Writing Fiction: A Course with Susan Schoenberger
Writing fiction is like constructing a house, and if you don't know your torque wrench from your circular saw, it's likely to fall down. This hands-on six-week class will examine the tools necessary to build a great short story, novella or novel, from point of view to character development to story arc. We'll also have time to share works in progress for constructive feedback and to talk about the wide variety of publishing options available today.
Susan Schoenberger is a writer and editor A Watershed Year, which won the gold medal in the William Faulkner-William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition, is her first novel. Her second novel is The Virtues of Oxygen. Her short stories have appeared in Inkwell, Village Rambler, and Bartlebysnopes.com, among others. A longtime journalist, Susan has worked for the Baltimore Sun, the Hartford Courant and many other newspapers and online publications.
Wednesday, October 1, through November 5, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm, $265
Writing Political Poetry: A Course with Edwina Trentham
What can we, as poets, do to respond to a world of suffering and inequality? We will examine two questions: "what is political poetry?" and "what makes a good political poem" exploring the challenge of writing poetry that tries to convey a belief, without sliding into preaching. We will read the work of selected modern and contemporary poets, and we will write and revise at least twelve poems""including out of class assignments and in-class exercises. We will also give a public reading of our work at the end of the course.
Edwina Trentham is Professor Emerita of English at Asnuntuck Community College in Enfield, Connecticut, where she was the founder and editor of the poetry journal, Freshwater. She was also a Visiting Instructor in the Graduate Liberal Studies Program at Wesleyan University from 1988 through 2005. She has been a fellow at Yaddo and her work is included in a number of magazines and anthologies. She has given readings and workshops throughout Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York. Her first book, Stumbling into the Light, was published by Antrim House in 2004, and she was a featured reader at the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival in June 2005. She won a 2010 Solo Writers Fellowship awarded by the Greater Hartford Arts Council and the Beatrice Fox Auerbach Foundation Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, and her chapbook, Still On This Earth, written with the Solo Fellowship's support, won honorable mention in the 2011 Comstock Review Chapbook Contest. For additional information go to www.antrimhousebooks.com/trentham.html or edwinatrentham.com.
Wednesday, October 1, through November 5, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm, $265
Freelance Writing: A Course with Theresa Sullivan Barger
This six-week course is about the business and craft of freelance writing, starting with finding ideas, selecting the right outlet and crafting pitches that sell. We'll cover query letters, how to become your editors' go-to writer and how to advance your writing career. We'll address: making a living; avoiding slave wages; finding writing work; dealing with rejection - a fact of life for writers; essential tools of the trade; social media for writers; maximizing tax deductions and time-management. We'll look at the pros and cons of being a specialist vs. a generalist and choosing the path that's best for you. No matter where you are in your writing career, this class will help you move forward.
Theresa Sullivan Barger, a former staff writer and editor for The Hartford Courant, is an award-winning freelance journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Yankee, The Huffington Post, AARP, The Saturday Evening Post, Center for Public Integrity, Yale Public Health, The Conference Board, CFO, CT Health Investigative Team, AAA Horizons, Hartford Business Journal, Seasons and many others. A communication consultant, she also writes and edits mission statements, strategic plans, grants, white papers, blogs and website copy. She led a freelance writing workshop in 2013 for The Mark Twain House & Museum's Sunday Afternoon Writers' Workshop series.
Wednesday, October 1, through November 5, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm, $265
Travel Writing: A Course with Mary Sharnick
Writers in this course will shape travel experiences into discrete, coherent posts, each passage evoking a sense of place. Focusing on specific and apt details, responding to particular sites and events, and reflecting on the emotive and transformative elements of travel, participants will develop a portfolio of texts suitable for sharing in a variety of virtual and paper venues.
Wednesday, October 1, through November 5, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm, $265
Writing Nonfiction: A Course with Susan Campbell
Our grandmas all told us to tell the truth -- but they didn't say we had to be boring about it. You CAN write non-fiction in an entertaining and enlightening way.
Susan Campbell is an award-winning author of "Dating Jesus," and the biography, "Tempest-Tossed: The Spirit of Isabella Beecher Hooker."
She was born in Kentucky and raised in southwest Missouri. She's worked at newspapers in Missouri, Kansas, Maryland, and Connecticut. For more than a quarter-century, she was a columnist at the Hartford Courant, where her work was recognized by the National Women's Political Caucus, New England Associated Press News Executives, the Society for Professional Journalists, the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors, the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, and the Sunday Magazine Editors Association.
Thursday, October 2, through November 6, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm, $265
Writing from Found Texts (Fiction & Creative Nonfiction Class)
From to-do lists to diary entries, from recipes to photographs, from PowerPoint presentations to maps, non-literary texts-or "found texts"-are often central in shaping fiction and creative nonfiction pieces. Found texts, any texts whose original purpose is in some way expanded, built upon, or transformed to take on the new purpose of creating a literary text, are ubiquitous in contemporary prose. In A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan writes a whole chapter as a PowerPoint presentation. Lorrie Moore in many of her pieces adopts the "how to" guide. Douglas Coupland inserts emails, advertising, labels, and other fragments of daily texts into his work. Laura Esquivel uses recipes to frame her novel Like Water for Chocolate. A whole anthology, Fakes: An Anthology of Pseudo-Interviews, Faux-Lectures, Quasi-Letters, "Found" Texts, and Other Fraudulent Artifacts, was published in 2012. In this workshop, we will read these and a number of other writers of fiction and nonfiction who make use of found texts in their work, and we will also explore the potential of using found texts in our own writing projects. We will engage in a series of short writing exercises working with a variety of texts, including advertisements, to-do lists, emails, recipe collections and menus, historical documents, social media texts, timelines, and diaries, examining how such texts can influence both the form and content of our work. At the culmination of the workshop writers will develop their own independent projects based on one or more found texts.
Yelizaveta P. Renfro is the author of a collection of essays, Xylotheque, available from the University of New Mexico Press, and a collection of short stories, A Catalogue of Everything in the World, winner of the St. Lawrence Book Award. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared inGlimmer Train Stories, North American Review, Colorado Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, South Dakota Review, Witness, Reader's Digest, Blue Mesa Review, Parcel, Adanna, Fourth River, Bayou Magazine, Untamed Ink, So to Speak, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from George Mason University and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Nebraska.
Thursday, October 2, through October 23, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm, $199
Social Media for Writers
In this 4-day class, Caitlin will cover individual platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs and more. You'll walk away with a better sense of how each social media platform works, and how they all connect to each other. You'll also walk away with the beginnings of a social media strategy, whether it be for your business or organization, or for your personal branding. The class will cover content calendars, and content creation and curation. Come with your questions, and your laptops!
Caitlin Thayer has been using social media since 2003. She has helped various non-profits and businesses in the Hartford community learn how to use social media effectively to build and support their community. Caitlin was recently named a Hartford Business Journal 40 Under 40 winner, and has been featured in Hartford Magazine as "Hartford County's Young Achievers" and in an article about Young Entrepreneurs.
Tuesday, October 7 - October 28th, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm, $199.
Intro to Self-Publishing
Tired of waiting-waiting to hear from agents, editors, and publishers-as you jump through hoops hoping to get your work traditionally published? An exciting new alternative is to dive in and publish yourself. This course will take you through the steps for putting your writing out there NOW. We'll talk about editing, formatting, and choosing a cover, and conclude by actually pushing the button and publishing your story on Amazon. Ideally, participants will have a short story, novel, or other work ready to go. If not, you can simply publish a "test book" to learn how.
Patrice Fitzgerald is a best-selling indie author, publisher, and attorney. She began self-publishing on Independence Day in 2011. Her ebooks and those of authors she publishes have reached the top 100 out of the millions of books sold by Amazon.
Monday, October 20 - Monday October November 10th, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm, $199
Questions? Email Director of Writing Programs Julia Pistell at julia.pistell@marktwainhouse.org.
Register for all writing workshops and courses by calling (860) 280-3130. Or you can register online at www.marktwainhouse.org.