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Summer 2003 |
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All classes are held at the Hudson Valley Writers' Center (Philipse Manor Railroad Station building) unless otherwise indicated. Winter
2004 Classes & Workshops CLASSES
& WORKSHOPS
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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.
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GETTING
YOUR SHORT NONFICTION MARKET-READY New students should submit a 1-2 page writing sample to the HVWC no later than 7/2 for use in determining eligibility. This class is for writers who aspire to write and market publication-quality essays and articles. Work by class members and others will be studied and discussed. Students are screened for eligibility (see above.) Those accepted should bring a writing sample, preferably unpublished, to the first class.
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GREEK
POETRY Sappho's love lyrics, Archilochus' biting invective, Pindar's odes of praise, and Theocritus' pastoral idylls are among the founding works of Western poetry. This introduction to the poetry of Ancient Greece will focus on the themes of love, praise, and blame that preoccupied Greek poets from the Archaic to the Hellenistic period. You will explore the specific poetic effects that can be achieved by a complex and highly inflected language and examine some problems of translation.
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HIDDEN
TREASURE: Viewing Your Story with an Anthropologist’s Eye When we start to tell our own personal stories, we quickly discover that they are never completely ours. They are stories of our families, of our neighborhoods and nations, of our cultural and spiritual communities. Most likely they include not just tales, but traditions, rituals, routines, celebrations, names, institutions, photos, other visual images, landscapes, and more. Probe the wealth of these community details so you can tell more truly and vividly your own story. Fiction writers, note: This will help you develop your characters too.
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HOW
TO BAIT — AND HOOK — AN EDITOR Pitching
Periodicals Bagging
a Book Contract
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NOT
JUST FOR KIDS: CROSS-OVER WRITING Nancy Willard is famous for work in many genres and for many different ages, so she is the perfect guide for a discussion of writing that can be enjoyed both by adults and children. You will look at retellings of tales by the Brothers Grimm and picture books based on texts by Robert Frost, Richard Wilbur, and Nikki Giovanni that first appeared in their adult poetry collections. There will be exercises in getting started, telling the story as a poem, and laying out a poem in picture book form. Serious teen writers welcome.
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SCREENWRITING Screenwriting, done well, is an art, but it always begins as a craft. Whether you've never written a screenplay or, having mastered the essentials, you're wondering why Spielberg isn't beating down your door, this course gives you the tools you need. Topics include concept development, format, story structure, characters, dialogue, selling your script, and screenwriters' most common mistakes. There will be a guest speaker from the film industry.
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WRITEMIND:
A Special Creative Writing Workshop for Teachers 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. When this class was offered last fall through the Rockland Teachers Center, one experienced Tarrytown English teacher commented: “Thank you so much for a course that will impact me forever as I teach writing.”
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Writing
for Young Adults — “Learning to See” This series of five stand-alone workshops, for serious writers age 12 and up, will help you develop your ability to see, with every sense of your being, and then to write. You will be challenged to use your imagination to see beyond the surface of things and to put on paper the stories and ideas that come to you. You will celebrate the very sound of words and the images they create. Sign up for 3, 4 or 5 weeks, indicating preferred dates.
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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. |
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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. Warner Library is located at 121 North Broadway (Route 9), Tarrytown, New York, approximately 1.5 miles north of the Tappan Zee Bridge. For further information about any of these classes or workshops, call the Writers' Center at 914-332-5953. |
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.
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 is a recipient of the 1998 CASE Gold Medal
for magazine writing from the council for the Advancement and Support
of Education. He won the 1991 New York Press Club Award for feature writing,
and he serves on the board of governors of the Society of the Silurians,
the oldest press club in America.
Barbara
Morrow, an editor and copy writer, has a Masters in Ancient Greek from
Columbia University. The classes she has taught in Homer, Aeschylus, Euripides,
Aristophanes, and other Greek writers in the Intervillage Continuing Education
program in Hastings-on-Hudson have attracted a large and devoted following,
even among those who initially approached Ancient Greek literature hesitantly.
Joanne
B. Mulcahy teaches and directs the Writing Culture Program at The Northwest
Writing Institute, Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon. She holds
degrees in comparative literature, anthropology, and folklore (Ph.D.)
and has taught writing in numerous community settings, including The Oregon
Coast Council on the Arts, The Verbal Arts Centre in Derry, N. Ireland,
and in Alaska and Oregon State Corrections. Her writing combines oral
history and cultural research with memoir and personal essay.
Melinda Marshall has written for over 18 national publications since 1990,
including Reader's Digest, Parenting, Cosmopolitan, and Redbook,
and her work has appeared in newspapers nationwide through the New
York Times Syndicate. For 7 years, she wrote the "That's Life" column
for Ladies Home Journal, where she is a contributing editor. She
is also the author, co-author, or ghost-writer of five books, most recently
Fight Your Fear and Win: The Seven Skills for Performing Your Best
Under Pressure. Her first book, Good Enough Mothers: Changing Expectations
for Ourselves, received a Washington Irving Book Prize in 1995.
Nancy Willard is the author of two novels, Things Invisible to See
and Sister Water; a collection of lectures on writing, Telling
Time; and eleven books of poetry, including the most recent, Swimming
Lessons. Her books for children include The Moon & Riddles Diner
and the Sunnyside Cafe, Step Lightly, and A Visit to William Blake's
Inn, which was nominated for the National Book Award and was the first
poetry book to win the Newbery medal. The Tale I Told Sasha was
a 1999 Booklist Top Ten Children's Poetry Title. She teaches at Vassar
College. 
Staton Rabin is a screenwriter and freelance story analyst who has evaluated
over 1000 film projects for Warner Bros., William Morris Agency, New Line
Cinema, scr(i)pt Magazine, and numerous individuals. She's also
a Senior Writer and screenplay contest judge for scr(i)pt. Her
novel Betsy and the Emperor is in film development with Al Pacino
attached to star. She has a BFA in film from New York University (NYU)
and is a frequent guest speaker for Mark DeGasperi's NYU courses in screenwriting.
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 published a collection of poetry and a young adult
novel and is working on a novel.