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Spring 2008 Writing Workshops | ||||
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Please
note that there is a nonrefundable $25 registration fee per workshop
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| Spring Workshops for Adults
One and Two-Day Workshops
Spring Workshops for Young Writers
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Spring
2008 Writing Workshops for Adults To register, click here. | |||
| ADVANCED
POETRY 7
Mondays, April 28 - June 16 (skips May 26) A unique workshop with a hybrid format: part of the time spent revising poems brought in by participants, the other part working on craft in the context of composing new work. The course will include models and exercises, homework assignments, and some tough love publishing advice. The tone will be challenging and supportive, the atmosphere fun and rigorous. Note: “Advanced” means poets who are serious in their writing and reading habits. For help figuring out if you’re advanced or not, you might want to take this little quiz: http://www.wintergetaway.com/poetrylevel.html Status: started 4/28 | |||
| HOW
TO PLAN, WRITE, AND DEVELOP A BOOK 6
Mondays, April 14 - June 2 (skips April 21 & May 26) Whether you’re a nonfiction author, memoirist, or novelist, and whether you have a book almost finished or merely a concept for one, this 6 week class will help you get to know your book—what it is about, how to structure it, how to finish it! You’ll learn a step-by-step plan (including timetables, chapter grids, story-boarding, and other techniques) and ways to flow chapters, find holes in your material that need filling, organize research and concepts, and construct plots. You’ll also learn how to package your book for agents and publishers and gain essential tips on editing and evaluating your book at all stages. Status: started 4/14 | |||
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WRITING
FOR CHILDREN: MEET THE CHALLENGE 6
Wednesdays, April 16 - May 28 (skips April 23) You’ve always wanted to write a children’s book? How hard could it be? A lot harder than you think! Whether you are writing (or hope to write) a picture book, a novel for teens, or something in between, this six-session course will help you think through your project. We’ll discuss the range of books for all ages of children in many genres, helping you discover your own voice and who it speaks to. You’ll have in-class writing practice, lots of homework and a better understanding of how the children’s publishing market works. Be prepared to have your work critiqued in a realistic - and yet inspirational - forum. A suggested reading list is provided. Status: completed | |||
| MEMOIR
WRITING 8
Tuesdays, April 29 - June 17 Writing is a solitary endeavor, and feedback is crucial to developing your voice and honing your style. Whether you are in the process of writing a memoir or just getting started, this workshop provides a supportive and constructive environment in which you will read your work aloud each week and receive responses. Your subjects may range from early childhood memories to the transforming events of adulthood, and finished pieces may be short or book-length. Several workshop members have published their work in The New York Times and various literary journals. For writers of all levels. Status: started 4/29 | |||
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FICTION
INTENSIVE 8
Thursdays, May 1 - June 19 In this intensive class we will critique students’ work with the goal of publication in mind. Through close attention to characterization, dramatization, style, pacing and tone we will devote our attention to the turning of the nearly finished into the finished and of the well-crafted into the distinctive and memorable. For intermediate students and above. Status: started 5/1 | |||
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THE
ART OF THE ESSAY 5
Wednesdays, May 21 - June 18 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. Status: cancelled | |||
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FICTION
WRITING 8
Saturdays, May
3 - June 28 (skips April 19 & 26; May 24) Whether you are an experienced or beginning writer, the techniques you’ll learn in this workshop will help make your work stronger. By combining writing exercises and traditional manuscript review, you’ll learn how to unleash your narrative voice, how to give your writing the texture and power of actual experience, and how to find and highlight the emotional core of your story. Status: started 5/3 | |||
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One
and Two-Day Workshops To register, click here. | |||
| LIFE
STORIES: FROM JOURNAL TO ESSAY TO MEMOIR Tuesday,
April 29, 2008 We all have life stories to share. In this workshop we will move from journal entries to personal essay to memoir, working with dreams, memories, and surroundings to find our stories. We will fit the stories together as we turn to memoir, creating mosaics of our lives. With examples and exercises. Status: completed | |||
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USING
THE TECHNIQUES OF FICTION TO MAKE YOUR CREATIVE NONFICTION EVEN MORE CREATIVE Friday,
May 2, 2008 Creative nonfiction strives to be as well crafted as the best fiction. This intensive will teach some of the techniques of fine fiction, such as character development, dialogue, sentence structure, setting the scene, point of view, word choice, and the use of time. It's all about story, ultimately. From that first moment when we heard, "Once upon a time," we were hooked on story, and that is what we, as nonfiction writers, do: tell stories. That our stories happen to be true is important. But what's really important is that the stories be dramatic, taut, and compelling. We want our stories to have energy, light, and depth. We want readers to keep turning the pages. That happens not so much as a result of what we are writing about as how. Some of the best creative nonfiction is, in fact, about our day-to-day lives. This class will use examples from fiction to illustrate these techniques, and we will have writing exercises, as well. Status: cancelled | |||
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JUMPSTART
YOUR POETRY WRITING LIFE Two separate offerings:
Want to get writing and keep writing? These special one and two-session versions of one of our most popular workshops present exercises and advice to jumpstart your poetry life. We will workshop one of your poems. Bring 11 copies, and practice seeing it for what it is: a springboard to your next poem, and your next! Status: cancelled | |||
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WRITING
YOUR LIFE: How to Plan, Develop, and Write a Memoir Friday,
May 16, 2008 Whether you are trying to write the story of your life for publication or as a family legacy, this workshop by the author of two memoirs will show you how to organize your stories into a readable, interesting work. You will be introduced to a simple formula that successful authors use to plan, organize, and write a book, and you will learn book-writing techniques such as the value of themes and how action and reflection balance one another in memoir and creative nonfiction. Exercises will help you put your learning into practice immediately. Status: completed | |||
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PERFORMING
POETRY Friday,
June 6, 2008 A workshop for poets who want to work on reading skills. Using theatre techniques of script analysis, dramatic arcs, and emotional decoding, poets will get a chance to improve their poetry reading skills and rediscover their own work. Please bring a poem to work on! Status: completed | |||
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GET
YOUR CHARACTERS TALKING Friday,
June 13, 2008 Developing compelling characters and having them speak with meaning is a key element of fiction and dramatic writing. In this intensive workshop you will enhance your ability to flesh out characters and have them dialog in effective ways. Through exercises and focused discussion you will leave with a new perspective on how to approach your writing. Status: open; accepting registrations | |||
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THE
WHEEL OF TEN: Essential Tools to Make Memoir and Fiction Come Alive Friday,
June 20, 2008 Spend a lively day exploring the ins and outs of ten essential writing tools that professional writers never leave home without. Even one, well used, will bring new vibrancy to a not-quite-there-yet memoir, short story, or novel. Fun writing exercises, short readings, discussion will help us see new levels of these basic tools—how to use them, how they influence a writer’s voice and the success of a piece of writing, and why they must be considered for any good storytelling (true tales, faction, or fiction): action, dialogue, pacing, point of view, backstory, chronology, setting, motive, closeness/distance, and change. Bring a bag lunch and short piece of writing in progress to use during the exercises or start something new in class. For all skill levels. Status: open; accepting registrations | |||
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WRITEMIND:
A Special Creative Writing Workshop for Teachers 3
Sundays, May 4 & 18; June 1 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. Please note that the nonmember workshop registration fee does not apply to this workshop. Status: cancelled -- may be rescheduled (please call or e-mail for information) | |||
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Spring 2008 Workshops for Young Writers To register, click here. | |||
| CREATIVE
WRITING FOR THIRD, FOURTH & FIFTH GRADERS 8
Thursdays, April 10 - June 12 (skips April 24 & May 22) 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. (Note that some sessions will be taught by Kate Gallagher and others will be taught by Charlotte Walsh.) Status: full; waiting list only | |||
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CREATIVE
WRITING FOR TEENS AGE 14+ 8
Saturdays, April 5 - June 7 (skips April 26; May 24) Eight 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. Status: full; waiting list only | |||
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To
register, click here. | |||
| About Our Instructors | |||
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 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 in 2006 was named the first poet laureate of the town of Greenburgh,
New York. She has had her work published and performed widely, and has just
completed a collection of poetry and a young adult novel and is working
on a novel. www.brendaconnorbey.com |
 Susan
Jennifer Polese's full-length play, Klaus' Closet, was produced
by The American Theatre for Actors at the Beckmann Theatre, and subsequently
at the Westbeth Artists' Residency, NYC. Her one-act play, After a Night
with Abe, was produced at the Herbert Mark Newman Theatre. Susan has
studied playwriting at The Wonderhorse Theatre, Herbert Berghof Studio,
and Hunter College. She's taught playwriting to children through a camp
program at Purchase College, and has taught with The Howard Meyer Acting
Program. Most recently her play Under the One-Time Sky was produced
at Here, Performing Arts Center in Manhattan with Axial Theatre Company.
As a journalist, Susan writes for The New York Times and The Advocate.
She is member of The Dramatists Guild. www.susanpolese.com |
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 Kate
Gallagher, a poet and former children's book editor, has taught at venues
which include the Scarsdale schools, the Kids' Short Story Connection in Greenburgh,
the Northern Westchester Center for the Arts. In addition to teaching children
and young adults, she also works with the developmentally disabled and women with
eating disorders. She has studied with Jorie Graham and Marvin Bell at the University
of Iowa and is a member of the Poetry Caravan. |  Joan
Potter’s nonfiction writing has been published in numerous magazines and newspapers.
Her personal essays appear in the anthologies Rooted in Rock, Living
North Country, the new collection, Illness & Grace, Terror & Transformation,
and in the online journal Perigee. She is the author of three books, including
African American Firsts: Famous, Little-Known and Unsung Triumphs of Blacks
in America. She has edited, among other books, 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 has also led workshops for
prisoners and Latino immigrants. | ||
 Richard
Goodman's latest book, The Soul of Creative Writing, has just been
published. He is also the author of French Dirt: The Story of a Garden in the
South of France. He has written on a variety of subjects for many national
publications, including The New York Times, Harvard Review, Creative Nonfiction,
Louisville Review, Commonweal, Vanity Fair, Garden Design, Grand Tour, The Writer's
Chronicle, Saveur, Ascent and the Michigan Quarterly Review. He has
twice been awarded a fellowship at the MacDowell Colony and twice been awarded
a fellowship at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. He wrote the introduction
for Travelers' Tales Provence. His essay, "In Search of the Exact Word,"
is in the Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus. He is the Fine Presses Editor
for Fine Books & Collections. He teaches creative nonfiction at Spalding University's
MFA in writing program in Louisville, Kentucky. http://richardgoodman.homestead.com |  Liana
Scalettar's writing has appeared or is forthcoming in American Short Fiction,
Arts & Letters, Drunken Boat, Failbetter, Gutcult, LIT, Nidus, Sentence and
Washington Square. Her awards include a Pushcart Prize nomination, a Glimmer
Train prize, and the Amanda Davis scholarship given by the Wesleyan Writers' Conference,
as well as residencies at the MacDowell Colony, Santa Fe Art Institute, and Vermont
Studio Center. She has taught at Boston and Fordham universities and Gotham Writers'
Workshop, and currently works at Queens College. | ||
 Douglas
Goetsch is the author of six collections of poems, most recently Your
Whole Life (winner of the 2007 Slipstream Prize). His work has appeared
widely in journals such as Poetry, The Iowa Review, and The
American Scholar, online at PoetryDaily and Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s
Almanac, on the air at NPR, and in many anthologies. He is a veteran instructor
who has taught at writing conferences and programs around the country, including
The Stonecoast Writers Conference, The Frost Place, the Chautauqua Institute,
and The Iowa Summer Writing Festival. To find out more, visit www.janestreet.org.
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 David
Surface was awarded a 2005 Fellowship in Non Fiction Literature from
the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), and was also nominated for
the NYFA Prize. He has also twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize
in fiction. His essays and stories have been published in a wide variety
of print and on-line journals, including DoubleTake, North American
Review, Crazyhorse, Fiction and Slow Trains. He
is a founder of WriteMind, a creative language arts program for teachers
and students of grades 4 - 12, and is leader of The F*E*G*S Writing Project
which conducts writing workshops in mental health facilities throughout
New York City. |
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 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. A collection of his essays, Home Fires,
will be out soon. |
 Susan
Tiberghien is an American-born writer living in Geneva, Switzerland.
She holds a BA in Literature and Philosophy and did graduate work at the
Université de Grenoble and the CG Jung Institute of Zurich. Susan has published
three memoirs and numerous narrative essays in journals and anthologies.
She teaches and lectures at graduate programs, at C.G. Jung Centers, and
at writers’ conferences in the U.S. and in Europe. She founded the Geneva
Writers’ Group in 1993 which she continues to direct and where she teaches
monthly workshops. www.susantiberghien.com |
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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. In 2005, she was winner of the first
annual TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award for Mable Riley. www.marthejocelyn.com |
 Charlotte
Walsh has taught poetry workshops at the Lakeland Schools Children’s Center,
in New York City schools in cooperation with the Lehman College Art Gallery, The
Scarsdale Young Writers’ Conference and the Armonk Library. Her works have been
published in “Into the Teeth of the Wind” and by other small presses. | ||
 Mara
Mills has been a professional storyteller, stage director, producer and arts
educator for more than twenty years. She is the author of Rites of Passage,
an integrated curriculum on script writing (National Middle School's Association
Journal, February 1990), and a chapter on children as storytellers in the text
Integrating Curriculum through the Arts, as well as a book of poetry, Ashes
and Tea. Recently, she worked with Domestic Abuse Survivors to create a choral
script. Mara created Drama Departments for The Mead School in Greenwich and The
Learning Community in Westport and was the Artistic Director of the successful
Herbert Mark Newman Theatre from 1991 - 2004. She received the 1996 award for
outstanding service to theatre from the national theatre association and the 2007
Cab Calloway award for her work in theatre in Westchester. | |||
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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. Jr. League = The Junior League of Westchester-on-Hudson, 35 South Broadway, Tarrytown, New York. During Metro North's platform reconstruction project at the Philipse Manor station, our daytime workshops will be held at the Junior League building (upstairs from the Nearly New shop). The building is located at the intersection of South Broadway (Route 9) and West Elizabeth Street, north of the Tappan Zee Bridge.
For further information about any of these classes or workshops, call the Writers' Center at 914-332-5953. The Hudson Valley Writers' Center - Home Page
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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, has just been published by Carnegie
Mellon.
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.