| CHARLES BAXTER: WRITING DURING A TIME OF POLITICAL TURMOIL | Saturday, March 28
4 — 5:15 PM—Writer’s Craft Session
CHARLES BAXTER: WRITING DURING A TIME OF POLITICAL TURMOIL
How do we write about social matters when the issues seem toxic and increasingly polarized? What does the writer have to do when every reader knows who the villain is? Using his recent experience as a citizen of Minneapolis, Charles Baxter will lead a discussion about using oblique means and unusual angles to address thorny political questions. Robert Penn Warren’s novel All the King’s Men and Allen Ginsberg’s poem “America” will serve as exemplary texts.
Hotel Monteleone, Royal Salon, $25 or VIP Pass.
| $25.00 | |
| PASSIONATE PLOTTING: CRUCIAL PLOT MOVES THAT KEEP READERS HOOKED—MARGOT DOUAIHY | Saturday, March 28
2:30 – 3:45—Writer’s Craft Session
PASSIONATE PLOTTING: CRUCIAL PLOT MOVES THAT KEEP READERS HOOKED—MARGOT DOUAIHY
Presented by the Diana Pinckley Prize for Crime Fiction
What is a plot, really? What’s the difference between a crucial plot point and a placeholder? In this craft session by novelist Margot Douaihy, we’ll sail past simple scaffolds and focus on precision plotting to augment any narrative style and structure. We’ll play with targeted exercises to sharpen your story’s momentum and honor your unique goals. We’ll examine exemplary plot strategies and put theory into action as we write 2-Minute Mysteries. This craft session is for any writer in any genre who wants to level up plot skills and become a passionate plotter!
Hotel Monteleone, Riverview Room, $25 or VIP Pass
| $25.00 | |
| CHRISTINE MA-KELLAMS—GREAT BEGINNINGS | Friday, March 27
2:30 – 3:45 PM–Writer’s Craft Session
CHRISTINE MA-KELLAMS—GREAT BEGINNINGS
How does a story start? How well you answer this question dictates whether the reader turns the page and finds out what happens next. Novelist, psychologist, and culture/lifestyle writer Christine Ma-Kellams discusses the secret(s) to get a total stranger to stay a little while longer in the world you’ve introduced them to for no other reason than an irresistible urge to find out what happens next. This writing workshop will examine classic and recent opening lines—from the loaded observations in Virginia Woolf and Deesha Philyaw to the real life music video that inspired the first lines of Ma-Kellams’ The Band—and how they set up the narrative arc for the remainder of the story. We will discuss how to apply them across narrative formats, from novels to short stories and everything in between. We’ll spend the second half of the session workshopping your own opening lines, which will include writing exercises, sharing, and feedback.
Hotel Monteleone, Lobby Level, Royal Salon, $25 or VIP Pass.
| $25.00 | |
| LAURA VENITA GREEN—DEVILS, DOPPELGÄNGERS, GHOSTS, AND CREEPY DOLLS: INCORPORATING ENTITY INTO YOUR FICTION TO TELL VERY HUMAN STORIES | Friday, March 27
1 – 2:15 PM—Writer’s Craft Session
LAURA VENITA GREEN—DEVILS, DOPPELGÄNGERS, GHOSTS, AND CREEPY DOLLS: INCORPORATING ENTITY INTO YOUR FICTION TO TELL VERY HUMAN STORIES
Serious literature doesn’t necessarily mean realist literature. Often, adding speculative elements into our fiction can help us reach a deeper level of truth and meaning, amplifying any subject we’re attempting to tackle, such as family, relationships, mental health, motherhood, growing up, and belonging. Introducing devils, demons, dogs, doppelgängers, or any number of non-human or superhuman entities is a great technique for underpinning characters’ psychological states, flaws, and behaviors. It’s also a strategy that can be used to reach toward the inarticulable messiness of the human condition. Each of us contains entire worlds—how do we contend with a truth that large? Through group discussion, targeted writing prompts, and examining contemporary genre-bending writers like Samanta Schweblin, ‘Pemi Aguda, Helen Phillips, and Ananda Lima, this craft session with novelist and translator Laura Venita Green will leave you with concrete ideas on how to incorporate some sort of entity or presence into your fiction to tell very human stories.
Hotel Monteleone, Lobby Level, Royal Salon, $25 or VIP Pass.
| $25.00 | |
| CHRISTOPHER CASTELLANI—THE ART OF PERSPECTIVE | Friday, March 27
11:30 – 12:45 PM—Writer’s Craft Session
CHRISTOPHER CASTELLANI—THE ART OF PERSPECTIVE
The success of any work of fiction or narrative nonfiction depends almost entirely on its narrative strategy: not only which character(s) tell(s) the story, from what vantage point, in the past or present, but why those choices are optimal and how they contribute to the overall effect. In this session, we will begin by defining narrative strategy, then discuss its relationship to an author’s choice of perspective and his/her manipulation of narrative distance. Participants should expect to discuss a few short examples from literature, do a writing exercise or two, and brainstorm solutions for their own projects.
Hotel Monteleone, Lobby Level, Royal Salon, $25 or VIP Pass.
| $25.00 | |
| MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM—WRITING A MEMOIR: TELLING THE STORY OF YOUR LIFE | Friday, March 27
10 – 11:15 AM—Writer’s Craft Session
MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM—WRITING A MEMOIR: TELLING THE STORY OF YOUR LIFE
Join Pulitzer Prize winning author Michael Cunningham for an audience-involved workshop on telling the story of your life through memoir writing. Telling your version of your own life may seem easy, but a memoir is more than straight narrative. Good memoirs compel readers to keep reading. There’s a thread or a theme that resonates with readers. What makes you want to share your life’s story? Is there something universal about it or relevant to a particular audience? Is there a thread or theme running through your life’s key moments? For this session, Cunningham will discuss his own work in this genre, his memoir coming out in July from Random House, Unsayable, and will lead the group in some writing of their own.
Hotel Monteleone, Lobby Level, Royal Salon, $25 or VIP Pass.
| $25.00 | |
| WRITING LITERARY FICTION WITH ROBERT OLEN BUTLER | Thursday, March 26
2:30 – 3:45 PM—Writer’s Craft Session
WRITING LITERARY FICTION WITH ROBERT OLEN BUTLER
In the first half of his workshop, Robert Olen Butler will speak on the fundamentals of the creative process for fiction writers who aspire to create enduring literature. He will address such issues as what is art; what is distinctive about the way the artist addresses the world, the inner self, and the objects to be created; and what are the essential characteristics of fiction as an art form. In the second half he will begin administering an in-class coached writing exercise. The exercise is in multiple parts and you will make an intensive line-to-line beginning in class under his prompting and will be given the remaining exercise increments to carry home to finish at your leisure. It is quite possible for a complete, fully-formed literary short story to eventually emerge. Needless to say, you must bring with you your primary mode of writing a story, be that anything from a drafting pencil and legal pad to a laptop computer.
Hotel Monteleone, Lobby Level, Royal Salon, $25 or VIP Pass.
| $25.00 | |
| SKYE JACKSON—WHAT A LOVELY WAY TO BURN: NEGOTIATING DISTANCE & DESIRE IN POETRY | Thursday, March 26
1 – 2:15 PM—Writer’s Craft Session
SKYE JACKSON—WHAT A LOVELY WAY TO BURN: NEGOTIATING DISTANCE & DESIRE IN POETRY
How close is too close? When we write poetry about desire, we must begin with a deep understanding of ourselves but also of the power of restraint—the way in which we use desire as a tool or as conduit for connection. What should be revealed? And what should stay hidden, and then, suddenly be deliciously discovered? We will probe these questions and more in our examination of desire in poetry—how we write into it and how we live it out as well. In this craft talk and workshop, we’ll read work by poets who unveil the underpinnings of desire and then attempt, in earnest, to write into that space as well. There will be time towards the end of the session to share your poems and receive feedback from the craft session leader and the rest of the group.
Hotel Monteleone, Lobby Level, Royal Salon, $25 or VIP Pass.
| $25.00 | |
| MARGUERITE SHEFFER—WRITING HOPES AND FEARS INTO SPECULATIVE FICTION | Thursday, March 26
11:30 AM – 12:45 PM—Writer’s Craft Session
MARGUERITE SHEFFER—WRITING HOPES AND FEARS INTO SPECULATIVE FICTION
What will the future bring? What can our dreams and wildest imaginations teach us about the worlds we want to build–or avoid? Speculative Fiction (science fiction, fantasy, horror, slipstream, etc.) is a rich playground for imagining our world otherwise. Speculative fiction authors bend reality to interrogate our morals and explore alternatives. In this session, we will learn from classic speculative short stories, and practice generative exercises to turn our hopes and fears about the future (and present) into engaging speculative fiction. We’ll also go over practices for revising, polishing, and publishing short speculative fiction.
Hotel Monteleone, Lobby Level, Royal Salon, $25 or VIP Pass.
| $25.00 | |
| MAURICE CARLOS RUFFIN—STARTING AND FINISHING STORIES AND NOVELS | Thursday, March 26
10 – 11:15 AM—Writer’s Craft Session
MAURICE CARLOS RUFFIN—STARTING AND FINISHING STORIES AND NOVELS
Starting a story is often the hardest part. In this generative workshop, we’ll explore tried and true techniques that will help you find a good place to begin. We’ll also discuss how beginnings are related to endings. In combination, these are valuable techniques to overcome writer’s block and complete your work. In addition, Ruffin will focus on the elements of craft to give you a rock-solid understanding of how stories are constructed, whether novels or short stories. We’ll discuss examples of craft from the writings of legendary authors, and we’ll make use of music, film clips, poetry, and philosophy to learn about storytelling.
Hotel Monteleone, Lobby Level, Royal Salon, $25 or VIP Pass.
| $25.00 | |
