people who have already taken Mr. Surface’s Introduction to Fiction workshop.
| |
|
CREATIVE
WRITING FOR YOUNG ADULTS Six stand-alone workshops in which writers age 11 and up can refine their "writer's eye" and find their own voices. Participants will be challenged to use their imaginations and every sense of their being to get beyond the surface of things and to put on paper the stories and ideas that come to them. They will also celebrate the sound of words and the images they create. "It's not like school," says Connor-Bey, and the small groups allow for maximum individualization. Sign up for 3, 4, 5 or 6 weeks, indicating preferred dates.
| |
|
GETTING
THE COW OUT OF THE BARN: This lecture/workshop will examine how good fiction uses narrative techniques to animate and exhibit its characters. (Where and how do we begin a story? What is the most important thing for the reader to know on the first page?) It will look at strong story beginnings and offer tips in fashioning a compelling reading experience through narrative construction. Limited to 14 students.
Note: Mr. Kenan will be reading at the Writers’ Center at 4:30 pm following his workshop, when he and author Sol Stein (Native Sons) salute James Baldwin’s 80th birthday. | |
|
This one-day workshop, designed for both beginners and continuing students, will focus on simple basic bookbinding techniques. Learn to bind Japanese ledgers and a multi-section soft cover butterfly book. If time permits, make a one-piece slipcase for this book. These bindings can be used for small volumes of poetry, novels, and short stories or for diaries, sketchbooks, etc. Ilse Schreiber-Noll expresses her strong political ideas in large-scale woodcuts, paintings and painted books. Her work has been exhibited widely, published, and included in major collections. She has also collaborated with contemporary poets with whom she produced Limited Edition Artist Books, and she has done theatre work, often in close collaboration with playwright, director and translator Eric Bentley. She teaches at Purchase College. | |
| For further information on any of our class offerings, call the HVWC at (914) 332-5953 or email us at info@writerscenter.org. |
| Notes: HVWC = The Hudson Valley Writers' Center, 300 Riverside Drive, Sleepy Hollow, NY. Classes and worshops are held in the restored Philipse Manor railroad station. For travel directions, visit our Directions page or see train schedules at Metro-North's Hudson River Line. For further information about any of these classes or workshops, call the Writers' Center at 914-332-5953. |
Suzanne
Cleary has an MA in Writing from Washington University and a Ph.D. in Literature
and Criticism from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She is Associate Professor
of English at SUNY Rockland and also teaches at Manhattanville College. Her poems
have appeared in Poetry, Georgia Review, and other journals, and her book,
Keeping Time, is now in its 2nd printing. Of her book Billy Collins said,
“I have long anticipated this first book, and the chance to express how highly
I value Suzanne Cleary’s poetry. Her poems have a vigorous forward roll to them
and are strung together by daring chains of association...”
Thaddeus
Rutkowski’s novel, Roughhouse (Kaya Press), was a finalist for the
Members’ Choice of the Asian American Literary Awards. His work has been anthologized
in Screaming Monkeys: Critiques of Asian American Images (Coffee House),
Sweet Jesus: Poems About the Ultimate Icon (Anthology Editions) and elsewhere.
His stories have appeared in Fiction, American Letters and Commentary, Asian
Pacific American Journal, Rattapallax, Columbia Review, CutBank, Artful Dodge
and other magazines. He has been a resident at Yaddo, MacDowell and other colonies
and has written book reviews for The New York Times and other papers. A
graduate of Cornell University and The Johns Hopkins University, he teaches fiction
writing at the Writer's Voice of the West Side YMCA. 
Patricia
Eakins is the author of The Hungry Girls and Other Stories and The
Marvelous Adventures of Pierre Baptiste, a novel. She is the subject of Reading
Patricia Eakins, critical essays edited by Françoise Palleau-Papin (Univ.
of Orléans Press, France, 2003). Her work has appeared in The Iowa Review,
Parnassus, Storia, Conjunctions, Cahiers Charles V, and The Paris Review,
which awarded her the Aga Khan Prize for Fiction. Other honors include two creative-writing
fellowships from the NEA. She has taught fiction workshops at Trinity College
(Hartford, CT), the New School, and NYU and has been writer-in-residence for the
Woodstock Guild.
Jean
Fritz of Dobbs Ferry is the author of over two dozen books for young people
and is particularly known for her historical biographies, which the School
Library Journal says have “blown like a fresh breeze across the children’s
book world...(she) has changed the face of the map.” She has also written an autobiography,
Homesick, about her childhood years in China, which was a 1983 Newbery
Medal Honor Book and the recipient of an American Book Award and many other awards.
Most recently, she was presented with the 2003 National Humanities Medal.
Herbert
Hadad’s work has appeared in numerous publications, including The New York
Times, Poets & Writers, Reader's Digest, Parenting, and Yankee. They
are also collected in several books, including The Random House Guide to Writing
and Sephardic American Voices: Two Hundred Years of a Literary Legacy.
He has received several awards for magazine writing and the New York Press Club
award for feature writing. One of his essays was included as a “notable essay”
in The Best American Essays 2003.
Rebecca
McClanahan has published four volumes of poetry, three books about writing,
and a collection of personal essays, The Riddle Song and Other Rememberings.
Her work has appeared in The Best American Essays, The Best American Poetry,
Georgia Review, Gettysburg Review, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. McClanahan,
who received a Pushcart Prize in Fiction, the Wood prize from Poetry, the
Carter prize for the essay from Shenandoah, and a 2003 New York Foundation
for the Arts fellowship, lives with her husband in New York City and can be reached
at 
Anne
Stevenson is a long-time resident of Tarrytown and a fourth grade teacher
in the Public Schools of the Tarrytowns. She has taken classes at the HVWC and
her interest in teaching here arose especially from her two-year experience with
David Surface’s WriteMind Workshop which treats both classroom teachers and their
students as writers. 
Joan
Potter's nonfiction writing has been published in numerous magazines, newspapers,
and anthologies. She is the author of three books, including African American
Firsts: Famous, Little-Known and Unsung Triumphs of Blacks in America, published
in fall 2002. She is the editor of Growing Up Strong: Four North Country Women
Recall Their Lives, a collection of memoirs produced in a writing workshop
she led in the Adirondacks. She recently edited Mountain Shadows: An Adirondack
Novel of Courage, Danger, and Love, published in August by Pinto Press, a
small publishing company of which she is co-owner. She is a regular contributor
to the Westchester County Times.
David
Surface's
fiction has been published in numerous literary journals, including DoubleTake,
North American Review, Crazyhorse, Fiction, Willow Spring, and Artful Dodge.
Excerpts from his novel, A Good Life, have been nominated for the Pushcart
Prize. His essays on the craft and teaching of writing have been featured in the
National Writers Union Newsletter and Teachers & Writers Guide to William
Carlos Williams. He has taught as a writer-in-the-schools for the Lincoln
Center Department of Education and as a Visiting Writer at the College of Wooster.
Brenda Connor-Bey,
the 2002 recipient of the Outstanding Arts Educator award from the Westchester
Fund for Women and Girls, has long been active in writer-residency programs throughout
the region, often through the Westchester Arts Council. She is the recipient of
many grants and awards (including four PEN awards) and has had her work published
and performed widely. She has just completed a collection of poetry and a young
adult novel and is working on a novel.
Randall
Kenan’s first novel, A Visitation of Spirits, was published in 1989,
when he was 26. A 1992 collection of stories, Let the Dead Bury Their Dead,
was nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Fiction, and was
a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He is also the author of
a young adult biography of James Baldwin and Walking on Water: Black American
Lives at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century, and the recipient of a Guggenheim
Fellowship, a Whiting Writers Award, the Sherwood Anderson Award, the John Dos
Passos Prize, and the 1997 Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Born in Brooklyn and raised in rural North Carolina, he has taught at Sarah Lawrence,
Columbia, Duke, and Vassar, and is currently an associate professor at UNC-Chapel
Hill. 
SIMPLE
BOOK-BINDING