Cooler weather means more time to stay inside and write through the winter hibernation season. Each session in this final WE WRITE! event for 2014 will provide fresh ideas, insights and useful tips for sharpening your skills along with your pencils. Join other writers on October 4 for inspiration and enjoyment.
| When: | Saturday, October 4, 9:30 AM - 3:00 PM |
| Where: | Monroeville Public Library, 4000 Gateway Campus Blvd., Monroeville, PA 15146 |
| Cost: | $30 — lunch included. Mail check out to "Monroeville Public Library Fund" to the library. |
| More info: | 412-372-0500, ext. 4 |
You can call to put your name on the list, but payment is required to guaranteed a seat.
Register early — seating is limited!
Our three speakers are all published authors and teachers. Bring questions and plenty of paper for taking notes.
All that Glimmers
Writing at its best is an act of discovery. In this workshop, we’ll go against the lesson of “write what you know.” We’ll talk about why it’s important to write what you don’t know, or even better, to write to discover what you want to know. We’ll discuss the concept of luminous vs. everyday details. We’ll talk about writing out-ward vs. inward and how to avoid navel-gazing and put readers first. More-over, we’ll focus on moving beyond writing what happened into writing that shows what your experience means – to readers, to you.Lori Jakiela is the author of the memoirs The Bridge to Take When Things Get Serious (C&R Press) and Miss New York Has Everything (Hatchette), as well as the poetry collection Spot the Terrorist (Turning Point). Her third memoir – Belief Is Its Own Kind of Truth, Maybe – is forthcoming from Atticus Books in Spring 2015.
Setting Inside and Out
In this generative writing work-shop, we’ll look at two ways to think about and create setting in a piece of prose—through observation and through memory—and the ways in which these types of settings evoke different emotional atmospheres in creative work. List making, in-class writing exercises, active observation, and reading aloud.Sherrie Flick is the author of the novel Reconsidering Happiness and the flash fiction chapbook I Call This Flirting. Her work has appeared in many anthologies and journals, including Norton’s Flash Fiction Forward and New Sudden Fiction as well as Ploughshares, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, and others. She writes a regular garden-to-table column for Pittsburgh Quarterly Magazine and teaches in the Food Studies and MFA programs at Chatham University.
Devils and Details
Whether you write fact or fiction, de-tails matter. Some details are structur-al, others add a finishing touch. Details bring characters to life, evoke moods, enhance reader connection, and keep dialog and story credible. Attention to detail is a master key to writing compelling description. But too much detail bogs the story down and inconsistencies and errors send readers fleeing. In this session we’ll explore how to add appropriate accents to every aspect of story, and tips for ensuring accuracy and consistency.Sharon Lippincott is the author of The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing, The Heart and Craft of Writing Compelling Description, and two memoirs: Adventures of a Chilehead and The Albuquerque Years. She serves on the advisory board of the National Association of Memoir Writers and teaches writing in the CMU and Pitt Osher programs.
