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| Spring 2005 |
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classes and workshops are held at the Hudson Valley Writers' Center (Philipse
Manor Railroad Station building) unless otherwise indicated. Winter
2006 Class Schedule CLASSES
& WORKSHOPS Tuesday: Wednesday: Thursday: Friday: Saturday: Sunday:
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| 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.
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| WRITEMIND: By thinking and working like a writer, teachers of writing at all levels (older elementary and up) can acquire many new insights. Enjoy a personalized hands-on experience with the narrative technique method of creative writing and acquire the teaching and assessment tools you need to encourage your students to become more creative writers.
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WRITING
OUR WAY HOME: This workshop will include a brief introduction to Hestia (Vesta), the keeper of the hearth, with reflections on our longing for home. You will examine the different pieces of your lives—dreams, memories, surroundings—to find the images that resonate. You will write journal entries, letting these images unfold your stories. And you will start to shape your entries into personal essays and memoir, as your writing becomes a journey home.
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WRITING
CHILDREN'S BOOKS AND STORIES * * Please note that our Wednesday Children’s Literature class with author Jean Fritz is currently full, but we do maintain a waiting list of interested students from which we fill available openings. If you would like to add your name to the list, please call us at 914-332-5953 or e-mail info@writerscenter.org. 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.
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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.
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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).
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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. Textbook: Poetry Daily, edited by Boller, Selby, and Yost (Sourcebooks, 2003, paperback.) Also suggested: The Teachers & Writers Handbook of Poetic Forms, edited by Ron Padgett (1987, paperback).
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WRITING
WORKSHOP FOR CHILDREN AGE 8 - 10 Every day you observe the world around you -- a fly perched on a leaf, the smell of spaghetti sauce bubbling on the stove, the sound of traffic rushing by on the street outside our window. How do use these things to create stories and poems? This class will help stimulate your senses, imagination, and emotions, and allow you to try out various writing techniques and share ideas in a comfortable atmosphere.
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STOKING
THE FIRE You begin with a poem. This is a workshop for poets who realize that their mission is to give that poem a voice. We’ll work with pieces from pen to page to stage to make sure your poem reaches as many people as possible as you gain confidence in bringing it to life. Whether you’re a fledgling open-miker or an established writer seeking a wider audience, you’ll get the help you need— from choosing the “right” poem to conquering stage fright. And you’ll have fun along the way!
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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.
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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.
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CREATIVE
WRITING FOR TEENS Five workshop sessions 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.
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FINDING
YOUR PLACE IN THE POETRY MARKETPLACE Whether you have a chapbook or full-length manuscript ready to send out, are just beginning to put one together, or simply want to get individual poems to a wider audience, this class will give you a strategy for success. Identify possible magazine and book markets for your work, discuss how to organize a manuscript of poems, consider ways in which you can engage the public with your poetry, and evaluate opportunities such as grants, fellowships, colonies, residencies, conferences and festivals. This a two-part class with assignments.
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| 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. |
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.
Susan
Tiberghien lives in Geneva, Switzerland but grew up in Briarcliff Manor. She
is the author of Looking for Gold, A Year in Jungian Analysis, and Circling
to the Center, One Woman’s Encounter with Silent Prayer. She teaches and lectures
at graduate programs, at Jung Centers, and at writers’ conferences both in the
States and in Europe. Ms Tiberghien has been a workshop director for the International
Women’s Writing Guild since 1990. An active member of International PEN, she directs
the Geneva Writers Group and edits the literary review Offshoots, Writing from
Geneva.
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 www.mcclanmuse.com.
Kate
Gallagher was a children’s book editor for many years and is now a freelance
editor and consultant. She has studied poetry with Marvin Bell and Jorie Graham
at the University of Iowa, and has read her work at venues throughout NYC and
Westchester. She teaches creative writing in the Scarsdale schools, at The Kids
Short Story Connection in Greenburgh, and at the Northern Westchester Center for
the Arts.
Patricia
Smith is a four-time national poetry slam champion and the author of three
poetry volumes, Close to Death, Life According to Motown, and Big Towns,
Big Talk. Her poetry has also been published in many fine literary journals
and anthologies and she has performed at innumerable spoken word venues throughout
the U.S. and abroad. Smith is also the author of Africans in America, a
companion volume to the ground-breaking PBS documentary, and the children’s book,
Janna and the Kings, which won Lee & Low Books’ New Voices Award. She is
currently at work on Fixed on a Furious Star, a biography of Harriet Tubman
to be published by Crown in 2006, two new poetry volumes, and another children’s
book. She has served as the Bruce McEver Visiting Chair in Writing at Georgia
Tech University and a faculty member at the Cave Canem retreat for African-American
writers.
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.
Amy
Holman is a literary consultant who teaches writers how to navigate the literary
marketplace to land at publication. She is a contributor to The Practical Writer
(Penguin), and Making the Perfect Pitch (The Writer Books), both published
in 2004, and is writing a guide to colonies, residencies, grants, fellowships,
and graduate writing programs to be published by Perigee in 2006. Her collection,
Wait For Me, I'm Gone, won the 2004 Annual Dream Horse Press National Chapbook
Competition and will be published in February 2005. She has essays in The History
of Panty Hose in America (Espresso Press), AWP Job Newsletter, The Manhattan
Review, and the forthcoming anthology, The Subway Chronicles, and poetry
and fiction in The Best American Poetry 1999, Night Train, American Letters
& Commentary, Rattapallax, Shade and Xconnect.