Myla Goldberg, author of Bee Season and lead singer of The Walking Hellos, discusses her voracious reading as a child, her new novel The False Friend, the trickiness of memory, love of a good trashy novel, and much more with Casey Tolfree.
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 […]
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 […]
The founders of Tin House – magazine, book publisher, workshop destination – put their mission best, so I won’t try to improve upon it: The first issue of Tin House magazine arrived in the spring of 1999, the singular lovechild of an eclectic literary journal and a beautiful glossy magazine. Publisher Win McCormack said of the effort, “I wanted to create a literary magazine for the many passionate readers who are not necessarily literary academics or publishing professionals.” From their latest issue (pictured above), which fills me with a tinge of nostalgia (did anyone else think of Jan Brett’s wonderfully […]
Does the Writing Workshop Still Work? offers an important and timely contribution to the creative writing discipline: in addition to focusing on pedagogies, professionalization, and workshop methodologies, the collection complicates issues by asking readers to consider the workshop as an event, an artistic act, and a human activity.
In The Faster Times, Chloé Cooper Jones holds a discussion with her former fiction professor, Deb Olin Unferth, and Unferth’s former professor, George Saunders. The results: a rational, practical and, in the end, laudatory discussion of MFA programs – a counterpoint to the voices raised against the model. The piece, You Are Not the Only One Writing About Moldavian Zookeepers: George Saunders and Deb Olin Unferth Discuss the State of the Creative Writing Degree, left me feeling hopeful and refreshed – mostly because, as good writers can, Saunders and Unferth reminded me that the world is not made up of […]
Launched in 2007, Slice is a nonprofit print magazine based in Brooklyn that “aims to bridge the gap between emerging and established authors by offering a space where both are published side-by-side. In each issue, a specific cultural theme becomes the catalyst for articles and interviews from renowned writers and lesser known voices alike.” (The current issue, pictured, focuses on the theme of “villains.”) This fall, Slice will begin a series of in-person writing/publishing workshops, We Who Write. Says the magazine’s website: In a new series of classes and workshops developed exclusively by Slice, aspiring writers will have a chance […]
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, […]
With all the posts on lectures and readings, you may be surprised to hear that we had any time to workshop at the conference at all. I was very lucky to be in Ann Hood’s workshop, as Ann offered specific concrete approaches to thinking about plot, theme, tension, and all of those nebulous concepts fiction writers have to deal with. We had a lot of novel excerpts in the class, so much of the workshop discussion focused on issues of the novel rather than the short story—a change from the norm. Fellow Bread Loafer Eugene Cross has written an account […]
So…who wants to spend a week with One Story magazine at this hotel in Positano, Italy, engaging in a series of advanced fiction- and memoir-writing workshops with Dani Shapiro, Jim Shepard, and Ron Carlson; giving and attending readings; and dining with a view of the Tirreno Sea? Submissions are open from now through October 31 for the third annual Sirenland Writers Conference (March 21-27, 2010). As someone lucky enough to have been workshopped by Shepard once, I urge other writers to jump at any chance to discuss work with him! Visit the Sirenland website to learn more about the conference […]
