Spring 2006

All classes and workshops are held at the Hudson Valley Writers' Center (Philipse Manor Railroad Station building) unless otherwise indicated.
In order to maximize individual attention, all classes are limited
to 10 students unless otherwise indicated.

Winter 2006 Class Schedule
Summer 2006 Class Schedule

Mondays:
How to Plan, Write, and Develop a Book with Mary Carroll Moore
Living the Poet's Life with Suzanne Cleary

Tuesdays:
Memoir Writing with Joan Potter
The Truth Hurts, But It's Funny: Tapping into Yourself for Your Writing with Vijai Nathan

Wednesdays:
Writing Children's Books and Stories with Marthe Jocelyn
Writing for the Web with Melinda Marshall

Thursdays:
Creative Writing for Third, Fourth, and Fifth Graders with Kate Gallagher

Saturdays:
Fiction Writing with David Surface
Continuing Fiction with David Surface
Creative Writing for Teens with Brenda Connor-Bey

One & Two Day Workshops:
The Alchemy of Imagination and Writing with Susan Tiberghien
Organically Grown: A Fiction Writer's Workshop with Mary Carroll Moore
The Poetry Chapbook with Amy Holman

Note:
We are also hoping to have a spring writing workshop for ages 11 to 13. Please contact us by phone (914-332- 5953) or e-mail (info@writerscenter.org) if you have a child interested in participating.

SUZANNE CLEARY has an MA in Writing from Washington University and a Ph.D. in Literature and Criticism from Indiana University in Pennsylvania. She is Associate Professor of English at SUNY Rockland. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Georgia Review, and other journals, and she recently won a Pushcart Prize. Her first book, Keeping Time, hailed by Billy Collins, is now in its second printing, and her second collection, Trick Pear, will be published by Carnegie Mellon in early 2007.

Status: Full; waiting list only

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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 2005 by Pinto Press, a small publishing company of which she is co-owner. She is a regular contributor to the Westchester County Times.

Status: Full; waiting list only

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VIJAI NATHAN is a comedienne, actor and writer. She was a journalist with Newsday and The Baltimore Sun before leaving in 1997 to pursue stand-up comedy. She tours nationally with her one-woman show, “Good Girls Don't, But Indian Girls Do.” She was nominated best comedian of 2005 by South Asian Media Awards, was chosen one of the top 10 comics in the nation for the NBC Stand-Up for Diversity Showcase, Los Angeles, 2004, and was named by Back Stage Magazine as one of the top ten stand-up comics in 2003. TV appearances include: ABC News’ 20/20, PBS, The Oxygen Network, the BBC and UK Comedy Central.

Status: Open; accepting registrations

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Marthe Jocelyn of NYC and Stratford, Ontario, says she reads everything she can get her hands on in children's literature "where some of the best writing being published today is found - and should be found." She is the author-illustrator of several picture books and the author of three chapter books (The Invisible Day, The Invisible Harry, and The Invisible Enemy) and two works of historical fiction, Earthly Astonishments, and Mable Riley: A Reliable Record of Humdrum, Peril and Adventure. She also wrote a non-fiction book, A Home for Foundlings, about the Foundling Hospital in London, England, and edited an anthology of short stories for middle grade readers called Secrets. She is the first (and so far only) children's author to win the new TD Canadian Children's Literature Award.

Status: Open; accepting registrations

Please note that Writing Children's Books & Stories with Jean Fritz, originally scheduled for this time slot, has been cancelled.

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MELINDA MARSHALL spent 20 years in conventional publishing as an editor for Hearst, a writer for 18 national magazines, and the author (or ghost author) of five books. Today she offers coaching, editing, and book doctoring services to small business owners, bloggers, and self-publishers.

Status: Open; accepting registrations

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CREATIVE WRITING FOR THIRD, FOURTH & FIFTH GRADERS
with Kate Gallagher
8 Thursdays, 3:30 - 5 pm
April 20 - June 15, 2006 (skips May 25)
Fee: $215 ($205 for members) returning Gallagher students deduct $10
Class limited to 9 students

Each day you take in 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.

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.

Status: Open; accepting registrations

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FICTION WRITING
with David Surface
8 Saturdays, 12:45 - 2:45 pm
April 22 - June 17, 2006 (skips May 27)
Fee: $295 ($260 for members) Returning Surface students deduct $10

In this workshop, designed for beginning and experienced writers, you will go beyond the traditional elements of fiction writing as taught in English class (“plot,” “setting,” “conflict,” etc.) and will focus instead on what great writers actually do on the page, the techniques they use to capture the reader’s interest and create imaginatively and emotionally rich work. By combining narrative technique exercises with traditional manuscript review in a focused and supportive setting, we will help you create work that employs the fundamentals of fiction writing while also expressing your personal voice.

DAVID SURFACE’s fiction has been published in numerous literary journals, including DoubleTake, North American Review, Crazyhorse, Fiction, Willow Spring, and Artful Dodge, and has 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. He was a 2005 Fellow in Nonfiction Literature from the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) and was a finalist for the NYFA prize.

Status: Open; accepting registrations

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CONTINUING FICTION WRITING
with David Surface
8 Saturdays, 10:30 am - 12:30 pm
April 22 - June 17, 2006 (skips May 27)
Fee: $295 ($260 for members) Returning Surface students deduct $10

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.

DAVID SURFACE’s fiction has been published in numerous literary journals, including DoubleTake, North American Review, Crazyhorse, Fiction, Willow Spring, and Artful Dodge, and has 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. He was a 2005 Fellow in Nonfiction Literature from the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) and was a finalist for the NYFA prize.

Status: Open; accepting registrations

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CREATIVE WRITING FOR TEENS
with Brenda Connor-Bey
6 Saturdays, 3 - 5:30 pm
April 29 - June 10, 2006 (skips May 27)
Fee: $215 ($200 for members) Returning Connor-Bey students deduct $10

Six workshop sessions in which writers age 14 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.

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.

Status: Full; waiting list only

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THE ALCHEMY OF IMAGINATION AND WRITING
with Susan Tiberghien
Thursday, May 4, 2006
9:30 am - noon
second session added: 1 - 3:30
Fee: $55 ($45 for members) Returning Tiberghien students deduct $5
Limited to 15 students

How do we move from personal experience to transcendent experience? After a brief introduction to the three steps of alchemy—nigredo (blackening, taking the image into the dark), albedo (whitening, listening to the image through active imagination), and rubedo (reddening, polishing the image)—we will look for images from our dreams, memories and surroundings and let them lead to a deeper level of creativity. Through writing, as in alchemy, you look for the gold within yourself.

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.

Status: Morning session full; waiting list only
Afternoon session open; accepting registrations

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ORGANICALLY GROWN : A Fiction Writer's Workshop
with Mary Carroll Moore
Saturday, June 24, 2006
10 am - 4 pm
Fee: $80 ($70 for members) Returning Moore students deduct $5
Limited to 20 students

Set aside your desire to make the story happen and let your fiction tell you where it wants to go. Explore and refine the “fiction switch” that helps a writer become receptive to what stories really want to say. Discover more about your characters via writing exercises on characterization through backstory, dialogue, setting, finding a character’s motives and self-concept, and point of view. Get constructive small group feedback on writing in progress to help your characters evolve from flat to unforgettable. Especially geared toward intermediate to advanced fiction writers who have stories or a novel that is not quite coming together.

MARY CARROLL MOORE has published ten nonfiction books (including How to Master Change in Your Life: Sixty-Seven Ways to Handle Life’s Toughest Moments). She has just finished her first fiction book, Breathing Room, a collection of linked short stories, and a chapter from this book won an honorable mention in the 2005 McKnight Awards. For twelve years she was a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist, and over 200 of her articles, essays, and stories have appeared in publications such as the Boston Globe, American Artist, and American Health. As an editor and book doctor for major publishing houses since 1986, she knows what it takes to write a successful book. She teaches writing at Litchfield Community Center in Connecticut, The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, and other locations around the U. S., Canada, and Europe.

Status: Open; accepting registrations

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THE POETRY CHAPBOOK
with Amy Holman
2 Sundays, April 23 and 30, 2006
12:30 - 3 pm
Fee: $100 ($90 for members) Returning Holman students deduct $5

Poets, prepare yourself for the journey to publication and promotion of a poetry chapbook (20-24 pp). Learn about the importance of style and subject in both the composition of the chapbook and the search for the right chapbook publishers. Look in-depth at three chapbook publishers, and discuss best ways to promote the book once it has been accepted for publication, when it has been published, and beyond to the whole poetry career. Readings, bookstore consignments, web sites, postcards, colonies, grants, fellowships, and fulllength poetry collections will be covered. If you bring five poems (5-6 pp) from your chapbook to the first session, you will get a starter list of six publishers at the second session.

AMY HOLMAN is a published poet and prose writer who teaches writers how to find publishing success. She is the author of Wait For Me, I’m Gone, winner of the 2004 Dream Horse Press National Poetry Chapbook Competition, and An Insider’s Guide to Creative Writing Programs: Choosing the Right MFA or MA Program, Colony, Residency, Grant or Fellowship (Prentice Hall Press, 2006). Her essays on the writing business have been in AWP JobLetter, Poets & Writers Magazine, The Manhattan Review, SideRoad, and the anthologies, The Practical Writer and Making The Perfect Pitch.

Status: Full; waiting list only

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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.

Weather-related closings: As a general rule, if bad weather causes the Tarrytown schools to close, it is likely that classes at the Writers’ Center will be cancelled. We will record a message on the office answering machine (914-332-5953) at least 2 hours prior to class time if the decision is made to close.

Refund policy: For classes dropped at least 24 hours prior to the first class, 100% of the class fee will be refunded. For classes dropped at least 48 hours before the second class, 75% of the class fee will be refunded. After that time, a partial refund will only be issued if your space in the class can be filled. For classes cancelled by the Writers’ Center, 100% of the class fee will be refunded.

For further information about any of these classes or workshops, call the Writers' Center at 914-332-5953.

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