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Summer 2008 Writing Workshops | ||||
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note that there is a nonrefundable $25 registration fee per workshop Due to Metro North’s ongoing Hudson Line station rehabilitation project at our Philipse Manor station home, our Monday - Friday daytime workshops are occasionally moved to the Junior League of Westchester-on-Hudson, 35 South Broadway, Tarrytown. You will be notified as far in advance as possible if your class needs to be relocated on any given day. | ||||
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Summer Workshops for Adults
One and Two-Day Workshops
Summer Workshops for Young Writers
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Summer
2008 Writing Workshops for Adults To register, click here. |
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HOW
TO WRITE PAGE-TURNING FICTION 6 Thursdays,
7 - 9 pm We’ve all done it, stayed awake until three a.m. compulsively turning pages until we finish the book or our eyes betray us and we fall asleep. How do writers grab us like that and not let go? As writers ourselves we can learn from literary techniques of popular genres how to keep the story moving in a compelling fashion. Whether we write about the everyday dramas of ordinary life or the extreme situations of the detective novel or the pulse-pounding thriller, our work will benefit from consideration of how to develop compelling and sympathetic protagonists, disquieting antagonists, a unique voice, well-considered plots, conflict and tension. Our characters may or may not be seeking the Holy Grail, but everyday life with its quiet agonies and quiet satisfactions is equally sacred to the writer of intelligent fiction—and equally deserving of that special magic it takes to keep the reader turning “just one more page.” Status: started 7/10 |
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THE
SEVEN STAGES OF CREATIVITY: The Creative Process Uncovered 4 Wednesdays,
10 am - noon How are we inspired? Is there a method to our creativity? Can the creative processes have a formula? How does research inform the creative process? It has been argued that creativity has seven stages: orientation, preparation, analysis, ideation, incubation, synthesis, and evaluation. Each of these steps will be explored with complementary writing exercises. These seven steps of creativity will be a platform to structure the class and hopefully come to understand the mystery of inspiration, originality, and invention. We will examine other related theories such as trauma and creativity, spontaneity, chance, creativity as a voice for empowerment, and the function of freedom and lack of freedom to heighten artistic movement. Status: completed |
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HOW
TO PLAN, WRITE, AND DEVELOP A BOOK 4
Mondays, June 23, 30; July 14, 21 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: completed |
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MEMOIR
WRITING 4 Tuesdays,
July 8 - July 29 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: completed |
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WRITING
CHILDREN'S BOOKS & STORIES 4
Wednesdays, 12:30 - 2:30 pm Develop a strong narrative voice and distinctive style when writing for readers from middle grade to young adult. In this intensive course, unique writing exercises will help writers, both the inexperienced and the skilled, explore their writing strengths. Each session will focus on a different aspect of writing. Information about being published will also be addressed. Status: cancelled
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ON
STYLE AND VOICE 5
Fridays, 10 am - noon For writers of fiction and nonfiction. Students in this intermediate-level workshop will generate copious amounts of new work with the goal of beginning or continuing to develop a distinctive and memorable sound. Along the way, we'll discuss musicality, the joining of voice to structure, and the avoidance of stylistic tics. Please read Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style before the first session. Status: completed |
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TRUE
FICTION: BREATHING LIFE INTO OUR STORIES 4
Saturdays, 10:30 am - 12:30 pm Someone once said that fiction is a lie that tells the truth. If fiction-writing is basically “making things up”, how can we make things up that feel true? What is it that turns a character from a bunch of random ink-marks on a page into a flesh and blood human being? How can we change our stories from something other people will merely read about into something they will experience? In this workshop, we will explore practical techniques for breathing life into fiction and finding the truth in our stories. Status: completed |
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One
and Two-Day Workshops To register, click here. |
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VOICE
& PLACE: GENERATING NEW WRITING Sunday, July
20 This workshop will focus on the elements of voice and place as royal gateways to authenticity and power in writing. Mastery of place allows readers to feel they are living in your world long after they¹ve put your writing down. Mastery of voice causes readers to forgive your narrator every vice except dishonesty.We will use models by poets, novelists, and essayists, but the emphasis will be on new writing by participants, and battery of techniques for entering it, and for generating it. This workshop is designed for both poets and prose writers, and is appropriate for all levels. Status: completed |
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THE
BOOK STAGE Tuesday, August
5 The Book Stage is a workshop to teach you marketing tools that will help you reach bigger and broader audiences throughout your career and put you in touch with helpful resources. It provides you with a plan for approaching your own wish/to do lists and instructs you on why and how you should build a career platform, what to put in a print/electronic press kit and when to use it, and the basics of writing pitch letters. E-mail, web sites, digital media, and the Internet will be part of the discussion. Status: completed |
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Summer
2008 Workshops for Young Writers To register, click here. |
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CREATIVE
WRITING FOR THIRD, FOURTH & FIFTH GRADERS 10 am - noon
choose 4 or more dates:
note: more dates may be added: check this calendar, e-mail info@writerscenter.org, or call the office (914-332-5953) for up-to-date information Fee $140 for any 4 dates (Gallagher/Walsh returnees deduct $10 from initial $140); $25 for each additional date 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: open and accepting registrations for dates in bold |
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TRAMPOLINE! Tuesday &
Thursday, July 22 and 24 Okay, you're sitting down to write something: Does the computer screen loom like a big blank ocean? Does your pen run out of energy when it meets the paper? Very often, writers need other writers to get their own ideas flowing and in this two day workshop we'll read some chapters from the young adult classic: The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros to help you find your own stories. So… sharpen your pencil, bring your notebook, and get ready to spring into your memories and imagination. Status: completed
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CREATIVE
WRITING FOR AGES 11 - 13 Tuesdays
& Thursdays, July 8 - 31 (8 classes) What do George Lucas and J.K. Rowling have in common? They borrow from the best for their stories, and you can too! In this class, you’ll investigate different classic story plots and learn how to create riveting conflicts and people them with valiant heroes, loyal friends and unpredictable villains. Your stories are ready to be written, and this collaborative and supportive workshop will help you make them into page turners. Status: cancelled |
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CREATIVE
WRITING FOR TEENS AGE 14+ 4 Wednesdays,
July 9 - July 30 Four 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: cancelled |
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CREATIVE
NARRATIVE FOR TEENS: Exploring Text and the Imagination 4 Tuesdays,
July 8 - July 29 (+ a final student presentation) This workshop will explore writing exercises and association processes for developing and accessing creativity in writing. Examples and studies in spoken word, humor, dialogue, political speech, performance, parody, and dramatic writing will be introduced and given attention to, according to individual interest. There will be a final evening presentation. Status: completed |
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To
register, click here. Due to Metro North’s ongoing Hudson Line station rehabilitation project at our Philipse Manor station home, our Monday - Friday daytime workshops are occasionally moved to the Junior League of Westchester-on-Hudson, 35 South Broadway, Tarrytown. You will be notified as far in advance as possible if your class needs to be relocated on any given day. |
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| About Our Instructors - Summer 2008 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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 Joanne
Dobson is the author of the Professor Karen Pelletier mystery series
from Doubleday and Poisoned Pen Press. In 2001 she was named Noted Author
of the Year by the RAAS section of the New York Library Association. Until
recently she taught literature and creative writing at Fordham University,
and she now writes full time. |
 Elizabeth
Sachs is the author of ten books for young adults and middle grade readers,
including The Boy Who Ate Dog Biscuits and Just Like Always.
She has served as editor of Kidspace, the children’s section of the
paper, The News Times, and has written book reviews for The New
York Times and Kirkus and articles for School Library Journal.
Her extensive career as a teacher and librarian includes children’s librarian
at Tuckahoe and the head of technical services at Eastchester Public Library. |
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 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. |
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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. |
 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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 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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 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. |
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 Amy
Holman is the author of An Insider’s Guide to Creative Writing Programs:
Choosing the Right MFA or MA Program, Colony, Residency, Grant or Fellowship,
and is a literary consultant to writers and literary groups. Her essays
on the writing business can be found in the anthologies, Making the Perfect
Pitch and The Practical Writer, and on the New York Foundation
for the Arts web site. She is the associate editor of Get Your First
Book Published, and its earlier edition, First Book Market. Her
poetry has won the 2004 Dream Horse Press National Poetry Chapbook Competition
and been selected for The Best American Poetry 1999. Poetry and nonfiction
have been nominated for Pushcart prizes and published in numerous anthologies
and magazines. www.amyholman.com |
 Jane
Willis has written plays (her one-act Slam! has been performed
all over the U.S. and, most recently, in India), screenplays (including
The It Girl for Martin Poll Productions), and for daytime dramas
(garnering an Emmy Nomination along with her writing team for As the
World Turns). She taught play-writing for eight years at Sarah Lawrence
College and now focuses her teaching efforts almost exclusively on middle
school students. |
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 Mary
Carroll Moore has published twelve nonfiction books (including How
to Master Change in Your Life: Sixty-Seven Ways to Handle Life’s Toughest
Moments, now in its third printing, and Healthy Cooking, winner
of a Julia Child award). Her novel, Qualities of Light, will be published
in 2009 by Spinsters Ink. A chapter from her second novel, Breathing
Room, won an honorable mention in the 2005 McKnight Awards and was a
top-ten finalist in the 2004 Loft Mentor Series in fiction, judged by Amy
Bloom. For twelve years she was a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist,
and over 500 of her articles, essays, poems, and short stories have appeared
in publications such as the Boston Globe, Quay: Journal of the Arts,
American Artist, and American Health. She has been featured in
USA Today, the New York Times, and other publications. 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 The Loft
Literary Center in Minneapolis and other locations around the United States,
Canada, and Europe. www.marycarrollmoore.com
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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. Junior League = The Junior League of Westchester-on-Hudson, 35 South Broadway, Tarrytown, New York. Due to Metro North’s ongoing Hudson Line station rehabilitation project at our Philipse Manor station home, our Monday - Friday daytime workshops are occasionally moved to the Junior League. 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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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. 
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.
Karen
Finley is an Arts Professor at New York University, Tisch School of
the Arts in the department of Art and Public Policy. Her raw and transgressive
performances have long provoked controversy and debate. She has appeared
and exhibited internationally her visual art, performances and plays.
Her performances have been presented at Lincoln Center, New York City,
The Guthrie, Minneapolis, American Repertory Theatre, The ICA in London,
Harvard, The Steppenwolf in Chicago, and The Bobino in Paris. Her artworks
are in numerous collections and museums including the Pompidou in Paris
and Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Finley attended the San Francisco
Art Institute receiving an MFA and honorary PHD. She has received numerous
awards and fellowships including a Guggenheim, 2 Obies, 2 Bessies, MS.
Magazine Woman Of The Year, NARAL Person of the Year (which she shared
with Anna Quindlen and Walter Cronkite), The Edwin Booth Award, The Lee
Reynolds Award, NYSCA and NEA Fellowships. She has appeared in independent
films and in the film Philadelphia. Finley has authored and or
edited seven books including Shock Treatment (City Lights 1990),
Enough is Enough (Poseidon, Simon and Schuster 1993), Living
It Up (Doubleday 1996), Pooh Unplugged (Smart Art Books 1999),
A Different Kind Of Intimacy: The Collected Writings of Karen Finley
(Thunders Mouth Press 2000), and edited and contributed to Aroused,
A Collection of Erotic Writings (Thunders Mouth Press 2001) and George
and Martha (Verso 2006). She written essays and commentary for The
Los Angeles Times, The Village Voice, Huffingtonpost.com and other
journals.