Fiction Writers Review » recommended events

826 Michigan’s “How to Write Like I Do Series”—This Weekend!

Celeste Ng — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:22:58 +0000

Not a kid, but wish you could go to 826’s amazing writing programs? Now, thanks to 826 Michigan’s How To Write Like I Do workshops, you can—and you don’t have to put your hair in pigtails and pretend to know about Bakugan.

Inspired by a similar series at 826 Seattle, the How To Write Like I Do workshops for adults are held 5-6 times per year, led by writers like Daniel Alarcon and Peter Ho Davies. Novelist and UM MFA faculty member V.V. Ganeshananthan leads the next session February 4, 2012 (that’s tomorrow!) titled “The Reported Imagination: Journalism Techniques for Fiction Writers“:

Whether writing what she knows or writing what she doesn’t — and needs to find out — any fiction writer can learn from reporters. Reporters go out into the world and observe it closely: interviewing people; hunting down information; producing lots of copy on deadline; and subjecting themselves to rigorous editing for length and clarity. How can fiction writers turn this approach toward the practice of writing creatively? [...]

Workshop participants will enjoy Zingerman’s coffee and pastries as they read, write, and discuss the issues raised in this workshop. Proceeds, as ever, support 826michigan’s free creative writing programs for students 6-18 in Washtenaw County.

The cost is $25 for one person or $40 for two, and tickets are available online at Brown Paper Tickets. (Zingerman’s pastries? As if I needed yet another reason to wish I were in Ann Arbor…)

If you’ve already got plans this weekend, no need to despair. You can catch the next session, “The Richness of Place: Setting in Fiction” with Doug Trevor (winner of the Iowa Short Fiction Award) on May 5, 2012, or attend 826 Michigan’s Third Annual Writer’s Conference, June 15-17, 2012. Check their website for forthcoming details.

And stay tuned—Program Coordinator Catherine Calabro writes: “We’re hoping to start a sister series called ‘How to Write Like Kids Do’— workshops that our volunteers teach but for adults to give them the chance to play/write creatively with a cool community of writers.”

Dzanc Day is almost here!

Celeste Ng — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 13:00:48 +0000

Dzanc Books’s second annual National Workshop Day—also known as Dzanc Day—is TOMORROW, April 9, 2011. From the event’s site:

Consisting of dozens of creative writing workshops in almost as many cities, Dzanc Day provides local, affordable two-to-four hour sessions led by professional writers, authors, and editors, all open to attendance by the public for a very affordable fee. Sessions are conducted in fiction, poetry, and non-fiction, and are generally suitable for writers of all levels.

Dzanc day helps writers in more ways than one, too: it helps fund Dzanc Books’s charitable endeavors, including the prestigious Dzanc Prize and their Writer in Residence program.

To find and sign up for a workshop near you, visit the Dzanc Day page and check the map for one in your city. Missed your chance? There’s always next year—and in the meantime, learn more about Dzanc here.

Dzanc Day Approacheth

Celeste Ng — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 13:00:37 +0000

Dzanc Books’s second annual National Workshop Day—also known as Dzanc Day—is coming up on April 9, 2011. Says the event’s site:

Consisting of dozens of creative writing workshops in almost as many cities, Dzanc Day provides local, affordable two-to-four hour sessions led by professional writers, authors, and editors, all open to attendance by the public for a very affordable fee. Sessions are conducted in fiction, poetry, and non-fiction, and are generally suitable for writers of all levels.

Dzanc day helps writers in more ways than one, too: it helps fund Dzanc Books’s charitable endeavors, including the prestigious Dzanc Prize and their Writer in Residence program.

Workshops start at just $30 for two hours of instruction. To find and sign up for one near you, visit the Dzanc Day page and check the map for one in your city. Or, if you’re interested in leading a workshop of your own, email the event organizers at matt@dzancbooks.org.

FWR at AWP

Lee Thomas — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 17:00:41 +0000

It’s here – AWP 2011! If you’ll be in D.C. for the conference, please come see Fiction Writers Review at Table B-18 in the bookfair.

Quick reminder: our Editor, Jeremiah Chamberlin will be moderating a panel on criticism, we’ll have two book signings at our table, and a number of our contributors are featured speakers this year. Here again, are some highlights:

Friday, February 4

9 am:“The Good Review: Criticism in the Age of Book Blogs and Amazon.com”
Panelists: Jeremiah Chamberlin, moderator; Charles Baxter; Stacey D’Erasmo; Gemma Sieff; Keith Taylor.

This panel examines how criticism is changing in a literary landscape increasingly dominated by new media. In this era, who is a critic? What is a good review? Whom does it serve? And what is the impact of criticism on literature and culture? Editors of both online and print publications join writers of fiction, poetry, and criticism to address these questions, as well as to discuss how books get reviewed and by whom, why vigorous reviewing is necessary, and ways to write reviews that matter.

Book Signings at FWR Table (B18):
2 pm: Erika Dreifus – Quiet Americans (Last Light Studio)
3 pm: Alison Espach – The Adults (Scribner)

And don’t miss these panels featuring FWR Contributors:
Thursday, February 3

1:30 pm: Stephanie Vanderslice on “What Do Writers Do All Day?: Articulating Our Work in the Profession.”

3:00 pm: Erika Dreifus on “Beyond Bagels and Lox: Jewish-American Fiction in the 21st Century”

4:30 pm: Mary Stewart Atwell and Dean Bakopoulos on “Creative Writing and the University: A Conversation with Mark McGurl”

Friday, February 4

1:30 pm: Margaret Lazarus Dean on “Politics in the Novel”

4:30 pm: Laura Valeri on “Research in the Creative Writing Classroom: Methods, Pedagogies, Dilemmas”

Saturday, February 5

10:30 am: Erika Dreifus on “Finding and Creating Online Teaching Opportunities—and Sustaining and Succeeding in Them”

1:30 pm: Stephanie Vanderslice on “Getting to the Core: Creative Writing as a Core Requirement in College Curricula”

4:30 pm: Margaret Lazarus Dean, Liam Callanan, and Valerie Laken on “Beyond the Workshop: Revising, Revamping, Rejecting the Workshop Model”

CLMP’s 11th Annual Lit Mag Marathon Weekend

Anne Stameshkin — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 06:58:00 +0000

NYC-based readers: On June 19-20, check out the CLMP’s Lit Mag Marathon Weekend, an annual celebration, showcase, and discount extravaganza of literary magazines and journals.

– Events kick off on Saturday at 4 PM with The Magathon at the New York Public Library (main branch: Fifth Ave @ 42nd Street). For 2.5 hours, a number of journal editors will present favorite selections from their latest issues.

– Then on Sunday from noon to 5, get your discounted periodical fix at the 11th Annual Literary Magazine Fair (also known as the Giant Lit Mag Fair) at Housing Works Bookstore Café (126 Crosby St.). Hundreds of mags will be marked down…some by more than 50%! Meet the editors and learn more about the staggering variety of literary magazines/journals seeking new work and new readers.

If you can’t make it next weekend but want to learn more about what lit journals are out there–and what they’re looking for–the CLMP is currently offering its annually updated Literary Press and Magazine Directory for only $20.

Should You Get an MFA in Creative Writing?

Anne Stameshkin — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 17:34:31 +0000

Stairway in the Old American Can Factory / photo from http://www.xoprojects.com/

Are you currently weighing the benefits of an MFA? If you heard Michael Chabon’s take on MFA programs in his amazing AWP keynote, you’re probably hitchhiking to UC Irvine, a typewriter strapped to your heart — but even so, you might be wrestling with important questions like these:

Will an advanced degree help you with your particular goals as a writer — and if so, when is the right time to go?
How important is full or partial funding? What about opportunities to teach or work on a journal?
What are program directors and committees looking for in MFA students, and how can you make your application sing?

This summer from July 25-30, One Story’s associate editor, Marie-Helene Bertino, will be offering a six-day writing workshop centered around addressing such questions, as well as on honing a workshopped portfolio — one usable as a writing sample for applications. The workshop will be held in Brooklyn’s The Old American Can Factory, the curated arts space in Gowanus where One Story keeps its offices.

Via One Story:

The week will include morning workshops, afternoon craft lectures, and evening panels with writers, editors, agents, and MFA directors. All events are designed to give students the practical advice they need to either apply for an MFA or launch their career outside of academia.

Students will leave with:

A workshopped portfolio they can use as their writing sample

Advice from MFA directors about what they look for in an applicant

A full understanding of the range of MFA and non-MFA options

Insight about what an MFA can offer a writer

A breakdown of the financial implications of an MFA

An introduction to a community of writers at the same stage of their career

Access to One Story editors and writers

A look at the wider publishing world from established agents, editors, and writers

The application period is open between now and May 31. Learn more on One Story’s website.

FWR @ AWP: Panels, Panels, Panels!

Anne Stameshkin — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 06:05:21 +0000

Several of our fabulous contributors are participating in panels and readings at AWP. In addition to our panel on online journals and lit sites in 2010 (Saturday from noon to 1:15, featuring Jeremiah Chamberlin), don’t miss the following sessions:

Thursday, April 8
10:30 – 11:45 a.m.
Rooms 102, 104
Colorado Convention Center, Street Level

R124. Bollywood, Bullets, and Beyond: The Poetry of South Asian America. (Featuring: Summi Kaipa, Pireeni Sundaralingam, Ravi Shankar, Bhanu Kapil, Subhashini Kaligotla and Monica Ferrell) What do a sestina, 9/11, and Amitabh Bachchan have in common? Popular, political, and poetic themes all appear in Indivisible (University of Arkansas Press, 2010), the first anthology of contemporary South Asian American poetry. The collection features emerging and established poets who can trace their ethnic heritages to Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Six extraordinary writers from this collection read from their work.

Thursday, April 8
12:00 – 1:15
Granite Room
Hyatt Regency Denver, 3rd Floor

R168. The Soul and The Machine: Teaching Creative Writing through Technology. (Laura Valeri, David Rothman, Kathryn Winograd, Steven Wingate) This panel explores the complexities of teaching prose and poetry with online technologies and social media. New medias offer us practical advantages, but also present technical and pedagogical challenges involving privacy, censorship, copyright, and other issues we are only beginning to understand. Creative writing professors share their lessons adapting Podcasts, Wikis, Videos, Facebook, online course platforms, and other sundry tools to graduate and undergraduate creative writing classes.

Margaret Lazarus Dean: photo credit Joe Vaughn

Friday, April 9
9:00 – 10:15
Rooms 401, 402
Colorado Convention Center, Street Level

F119. The Place of Place: Crafting Place as Character in Fiction. (Sejal Shah, Margaret Lazarus Dean, Geeta Kothari, Michael Byers, Jesmyn Ward) It’s a commonplace notion that setting can be so central to fiction that the landscape can become a character—even a central character. But how, in craft terms, does it come to pass that place can inhabit fiction as much as fiction inhabits place? Five fiction writers will discuss their approaches to writing place—both urban and rural—in their works, drawing on settings as diverse as Bombay, the Mississippi Gulf Coast, Upstate New York, Cape Canaveral, Washington State, and the American Midwest.

Friday, April 8
9:00 – 10:15
Room 111
Colorado Convention Center, Street Level

F108. To West or Not to West. (Jenny Shank, Marilyn Krysl, Steven Wingate, Laura Pritchett, Robert Garner McBrearty, Janis Hallowell) Fiction writers in the West inevitably find themselves face to face with two forces: the region’s role in America’s cultural mythos and the shadow of “the Western” as a genre in fiction and film. Many authors with roots in the West do not write “western” fiction, yet they feel their aesthetics and subject matter being influenced by the life of the region. This panel will explore the variety of ways Colorado fiction writers respond to the West at a time when the region’s identity is shifting.

Margaret Lazarus Dean: photo credit Joe Vaughn

Friday, April 9
3-4:15pm
Room 108
Colorado Convention Center, Street Level

F196. From MFA Thesis to First Novel—Five Writers Share Their Stories. (Sheila O’Connor, Geoff Herbach, Nami Mun, Valerie Laken, Patti Frazee, Margaret Lazarus Dean) Is the MFA thesis an end or a beginning? How do we know if our thesis project is a viable book or an early draft that still requires radical revision? For books that need revision, how do writers practice the necessary discipline novels require over the long haul? How do emerging writers secure agents and publishers for that first book? Focusing on the challenges and triumphs of seeing theses projects into print, five first- time novelists will share their diverse writing and publishing experiences.

Saturday, April 10
10:30 – 11:45 a.m.
Room 201
Colorado Convention Center, Street Level

S132. Re-writing America: Complicating the Poetics of Identity. (Featuring Hayan Charara, Samantha Thornhill, Ching-In Chen, Tim Hernandez, Summi Kaipa. Moderated by Neelanjana Banerjee.) Even as the minority surges towards the majority in making up the New America, poets seek out the nurturing spaces of ethno-literary organizations like Kundiman and Cave Canem. Popular ethnic-specific anthologies are being published each year. Yet the work coming out of these cultural boundaries is incredibly diverse in style and influence. This panel examines the ways in which hyphenated American poets are rethinking the concept of identity and, in turn, shaping the national zeitgeist.

FWR @ AWP 2010

Anne Stameshkin — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 20:20:01 +0000

FWR at AWP 2009 (holding my photo. I had pneumonia!)

AWP 2010 in Denver is just days away, and Fiction Writers Review will be there. Stop by our table at the bookfair, sign up for our mailing list, win loot from the FWR store, and check out our panel with the editors of Waccamaw, The Emerging Writers Network/Dzanc, and storySouth on Saturday from noon to 1:15 (Granite Room: Hyatt Regency, 3rd Floor):

S163. Evolution of the New Media: Online Literary Journals and Websites in 2010. (Dan Albergotti, Dan Wickett, Jeremiah Chamberlin, Terry Kennedy) This panel examines the evolution of online publishing and literary promotion via digital media in the 21st century. Dan Wickett and Jeremiah Chamberlin will discuss ways their sites have developed an extended literary community for emerging writers, while Dan Albergotti and Terry Kennedy will address how aesthetics of online journal design and presentation have evolved in recent years.

Denver-based writers: even if you’re not registered, the bookfair is FREE and open to the public on the last day of the conference (Saturday, April 10).

We hope to see many of you soon!

Bloggers Host Authors at Greenlight Bookstore

Anne Stameshkin — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 17:25:37 +0000

Next Monday, March 22, at 7:30 PM, Brooklyn’s Greenlight Bookstore continues their Blogger/Author Pairings series, wherein lit bloggers host and talk with authors whose books they love, and the authors read from their work. Next up is Brooklyn’s own blogger/critic Maud Newton (of MaudNewton.com, one of the finest lit blogs, exclamation point) and award-winning author Victor LaValle, whose work has drawn comparisons to the likes of Ralph Ellison, Shirley Jackson, and Thomas Pyncheon, and whose novel (of the same title) inspired Mos Def’s The Ecstatic. LaValle will read from and discuss his new novel Big Machine, which Greenlight’s newsletter describes as “the story of a middle-aged hustler inducted into a band of paranormal investigators.” New York-based readers can RSVP on Facebook or just show up. Greenlight is located at 686 Fulton Street, Brooklyn.

I love this idea of organizing blogger/author pairings at a local indie bookstore; inviting a respected blogger who loves a particular book to join that book’s author offline, in a face-to-face dialogue with readers, affords a rare opportunity for publicity and community: a chance to support books, bookstores, and lit blogs all at once. Is this kind of event happening throughout the country? Because it should be!

If you could host and talk with any author, at any bookstore, who would you introduce, and where would it be?

The Paris Review and Barnes & Noble Series in NYC

Jeremiah Chamberlin — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 00:27:57 +0000

Benjamin Percy, author of The Language of Elk and Refresh, Refresh. Photo Credit: Jennifer May

New York readers, ring in the New Year with a month of Monday readings to celebrate The Paris Review’s iconic interview series. Starting this Monday, January 4th, the Barnes and Noble flagship store at 86th and Lexington, in New York City, will host a month-long series of interviews showcasing authors, artists, and editors discussing writers, writing, and the writing life. The first event will feature Benjamin Percy–one of our favorite authors here at FWR–who will be interviewing Carol Sklenicka about her recent biography of Raymond Carver.

Here is the schedule of the events:

Monday, January 4th at 7:00pm:
Benjamin Percy, 2007 recipient of The Paris Review’s Plimpton Prize and author of Refresh, Refresh will interview Carol Sklenicka, author of the recent Raymond Carver biography, A Writer’s Life.

Monday, January 11th at 7:00pm:
Philip Gourevitch, Editor of The Paris Review and author of The Ballad of Abu Ghraib will interview Richard Price, author of Lush Life and Clockers, among other classics of American urban fiction.

Monday, January 18th at 7:00pm:
Frank Rich, Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times will interview America’s premiere composer and lyricist, Stephen Sondheim.

Monday, January 25th at 7:00pm:
Nathaniel Rich, Senior Editor of The Paris Review and author of The Mayor’s Tongue, will interview Paul Auster, author of, most recently, Invisible.

Order Your Copy of Volume IV of The Paris Review Interviews