|
|
|
Winter 2005 |
|
All
classes and workshops are held at the Hudson Valley Writers' Center (Philipse
Manor Railroad Station building) unless otherwise indicated. Fall
2005 Class Schedule CLASSES
& WORKSHOPS Monday: Tuesday: Wednesday: Thursday: Friday: Saturday:
| |
LIVING
THE POET'S LIFE It’s now or never! Whether you are an experienced poet who feels “stuck” or one fairly new to the craft, this workshop will help you get your poetry life on track with exercises and advice designed to get you writing poetry—and keep you writing poetry.
| |
|
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.
| |
| 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.
| |
|
WRITING
CHILDREN'S BOOKS AND STORIES * * Please note that our Wednesday Children’s Literature class with author Jean Fritz is currently full, but we do maintain a waiting list of interested students from which we fill available openings. If you would like to add your name to the list, please call us at 914-332-5953 or e-mail info@writerscenter.org. Writing a book for children—or planning to? Don’t miss this chance to discuss your project with one of our country’s most honored writers of books for children. Come with some knowledge of what kind of children’s books you like and what good writers in this field are doing today. The sessions will be informal and tailored to the needs of the group.
| |
|
THE
ART OF THE ESSAY 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. Class limited to 8 students.
| |
|
GREEK
TRAGEDY The ancient Greeks invented tragedy, and Sophocles perfected this literary form in his three Theban plays, Antigone, Oedipus the King, and Oedipus at Colonus. This course will explore these foundational works of Western literature, which have captured the imagination of writers in every century, and examine Sophocles’ theater craft, his use of myth, his delineation of character, and his tragic vision of the powerful opposition of fate and human responsibility. Class size may exceed 10 students. Read Antigone for the first class. Recommended (but not required) text: Sophocles: The Three Theban Plays, translated by Robert Fagles (Penguin Classics paperback).
| |
|
WRITING
WORKSHOP FOR CHILDREN AGE 8 - 10 Every day you observe 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.
| |
|
INTRODUCTION
TO 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. This course is both for people who are beginning to write fiction and for more experienced writers who have never taken one of Mr. Surface’s workshops.
| |
|
CONTINUING
FICTION WRITING 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.
| |
|
CREATIVE
WRITING FOR TEENS Six workshops in which writers age 11 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.
| |
|
FINDING
YOUR PLACE IN THE POETRY MARKETPLACE Whether you have a chapbook or full-length manuscript ready to send out, are just beginning to put one together, or simply want to get individual poems to a wider audience, this class will give you a strategy for success. Identify possible magazine and book markets for your work, discuss how to organize a manuscript of poems, consider ways in which you can engage the public with your poetry, and evaluate opportunities such as grants, fellowships, colonies, residencies, conferences and festivals. This a two-part class with assignments.
| |
| For further information on any of our class offerings, call the HVWC at (914) 332-5953 or email us at info@writerscenter.org. |
| 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. |
Suzanne
Cleary has an MA in Writing from Washington University and a Ph.D. in Literature
and Criticism from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She is Associate Professor
of English at SUNY Rockland and also teaches at Manhattanville College. Her poems
have appeared in Poetry, Georgia Review, and other journals, and her book,
Keeping Time, is now in its 2nd printing. Of her book Billy Collins said,
“I have long anticipated this first book, and the chance to express how highly
I value Suzanne Cleary’s poetry. Her poems have a vigorous forward roll to them
and are strung together by daring chains of association...” She recently won a
Pushcart Prize.
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 by Pinto Press, a
small publishing company of which she is co-owner. She is a regular contributor
to the Westchester County Times.
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.
Jean
Fritz of Dobbs Ferry is the author of over two dozen books for young people
and is particularly known for her historical biographies, which the School
Library Journal says have “blown like a fresh breeze across the children’s
book world...(she) has changed the face of the map.” She has also written an autobiography,
Homesick, about her childhood years in China, which was a 1983 Newbery
Medal Honor Book and the recipient of an American Book Award and many other awards.
Most recently, she was presented with the 2003 National Humanities Medal.
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.
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.
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. She teaches creative writing in the Scarsdale schools, at The Kids
Short Story Connection in Greenburgh, and at the Northern Westchester Center for
the Arts.
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.
Amy
Holman is a literary consultant who teaches writers how to navigate the literary
marketplace to land at publication. She is a contributor to The Practical Writer
(Penguin), and Making the Perfect Pitch (The Writer Books), both published
in 2004, and is writing a guide to colonies, residencies, grants, fellowships,
and graduate writing programs to be published by Perigee in 2006. Her collection,
Wait For Me, I'm Gone, won the 2004 Annual Dream Horse Press National Chapbook
Competition and will be published in February 2005. She has essays in The History
of Panty Hose in America (Espresso Press), AWP Job Newsletter, The Manhattan
Review, and the forthcoming anthology, The Subway Chronicles, and poetry
and fiction in The Best American Poetry 1999, Night Train, American Letters
& Commentary, Rattapallax, Shade and Xconnect.