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Summer 2004 |
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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 2004 Class Schedule CLASSES
& WORKSHOPS
Monday: Monday/Wednesday: Tuesday: NEW!
Tuesday/Thursday: Wednesday: Thursday: Friday: Saturday: Saturday/Sunday:
changed to Saturday 6/26 only -- see below
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SUMMER WORKSHOPS
FOR WRITERS AGES 8 - 10 The Hudson Valley Writers' Center is offering six writing workshops taught by Anne Stevenson, a writer and an experienced elementary school teacher in the Public Schools of the Tarrytowns. Using writing challenges, lively activities, and children’s literature, the workshop will inspire children to write from their hearts, tap their imaginations and find their voices in their written words. This will be a unique opportunity for your child to write and learn in a non-competitive, nurturing environment with no more than 10 students. Sign up for at least 3 or as many as 6 sessions. Each session stands alone. If feasible, there will also be a public reading featuring participating students at a time to be announced. Questions? Call the HVWC (332-5953) or Anne Stevenson (332-4365). Thanks to the Rotary of the Tarrytowns, there is some scholarship aid for those who cannot otherwise attend. If interested, please inquire. |
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ADVANCED
POETRY “Energy is eternal delight.” —Wm. Blake This workshop will focus on the poetic line as a vehicle for imaginative and emotional energy, on the poetic sentence as a means of distributing energy, and on energy generally, rather than, strictly, meaning, as the central characteristic of the successful poem. We will scrutinize both canonical and little known poems, and adduce principles by which we can discuss and revise our own poems. Everyone should come prepared to think and to talk. Open to individuals who have previously taken an HVWC poetry class or equivalent.
Vijay Seshadri will give a reading at the Writers’ Center on Thursday, July 15th, at 7:30 pm. Admission free to Seshadri 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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SHORT
AND SWEET 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.
Thad Rutkowski will give a reading at the Writers’ Center on Thursday, July 8th, at 7:30 pm. Admission free to Rutkowski students. |
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POETIC
FIRES This post-July 4th workshop will help students ignite their own creative fires and shape them into beautiful, illuminating flames. A few poems by “established” poets will be used as portals into students' original creations. Writing, revising, and reading aloud will follow. By workshop end, each student will have written and shared aloud at least one finished (or near-finished) poem. Bring a snack.
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PUTTING
THE SELF ON THE LINE The college application process is fraught with stresses, but students truly stand alone when writing their personal essays. This type of personal writing, often neglected in English classes, is a critical component of applying to colleges, work-study programs, internships, even summer jobs. How to capture in writing my best, truest, most honest self for a reader I will never know, a reader who holds a key to my future? This is the dilemma posed by the college essay. This workshop will banish fear from the room and allow students to produce drafts that can be adapted in the fall. Primarily for students entering their senior year in high school; others should inquire.
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WRITING
WORKSHOPS FOR MIDDLE-SCHOOL STUDENTS This workshop helps 11 to 14 year old students 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. Students will have the opportunity to read from their work at the Writers’ Center on Thursday, July 22 (see below.)
Brenda Connor-Bey and her students will give a reading at the Writers’ Center on Thursday, July 22nd, at 7:30 pm. |
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GREEK
MYTHOLOGY Immortal, unaging, mighty and beautiful, the gods of ancient Greece continue to fascinate readers and writers today. This introduction to Greek mythology will focus on the stories of some of the most important Olympian gods—Aphrodite, Apollo, Athena and Hermes among them—as told in the captivating poetry of the Homeric Hymns. The Hymns provide a unique window on a long ago world as they explore themes of love and power, betrayal and healing that remain at the heart of the human condition. Limited to 12 students. Recommended text: The Homeric Hymns, translated by Diane Rayor (University of California Press, 2004; paperback)
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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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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.
David Surface and some of his students will give a reading at the Writers’ Center on Thursday, July 29th, at 7:30 pm. |
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MAKING
MOSAICS OF OUR LIVES There is a growing urgency to find meaning in our fragmented lives. Explore the different pieces found in your dreams, surroundings, and memories, writing about them and looking for patterns linking them together. Examples will be provided from Annie Dillard (For the Time Being), Michael Ondaatje (Running in the Family), and Margaret Atwood (Negotiating with the Dead). Finally, as you move towards writing memoir, you will shape the pieces into journal entries, essays, stories, and poems—a mosaic of your life. Recommended reading, Running in the Family, Michael Ondaatje, and For the Time Being, Annie Dillard. Limited to 15 students.
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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. For further information about any of these classes or workshops, call the Writers' Center at 914-332-5953. |
Vijay
Seshadri
was born in Bangalore, India, and came to the U.S. at age 5. His collections
of poems are Wild Kingdom (1996) and The Long Meadow (2004),
both from Graywolf Press. His poems, essays, and reviews have appeared
in numerous fine periodicals and anthologies. Among his many distinguished
fellowships, residencies, and awards is the Academy of American Poets
James Laughlin Prize (2004). He currently teaches poetry and is the
director of the graduate nonfiction writing program at Sarah Lawrence
College. 
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.
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. 
Alessandra
Lynch was raised north of New York City. She holds a BA from Sarah
Lawrence College and an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.
Her poems have appeared in the American Poetry Review, Hayden's Ferry
Review, Ploughshares, Quarterly West, and other journals. Her first
poetry collection, Sails the Wind Left Behind, was published in
2002 by Alice James Books. A former English teacher at Horace Greeley
High School, Ms. Lynch currently teaches Composition and Creative Writing
at the University of Pittsburgh in Johnstown and is working on her second
book.
Nancy
Krim spent twenty-three years teaching English at Scarsdale High School,
developing techniques for bringing out the best in her students. Educated
at Stanford University, she is both a master teacher and a practicing
poet with an MFA from the Warren Wilson MFA Program. Nancy has published
both essays and poetry in a variety of journals. She leads writing workshops
for both students and teachers.
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. 
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. 
Joan Potter
is the co-author of The Book of Adirondack Firsts and the children's
book, African Americans Who Were First. She is the author of African-American
Firsts: Famous, Little-Known and Unsung Triumphs of Blacks in America,
a revised, expanded edition of which was published in November 2002. She
edited Growing Up Strong: Four North Country Women Recall Their Lives,
a collection of memoirs produced in a writing workshop she led in the
Adirondacks. Her essays appear in the anthologies Living North Country
and Rooted in Rock. She is a regular contributor to the Westchester
County Times.
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.