Qarrtsiluni: the New Classics issue
Guest Editor, with Ann E. Michael. “What is a classic? What does it mean to us? In this issue of qarrtsiluni, which will begin publishing around May 1, we invite you to engage, interpret, revisit and re-invent classics through your own idiosyncratic and modern sensibility. We’re looking for work inspired by the archetypes and forms of familiar pieces of art, sacred story, poetry, iconography or folk tales, but the term ‘classic’ should be interpreted both broadly and internationally, and could certainly encompass contemporary work–” Read the whole CFS and find instructions for submissions here.
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Chester Theater Company’s Gateway Project (and Camp Shepard Project, in 2011): giving kids an opportunity to succeed. “Using the skills of working theater artists, the Project is able to create plays for the children that spotlight their individual talents. The Project is able to bring out the best in the children as writers by teaching the basic tenets of playwriting, providing sensitive writing mentors and by realizing the children’s individual visions with faithful acting and direction. Through all of this, the children learn important lessons about discipline and reward, and experience an arc of completion. They are in on the process from the blank page through the final bow. They are witness to talented adult actors, playwrights, directors, designers, stage managers, technicians and administrators whose positive attitude is simultaneously inspiring and contagious.”
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This is What a Femme Looks Like: A Discussion and Writing Workshop
Transcending Boundaries Conference, 2009
Social justice and community beyond the binary: TCB is for and about people who do not fit into simple categories. The workshop and event schedule for this year includes a wide range of opportunities to discover and connect, facilitated by writers and community educators, activists and actors. I’m offering a place for femmes, their partners, allies, friends, and those interested in exploring femme identity to join an open and wide-ranging facilitated discussion, followed by several short, guided writing exercises geared toward leaving behind stereotypes and assumptions and celebrating the full diversity of femme identity. No prior writing experience required, all are welcome!
November 20-22, 2009 ~ DCU Conference Center, Worcester Massachusetts.
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Exploring the Boundaries Between Forms: A Master Class in Cross-Genre Writing
Middlebury College, 2009
Throughout history, some of the most startling and transformative writing has blurred the edges between prose and poetry, creative non-fiction and magic realism, fable and fact, script and novel. In this workshop-style course, students will use techniques from a variety of forms to create new cross-genre work, practice revision and reading performance, and identify potential journals for publication of their work. The course will culminate in a formal reading open to the public. Readings will include Basho, Carson, Singer, Malamud, Joyce, Busson, Eugenides, Marquez, Orwell, Timpanelli, Calvino, and others, as well as a sampling of writers working in online venues.
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Qarrtsiluni: the Transformation issue Guest Editor, with Allan Peterson.
We received marvelous submissions, and were able to craft an impressive issue; many thanks to all the contributors and the Managing Editors Dave Bonta and Beth Adams for their excellence. It was a pleasure and an honor to work with this material in this medium.
Check it out here.
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Other workshops:
The Care and Feeding of your Creative Voice: A Class in Abundance
[Offered at the University of Pennsylvania's Writer’s Conference, Greenfield Continuing Education, and The Bang's Community Center of Amherst]
Generate creative energy and develop techniques for allowing all aspects of your life to feed your writing—especially when you are blocked, struggling for time to write, or uninspired. Through in-class excursions into the realms of etymology, voice, exorcism, sensuality, critical engagement, soul mining, and finding our plain old fashioned glee on the page, we will practice the writing tools that can build our ideal creative life—and learn some quick and dirty tricks to get us moving towards it even when we think we’ll never write anything good again.
This class is for writers at all levels and in all genres: published, unpublished, mid-novel and stuck, just beginning to write, used to write but haven’t had time and it’s driving you crazy— join us and jump start your stalled creative life.
Making It Happen: From Block to Book
[Offered at the University of Pennsylvania's Writer’s Conference and through Greenfield Community Education by way of a Fostering Arts and Culture grant]
You’ve got the writing rolling – what happens now? Few programs or classes teach the basic skills every writer needs to get a book into the world: useful revision strategies, how to get and give truly useful critical feedback, how to choose between traditional and non-traditional publishing options, how to market your work (and when you have to), and how to use all available resources and technologies to give yourself the best chance of getting your work to your potential readers.
Treat this as part two of my prior workshop The Care and Feeding of Your Creative Voice: A Class in Abundance and bring your now-unblocked project to fruition – or join us at this stage and see the writing project you already have underway through to publication. look at rough drafts, develop tools for revision and supporting each other’s work with skilled critical feedback, and getting the draft into its best possible form. We’ll also examine the options – and how-to’s – for publishing: traditional, agented submissions, publish-on-demand technologies (and how these are different from ‘vanity presses’), using print and electronic journals to market your work for you, blogging, et cetera.