SACRAMENTO, CA: Cosumnes River College (CRC) and the Hart Senior Center are holding their seventh annual conference, “Our Life Stories”, on April 12 at the Hart Center. With classes on the craft of writing, this cross-generational conference features some of California’s top authors, writers and poets. The workshops and presentations will address how to write first-person essays and short stories, techniques for creating plot, writing poems from family history, live storytelling, and the ins and outs of small press publishing. For more information, visit the organizers’ website.
W o r k s h o p D e s c r i p t i o n s
| The Best Time to Climax: How to Arrange Events for an Impactful Plot Kerstin FeindertThis workshop focuses on hands-on exercises that highlight techniques to create an impactful plot. We will discuss how writers control a reader’s emotional responses and prepare the reader for reversals and surprises via the plot and variations in tempo. In addition, analysis of short sample pieces and exercises completed in the workshop will help writers create tension in their stories and narrative poems.Lessons Learned in Small Press Publishing Christian Keifer and Michael Spurgeon Last year, American River College started Ad Lumen Press for the purposes of publishing new works of literary merit penned by the extended ARC family. Christian Kiefer, the press’s editor-in-chief, and Michael Spurgeon, one of its authors, will discuss the school of hard knocks lessons learned in running a small press.
Writing Poems from Family History: Our Stories as a Matter of Craft In our families, we all have very rich histories, yet each of us remembers and reconstructs these histories differently. The process of recalling the events and shaping them into language is one that is both inherently creative and intellectual. While we may work from our own sense of memory, we may also find ourselves researching family events for the “truth” of the moments we use in our work. This workshop will offer exercises for accessing memory and offer tools for re-creating them on the page as poetry. Participants will explore: the transformation of memory as words into metaphor; the use and function of point of view; the use of triggering and real subjects; and the delivery of credible surprise in a poem.
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Writing about Your Life in First-Person Essays Ginny McReynoldsFirst-person essays are one of the most widely read forms of writing today. From humorous pieces, to those looking at the most serious themes of our lives, the essay is a powerful, yet graceful way to share one’s story with an audience of readers. Whether you’re an essay writer or not, practicing this somewhat abbreviated form can add clarity and detail to all of your writing. This workshop will focus on first-person essays, including: introducing participants to a variety of essayists, both historical and contemporary; choosing the kinds of topics that work best in this form; tracing the arc of the story you want to tell; writing essays that are rich in detail; and finding markets for publication.Your Three-Legged Stool: Character, Setting and Voice Clive Rosengren The workshop will discuss the elements of character, setting and voice as the three legs of a solid foundation for your story. Participants will be given writing prompts to put into practice these three elements. Storytelling—Live! This workshop focuses on the presentation of basic elements of preparing a story, creating a story-board, memorizing events in the story, adding color, opening and closing lines, rehearsing, and timing. It involves discussion, and participants create their own stories to share in groups. The Making of a Story In this workshop we look at different approaches to the making of a short story through a process that embraces what Flannery O’Connor called “Mystery and Manner,” the same concept that is invoked in John Gardener’s “Aesthetic Law and Artistic Mystery,” and Alice LaPlante’s “Method and Madness.” This hands-on workshop will give participants the motivation to turn their creativity into crafted works worth sharing with an audience. |
