During Week 2 of our Summer Residency, some of our instructors have opted to focus on a specific theme. You will still be workshopping each others' writing samples, but much of the discussion will focus on the below themes.
Fiction Week Two Themes
Writing Your Obsessions
We all have certain topics that we return to
again and again in our writing. Somehow, we can't escape our own core interests
and obsessions. And, of course, it's your obsessions that set you apart from
every other writer. In this class, we'll explore your obsessions and work to
get them on the page. Be prepared to let go of your writing inhibitions.
Personal/History
Fiction is an art of
invention, but research is still a useful tool to help us sharpen our rendering
of what we know and help us write about what we don't. But how does one
translate research into vital prose and characters? In this workshop, we will
explore how fiction writers can transform researched fact into their fiction,
through character, setting, plot, dialogue, etc. Reading excerpts from recent
award-winning novels and stories that incorporate historical fact in
fictions--including work by Lily King (Euphoria), Monique Truong (Book of Salt),
EL Doctorow (Book of Daniel), and Randall Kenan (Let the Dead Bury Their Dead)--we
will practice rendering research in various forms to suit your projects and
explore the pleasures and perils of taking history personally.
Unthemed
to be determined
Creative Nonfiction Week Two Themes
Essaying
the Image: Ekphrasticize Yourself
Images
often inspire writers and impel them to essay and memoir. Family photographs
trigger remembrance and reflection; art works provoke contemplation and
analysis; posters, dust jackets, album covers all set off chains of thought. In
this workshop, with references to books like A Postcard Memoir by Lawrence Sutin, Half in Shade by Judith Kitchen, A Moment with Strangers by W. Scott Olsen, and Leap by Terry Tempest Williams, we’ll rummage through our own
collections of images both personal and impersonal to interrogate them, inhabit
them, and investigate their impact on us through journal entries we share and
discuss and finding impetus for further writing of essays, articles, blog
posts, and memoir.
Load, Lessen, Level
Taking paragraphs and short sections of
nonfiction prose, I show how writers emphasize (load), subordinate (lessen),
and balance (level) elements of style, grammar, word choice,
cohesion/coherence, narrative, statement, theme, and more. A writer makes these
choices to set up variable patterns of emotionality, drama, and exposition. The
rhythmic substance of prose, both narrative and expository, comes from the
degree of play with repetition, variation, and stability. This intentional
design is the primary shaper of the work’s meaning.
The Mnemonics of Personal Nonfiction
Memory, coming to us as a strange concoction of thought and dream,
is the source of memoir, personal essays, and other forms of creative
nonfiction. Some memories come unbidden,
others emerge in the writing process, and some reluctant ones need to be teased
out. The primary focus of the class will
be the daily workshop sessions on student writing, but we will also study a
range of techniques to bring memories, even the shy ones, into consciousness
and see them vividly enough and in enough detail to use in a memoir or essay. Students
should bring paper and a pen even if they plan to use a computer to write. We will use passages from my memoir, The Book
of Knowledge and Wonder, which I will send to students as a word document.
Poetry
There are no pre-set themes for Week Two Poetry Workshops, but specific topics may be selected according to student interest.