Workshops & Events
Flash Fiction Marathon
Saturday, May 25th, 10:00am-5:00pm at Grub Street headquarters.
The market for flash fiction is booming, and this seminar is perfect for any writer ready to crank out some new short-short stories. At the end of the day, you’ll walk away with a brand new assortment of stories, each created through writing exercises designed to unleash your flash fiction genius. The seminar will also feature discussion of published flash fiction—which we’ll draw inspiration from—as well as quick, on-the-spot feedback on your own work.
- Instructor: Matthew Salesses
Matthew Salesses is the author of I'm Not Saying, I'm Just Saying (Civil Coping Mechanisms, Feb 2013), The Last Repatriate (Nouvella), and the chapbooks, Our Island of Epidemics (PANK) and We Will Take What We Can Get (Publishing Genius). His fiction has appeared in Glimmer Train, Witness, American Short Fiction, The Literary Review, West Branch, and over fifty other journals and anthologies. He is the recipient of awards and fellowships from Glimmer Train, Mid-American Review, HTMLGIANT, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Emerson College, the University of New Orleans, and IMPAC. Currently, he serves as the Fiction Editor and a Contributing Writer for the Good Men Project. On the web, he is matthewsalesses.com and @salesses.
There are 2 seats remaining in this class.
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The Novel Series: How to Hold Up Your Middle & Find Your Ending
Saturday, May 25th, 10:30am-5:30pm at Grub Street headquarters.
Having trouble keeping the energy of your novel going through the sometimes deadly middle pages? Have no idea where or how to discover your novel’s ending? Though the opening pages grab your reader, a novel that sinks after the first third will never see the light of day. Through craft discussions, the examination of published work, and writing exercises, we will look at how a strong “signature” buttresses the “roof” of your book, and how to increase the stakes at mid-point in order to renew your reader’s interest. We will also discuss how a thorough understanding of your protagonist’s desires and wounds, as well as you own personal vision about the novel’s “premise,” determines where you should end, how, and when. By the end of the course, you will have a plan for getting back to your writing desk and renewed energy about where your novel is going. Bring your laptops or notebooks and a digital or printed copy of your novel-in-progress for reference. Part of a monthly series of 10 one-day classes for novelists at the beginning or more advanced stages of their manuscripts.
- Instructor: Michelle Hoover
Michelle Hoover is a full-time instructor at Boston University and teaches many novel courses at Grub Street, including Grub's intensive year-long novel program, the Novel Incubator. She was a finalist for the Dorothy Churchill Cappon Essay Prize and has published short stories and novel excerpts in numerous journals, including Prairie Schooner, The Massachusetts Review, StoryQuarterly and Confrontation, StoryQuarterly. She has been the Philip Roth Writer-in-Residence at Bucknell, a MacDowell Fellow, and in 2005 the winner of the PEN/New England Discovery Award for Fiction. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and published in Best New American Voices. Her debut novel, The Quickening, was shortlisted for the Center for Fiction's Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize, was a Finalist for the Indies Choice Debut of 2010 and Forward Magazine's Best Literary Book of 2010, and is a 2010 Massachusetts Book Award "Must Read" pick. For more, go to www.michelle-hoover.com.
Sorry, this class is sold out. Please click here to be put on a waiting list.
Go Deeper, Baby: Writing Meaningful Erotica
Thursday, May 30th, 6:30-9:30pm at Grub Street headquarters.
In this one-night seminar, we'll celebrate erotic fiction, looking at why it's both emotionally valuable and increasingly popular. Drawing on well-respected authors such as Anais Nin and Steve Almond, we'll explore what makes a sexy story sexy, while also tapping the transformational qualities of the genre. Come along with a willingness to be open about feelings and sensations, and you'll leave with a short, sexy story of your own. All sexual and gender identities warmly welcomed. Led by an instructor who regularly publishes erotica and views it as some of her most meaningful work.
- Instructor: Lana Fox
Lana Fox became a sex writer when she realized she couldn't shut up about the subject. As well as publishing in both literary and commercial magazines, Lana has been an online sex columnist for both Boston Magazine and the Nervous Breakdown, and her short stories appear in a variety of anthologies, including Best Women's Erotica 2011 and Best Bondage Erotica 2012. She is represented by the Sarah Jane Freymann Literary Agency in New York and can be found online at www.lanafox.com.
There are 10 seats remaining in this class.
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Making Images
Thursday, May 30th, 6:30-9:30pm at Grub Street headquarters.
What makes an image fresh, vivid, astonishing, memorable? What makes an image at all? In the first half of this seminar we'll take a hard look at some surprising and dazzling images in poetry and fiction to articulate a working definition of the image, to observe the choices involved in the making of great images, and to develop a list of image-driven strategies. In the seminar's second half we'll perform some exercises to practice and implement these strategies, and to rethink how we construct images in our own work. Participants are expected to bring an image that they would like to revise, which they'll work on and have the opportunity to share at the seminar's end.
- Instructor: Scott Challener
Scott Challener teaches writing in Boston University’s Writing Program and Metropolitan College and Northeastern University’s College of Professional Studies, and volunteers for 826 Boston. He holds an MFA in Poetry from Warren Wilson College’s MFA Program for Writers. His work has appeared in Gulf Coast, Narrative Magazine, The Rumpus, Mississippi Review, and elsewhere. His reviews of five past National Book Award winners appeared recently on the National Book Awards Foundation website. He lives in the Fort Point Channel area of South Boston.
There are 8 seats remaining in this class.
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At Stake: Building Tension in Fiction
Thursday, May 30th, 6:00-9:00pm at Grub Street headquarters.
You don’t need to start your story with a car chase or a gun going off to draw your readers in. And you needn’t end every chapter with a cliffhanger to keep them reading. Tension in fiction is created in a variety of ways, and through close reading and discussion, you’ll learn how to craft compelling characters, choose fresh plot lines, manipulate pacing, and highlight setting in ways that support the central conflict of your story. Novelist Lynne Griffin will walk you through how to move your characters closer to their goals while introducing complications to your story that raise stakes, putting at risk what your characters want and need, making failure ever more possible and dangerous. In an attempt to raise reader questions yet keep them grounded in scene, you’ll learn to create the kind of intense curiosity that keeps readers turning those pages. An extended version of the sold-out Muse 2012 session.
- Instructor: Lynne Griffin
Lynne Griffin is the author of the novels Sea Escape (Simon & Schuster) and Life Without Summer (St. Martin’s Press), and the nonfiction parenting guide, Negotiation Generation (Penguin). In addition to teaching at Grub Street, Lynne teaches in the graduate program of family studies at Wheelock College. She is the family life contributor for Boston’s Fox Morning News and writes for The Writer magazine, Parenting magazine, and Psychology Today. For more about Lynne’s work, visit her website, www.LynneGriffin.com or her blog, Field Guide to Families.
Sorry, this class is sold out. Please click here to be put on a waiting list.
How to Create An Irresistible Narrator
Thursday, May 30th, 6:30-9:30pm at Grub Street headquarters.
Many a short story, novel, and memoir have gone unpublished because the author fails to create a strong narrator, one who can act as a wise and entertaining guide to the reader. In this class, we'll examine the work of Ford, Salinger, Austen and others -- and try an in-class exercise -- in an effort to make sure your next narrator isn't just strong, but irresistible.
- Instructor: Steve Almond
Steve Almond is the author of seven books of fiction and non-fiction, most recently the story collection God Bless America. Learn more at stevealmondjoy.com.
There are 9 seats remaining in this class.
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Happy Neurons: Writing Sensory Detail That's Truly Sensory
Saturday, June 1st, 10:00am-5:00pm at Grub Street headquarters.
A recent article in the New York Times outlined the ways in which the reading mind responds to sensory detail in written language: neurons trace more or less the same paths they would when reacting to actual sense-impressions. In case anybody needed convincing, here is scientific evidence to back up the idea that creative writing is greatly enhanced by rich description and evocative word choices. But getting to this level of writing doesn’t necessarily come naturally. How can you create a sensuous linguistic landscape in every essay, story, or chapter―one that will keep your readers’ neurons jumping? In this weekend intensive we’ll do close readings of inspirational examples of rich sensory description and do in-class exercises. We’ll discuss the dampening effect of cilches and predictable phrasing, as well as the value of idiosyncratic or slightly unexpected turns of phrase. In-class exercises will help us identify less than exciting descriptive techniques and possible ways to replace them with more vivid, distinctive, and memorable language.
- Instructor: Kim Adrian
Kim Adrian's short stories, essays, and memoir excerpts have appeared in Tin House, Gettysburg Review, Agni, Raritan, Crazyhorse, New England Review, /nor, Ninth Letter, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a P.E.N. New England Discovery Award, an Artist's Grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and the Editor's Prize in Nonfiction from the New Ohio Review, as well as residencies at the Edward Albee Barn, Ragdale, and the VCCA. She teaches creative writing at Grub Street, reads nonfiction for Agni magazine, and serves on the admissions board for the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. Her essay, "Questionnaire for My Grandfather" will appear in the upcoming anthology YOU: Essays in the Second Person (Welcome Table Press, 2012). Currently, she is at work on a book-length memoir. More at kimadrian.com.
Kim is the founder of Thumbtack, a website production company for authors.
There are 7 seats remaining in this class.
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"Boosts" for Your Writing Project or Career
Tuesday, June 4th, 1:30-4:30pm at Grub Street headquarters.
In most workshops, instructors tend to focus on constructive criticism rather than constructive praise. Instructors do this mostly in the interest of time, and because constructive criticism is often easier to illustrate with examples or to compare with texts that are "working better." But these 1-on-1 Boost consultations work in a different way, focusing instead on what you are doing well. Choose from a 30-minute boost for $37.50 or a 60-minute boost for $75. You don't need to email any work in advance. All pages are looked at within the Boost session itself. If you're unable to meet in person, Boosts are available via a phone call or Skype session as well.To proceed, fill out the following form and Grub Street will follow up with you about payment and scheduling.
30-Minute Short Story/Nonfiction Boost (For a Short Piece of up to 3000 words)
In this consultation, the instructor will start by reading and reviewing one of your stories (or part of a story) that has already been workshopped and spend time discussing the strengths of the piece and, more importantly, why they are strengths. Not only will this bring you confidence, but it will also help you understand your strengths and how you might use them to best effect. If appropriate, you will also receive personally tailored tasks that seek to bring you confidence in areas where you need it. Short Fiction or Non-Fiction Boosts can be booked one at a time, or as a string of ongoing consultations. 60-Minute Book-Length Boost (For an Ongoing Novel, Novella or Book-Length Manuscript)
In this consultation, the instructor will look at an overview or outline of your project, along with an excerpt/excerpts from your manuscript in progress. The focus will be on your strengths so far and why they are strengths. Your instructor will also examine how you might best make use your talents in the rest of your project. Time will be taken to study any feedback that you received in class and put it to use in positive ways. Book-Length Boosts can also involve mini-tasks that will help you to work on your skills in a precise way, with the promise of motivational feedback. These Boosts can be booked one at a time, or as a string of ongoing consultations. 30- or 60-Minute Writing Career Boost
All writers deal with rejection. In fact, it is part and parcel of a successful writing career. But when it comes to getting published, it is all too easy to grind to a halt in the face of ongoing rejection slips. Yet submission is how we move forward, and as Pamela Painter advises, it can help to “keep hope in the mail.” In this Boost, you will discuss your career and/or aspirations with an instructor who has been an editor at a literary magazine and is a Senior Editor at an indie press. Not only will you discuss ways of dealing with ongoing rejection while continuing to write more rather than less, but you will also consider alternative ways of showcasing your work and receiving meaningful feedback as you move forward. This Boost can also involve a review of your cover letter and advice on researching markets/venues for your work.
In this consultation, the instructor will start by reading and reviewing one of your stories (or part of a story) that has already been workshopped and spend time discussing the strengths of the piece and, more importantly, why they are strengths. Not only will this bring you confidence, but it will also help you understand your strengths and how you might use them to best effect. If appropriate, you will also receive personally tailored tasks that seek to bring you confidence in areas where you need it. Short Fiction or Non-Fiction Boosts can be booked one at a time, or as a string of ongoing consultations. 60-Minute Book-Length Boost (For an Ongoing Novel, Novella or Book-Length Manuscript)
In this consultation, the instructor will look at an overview or outline of your project, along with an excerpt/excerpts from your manuscript in progress. The focus will be on your strengths so far and why they are strengths. Your instructor will also examine how you might best make use your talents in the rest of your project. Time will be taken to study any feedback that you received in class and put it to use in positive ways. Book-Length Boosts can also involve mini-tasks that will help you to work on your skills in a precise way, with the promise of motivational feedback. These Boosts can be booked one at a time, or as a string of ongoing consultations. 30- or 60-Minute Writing Career Boost
All writers deal with rejection. In fact, it is part and parcel of a successful writing career. But when it comes to getting published, it is all too easy to grind to a halt in the face of ongoing rejection slips. Yet submission is how we move forward, and as Pamela Painter advises, it can help to “keep hope in the mail.” In this Boost, you will discuss your career and/or aspirations with an instructor who has been an editor at a literary magazine and is a Senior Editor at an indie press. Not only will you discuss ways of dealing with ongoing rejection while continuing to write more rather than less, but you will also consider alternative ways of showcasing your work and receiving meaningful feedback as you move forward. This Boost can also involve a review of your cover letter and advice on researching markets/venues for your work.
- Instructor: Sue Williams
Sue Williams is published in over thirty books and magazines, including Narrative, Night Train, Greatest Uncommon Denominator, Smokelong Quarterly, Salamander, Gargoyle, and Hint Fiction: a Norton Anthology. She has garnered several literary awards, including first place in the 2009 Carolyn A. Clark Flash Fiction Prize and the Glimmer Train Best Start Award. She has worked as an Assistant Editor at Narrative Magazine and is a writing instructor at Grub Street in Boston. Sue can be found online at www.suewilliams.co.uk.
The Hero of a Thousand Stories: Unlocking the Power of Myth for Your Story Structure
Thursday, June 6th, 6:30-9:30pm at Grub Street headquarters.
Joseph Campbell’s Hero of a Thousand Faces has influenced writers and filmmakers for decades. The book accesses centuries of myth and culture to reveal that all stories follow a similar pattern. By understanding that pattern, the writer can deeply connect with their audience. “The Monomyth” has been used by creators such as George Lucas, J.K. Rowling, Neil Gaiman, and Philip Pullman and has influenced films as diverse as The Matrix and Darren Aranofsky’s Black Swan. By the end of this seminar, writers will have a better understanding of the seventeen stages of the Monomyth and be able to use these archetypical scenes to add power and meaning to their work. We will discuss the various stages of the Monomyth while using examples from novels and films to illustrate each stage. During the question-and-answer segment, students may share their work in order to see how the Monomyth fits their writing. This seminar is perfect for novelists, screenwriters, and short story writers interested in using the power of myth to enhance their writing. This class is a great compliment to Screenwriting I or II and Novel in Progress.
- Instructor: Mark Fogarty
Mark Fogarty is the president and Co-founder of the Rhode Island Film Collaborative (RIFC), a non-profit created to help local filmmakers find resources in the Ocean State. The RIFC has more than 1,900 members and has been involved in the production of dozens of films. For more information, visit www.rifcfilms.com. Mark started Exile Movies in 2003 and has worked as a director of photography and editor on feature-length and short films. Mark recently directed the feature-length epic, smalltown, from his screenplay. You can find out more about the film at www.smalltownmovie.com. As an actor, Mark has been in dozens of films and uses his knowledge of acting to inform his writing. Mark graduated from Emerson College with a degree in filmmaking, and works as a freelance editor and writer.
There are 3 seats remaining in this class.
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How to Make Your Characters Snap, Crackle & Pop!
Thursday, June 6th, 6:30-9:30pm at Grub Street headquarters.
Ever read (or write) a story where the hero or heroine just doesn't seem to pop? I have. Like a thousand times. In this intensive (but fun-filled!) seminar, we'll look at why some characters leap off the page, while others just sit there. We'll discuss the perils of passivity, the allure of action, and look at examples of both from writers way more talented than the instructor. We'll also do an in-class exercise to bring the lesson home.
- Instructor: Steve Almond
- Steve Almond is the author of seven books of fiction and non-fiction, most recently the story collection God Bless America. Learn more at stevealmondjoy.com.
There are 8 seats remaining in this class.
register as a member $50.00 register as a non-member $65.00Not a member? Become a Grubbie today!
"Boosts" for Your Writing Project or Career
Tuesday, June 11th, 1:30-4:30pm at Grub Street headquarters.
In most workshops, instructors tend to focus on constructive criticism rather than constructive praise. Instructors do this mostly in the interest of time, and because constructive criticism is often easier to illustrate with examples or to compare with texts that are "working better." But these 1-on-1 Boost consultations work in a different way, focusing instead on what you are doing well. Choose from a 30-minute boost for $37.50 or a 60-minute boost for $75. You don't need to email any work in advance. All pages are looked at within the Boost session itself. If you're unable to meet in person, Boosts are available via a phone call or Skype session as well.To proceed, fill out the following form and Grub Street will follow up with you about payment and scheduling.
30-Minute Short Story/Nonfiction Boost (For a Short Piece of up to 3000 words)
In this consultation, the instructor will start by reading and reviewing one of your stories (or part of a story) that has already been workshopped and spend time discussing the strengths of the piece and, more importantly, why they are strengths. Not only will this bring you confidence, but it will also help you understand your strengths and how you might use them to best effect. If appropriate, you will also receive personally tailored tasks that seek to bring you confidence in areas where you need it. Short Fiction or Non-Fiction Boosts can be booked one at a time, or as a string of ongoing consultations. 60-Minute Book-Length Boost (For an Ongoing Novel, Novella or Book-Length Manuscript)
In this consultation, the instructor will look at an overview or outline of your project, along with an excerpt/excerpts from your manuscript in progress. The focus will be on your strengths so far and why they are strengths. Your instructor will also examine how you might best make use your talents in the rest of your project. Time will be taken to study any feedback that you received in class and put it to use in positive ways. Book-Length Boosts can also involve mini-tasks that will help you to work on your skills in a precise way, with the promise of motivational feedback. These Boosts can be booked one at a time, or as a string of ongoing consultations. 30- or 60-Minute Writing Career Boost
All writers deal with rejection. In fact, it is part and parcel of a successful writing career. But when it comes to getting published, it is all too easy to grind to a halt in the face of ongoing rejection slips. Yet submission is how we move forward, and as Pamela Painter advises, it can help to “keep hope in the mail.” In this Boost, you will discuss your career and/or aspirations with an instructor who has been an editor at a literary magazine and is a Senior Editor at an indie press. Not only will you discuss ways of dealing with ongoing rejection while continuing to write more rather than less, but you will also consider alternative ways of showcasing your work and receiving meaningful feedback as you move forward. This Boost can also involve a review of your cover letter and advice on researching markets/venues for your work.
In this consultation, the instructor will start by reading and reviewing one of your stories (or part of a story) that has already been workshopped and spend time discussing the strengths of the piece and, more importantly, why they are strengths. Not only will this bring you confidence, but it will also help you understand your strengths and how you might use them to best effect. If appropriate, you will also receive personally tailored tasks that seek to bring you confidence in areas where you need it. Short Fiction or Non-Fiction Boosts can be booked one at a time, or as a string of ongoing consultations. 60-Minute Book-Length Boost (For an Ongoing Novel, Novella or Book-Length Manuscript)
In this consultation, the instructor will look at an overview or outline of your project, along with an excerpt/excerpts from your manuscript in progress. The focus will be on your strengths so far and why they are strengths. Your instructor will also examine how you might best make use your talents in the rest of your project. Time will be taken to study any feedback that you received in class and put it to use in positive ways. Book-Length Boosts can also involve mini-tasks that will help you to work on your skills in a precise way, with the promise of motivational feedback. These Boosts can be booked one at a time, or as a string of ongoing consultations. 30- or 60-Minute Writing Career Boost
All writers deal with rejection. In fact, it is part and parcel of a successful writing career. But when it comes to getting published, it is all too easy to grind to a halt in the face of ongoing rejection slips. Yet submission is how we move forward, and as Pamela Painter advises, it can help to “keep hope in the mail.” In this Boost, you will discuss your career and/or aspirations with an instructor who has been an editor at a literary magazine and is a Senior Editor at an indie press. Not only will you discuss ways of dealing with ongoing rejection while continuing to write more rather than less, but you will also consider alternative ways of showcasing your work and receiving meaningful feedback as you move forward. This Boost can also involve a review of your cover letter and advice on researching markets/venues for your work.
- Instructor: Sue Williams
- Sue Williams is published in over thirty books and magazines, including Narrative, Night Train, Greatest Uncommon Denominator, Smokelong Quarterly, Salamander, Gargoyle, and Hint Fiction: a Norton Anthology. She has garnered several literary awards, including first place in the 2009 Carolyn A. Clark Flash Fiction Prize and the Glimmer Train Best Start Award. She has worked as an Assistant Editor at Narrative Magazine and is a writing instructor at Grub Street in Boston. Sue can be found online at www.suewilliams.co.uk.
What’s Temperament Got to Do With It? Creating Authentic Characters
Thursday, June 13th, 6:00-9:00pm at Grub Street headquarters.
In this seminar, you'll learn how to get to the heart of character motivation. Lynne Griffin has over twenty years' experience as a family life educator, with specific expertise in the impact of individual differences on human behavior, and she'll share her unique ideas for crafting characters from the inside out -- ones who are more than the sum of their physical traits. You’ll learn how to use behavioral research to answer all kinds of questions such as, “What would this character really do?” “What makes a person do this or that?” “How would my character react to that?” Through lecture, discussion, and writing exercises, you’ll learn new techniques for crafting three-dimensional, compelling, and memorable major as well as minor characters.
- Instructor: Lynne Griffin
- Lynne Griffin is the author of the novels Sea Escape (Simon & Schuster) and Life Without Summer (St. Martin’s Press), and the nonfiction parenting guide, Negotiation Generation (Penguin). In addition to teaching at Grub Street, Lynne teaches in the graduate program of family studies at Wheelock College. She is the family life contributor for Boston’s Fox Morning News and writes for The Writer magazine, Parenting magazine, and Psychology Today. For more about Lynne’s work, visit her website, www.LynneGriffin.com or her blog, Field Guide to Families.
There are 12 seats remaining in this class.
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The Visual Art of Fiction
Thursday, June 13th, 6:00-9:00pm at Grub Street headquarters.
It is no accident that so much of our great literature has been adapted into films, plays, comics, and other visual art forms. Great literature leaves us not just with extraordinary stories; the language also leaves an image—a rich and expansive painting of the world written on the page.
Most of this class will be spent in lecture and discussion on how the techniques and processes employed by visual artists can be used by the writer to great effect. We will look at images both in literature and art and learn what it is that makes these images endure so clearly in our imaginations. Through a range of techniques and exercises students will learn how to infuse their writing with vividness and make their work “pop” by choosing and exaggerating certain details. The instructor will share a variety techniques on how to access the most visual parts of the brain and how to translate those visions into stories.
This class is for writers of all levels with a consistent discipline of writing looking for a fresh new way to approach their work.
For further information please visit the workshop tab of www.annieweatherwax.com.
- Instructor: Annie Weatherwax
Annie Weatherwax's novel, How It Ends will be published by Scribner in the summer of 2014. Her short stories have appeared in The Sun Magazine, The Southern Review, Other Voices, Quarterly West, and elsewhere. She was the 2009 winner of the Robert Olen Butler Prize for Fiction. Her writing on language and art has appeared in The New York Times in a review of The Graphic Canon. She is a painter and sculptor and for years earned a living sculpting superheroes and cartoon characters for Nickelodeon, DC Comics, Pixar and others. www.annieweatherwax.com.
There are 7 seats remaining in this class.
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Micro-Editing
Thursday, June 13th, 6:00-9:00pm at Grub Street headquarters.
Before an editor evaluates your manuscript’s themes, plot, characters, or voice, he or she judges its sentences. The best way to impress any reader is to write clear and efficient prose. Good sentence-level editing can increase the pace, enhance the description, and deepen the mood of your work. In short, it can make your writing more compelling. In this workshop, we will take apart and reassemble sentences and paragraphs from both fiction and nonfiction drafts. You will learn to read like an editor, to question every word and remove abstraction in order to take your writing to the next level.
- Instructor: Michelle Seaton
Michelle Seaton has been an instructor with Grub Street since 2000, teaching such classes as 6 Weeks-6 Essays, Tour of the Essay, and Master Narrative Nonfiction. She is also the lead instructor and created the curriculum for Grub Street's Memoir Project, a program that offers free memoir classes to senior citizens in Boston neighborhoods. The project has visited ten Boston neighborhoods and produced three anthologies. Twenty-two participants on Nantucket have also completed a Memoir Project class, and that anthology is forthcoming. Seaton’s nonfiction work has been published in Bostonia, Yankee, Robb Report and The Pinch. Her essay, “How to Work a Locker Room” appeared in the 2009 edition of Best American Nonrequired Reading. It is based on her experience covering the National Hockey League for National Public Radio's Only a Game, a program for which she has been a frequent contributor for 14 years. For the show, she has reported on topics ranging from asthma camp to professional wrestling to bird watching. Her fiction has appeared in the Sycamore Review and Quiddity International Journal. She is the coauthor of The Way of Boys (William Morrow, 2009). Her other book projects include The Cardiac Recovery Handbook, coauthored with Dr. Paul Kligfield, Medical Director of Cardiology at the Weill-Cornell Medical Center of the New York Presbyterian Hospital.
There are 9 seats remaining in this class.
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Swinging Singles: The Art of the Single Scene Story
Thursday, June 13th, 6:30-9:30pm at Grub Street headquarters.
The ultimate challenge for any story writer is how to pack the maximum pathos and humor into the minimum space. We'll look at the work of masters such as Tobias Wolff, Carolyn Forche, and others to figure out how a single, sustained scene can prove even more dramatically satisfying than stories that leap around. Bonus: awesome in-class exercise included!
- Instructor: Steve Almond
- Steve Almond is the author of seven books of fiction and non-fiction, most recently the story collection God Bless America. Learn more at stevealmondjoy.com.
There are 14 seats remaining in this class.
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Taming Time: Pacing, Compression, and Slowing Down
Saturday, June 15th, 10:00am-5:00pm at Grub Street headquarters.
Creating a believable sense of time is one of the novelist's greatest triumphs and most painful of headaches. This course will offer an array of techniques to help keep your reader with you and use time to its most significant effect. Through craft lectures, in-class reading of published works, as well as the sharing of personal writing and concerns, students will learn the art of pacing scenes and using summary, how to compress time within scenes and chapters and handle time jumps, as well as how to add emphasis to specific moments by slowing down. In addition, we will cover cinematic techniques important to fiction writers, such as scene cuts and the montage. By the end of the course, you will not only have gained a greater sense of time in reading the works of others but be able to grapple with time’s difficulties in your own work. Students should bring thirteen copies of a 500- to 750-word scene or part of a scene-in-progress that they are having trouble with in terms of time and pacing. You may also wish to bring your laptops or notebooks and a digital or printed copy of your novel-in-progress for personal reference. This course is part of a monthly series of 10 one-day classes for novelists at the beginning or more advanced stages of their manuscripts.
- Instructor: Michelle Hoover
- Michelle Hoover is a full-time instructor at Boston University and teaches many novel courses at Grub Street, including Grub's intensive year-long novel program, the Novel Incubator. She was a finalist for the Dorothy Churchill Cappon Essay Prize and has published short stories and novel excerpts in numerous journals, including Prairie Schooner, The Massachusetts Review, StoryQuarterly and Confrontation, StoryQuarterly. She has been the Philip Roth Writer-in-Residence at Bucknell, a MacDowell Fellow, and in 2005 the winner of the PEN/New England Discovery Award for Fiction. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and published in Best New American Voices. Her debut novel, The Quickening, was shortlisted for the Center for Fiction's Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize, was a Finalist for the Indies Choice Debut of 2010 and Forward Magazine's Best Literary Book of 2010, and is a 2010 Massachusetts Book Award "Must Read" pick. For more, go to www.michelle-hoover.com.
Sorry, this class is sold out. Please click here to be put on a waiting list.
Kickstart Your Writing Mojo with A Random Exercise
Saturday, June 15th, 10:00am-5:00pm at Grub Street headquarters.
Write a story in 100 words or less. Write an essay as it it were captions to a personal museum exhibit. Write a poem as an instructional manual. Without fail, arbitrary exercises like these refresh your writing mojo and force you to produce unexpected, shimmering work in a voice or style you never thought you could pull off. In this 6 hour writing workshop, the instructor will throw at the class a series of 15 to 30 minute, in-class writing exercises -- prose (both fiction or nonfiction), as well as a fun poem or two. The idea? To get you to try as many modes and voices as possible, using arbitrary rules and emulating writers we love. There will be minimal sharing, but no workshopping. You'll leave the workshop with new energy and excitement about your work, having generated a series of starts on a variety of projects.
- Instructor: Ethan Gilsdorf
A journalist, memoirist, critic, poet, teacher and geek, Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of the award-winning travel memoir investigation Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms. Based in Somerville, Massachusetts, he publishes travel, arts, and pop culture stories, essays and reviews regularly in The New York Times, Boston Globe, Salon.com, wired.com and Christian Science Monitor, and has published hundreds of articles in dozens of other magazines, newspapers, websites and guidebooks worldwide, including Playboy, National Geographic Traveler, Psychology Today, the San Francisco Chronicle, USA Today Washington Post and Fodor's travel guides. He is a book and film critic for the Boston Globe, former bicycling culture columnist for the Boston Globe, and is the film columnist for Art New England. He is a core contributor to the blog "GeekDad" at wired.com and his blog "Geek Pride" is seen regularly on PsychologyToday.com. He also writes for blogs at Boston.com's Globetrotting; Tor.com; ForcesofGeek.com, and TheOneRing.net. As a poet, he is the winner of the Hobblestock Peace Poetry Competition and the Esme Bradberry Contemporary Poets Prize, and has published poems in Poetry, The Southern Review, The North American Review, Exquisite Corpse and several anthologies. He is co-founder of Grub Street's Young Adult Writers Program (YAWP), volunteers as a guest speaker in the Boston Public Schools and teaches creative writing workshops at Grub Street, Emerson College, Media Bistro and, for younger students, in schools and community centers. He also serves on the Board of Directors of Grub Street. Follow Ethan’s adventures at www.ethangilsdorf.com.
There are 4 seats remaining in this class.
register as a member $95.00 register as a non-member $115.00Not a member? Become a Grubbie today!
"Boosts" for Your Writing Project or Career
Tuesday, June 18th, 1:30-4:30pm at Grub Street headquarters.
In most workshops, instructors tend to focus on constructive criticism rather than constructive praise. Instructors do this mostly in the interest of time, and because constructive criticism is often easier to illustrate with examples or to compare with texts that are "working better." But these 1-on-1 Boost consultations work in a different way, focusing instead on what you are doing well. Choose from a 30-minute boost for $37.50 or a 60-minute boost for $75. You don't need to email any work in advance. All pages are looked at within the Boost session itself. If you're unable to meet in person, Boosts are available via a phone call or Skype session as well.To proceed, fill out the following form and Grub Street will follow up with you about payment and scheduling.
30-Minute Short Story/Nonfiction Boost (For a Short Piece of up to 3000 words)
In this consultation, the instructor will start by reading and reviewing one of your stories (or part of a story) that has already been workshopped and spend time discussing the strengths of the piece and, more importantly, why they are strengths. Not only will this bring you confidence, but it will also help you understand your strengths and how you might use them to best effect. If appropriate, you will also receive personally tailored tasks that seek to bring you confidence in areas where you need it. Short Fiction or Non-Fiction Boosts can be booked one at a time, or as a string of ongoing consultations. 60-Minute Book-Length Boost (For an Ongoing Novel, Novella or Book-Length Manuscript)
In this consultation, the instructor will look at an overview or outline of your project, along with an excerpt/excerpts from your manuscript in progress. The focus will be on your strengths so far and why they are strengths. Your instructor will also examine how you might best make use your talents in the rest of your project. Time will be taken to study any feedback that you received in class and put it to use in positive ways. Book-Length Boosts can also involve mini-tasks that will help you to work on your skills in a precise way, with the promise of motivational feedback. These Boosts can be booked one at a time, or as a string of ongoing consultations. 30- or 60-Minute Writing Career Boost
All writers deal with rejection. In fact, it is part and parcel of a successful writing career. But when it comes to getting published, it is all too easy to grind to a halt in the face of ongoing rejection slips. Yet submission is how we move forward, and as Pamela Painter advises, it can help to “keep hope in the mail.” In this Boost, you will discuss your career and/or aspirations with an instructor who has been an editor at a literary magazine and is a Senior Editor at an indie press. Not only will you discuss ways of dealing with ongoing rejection while continuing to write more rather than less, but you will also consider alternative ways of showcasing your work and receiving meaningful feedback as you move forward. This Boost can also involve a review of your cover letter and advice on researching markets/venues for your work.
In this consultation, the instructor will start by reading and reviewing one of your stories (or part of a story) that has already been workshopped and spend time discussing the strengths of the piece and, more importantly, why they are strengths. Not only will this bring you confidence, but it will also help you understand your strengths and how you might use them to best effect. If appropriate, you will also receive personally tailored tasks that seek to bring you confidence in areas where you need it. Short Fiction or Non-Fiction Boosts can be booked one at a time, or as a string of ongoing consultations. 60-Minute Book-Length Boost (For an Ongoing Novel, Novella or Book-Length Manuscript)
In this consultation, the instructor will look at an overview or outline of your project, along with an excerpt/excerpts from your manuscript in progress. The focus will be on your strengths so far and why they are strengths. Your instructor will also examine how you might best make use your talents in the rest of your project. Time will be taken to study any feedback that you received in class and put it to use in positive ways. Book-Length Boosts can also involve mini-tasks that will help you to work on your skills in a precise way, with the promise of motivational feedback. These Boosts can be booked one at a time, or as a string of ongoing consultations. 30- or 60-Minute Writing Career Boost
All writers deal with rejection. In fact, it is part and parcel of a successful writing career. But when it comes to getting published, it is all too easy to grind to a halt in the face of ongoing rejection slips. Yet submission is how we move forward, and as Pamela Painter advises, it can help to “keep hope in the mail.” In this Boost, you will discuss your career and/or aspirations with an instructor who has been an editor at a literary magazine and is a Senior Editor at an indie press. Not only will you discuss ways of dealing with ongoing rejection while continuing to write more rather than less, but you will also consider alternative ways of showcasing your work and receiving meaningful feedback as you move forward. This Boost can also involve a review of your cover letter and advice on researching markets/venues for your work.
- Instructor: Sue Williams
- Sue Williams is published in over thirty books and magazines, including Narrative, Night Train, Greatest Uncommon Denominator, Smokelong Quarterly, Salamander, Gargoyle, and Hint Fiction: a Norton Anthology. She has garnered several literary awards, including first place in the 2009 Carolyn A. Clark Flash Fiction Prize and the Glimmer Train Best Start Award. She has worked as an Assistant Editor at Narrative Magazine and is a writing instructor at Grub Street in Boston. Sue can be found online at www.suewilliams.co.uk.
The Little People: Developing Minor Characters in Fiction and Memoir
Tuesday, June 18th, from 6:30-9:30pm at Grub Street headquarters.
The greatest novelists in the English language—Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, George Eliot, Herman Melville, Henry James, James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald—gave them voices and cameos that make them hard to forget. They are the prophets and idiots, shepherds and choristers, financiers and secretaries, golfers and grandfathers of the short story and the novel. Virginia Woolf, Marcel Proust, George Orwell, E. B. White, and, more recently, Malcolm Gladwell made use of them, too, in their nonfiction, in an effort to give smaller but still significant moments and bizarre social patterns their due. And contemporary authors J.K. Rowling, Stephen King, and John le Carré have traded in the circus of obscurity and oddity which minor characters can provide. This seminar will ask you to examine the usual suspects of your stories (from fiction and from life), and start holding auditions for some new parts—the third-grade nerd with bad dandruff, the great aunt who never stops talking, the intellectual postman, the poker-playing nurse, and the pet ferret who ruled your days though he never said a word (think Sredni Vashtar). This workshop will ask you to give minor characters in your own writing their moment in the spotlight, whether that means being seen, or seeing the action. We will place the microscope on them; we will let them talk in monologues and in dialogues; we will construct their back stories; and most importantly, we will pay attention to their perspective on the main characters of your story or memoir. The aim will be to get you thinking about the ‘little people’ who already populate your consciousness, and to give them a larger life on the page.
This seminar will serve intermediate and advanced writers of literary fiction and creative nonfiction who are interested in broadening their subject matter, breaking “type,” and deepening realism in their narrative world. Come with a list of your favorite minor characters, if you have some, and in addition to the lecture, we will do a number of point-of-view and memory-jogging exercises toward generating a bunch of new voices/perspectives/figures for you to explore in your future writing.
- Instructor: Nicole Miller
Nicole Miller has published both fiction and non-fiction in the US and the UK, with two appearances in the May Anthology of Short Stories, edited by Jill Paton Walsh and Sebastian Faulks. After completing an M.Phil in English Literature at Oxford, she worked at The New Yorker and The Oxford English Dictionary, where she still serves as a scholarly reader for the department of etymology, with a specialty in British Dialects. At Emerson College, she held the Emerson Graduate Fellowship in Creative Writing for three years, gaining her MFA in 2012. She was also awarded a PhD in Victorian Literature from University College, London in 2012 and publishes criticism on the works of Charles Dickens. She has taught in the Harvard College Writing Center since 2010 and edits faculty manuscripts for Harvard’s English Department. Her interests span the novel, short story, essay, and memoir form and the translation of Modern Greek poetry. Nicole is thrilled to share her love of words, literature, story-writing, and life-writing with the students of Grub Street this winter.
There are 5 seats remaining in this class.
register as a member $50.00 register as a non-member $65.00Not a member? Become a Grubbie today!
Eye of the Beholder: Crafting Character through Description
Tuesday, June 18th, 6:00-9:00pm at Grub Street headquarters.
He sees the remote and a Pats fleece thrown over an overstuffed recliner. She sees a worn easy chair, a busted seam revealing yellowed foam, and a sagging leg. They're headed for trouble. Intended for beginning or intermediate fiction and nonfiction writers, this seminar focuses on using description in a selective manner to develop characterization. No prior work is necessary. During the seminar, we’ll read a few examples, from fiction and nonfiction, to see how writers use description to develop character. Then we’ll spend some time writing, working with prompts. There will be some time to share and discuss the work you produce in class and to receive some feedback, though you won’t be required to share. Writers will take away some techniques for manipulating description to shape character.
- Instructor: Kim Freeman
Kim Freeman, author of Love American Style: Divorce and the American Novel 1881-1976, writes fiction, poetry, non-fiction, and literary criticism. She has published in The Long River Review, The Grub Street Free Press, New England Fiction’s Meeting House, The Bicycle Review, The Bare Root Review, and Prick of the Spindle, among other journals. Currently she teaches writing at Northeastern University, where is Interim Director of Advanced Writing in the Disciplines. She lives in Somerville. She also teaches yoga at O2 in Somerville and Boston.
There are 8 seats remaining in this class.
register as a member $50.00 register as a non-member $65.00Not a member? Become a Grubbie today!
Steal, Borrow, Channel: How Emulating Other Voices Can Energize Your Own Work
Wednesday, June 19th, 6:00-9:00pm at Grub Street headquarters.
Stealing -- OK, channeling or borrowing -- the style and tone and rhythm of prose writers we love can be like speed for writers. Inhabiting their voices and taking them out for a test drive can also be a fantastic way to get you out of your head and "un-stuck yourself" if you feel trapped in or bored by your writing moves. In this workshop, we'll examine exemplary "voice-y" passages by established writers -- from Geoff Dyer to Virginia Woolf, Jess Walter to Jamaica Kincaid, Keith Richards to Bill Bryson. Then, in a series of lightning-fast in-class exercises (with minimal sharing), we'll emulate these writers. Voila! You've broken out of your old patterns and tired voice and tried on some new ones for size. Students can apply these exercise to both fiction and nonfiction, depending on their interests. You'll exit the class with several beginnings to new essays or stories, and hopefully new and energizing voices bouncing around in your head to try out in future work. Feel free to come with a passage or chunk of writing that for you feel dull or stuck.
- Instructor: Ethan Gilsdorf
- A journalist, memoirist, critic, poet, teacher and geek, Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of the award-winning travel memoir investigation Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms. Based in Somerville, Massachusetts, he publishes travel, arts, and pop culture stories, essays and reviews regularly in The New York Times, Boston Globe, Salon.com, wired.com and Christian Science Monitor, and has published hundreds of articles in dozens of other magazines, newspapers, websites and guidebooks worldwide, including Playboy, National Geographic Traveler, Psychology Today, the San Francisco Chronicle, USA Today Washington Post and Fodor's travel guides. He is a book and film critic for the Boston Globe, former bicycling culture columnist for the Boston Globe, and is the film columnist for Art New England. He is a core contributor to the blog "GeekDad" at wired.com and his blog "Geek Pride" is seen regularly on PsychologyToday.com. He also writes for blogs at Boston.com's Globetrotting; Tor.com; ForcesofGeek.com, and TheOneRing.net. As a poet, he is the winner of the Hobblestock Peace Poetry Competition and the Esme Bradberry Contemporary Poets Prize, and has published poems in Poetry, The Southern Review, The North American Review, Exquisite Corpse and several anthologies. He is co-founder of Grub Street's Young Adult Writers Program (YAWP), volunteers as a guest speaker in the Boston Public Schools and teaches creative writing workshops at Grub Street, Emerson College, Media Bistro and, for younger students, in schools and community centers. He also serves on the Board of Directors of Grub Street. Follow Ethan’s adventures at www.ethangilsdorf.com.
There are 10 seats remaining in this class.
register as a member $50.00 register as a non-member $65.00Not a member? Become a Grubbie today!
How to Plan, Write, and Develop a Book: Section B
Saturday, June 22nd, 10:00am-5:00pm at Grub Street headquarters.
Books often start with a simple yearning to explore new territory: fascinating topics, characters who won’t leave you alone, a good story. But manuscripts get unwieldy, fast. Nine out of ten writers never finish their manuscripts because most first-time book writers get lost without good structure and planning. Mary Carroll Moore, award-winning author of 13 books in three genres and a PEN/Faulkner nominee, will guide you through a simple and successful book-writing process that can take your book from idea to publication, a process using a three-act structure that eases organization and makes a manuscript vivid and engaging to readers. Find out why Aristotle believed that three acts formed a perfect structure for all stories, why humans lean toward beginning, middle, and end, and why we crave the emotional catharsis of that format in literature too. For all levels of writers working on nonfiction, memoir, or novels, at any stage from seed idea to draft. Learn why strong structuring is the key to selling a book in today's competitive publishing industry.
- Instructor: Mary Carroll Moore
Mary Carroll Moore’s twelve published books include the PEN/Faulkner nominated novel Qualities of Light (Bella Books); How to Master Change in Your Life: Sixty-seven Ways to Handle Life’s Toughest Moments (Eckankar Books); Cholesterol Cures (Rodale Press), and the award-winning Healthy Cooking (Ortho Publications). Your Book Starts Here: Create, Craft, and Sell Your First Novel, Memoir, or Nonfiction Book, based on her How to Plan, Write, and Develop a Book writing workshops, will be released in fall 2010. A former nationally syndicated columnist for the Los Angeles Times, over 300 of Mary’s essays, short stories, articles, and poetry have appeared in literary journals, magazines, and newspapers around the U.S. and have won awards with the McKnight Awards for Creative Prose, Glimmer Train Press, the Loft Mentor Series, and other writing competitions. She teaches creative writing in New York, Boston, New Hampshire, and Minnesota and writes a weekly blog for book writers at http://howtoplanwriteanddevelopabook.blogspot.com.
There are 3 seats remaining in this class.
register as a member $95.00 register as a non-member $115.00Not a member? Become a Grubbie today!
Writing Dialogue
Saturday, June 22nd, 10:00am-5:00pm at Grub Street headquarters.
Writing dialogue can be one of the most difficult and significant tasks a writer faces. The techniques a writer learns along the way may prepare them for every kind of prose, but when faced with dialogue, the writer is lost. How do you create dialogue that feels and sounds real, yet also works to communicate your story? This workshop is designed for playwrights, screenwriters, novelists, and short fiction writers interested in writing crisp, realistic-sounding dialogue. We will study several great scenes from films, plays, and fiction to break down what makes the dialogue so effective.
Topics explored will include creating subtext, hiding exposition, working with slang, and how to get the characters in your head speaking with a voice of their own. You will learn how to break down a scene into beats and intentions, and approach the scene as an actor would. Most importantly, during the workshop portion, we will act out your dialogue so you may hear it the way dialogue is meant to be heard -- out loud. The first half of the class will be spent discussing techniques for creating effective dialogue. During the second session, students will use what they have learned to write a dialogue scene and receive peer and instructor feedback.
- Instructor: Mark Fogarty
- Mark Fogarty is the president and Co-founder of the Rhode Island Film Collaborative (RIFC), a non-profit created to help local filmmakers find resources in the Ocean State. The RIFC has more than 1,900 members and has been involved in the production of dozens of films. For more information, visit www.rifcfilms.com. Mark started Exile Movies in 2003 and has worked as a director of photography and editor on feature-length and short films. Mark recently directed the feature-length epic, smalltown, from his screenplay. You can find out more about the film at www.smalltownmovie.com. As an actor, Mark has been in dozens of films and uses his knowledge of acting to inform his writing. Mark graduated from Emerson College with a degree in filmmaking, and works as a freelance editor and writer.
There are 8 seats remaining in this class.
register as a member $95.00 register as a non-member $115.00Not a member? Become a Grubbie today!
Writing the Multicultural Thriller or Mystery
Saturday, June 22nd, 10:30am-1:30pm at Grub Street headquarters.
Are you interested in writing suspense? Thriller/mystery is a genre that offers many opportunities to the debut author, including a large, dedicated readership and the ability to write a series of interconnected books.
In the last few years, thriller/mystery writers have shed their Cold War roots and taken the genre in a new direction. Instead of plots dominated by evil foreign spymasters, the genre increasingly explores specific cultures and milieus: Colin Cotterill writes about a coroner in Cambodia, John Burdett’s Buddhist detective works in Bankok, Thailand, and Martin Limon’s investigators solve crimes in post-war Korea.
Join a published thriller writer to learn more about the genre and to explore this new direction. This three-hour seminar will consist of lecture, writing exercises, and discussion. Topics covered will include the rules of writing within genre, the basics of a fast-moving plot, how to research and incorporate multicultural settings, how to formulate a vision for your book, and industry connections: agents, publishing houses, and conferences. Come prepared with some idea of settings for your book and a scenario to explore. Leave with a much greater idea of how the new multicultural thriller/mystery works!
- Instructor: A.X. Ahmad
A.X. Ahmad studied writing at Grub Street, The New School, and NYU. His literary work has appeared in The Missouri Review, The Harvard Review, The New England Review, Narrative Magazine and The Good Men Project. He's been a finalist for Glimmer Train's Short Story Award, and been listed in Best American Essays. His articles have been published in The Sun Magazine, Utne Reader, and forthcoming in Slate.
His first book, THE CARETAKER, was published by St. Martin’s Press this year, and a sequel, BOLLYWOOD TAXI, will be published next year.
There are 12 seats remaining in this class.
register as a member $50.00 register as a non-member $65.00Not a member? Become a Grubbie today!
Make It Or Break It: Your Novel's Opening Pages
Saturday, June 22nd, 10:30am-5:30pm at Grub Street headquarters.
Often the writer’s easiest entry point into a novel’s first draft is not the most dynamic place for the story to begin. What strategies do novelists use to hook readers – including agents and editors – from the first sentence, paragraph, page, scene? In this class, we’ll examine narrative strategies used in a variety of novels; do exercises related to the opening pages; and provide feedback on your novel’s opening page and summarized opening scene. Please bring 12 copies of your novel’s first page and a one-paragraph summary of your opening scene to class.
- Instructor: Lisa Borders
Lisa Borders' first novel, Cloud Cuckoo Land, was chosen by Pat Conroy as the winner of River City Publishing's Fred Bonnie Award for Best First Novel and was published in 2002. Cloud Cuckoo Land also received fiction honors in the 2003 Massachusetts Book Awards. Her essay "Enchanted Night" was published in Don't You Forget About Me: Contemporary Writers on the Films of John Hughes (Simon & Schuster, 2007). Lisa has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and her short stories have appeared in Kalliope, Washington Square, Black Warrior Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Newport Review and other journals. She has received grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Somerville Arts Council and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and fellowships at the Millay Colony, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Hedgebrook and the Blue Mountain Center. More information on Lisa and her work is available at lisaborders.com.
There are 7 seats remaining in this class.
register as a member $95.00 register as a non-member $115.00Not a member? Become a Grubbie today!
Moments of Being: Capturing Consciousness in Your Writing
Saturday, June 22nd, 10:30am-5:30pm at Grub Street headquarters.
"The moment was all. The moment was enough," Virginia Woolf wrote in The Waves, bringing everything down to the pocket-sized glory of appreciating a single fine point of experience. Woolf was a master of the moment, and this seminar asks you to concentrate on this smallest of units in your writing and inhabit it. The moment can take the form of a thought, a dream, a fantasy, an epiphany, an observation, or a philosophical, religious, or scientific meditation that begins with a second and stretches out to form what Woolf called "a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope" over a series of pages. We will treat the moment both as an end in itself and as a way to illuminate your characters' outer or inner landscapes. The aim of this class is to give "the life of the mind"—reflection, realization, memory, mirage, wonder, or faith—a place to expand in your writing. The class is appropriate for all kinds of creative writers, from novelists who want to get into the heads of their protagonists, to memoirists who need to spend time contemplating a particular event, to essayists who wish to unravel a twist, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant.
This class will divided into part lecture, with analysis and discussion of writing by James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Henry James, Eudora Welty, Frank Conroy, and Ethan Canin, and part workshop, in which you will experiment with moments, turning points, and consciousness to produce new scenes and passages.
- Instructor: Nicole Miller
- Nicole Miller has published both fiction and non-fiction in the US and the UK, with two appearances in the May Anthology of Short Stories, edited by Jill Paton Walsh and Sebastian Faulks. After completing an M.Phil in English Literature at Oxford, she worked at The New Yorker and The Oxford English Dictionary, where she still serves as a scholarly reader for the department of etymology, with a specialty in British Dialects. At Emerson College, she held the Emerson Graduate Fellowship in Creative Writing for three years, gaining her MFA in 2012. She was also awarded a PhD in Victorian Literature from University College, London in 2012 and publishes criticism on the works of Charles Dickens. She has taught in the Harvard College Writing Center since 2010 and edits faculty manuscripts for Harvard’s English Department. Her interests span the novel, short story, essay, and memoir form and the translation of Modern Greek poetry. Nicole is thrilled to share her love of words, literature, story-writing, and life-writing with the students of Grub Street this winter.
There are 8 seats remaining in this class.
register as a member $95.00 register as a non-member $115.00Not a member? Become a Grubbie today!
Novel Intensive: Section A
Monday-Friday, 2:30-5:30pm from June 24th-28th at Grub Street headquarters.
Do you have a great idea for a novel but don’t know where to start? Or maybe you’re well on your way, but lately your manuscript has become a flabby mass of pages? Either way, this course will whip that novel into shape. Over the course of five days, we will focus on the elements of craft necessary to sustain a book-length narrative, from structure to scene, character arcs to subplots. We will read excerpts from a range of published novels, pick them apart as writers, and apply these lessons to our own projects. The course will include substantial in-class writing time and an optional homework assignment every evening and will culminate in a one-on-one meeting with the instructor to discuss your opening chapter and outline. Writing a novel is a long, unpredictable journey, but you will end this course with a new set of tools to navigate your way.
- Instructor: Becky Tuch
Becky Tuch has received literature fellowships from The MacDowell Colony and The Somerville Arts Council, awards from Briar Cliff Review, Byline Magazine, and The Tennessee Writers Alliance, and her fiction has been short-listed for a Pushcart Prize and Glimmer Train's Very Short Fiction Award. Other stories, essays, and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in Virginia Quarterly Review, Hobart, Quarter After Eight, Folio, HTMLGiant, and elsewhere. In 2011 and 2012 her work was included in The Drum's audio series at The Boston Book Festival. Additionally, she is the founding editor of The Review Review, a website which reviews literary magazines and interviews journal editors. The Review Review has twice been listed by Writer's Digest as "Best of the Best" among 101 Best Websites for Writers. She is also one of the founders of the writing and publishing blog, Beyond the Margins.
There are 10 seats remaining in this class.
register as a member $240.00 register as a non-member $260.00Not a member? Become a Grubbie today!
Jumpstart Your Novel
10 Mondays from 6:00-9:00pm at Grub Street headquarters. Begins June 24th.
Writing a novel can be an incredible journey of self-discovery. It can also be quite a struggle as you trek through the middle chapters, re-write your outlines, and wonder if you will ever finish the thing. Not only is finding time to write difficult, but overcoming psychological blocks and narrative slumps takes patience and practice. In this workshop, students will generate new material each week based on prompts from the instructor. Additionally, students will read one novel over the course of the term. The text will be discussed and analyzed in order to better understand fictional elements such as character development, scene building, conflict, chapter structure, and narrative arc. Students will come away with a clear understanding of how these elements work in fiction, as well as strategies for employing them in their own writing. Each student will share 3 pages of writing out loud each week (in response to the weekly prompt). The focus is on support and feedback, rather than critique. This class is suitable for writers at all stages of the novel-writing process.
- Instructor: Becky Tuch
- Becky Tuch has received literature fellowships from The MacDowell Colony and The Somerville Arts Council, awards from Briar Cliff Review, Byline Magazine, and The Tennessee Writers Alliance, and her fiction has been short-listed for a Pushcart Prize and Glimmer Train's Very Short Fiction Award. Other stories, essays, and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in Virginia Quarterly Review, Hobart, Quarter After Eight, Folio, HTMLGiant, and elsewhere. In 2011 and 2012 her work was included in The Drum's audio series at The Boston Book Festival. Additionally, she is the founding editor of The Review Review, a website which reviews literary magazines and interviews journal editors. The Review Review has twice been listed by Writer's Digest as "Best of the Best" among 101 Best Websites for Writers. She is also one of the founders of the writing and publishing blog, Beyond the Margins.
There are 12 seats remaining in this class.
register as a member $$430.00 register as a non-member $$455.00Not a member? Become a Grubbie today!
"Boosts" for Your Writing Project or Career
Tuesday, June 25th, 1:30-4:30pm at Grub Street headquarters.
In most workshops, instructors tend to focus on constructive criticism rather than constructive praise. Instructors do this mostly in the interest of time, and because constructive criticism is often easier to illustrate with examples or to compare with texts that are "working better." But these 1-on-1 Boost consultations work in a different way, focusing instead on what you are doing well. Choose from a 30-minute boost for $37.50 or a 60-minute boost for $75. You don't need to email any work in advance. All pages are looked at within the Boost session itself. If you're unable to meet in person, Boosts are available via a phone call or Skype session as well.To proceed, fill out the following form and Grub Street will follow up with you about payment and scheduling.
30-Minute Short Story/Nonfiction Boost (For a Short Piece of up to 3000 words)
In this consultation, the instructor will start by reading and reviewing one of your stories (or part of a story) that has already been workshopped and spend time discussing the strengths of the piece and, more importantly, why they are strengths. Not only will this bring you confidence, but it will also help you understand your strengths and how you might use them to best effect. If appropriate, you will also receive personally tailored tasks that seek to bring you confidence in areas where you need it. Short Fiction or Non-Fiction Boosts can be booked one at a time, or as a string of ongoing consultations. 60-Minute Book-Length Boost (For an Ongoing Novel, Novella or Book-Length Manuscript)
In this consultation, the instructor will look at an overview or outline of your project, along with an excerpt/excerpts from your manuscript in progress. The focus will be on your strengths so far and why they are strengths. Your instructor will also examine how you might best make use your talents in the rest of your project. Time will be taken to study any feedback that you received in class and put it to use in positive ways. Book-Length Boosts can also involve mini-tasks that will help you to work on your skills in a precise way, with the promise of motivational feedback. These Boosts can be booked one at a time, or as a string of ongoing consultations. 30- or 60-Minute Writing Career Boost
All writers deal with rejection. In fact, it is part and parcel of a successful writing career. But when it comes to getting published, it is all too easy to grind to a halt in the face of ongoing rejection slips. Yet submission is how we move forward, and as Pamela Painter advises, it can help to “keep hope in the mail.” In this Boost, you will discuss your career and/or aspirations with an instructor who has been an editor at a literary magazine and is a Senior Editor at an indie press. Not only will you discuss ways of dealing with ongoing rejection while continuing to write more rather than less, but you will also consider alternative ways of showcasing your work and receiving meaningful feedback as you move forward. This Boost can also involve a review of your cover letter and advice on researching markets/venues for your work.
In this consultation, the instructor will start by reading and reviewing one of your stories (or part of a story) that has already been workshopped and spend time discussing the strengths of the piece and, more importantly, why they are strengths. Not only will this bring you confidence, but it will also help you understand your strengths and how you might use them to best effect. If appropriate, you will also receive personally tailored tasks that seek to bring you confidence in areas where you need it. Short Fiction or Non-Fiction Boosts can be booked one at a time, or as a string of ongoing consultations. 60-Minute Book-Length Boost (For an Ongoing Novel, Novella or Book-Length Manuscript)
In this consultation, the instructor will look at an overview or outline of your project, along with an excerpt/excerpts from your manuscript in progress. The focus will be on your strengths so far and why they are strengths. Your instructor will also examine how you might best make use your talents in the rest of your project. Time will be taken to study any feedback that you received in class and put it to use in positive ways. Book-Length Boosts can also involve mini-tasks that will help you to work on your skills in a precise way, with the promise of motivational feedback. These Boosts can be booked one at a time, or as a string of ongoing consultations. 30- or 60-Minute Writing Career Boost
All writers deal with rejection. In fact, it is part and parcel of a successful writing career. But when it comes to getting published, it is all too easy to grind to a halt in the face of ongoing rejection slips. Yet submission is how we move forward, and as Pamela Painter advises, it can help to “keep hope in the mail.” In this Boost, you will discuss your career and/or aspirations with an instructor who has been an editor at a literary magazine and is a Senior Editor at an indie press. Not only will you discuss ways of dealing with ongoing rejection while continuing to write more rather than less, but you will also consider alternative ways of showcasing your work and receiving meaningful feedback as you move forward. This Boost can also involve a review of your cover letter and advice on researching markets/venues for your work.
- Instructor: Sue Williams
- Sue Williams is published in over thirty books and magazines, including Narrative, Night Train, Greatest Uncommon Denominator, Smokelong Quarterly, Salamander, Gargoyle, and Hint Fiction: a Norton Anthology. She has garnered several literary awards, including first place in the 2009 Carolyn A. Clark Flash Fiction Prize and the Glimmer Train Best Start Award. She has worked as an Assistant Editor at Narrative Magazine and is a writing instructor at Grub Street in Boston. Sue can be found online at www.suewilliams.co.uk.
Novel in Progress: Section C
8 Tuesdays from 6:30-9:30pm at the Welch Building 146 Front Street, Scituate, MA 02066. Begins June 25th.
First drafts of novels can be messy, amorphous and daunting. Some writers feel extensive critical feedback can be counterproductive before the first draft is finished, yet find themselves losing their focus without support and guidance. In class, we will do exercises, discuss craft issues -- characterization, plot and outlining, point of view, voice, dialogue, setting -- and read short scenes from each other's work, providing guidance and feedback in an environment that recognizes the specific challenges of the novel in progress. Before the last class, all writers will be invited to submit twenty-five pages of their novels to receive a written critique from the instructor or have a one-on-one meeting to discuss the writer's work with suggested strategies for finishing the manuscript. Please bring the first page (double-spaced) of your novel to the first class.
- Instructor: Lynne Griffin
- Lynne Griffin is the author of the novels Sea Escape (Simon & Schuster) and Life Without Summer (St. Martin’s Press), and the nonfiction parenting guide, Negotiation Generation (Penguin). In addition to teaching at Grub Street, Lynne teaches in the graduate program of family studies at Wheelock College. She is the family life contributor for Boston’s Fox Morning News and writes for The Writer magazine, Parenting magazine, and Psychology Today. For more about Lynne’s work, visit her website, www.LynneGriffin.com or her blog, Field Guide to Families.
There are 9 seats remaining in this class.
register as a member $345.00 register as a non-member $365.00Not a member? Become a Grubbie today!
Master Novel in Progress
10 Tuesdays from 6:30-9:30pm at Grub Street headquarters. Begins June 25th.
You’ve taken fiction workshops in the past, are comfortable discussing manuscripts in process, and have made significant headway on your novel. Still, some sections remain spotty, you sense the plot going off course, your characters have lost their chutzpah, some scenes are less than riveting, you question how to begin or end, or suspect the middle is mush. In this workshop, there will be no manuscripts to read and critique outside of class; all outside work will be devoted to one's own writing. In class, we will do exercises, discuss craft issues—characterization, plot, structure, scenes, point of view, and voice—and read short sections (no more than 5 pages) from each other's work aloud, providing guidance and feedback. By the end of the course, you will have a firm structure for your book from beginning to end, understand how the complexity of your characters drives your story, know which scenes you need to create, which you can cut, and how to breathe life into those that remain. In the last class, all writers will be invited to hand in 20 revised pages of their novels to receive an oral critique in a one-on-one meeting with the instructor, with suggested strategies for finishing the manuscript. If accepted, please bring the first five pages (double-spaced) of your novel and a one-page summary or outline to the first class. The class cost is $555 for non-members, $530 for members.
Apply via the form below or through this link by 12:00pm on Wednesday, June 12th. You will hear from the reading committee by Monday, June 17th.
- Instructor: Michelle Hoover
- Michelle Hoover is a full-time instructor at Boston University and teaches many novel courses at Grub Street, including Grub's intensive year-long novel program, the Novel Incubator. She was a finalist for the Dorothy Churchill Cappon Essay Prize and has published short stories and novel excerpts in numerous journals, including Prairie Schooner, The Massachusetts Review, StoryQuarterly and Confrontation, StoryQuarterly. She has been the Philip Roth Writer-in-Residence at Bucknell, a MacDowell Fellow, and in 2005 the winner of the PEN/New England Discovery Award for Fiction. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and published in Best New American Voices. Her debut novel, The Quickening, was shortlisted for the Center for Fiction's Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize, was a Finalist for the Indies Choice Debut of 2010 and Forward Magazine's Best Literary Book of 2010, and is a 2010 Massachusetts Book Award "Must Read" pick. For more, go to www.michelle-hoover.com.
Novel in Progress: Section B
10 Tuesdays from 10:30am-1:30pm at Grub Street headquarters. Begins June 25th
First drafts of novels can be messy, amorphous and daunting. Some writers feel extensive critical feedback can be counterproductive before the first draft is finished, yet find themselves losing their focus without support and guidance. In class, we will do exercises, discuss craft issues -- characterization, plot and outlining, point of view, voice, dialogue, setting -- and read short scenes from each other's work, providing guidance and feedback in an environment that recognizes the specific challenges of the novel in progress. Before the last class, all writers will be invited to submit twenty-five pages of their novels to receive a written critique from the instructor or have a one-on-one meeting to discuss the writer's work with suggested strategies for finishing the manuscript. Please bring the first page (double-spaced) of your novel to the first class.
- Instructor: Steven Lee Beeber
Steven Lee Beeber is the author of The Heebie-jeebies at CBGB's: A Secret History of Jewish Punk (Chicago Review Press), the editor of AWAKE! A Reader for the Sleepless (Soft Skull Press), and the associate editor of the literary journal Conduit. His work has appeared in The Paris Review, Harper's, Fiction, Bridge, Memorious, The New York Times, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA in Fiction from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and teaches creative writing and creative nonfiction at Lesley University.
There are 11 seats remaining in this class.
register as a member $430.00 register as a non-member $455.00Not a member? Become a Grubbie today!
The Perfect Crime (Novel): How to Writing Mystery and Suspense: ONLINE CLASS
10 weeks in Grub Street's online space with live meetings on Tuesdays from 11:00am-1:00pm EST, beginning June 25th.
Join two-time Edgar Award nominee Ben H. Winters for a ten-week online course on the mechanics of crafting the smart mystery, thriller, or novel of suspense. During the ten weeks of this intense class we will move through different aspects of craft, from take-their-breath-away beginnings to unique heroes to the elusive question of tone. Your instructor will offer a series of lectures—“live,” via the magic of the internet—on these and other subjects, and additionally assign supplemental readings via links and uploads, to broaden our understanding of how the great ones, from Conan Doyle to Highsmith to Connelly, make it look easy. There will also be a significant writing component, with the expectation that each student will “turn in” (via upload) approximately three pages of material each week, in response to prompts and exercises, to be returned with comments from the instructor. The ideal student will begin the course with a rough draft of a mystery or thriller, or at least an idea and a couple of chapters—the lessons and exercises will all be designed for immediate application to a work in progress.
This class is for accepted students only. Apply via the form below or at this link by 12:00pm on Tuesday, June 11th. The class is $430 for members and $455 for non-members.
- Instructor: Ben H. Winters
Ben H. Winters is the author, most recently, of The Last Policeman, which was selected as an Amazon “Best Book” of July 2012 and for the Indy NEXT List of the American Bookseller’s Association. His other works of fiction include the New York Times bestseller Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters and the middle-grade novel The Secret Life of Ms. Finkleman, an Edgar Award nominee and a Bank Street College Best Children’s Book of 2011. Winters’ other books include the science-fiction Tolstoy parody Android Karenina, the Finkleman sequel The Mystery of the Missing Everything, and the supernatural thriller Bedbugs, which has been optioned for the screen by Warner Brothers.
Writing the Novella
10 Wednesdays from 6:00-9:00pm at Grub Street headquarters. Begins June 26th.
Booker Prize-winning author Ian McEwan says the novella is the "perfect form of prose fiction," and indeed the novella is on the rise, from Denis Johnson's recent Pulitzer-finalist Train Dreams to Justin Torres's We the Animals to new publishers like Nouvella focusing on the in-between form. Over ten weeks each student will take an idea - whether from a story that didn't seem long enough or a novel that seemed too long, or from a character or situation or voice, etc. still in the mind - and turn it into a full-length draft between 10,000 and 40,000 words. We will use some of the techniques of screenwriting, short story-writing, and novel-writing, but the result will be all its own: a story of the "perfect" length. Please bring ideas and enthusiasm to our first class. Plan to write 1,000-4,000 words per week and to read two novellas total over the course duration. In-class lessons will help put this goal within reach by providing ideas, momentum, and direction. Each week we will be reading our words aloud and doing micro-workshops as well as talking about how to shape our narratives through subplots, increasing conflict, agency, consequences, secrets, and more. The goal is to have a full novella draft at the end of the course.
- Instructor: KL Pereira
KL Pereira is a teaching artist who lives mostly in her head; she's interested in the creaky, creepy underbelly of life and whatever lies beyond. She holds a BA in Literature and Languages from Bard College, an MA in Gender/Cultural Studies from Simmons College and an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College. Her fiction, nonfiction, and poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Mythic Deliruim, Jabberwocky, The Medulla Review, Bitch Magazine, Clamor Magazine, and other fine magazines, anthologies, chapbooks, and journals. You can read her column: Slaying Genre: A Monthly Column on Horror, Noir, Fantasy, and the Other Red-Headed Step-Children of the Literary World here. Pereira publishes erotic horror under a different name and is currently working on a collection of flash fiction fairy tales, a mytho-punk noir, and some zombie apocalyptica. For more information, visit www.darknesslovescompany.com.
There are 11 seats remaining in this class.
register as a member $430.00 register as a non-member $455.00Not a member? Become a Grubbie today!
Novel in Progress: Section A
10 Wednesdays from 6:30-9:30pm at Grub Street headquarters. Begins June 26th.
First drafts of novels can be messy, amorphous and daunting. Some writers feel extensive critical feedback can be counterproductive before the first draft is finished, yet find themselves losing their focus without support and guidance. In class, we will do exercises, discuss craft issues -- characterization, plot and outlining, point of view, voice, dialogue, setting -- and some of our favorite novels, and read short scenes from each other's work, providing guidance and feedback in an environment that recognizes the specific challenges of the novel in progress. Before the last class, all writers will be invited to submit twenty-five pages of their novels to receive a written critique from the instructor or have a one-on-one meeting to discuss the writer's work with suggested strategies for finishing the manuscript. Novels of all genres are welcome. Please bring the first page (double-spaced) of your novel to the first class.
- Instructor: Becky Tuch
- Becky Tuch has received literature fellowships from The MacDowell Colony and The Somerville Arts Council, awards from Briar Cliff Review, Byline Magazine, and The Tennessee Writers Alliance, and her fiction has been short-listed for a Pushcart Prize and Glimmer Train's Very Short Fiction Award. Other stories, essays, and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in Virginia Quarterly Review, Hobart, Quarter After Eight, Folio, HTMLGiant, and elsewhere. In 2011 and 2012 her work was included in The Drum's audio series at The Boston Book Festival. Additionally, she is the founding editor of The Review Review, a website which reviews literary magazines and interviews journal editors. The Review Review has twice been listed by Writer's Digest as "Best of the Best" among 101 Best Websites for Writers. She is also one of the founders of the writing and publishing blog, Beyond the Margins.
There are 7 seats remaining in this class.
register as a member $430.00 register as a non-member $455.00Not a member? Become a Grubbie today!
Creating Complex Characters
Thursday, June 27th, 6:30-9:30pm at Grub Street headquarters.
Stories often begin with a character the writer loves -- or loves to hate. But characters who come to life on the page are full of contradictions, neither wholly good nor entirely evil. How do we infuse our characters with the complexity that will make them believable? Through a combination of exercises and discussion of published work, this seminar will help you to create characters whose human contradictions make them vivid and memorable. You may come to class with a character already in mind, or you may start to create one through in-class exercises.
- Instructor: Lisa Borders
- Lisa Borders' first novel, Cloud Cuckoo Land, was chosen by Pat Conroy as the winner of River City Publishing's Fred Bonnie Award for Best First Novel and was published in 2002. Cloud Cuckoo Land also received fiction honors in the 2003 Massachusetts Book Awards. Her essay "Enchanted Night" was published in Don't You Forget About Me: Contemporary Writers on the Films of John Hughes (Simon & Schuster, 2007). Lisa has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and her short stories have appeared in Kalliope, Washington Square, Black Warrior Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Newport Review and other journals. She has received grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Somerville Arts Council and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and fellowships at the Millay Colony, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Hedgebrook and the Blue Mountain Center. More information on Lisa and her work is available at lisaborders.com.
There are 12 seats remaining in this class.
register as a member $50 register as a non-member $65Not a member? Become a Grubbie today!
Writing with Style
Friday, June 28th, 10:00am-5:00pm at Grub Street headquarters.
What's your writing style and how do you improve it? What makes Michael Ondaatje or George Saunders or Barry Hannah a stylist? Using examples from fiction and nonfiction, we will work out how (and when and why) to add music to your sentences. Students should bring with them the first page of a new story or essay. We will address issues of style in part through micro-editing: choosing the right verbs, using common words in new ways, cutting out unnecessary words and phrases, adding precision and specificity, and looking at how word order can transform a sentence. We'll also borrow poetic techniques, paying attention to the rhythm and cadence of a sentence, to meter and stressed syllables, and to the persona, or attitude, of the narrator. We will do a few in-class exercises and share some feedback on those pieces. You will leave with a cheat sheet of handy techniques that you can try in your own work.
- Instructor: Matthew Salesses
- Matthew Salesses is the author of I'm Not Saying, I'm Just Saying (Civil Coping Mechanisms, Feb 2013), The Last Repatriate (Nouvella), and the chapbooks, Our Island of Epidemics (PANK) and We Will Take What We Can Get (Publishing Genius). His fiction has appeared in Glimmer Train, Witness, American Short Fiction, The Literary Review, West Branch, and over fifty other journals and anthologies. He is the recipient of awards and fellowships from Glimmer Train, Mid-American Review, HTMLGIANT, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Emerson College, the University of New Orleans, and IMPAC. Currently, he serves as the Fiction Editor and a Contributing Writer for the Good Men Project. On the web, he is matthewsalesses.com and @salesses.
There are 12 seats remaining in this class.
register as a member $95 register as a non-member $115Not a member? Become a Grubbie today!
Finding Your Book
6 Sundays from 6:30-9:30pm at Grub Street headquarters. Begins June 30th.
Go on a six-week journey with literary agent Joanne Wyckoff of the Carol Mann Agency to “find your book” and start crafting a book proposal. Perhaps you have a number of essays that you think might be the beginnings of a book. Or you’ve written chapters of a memoir or nonfiction narrative. Or perhaps you’ve written a long article and are wondering if it can be expanded into a book. Through class discussion and sharing of manuscript material, students will explore their book idea to figure out if their concept or storyline is workable. The aim of the class is to help students find their book before embarking on writing a book proposal. We'll also discuss the importance of doing market research to determine the uniqueness of a book idea or storyline, as well as developing an author profile or platform. By the end of class, it is my hope that all students will have a workable synopsis/overview of their book and the beginnings of chapter-by-chapter summaries. This is a course that focuses on narrative nonfiction and memoir. The course is part lecture and part workshop. Students who wish to take this class should have taken writing classes before and should feel comfortable reading and critiquing other students’ work. Led by an instructor who has worked extensively as both a literary agent and an editor.
- Instructor: Joanne Wyckoff
Joanne Wyckoff is an agent with the Carol Mann Agency. Prior to joining CMA, she was an agent with Zachary Shuster Harmsworth. Before becoming an agent, Joanne worked as Senior Editor at Ballantine Books/Random House, and as Executive Editor at Beacon Press. As an agent, Joanne represents nonfiction and selected fiction. She has a particular love of the memoir and narrative nonfiction and is always looking for exciting new writing in these genres. She has a lot of experience working with academics and experts in diverse fields, helping them develop and write books for a broad market. Her nonfiction list includes books in psychology, women’s issues, education, health and wellness, self-help, natural history and anything about animals, religion and spirituality, and African-American issues.
There are 10 seats remaining in this class.
register as a member $280.00 register as a non-member $305.00Not a member? Become a Grubbie today!
"Boosts" for Your Writing Project or Career
Tuesday, July 2nd, 1:30-4:30pm at Grub Street headquarters.
In most workshops, instructors tend to focus on constructive criticism rather than constructive praise. Instructors do this mostly in the interest of time, and because constructive criticism is often easier to illustrate with examples or to compare with texts that are "working better." But these 1-on-1 Boost consultations work in a different way, focusing instead on what you are doing well. Choose from a 30-minute boost for $37.50 or a 60-minute boost for $75. You don't need to email any work in advance. All pages are looked at within the Boost session itself. If you're unable to meet in person, Boosts are available via a phone call or Skype session as well.To proceed, fill out the following form and Grub Street will follow up with you about payment and scheduling.
30-Minute Short Story/Nonfiction Boost (For a Short Piece of up to 3000 words)
In this consultation, the instructor will start by reading and reviewing one of your stories (or part of a story) that has already been workshopped and spend time discussing the strengths of the piece and, more importantly, why they are strengths. Not only will this bring you confidence, but it will also help you understand your strengths and how you might use them to best effect. If appropriate, you will also receive personally tailored tasks that seek to bring you confidence in areas where you need it. Short Fiction or Non-Fiction Boosts can be booked one at a time, or as a string of ongoing consultations. 60-Minute Book-Length Boost (For an Ongoing Novel, Novella or Book-Length Manuscript)
In this consultation, the instructor will look at an overview or outline of your project, along with an excerpt/excerpts from your manuscript in progress. The focus will be on your strengths so far and why they are strengths. Your instructor will also examine how you might best make use your talents in the rest of your project. Time will be taken to study any feedback that you received in class and put it to use in positive ways. Book-Length Boosts can also involve mini-tasks that will help you to work on your skills in a precise way, with the promise of motivational feedback. These Boosts can be booked one at a time, or as a string of ongoing consultations. 30- or 60-Minute Writing Career Boost
All writers deal with rejection. In fact, it is part and parcel of a successful writing career. But when it comes to getting published, it is all too easy to grind to a halt in the face of ongoing rejection slips. Yet submission is how we move forward, and as Pamela Painter advises, it can help to “keep hope in the mail.” In this Boost, you will discuss your career and/or aspirations with an instructor who has been an editor at a literary magazine and is a Senior Editor at an indie press. Not only will you discuss ways of dealing with ongoing rejection while continuing to write more rather than less, but you will also consider alternative ways of showcasing your work and receiving meaningful feedback as you move forward. This Boost can also involve a review of your cover letter and advice on researching markets/venues for your work.
In this consultation, the instructor will start by reading and reviewing one of your stories (or part of a story) that has already been workshopped and spend time discussing the strengths of the piece and, more importantly, why they are strengths. Not only will this bring you confidence, but it will also help you understand your strengths and how you might use them to best effect. If appropriate, you will also receive personally tailored tasks that seek to bring you confidence in areas where you need it. Short Fiction or Non-Fiction Boosts can be booked one at a time, or as a string of ongoing consultations. 60-Minute Book-Length Boost (For an Ongoing Novel, Novella or Book-Length Manuscript)
In this consultation, the instructor will look at an overview or outline of your project, along with an excerpt/excerpts from your manuscript in progress. The focus will be on your strengths so far and why they are strengths. Your instructor will also examine how you might best make use your talents in the rest of your project. Time will be taken to study any feedback that you received in class and put it to use in positive ways. Book-Length Boosts can also involve mini-tasks that will help you to work on your skills in a precise way, with the promise of motivational feedback. These Boosts can be booked one at a time, or as a string of ongoing consultations. 30- or 60-Minute Writing Career Boost
All writers deal with rejection. In fact, it is part and parcel of a successful writing career. But when it comes to getting published, it is all too easy to grind to a halt in the face of ongoing rejection slips. Yet submission is how we move forward, and as Pamela Painter advises, it can help to “keep hope in the mail.” In this Boost, you will discuss your career and/or aspirations with an instructor who has been an editor at a literary magazine and is a Senior Editor at an indie press. Not only will you discuss ways of dealing with ongoing rejection while continuing to write more rather than less, but you will also consider alternative ways of showcasing your work and receiving meaningful feedback as you move forward. This Boost can also involve a review of your cover letter and advice on researching markets/venues for your work.
- Instructor: Sue Williams
- Sue Williams is published in over thirty books and magazines, including Narrative, Night Train, Greatest Uncommon Denominator, Smokelong Quarterly, Salamander, Gargoyle, and Hint Fiction: a Norton Anthology. She has garnered several literary awards, including first place in the 2009 Carolyn A. Clark Flash Fiction Prize and the Glimmer Train Best Start Award. She has worked as an Assistant Editor at Narrative Magazine and is a writing instructor at Grub Street in Boston. Sue can be found online at www.suewilliams.co.uk.
Young Adult Novel Workout
Monday-Thursday, 2:30-5:30pm from July 8-11th at Grub Street headquarters.
Do you have a full or partial draft of a Young Adult (YA) novel? Are you ready to give yourself a rigorous YA novel workout? In this one-week intensive you’ll tackle exercises, take up your tools, and employ techniques and strategies for planning, shaping, and revising your work-in-progress. By the end of this class, you can expect to have a much better grasp of your novel and a clear direction for your path going forward—whether toward a complete first draft or a full revision. The course will be structured as follows:Class 1: character, voice, and dialogueClass 2: plot, tension, and pacingClass 3: themes, motifs, and imageryClass 4: the big pictureIn Class 4 participants will workshop brief excerpts from their YA novels-in-progress.Bring your full or partial novel draft on your laptop or as a hard copy. Bring writing implements, highlighters, sticky notes, and paper.
- Instructor: Holly Thompson
Holly Thompson (www.hatbooks.com) is the author of two young adult novels in verse: The Language Inside and Orchards, winner of the APALA Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, both published by Delacorte/Random House. She is also author of the adult novel Ash and the picture book The Wakame Gatherers. Raised in Massachusetts but a longtime resident of Japan, she recently edited Tomo: Friendship Through Fiction—An Anthology of Japan Teen Stories. A graduate of the N.Y.U. Creative Writing Program, she writes poetry and fiction for children, teens and adults, serves as regional advisor for the Japan chapter of SCBWI, and teaches creative writing and literature at Yokohama City University.
There are 12 seats remaining in this class.
register as a member $185.00 register as a non-member $205.00Not a member? Become a Grubbie today!
"Boosts" for Your Writing Project or Career
Tuesday, July 9th, 1:30-4:30pm at Grub Street headquarters.
In most workshops, instructors tend to focus on constructive criticism rather than constructive praise. Instructors do this mostly in the interest of time, and because constructive criticism is often easier to illustrate with examples or to compare with texts that are "working better." But these 1-on-1 Boost consultations work in a different way, focusing instead on what you are doing well. Choose from a 30-minute boost for $37.50 or a 60-minute boost for $75. You don't need to email any work in advance. All pages are looked at within the Boost session itself. If you're unable to meet in person, Boosts are available via a phone call or Skype session as well.To proceed, fill out the following form and Grub Street will follow up with you about payment and scheduling.
30-Minute Short Story/Nonfiction Boost (For a Short Piece of up to 3000 words)
In this consultation, the instructor will start by reading and reviewing one of your stories (or part of a story) that has already been workshopped and spend time discussing the strengths of the piece and, more importantly, why they are strengths. Not only will this bring you confidence, but it will also help you understand your strengths and how you might use them to best effect. If appropriate, you will also receive personally tailored tasks that seek to bring you confidence in areas where you need it. Short Fiction or Non-Fiction Boosts can be booked one at a time, or as a string of ongoing consultations. 60-Minute Book-Length Boost (For an Ongoing Novel, Novella or Book-Length Manuscript)
In this consultation, the instructor will look at an overview or outline of your project, along with an excerpt/excerpts from your manuscript in progress. The focus will be on your strengths so far and why they are strengths. Your instructor will also examine how you might best make use your talents in the rest of your project. Time will be taken to study any feedback that you received in class and put it to use in positive ways. Book-Length Boosts can also involve mini-tasks that will help you to work on your skills in a precise way, with the promise of motivational feedback. These Boosts can be booked one at a time, or as a string of ongoing consultations. 30- or 60-Minute Writing Career Boost
All writers deal with rejection. In fact, it is part and parcel of a successful writing career. But when it comes to getting published, it is all too easy to grind to a halt in the face of ongoing rejection slips. Yet submission is how we move forward, and as Pamela Painter advises, it can help to “keep hope in the mail.” In this Boost, you will discuss your career and/or aspirations with an instructor who has been an editor at a literary magazine and is a Senior Editor at an indie press. Not only will you discuss ways of dealing with ongoing rejection while continuing to write more rather than less, but you will also consider alternative ways of showcasing your work and receiving meaningful feedback as you move forward. This Boost can also involve a review of your cover letter and advice on researching markets/venues for your work.
In this consultation, the instructor will start by reading and reviewing one of your stories (or part of a story) that has already been workshopped and spend time discussing the strengths of the piece and, more importantly, why they are strengths. Not only will this bring you confidence, but it will also help you understand your strengths and how you might use them to best effect. If appropriate, you will also receive personally tailored tasks that seek to bring you confidence in areas where you need it. Short Fiction or Non-Fiction Boosts can be booked one at a time, or as a string of ongoing consultations. 60-Minute Book-Length Boost (For an Ongoing Novel, Novella or Book-Length Manuscript)
In this consultation, the instructor will look at an overview or outline of your project, along with an excerpt/excerpts from your manuscript in progress. The focus will be on your strengths so far and why they are strengths. Your instructor will also examine how you might best make use your talents in the rest of your project. Time will be taken to study any feedback that you received in class and put it to use in positive ways. Book-Length Boosts can also involve mini-tasks that will help you to work on your skills in a precise way, with the promise of motivational feedback. These Boosts can be booked one at a time, or as a string of ongoing consultations. 30- or 60-Minute Writing Career Boost
All writers deal with rejection. In fact, it is part and parcel of a successful writing career. But when it comes to getting published, it is all too easy to grind to a halt in the face of ongoing rejection slips. Yet submission is how we move forward, and as Pamela Painter advises, it can help to “keep hope in the mail.” In this Boost, you will discuss your career and/or aspirations with an instructor who has been an editor at a literary magazine and is a Senior Editor at an indie press. Not only will you discuss ways of dealing with ongoing rejection while continuing to write more rather than less, but you will also consider alternative ways of showcasing your work and receiving meaningful feedback as you move forward. This Boost can also involve a review of your cover letter and advice on researching markets/venues for your work.
- Instructor: Sue Williams
- Sue Williams is published in over thirty books and magazines, including Narrative, Night Train, Greatest Uncommon Denominator, Smokelong Quarterly, Salamander, Gargoyle, and Hint Fiction: a Norton Anthology. She has garnered several literary awards, including first place in the 2009 Carolyn A. Clark Flash Fiction Prize and the Glimmer Train Best Start Award. She has worked as an Assistant Editor at Narrative Magazine and is a writing instructor at Grub Street in Boston. Sue can be found online at www.suewilliams.co.uk.
Writing Social Justice
Friday, July 12th, 10:00am-5:00pm at Grub Street headquarters.
To change the world, first you've got to make people care. In this one-day class, we'll explore how writers have used the power of storytelling to give life to social justice issues in both fiction and nonfiction. What goes into such a narrative? What gets left out? And what strategies do writers use in researching and shaping their work? We'll look at published examples and do writing exercises to help you identify issues you're passionate about and get you started on the path of turning them into story. The instructor will also provide a list of suggested further reading in multiple genres and on multiple issues.
- Instructor: Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich
Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich is writing a book of combined family memoir and literary journalism about a Louisiana murder, in support of which she has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, the Millay Colony for the Arts, Blue Mountain Center, and the Rona Jaffe Foundation, as well as a scholarship from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She earned her MFA at Emerson College and her JD at Harvard Law School. Her essays appear in The New York Times, Oxford American, Fourth Genre, TriQuarterly Online, Bellingham Review (as the winner of the Annie Dillard Award for Creative Nonfiction), and elsewhere, and her fiction appears in Southeast Review and Minnetonka Review. She teaches creative writing at Cedar Crest College in Allentown, PA, and at Grub Street. Visit her online at www.alexandria-marzano-lesnevich.com.
There are 10 seats remaining in this class.
register as a member $95 register as a non-member $115Not a member? Become a Grubbie today!
The Murky Middle
Saturday, July 13th, 10:00am-5:00pm at Grub Street headquarters.
"Writing the middle of a novel can feel, for many writers, like being lost in the forest with neither a breadcrumb trail nor a compass. You know where you want to end up, but are not sure how to get there. If you’ve written at least 50 pages and feel lost in the murky middle of your novel, this class will help you forge a path toward the story’s climax. Through intensive in-class exercises and brainstorming, you will leave at the end of the day with a better understanding of your novel's structure, and a possible path out of the forest.
Please come to class with 12 copies of both the first paragraph of your novel and a one-page plot summary of what you’ve written so far. We will be working with these outlines in class."
- Instructor: Lisa Borders
- Lisa Borders' first novel, Cloud Cuckoo Land, was chosen by Pat Conroy as the winner of River City Publishing's Fred Bonnie Award for Best First Novel and was published in 2002. Cloud Cuckoo Land also received fiction honors in the 2003 Massachusetts Book Awards. Her essay "Enchanted Night" was published in Don't You Forget About Me: Contemporary Writers on the Films of John Hughes (Simon & Schuster, 2007). Lisa has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and her short stories have appeared in Kalliope, Washington Square, Black Warrior Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Newport Review and other journals. She has received grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Somerville Arts Council and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and fellowships at the Millay Colony, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Hedgebrook and the Blue Mountain Center. More information on Lisa and her work is available at lisaborders.com.
There are 12 seats remaining in this class.
register as a member $95 register as a non-member $115Not a member? Become a Grubbie today!
The Novel Series: Facing Your Revision
Saturday, July 13th, 10:00am-5:00pm at Grub Street headquarters.
You’ve completed a first draft or the last of many drafts, but now you face the daunting task of where to begin with your revision. Often, this process feels like breaking down a brick wall with a toothpick or trying to lasso a dozen frenzied pigeons. This course will offer revision techniques for many different writing personalities, detail the major concerns you should be looking for, and help you simplify the process and feel more in control. By the end of the course, you will have created a revision plan to help you move forward in the next phase of your work. Students should bring their laptops or notebooks and a digital or printed copy of your novel-in-progress for reference. Much of the course will consist of individual work as led by specific exercises in organization and planning as well as sharing and finding solutions for individual trouble spots within the group. This course is part of a monthly series of 10 one-day classes for novelists at the beginning or more advanced stages of their manuscripts.
- Instructor: Michelle Hoover
- Michelle Hoover is a full-time instructor at Boston University and teaches many novel courses at Grub Street, including Grub's intensive year-long novel program, the Novel Incubator. She was a finalist for the Dorothy Churchill Cappon Essay Prize and has published short stories and novel excerpts in numerous journals, including Prairie Schooner, The Massachusetts Review, StoryQuarterly and Confrontation, StoryQuarterly. She has been the Philip Roth Writer-in-Residence at Bucknell, a MacDowell Fellow, and in 2005 the winner of the PEN/New England Discovery Award for Fiction. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and published in Best New American Voices. Her debut novel, The Quickening, was shortlisted for the Center for Fiction's Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize, was a Finalist for the Indies Choice Debut of 2010 and Forward Magazine's Best Literary Book of 2010, and is a 2010 Massachusetts Book Award "Must Read" pick. For more, go to www.michelle-hoover.com.
There are 9 seats remaining in this class.
register as a member $95 register as a non-member $115Not a member? Become a Grubbie today!
"Boosts" for Your Writing Project or Career
Tuesday, July 16th, 1:30-4:30pm at Grub Street headquarters.
In most workshops, instructors tend to focus on constructive criticism rather than constructive praise. Instructors do this mostly in the interest of time, and because constructive criticism is often easier to illustrate with examples or to compare with texts that are "working better." But these 1-on-1 Boost consultations work in a different way, focusing instead on what you are doing well. Choose from a 30-minute boost for $37.50 or a 60-minute boost for $75. You don't need to email any work in advance. All pages are looked at within the Boost session itself. If you're unable to meet in person, Boosts are available via a phone call or Skype session as well.To proceed, fill out the following form and Grub Street will follow up with you about payment and scheduling.
30-Minute Short Story/Nonfiction Boost (For a Short Piece of up to 3000 words)
In this consultation, the instructor will start by reading and reviewing one of your stories (or part of a story) that has already been workshopped and spend time discussing the strengths of the piece and, more importantly, why they are strengths. Not only will this bring you confidence, but it will also help you understand your strengths and how you might use them to best effect. If appropriate, you will also receive personally tailored tasks that seek to bring you confidence in areas where you need it. Short Fiction or Non-Fiction Boosts can be booked one at a time, or as a string of ongoing consultations. 60-Minute Book-Length Boost (For an Ongoing Novel, Novella or Book-Length Manuscript)
In this consultation, the instructor will look at an overview or outline of your project, along with an excerpt/excerpts from your manuscript in progress. The focus will be on your strengths so far and why they are strengths. Your instructor will also examine how you might best make use your talents in the rest of your project. Time will be taken to study any feedback that you received in class and put it to use in positive ways. Book-Length Boosts can also involve mini-tasks that will help you to work on your skills in a precise way, with the promise of motivational feedback. These Boosts can be booked one at a time, or as a string of ongoing consultations. 30- or 60-Minute Writing Career Boost
All writers deal with rejection. In fact, it is part and parcel of a successful writing career. But when it comes to getting published, it is all too easy to grind to a halt in the face of ongoing rejection slips. Yet submission is how we move forward, and as Pamela Painter advises, it can help to “keep hope in the mail.” In this Boost, you will discuss your career and/or aspirations with an instructor who has been an editor at a literary magazine and is a Senior Editor at an indie press. Not only will you discuss ways of dealing with ongoing rejection while continuing to write more rather than less, but you will also consider alternative ways of showcasing your work and receiving meaningful feedback as you move forward. This Boost can also involve a review of your cover letter and advice on researching markets/venues for your work.
In this consultation, the instructor will start by reading and reviewing one of your stories (or part of a story) that has already been workshopped and spend time discussing the strengths of the piece and, more importantly, why they are strengths. Not only will this bring you confidence, but it will also help you understand your strengths and how you might use them to best effect. If appropriate, you will also receive personally tailored tasks that seek to bring you confidence in areas where you need it. Short Fiction or Non-Fiction Boosts can be booked one at a time, or as a string of ongoing consultations. 60-Minute Book-Length Boost (For an Ongoing Novel, Novella or Book-Length Manuscript)
In this consultation, the instructor will look at an overview or outline of your project, along with an excerpt/excerpts from your manuscript in progress. The focus will be on your strengths so far and why they are strengths. Your instructor will also examine how you might best make use your talents in the rest of your project. Time will be taken to study any feedback that you received in class and put it to use in positive ways. Book-Length Boosts can also involve mini-tasks that will help you to work on your skills in a precise way, with the promise of motivational feedback. These Boosts can be booked one at a time, or as a string of ongoing consultations. 30- or 60-Minute Writing Career Boost
All writers deal with rejection. In fact, it is part and parcel of a successful writing career. But when it comes to getting published, it is all too easy to grind to a halt in the face of ongoing rejection slips. Yet submission is how we move forward, and as Pamela Painter advises, it can help to “keep hope in the mail.” In this Boost, you will discuss your career and/or aspirations with an instructor who has been an editor at a literary magazine and is a Senior Editor at an indie press. Not only will you discuss ways of dealing with ongoing rejection while continuing to write more rather than less, but you will also consider alternative ways of showcasing your work and receiving meaningful feedback as you move forward. This Boost can also involve a review of your cover letter and advice on researching markets/venues for your work.
- Instructor: Sue Williams
- Sue Williams is published in over thirty books and magazines, including Narrative, Night Train, Greatest Uncommon Denominator, Smokelong Quarterly, Salamander, Gargoyle, and Hint Fiction: a Norton Anthology. She has garnered several literary awards, including first place in the 2009 Carolyn A. Clark Flash Fiction Prize and the Glimmer Train Best Start Award. She has worked as an Assistant Editor at Narrative Magazine and is a writing instructor at Grub Street in Boston. Sue can be found online at www.suewilliams.co.uk.
"Boosts" for Your Writing Project or Career
Tuesday, July 23rd, 1:30-4:30pm at Grub Street headquarters.
In most workshops, instructors tend to focus on constructive criticism rather than constructive praise. Instructors do this mostly in the interest of time, and because constructive criticism is often easier to illustrate with examples or to compare with texts that are "working better." But these 1-on-1 Boost consultations work in a different way, focusing instead on what you are doing well. Choose from a 30-minute boost for $37.50 or a 60-minute boost for $75. You don't need to email any work in advance. All pages are looked at within the Boost session itself. If you're unable to meet in person, Boosts are available via a phone call or Skype session as well.To proceed, fill out the following form and Grub Street will follow up with you about payment and scheduling.
30-Minute Short Story/Nonfiction Boost (For a Short Piece of up to 3000 words)
In this consultation, the instructor will start by reading and reviewing one of your stories (or part of a story) that has already been workshopped and spend time discussing the strengths of the piece and, more importantly, why they are strengths. Not only will this bring you confidence, but it will also help you understand your strengths and how you might use them to best effect. If appropriate, you will also receive personally tailored tasks that seek to bring you confidence in areas where you need it. Short Fiction or Non-Fiction Boosts can be booked one at a time, or as a string of ongoing consultations. 60-Minute Book-Length Boost (For an Ongoing Novel, Novella or Book-Length Manuscript)
In this consultation, the instructor will look at an overview or outline of your project, along with an excerpt/excerpts from your manuscript in progress. The focus will be on your strengths so far and why they are strengths. Your instructor will also examine how you might best make use your talents in the rest of your project. Time will be taken to study any feedback that you received in class and put it to use in positive ways. Book-Length Boosts can also involve mini-tasks that will help you to work on your skills in a precise way, with the promise of motivational feedback. These Boosts can be booked one at a time, or as a string of ongoing consultations. 30- or 60-Minute Writing Career Boost
All writers deal with rejection. In fact, it is part and parcel of a successful writing career. But when it comes to getting published, it is all too easy to grind to a halt in the face of ongoing rejection slips. Yet submission is how we move forward, and as Pamela Painter advises, it can help to “keep hope in the mail.” In this Boost, you will discuss your career and/or aspirations with an instructor who has been an editor at a literary magazine and is a Senior Editor at an indie press. Not only will you discuss ways of dealing with ongoing rejection while continuing to write more rather than less, but you will also consider alternative ways of showcasing your work and receiving meaningful feedback as you move forward. This Boost can also involve a review of your cover letter and advice on researching markets/venues for your work.
In this consultation, the instructor will start by reading and reviewing one of your stories (or part of a story) that has already been workshopped and spend time discussing the strengths of the piece and, more importantly, why they are strengths. Not only will this bring you confidence, but it will also help you understand your strengths and how you might use them to best effect. If appropriate, you will also receive personally tailored tasks that seek to bring you confidence in areas where you need it. Short Fiction or Non-Fiction Boosts can be booked one at a time, or as a string of ongoing consultations. 60-Minute Book-Length Boost (For an Ongoing Novel, Novella or Book-Length Manuscript)
In this consultation, the instructor will look at an overview or outline of your project, along with an excerpt/excerpts from your manuscript in progress. The focus will be on your strengths so far and why they are strengths. Your instructor will also examine how you might best make use your talents in the rest of your project. Time will be taken to study any feedback that you received in class and put it to use in positive ways. Book-Length Boosts can also involve mini-tasks that will help you to work on your skills in a precise way, with the promise of motivational feedback. These Boosts can be booked one at a time, or as a string of ongoing consultations. 30- or 60-Minute Writing Career Boost
All writers deal with rejection. In fact, it is part and parcel of a successful writing career. But when it comes to getting published, it is all too easy to grind to a halt in the face of ongoing rejection slips. Yet submission is how we move forward, and as Pamela Painter advises, it can help to “keep hope in the mail.” In this Boost, you will discuss your career and/or aspirations with an instructor who has been an editor at a literary magazine and is a Senior Editor at an indie press. Not only will you discuss ways of dealing with ongoing rejection while continuing to write more rather than less, but you will also consider alternative ways of showcasing your work and receiving meaningful feedback as you move forward. This Boost can also involve a review of your cover letter and advice on researching markets/venues for your work.
- Instructor: Sue Williams
- Sue Williams is published in over thirty books and magazines, including Narrative, Night Train, Greatest Uncommon Denominator, Smokelong Quarterly, Salamander, Gargoyle, and Hint Fiction: a Norton Anthology. She has garnered several literary awards, including first place in the 2009 Carolyn A. Clark Flash Fiction Prize and the Glimmer Train Best Start Award. She has worked as an Assistant Editor at Narrative Magazine and is a writing instructor at Grub Street in Boston. Sue can be found online at www.suewilliams.co.uk.
Micro-Editing
Saturday, July 27th, 10:30am-1:30pm at Grub Street headquarters.
Before an editor evaluates your manuscript’s themes, plot, characters, or voice, he or she judges its sentences. The best way to impress any reader is to write clear and efficient prose. Good sentence-level editing can increase the pace, enhance the description, and deepen the mood of your work. In short, it can make your writing more compelling. In this workshop, we will take apart and reassemble sentences and paragraphs from both fiction and nonfiction drafts. You will learn to read like an editor, to question every word and remove abstraction in order to take your writing to the next level.
- Instructor: Michelle Seaton
- Michelle Seaton has been an instructor with Grub Street since 2000, teaching such classes as 6 Weeks-6 Essays, Tour of the Essay, and Master Narrative Nonfiction. She is also the lead instructor and created the curriculum for Grub Street's Memoir Project, a program that offers free memoir classes to senior citizens in Boston neighborhoods. The project has visited ten Boston neighborhoods and produced three anthologies. Twenty-two participants on Nantucket have also completed a Memoir Project class, and that anthology is forthcoming. Seaton’s nonfiction work has been published in Bostonia, Yankee, Robb Report and The Pinch. Her essay, “How to Work a Locker Room” appeared in the 2009 edition of Best American Nonrequired Reading. It is based on her experience covering the National Hockey League for National Public Radio's Only a Game, a program for which she has been a frequent contributor for 14 years. For the show, she has reported on topics ranging from asthma camp to professional wrestling to bird watching. Her fiction has appeared in the Sycamore Review and Quiddity International Journal. She is the coauthor of The Way of Boys (William Morrow, 2009). Her other book projects include The Cardiac Recovery Handbook, coauthored with Dr. Paul Kligfield, Medical Director of Cardiology at the Weill-Cornell Medical Center of the New York Presbyterian Hospital.
There are 12 seats remaining in this class.
register as a member $50 register as a non-member $65Not a member? Become a Grubbie today!
"Boosts" for Your Writing Project or Career
Tuesday, July 30th, 1:30-4:30pm at Grub Street headquarters.
In most workshops, instructors tend to focus on constructive criticism rather than constructive praise. Instructors do this mostly in the interest of time, and because constructive criticism is often easier to illustrate with examples or to compare with texts that are "working better." But these 1-on-1 Boost consultations work in a different way, focusing instead on what you are doing well. Choose from a 30-minute boost for $37.50 or a 60-minute boost for $75. You don't need to email any work in advance. All pages are looked at within the Boost session itself. If you're unable to meet in person, Boosts are available via a phone call or Skype session as well.To proceed, fill out the following form and Grub Street will follow up with you about payment and scheduling.
30-Minute Short Story/Nonfiction Boost (For a Short Piece of up to 3000 words)
In this consultation, the instructor will start by reading and reviewing one of your stories (or part of a story) that has already been workshopped and spend time discussing the strengths of the piece and, more importantly, why they are strengths. Not only will this bring you confidence, but it will also help you understand your strengths and how you might use them to best effect. If appropriate, you will also receive personally tailored tasks that seek to bring you confidence in areas where you need it. Short Fiction or Non-Fiction Boosts can be booked one at a time, or as a string of ongoing consultations. 60-Minute Book-Length Boost (For an Ongoing Novel, Novella or Book-Length Manuscript)
In this consultation, the instructor will look at an overview or outline of your project, along with an excerpt/excerpts from your manuscript in progress. The focus will be on your strengths so far and why they are strengths. Your instructor will also examine how you might best make use your talents in the rest of your project. Time will be taken to study any feedback that you received in class and put it to use in positive ways. Book-Length Boosts can also involve mini-tasks that will help you to work on your skills in a precise way, with the promise of motivational feedback. These Boosts can be booked one at a time, or as a string of ongoing consultations. 30- or 60-Minute Writing Career Boost
All writers deal with rejection. In fact, it is part and parcel of a successful writing career. But when it comes to getting published, it is all too easy to grind to a halt in the face of ongoing rejection slips. Yet submission is how we move forward, and as Pamela Painter advises, it can help to “keep hope in the mail.” In this Boost, you will discuss your career and/or aspirations with an instructor who has been an editor at a literary magazine and is a Senior Editor at an indie press. Not only will you discuss ways of dealing with ongoing rejection while continuing to write more rather than less, but you will also consider alternative ways of showcasing your work and receiving meaningful feedback as you move forward. This Boost can also involve a review of your cover letter and advice on researching markets/venues for your work.
In this consultation, the instructor will start by reading and reviewing one of your stories (or part of a story) that has already been workshopped and spend time discussing the strengths of the piece and, more importantly, why they are strengths. Not only will this bring you confidence, but it will also help you understand your strengths and how you might use them to best effect. If appropriate, you will also receive personally tailored tasks that seek to bring you confidence in areas where you need it. Short Fiction or Non-Fiction Boosts can be booked one at a time, or as a string of ongoing consultations. 60-Minute Book-Length Boost (For an Ongoing Novel, Novella or Book-Length Manuscript)
In this consultation, the instructor will look at an overview or outline of your project, along with an excerpt/excerpts from your manuscript in progress. The focus will be on your strengths so far and why they are strengths. Your instructor will also examine how you might best make use your talents in the rest of your project. Time will be taken to study any feedback that you received in class and put it to use in positive ways. Book-Length Boosts can also involve mini-tasks that will help you to work on your skills in a precise way, with the promise of motivational feedback. These Boosts can be booked one at a time, or as a string of ongoing consultations. 30- or 60-Minute Writing Career Boost
All writers deal with rejection. In fact, it is part and parcel of a successful writing career. But when it comes to getting published, it is all too easy to grind to a halt in the face of ongoing rejection slips. Yet submission is how we move forward, and as Pamela Painter advises, it can help to “keep hope in the mail.” In this Boost, you will discuss your career and/or aspirations with an instructor who has been an editor at a literary magazine and is a Senior Editor at an indie press. Not only will you discuss ways of dealing with ongoing rejection while continuing to write more rather than less, but you will also consider alternative ways of showcasing your work and receiving meaningful feedback as you move forward. This Boost can also involve a review of your cover letter and advice on researching markets/venues for your work.
- Instructor: Sue Williams
- Sue Williams is published in over thirty books and magazines, including Narrative, Night Train, Greatest Uncommon Denominator, Smokelong Quarterly, Salamander, Gargoyle, and Hint Fiction: a Norton Anthology. She has garnered several literary awards, including first place in the 2009 Carolyn A. Clark Flash Fiction Prize and the Glimmer Train Best Start Award. She has worked as an Assistant Editor at Narrative Magazine and is a writing instructor at Grub Street in Boston. Sue can be found online at www.suewilliams.co.uk.
Non-Linear Narratives and Interactive Storytelling
Saturday, August 3rd, 10:00am-5:00pm at Grub Street headquarters.
"In this one-day seminar, writers will explore basic screenplay structure and techniques for traditional screenwriting that can be adapted to create narratives for use in interactive game design, webisodes, and other digital storytelling vehicles.
We will begin by looking closely at classic linear narrative structure and traditional screenplay story and character arcs as the foundation of visual communication. We will view and deconstruct film clips, complete writing exercises that focus on character development and narrative structure as keys to effective story-world creation, and then consider how story structure can be used to create nonlinear narratives and truly interactive experiences for audiences. In addition to excerpts from films, we will look at examples of transmedia projects including webisodes and online games, and then assess how users interface with these story worlds. "
- Instructor: Cheryl Eagan-Donovan
Cheryl Eagan-Donovan is a writer and documentary filmmaker. She studied writing and literature at Goddard College, has a BS from Boston University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University. She has published poetry and articles about Shakespeare, screenwriting, and film. She teaches screenwriting at BU’s Center for Digital Imaging Arts and at Northeastern University. Her new film, Nothing is Truer than Truth, is based on the book Shakespeare By Another Name. Cheryl is a lecturer at Shakespeare conferences around the country. Her new ten-minute play, Ve-Ri-Tas, had its first staged reading at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in January. Her debut documentary, All Kindsa Girls, screened at art house theaters and film festivals in London, Toronto, and throughout the US, is featured in Paul Sherman’s book Big Screen Boston, and was short-listed for the PBS series POV. The film’s theatrical screenings included the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago, and the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Boston. She served as President of Women in Film & Video/New England for several years, and was the 2012 Judge for the WIFVNE Annual Screenwriting Competition. She also served as a panelist for the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts 2012 Play/Screenwriting Fellowship. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of The Next Door Theater in Winchester, Massachusetts.
There are 12 seats remaining in this class.
register as a member $95 register as a non-member $115Not a member? Become a Grubbie today!
"Boosts" for Your Writing Project or Career
Tuesday, August 6th, 1:30-4:30pm at Grub Street headquarters.
In most workshops, instructors tend to focus on constructive criticism rather than constructive praise. Instructors do this mostly in the interest of time, and because constructive criticism is often easier to illustrate with examples or to compare with texts that are "working better." But these 1-on-1 Boost consultations work in a different way, focusing instead on what you are doing well. Choose from a 30-minute boost for $37.50 or a 60-minute boost for $75. You don't need to email any work in advance. All pages are looked at within the Boost session itself. If you're unable to meet in person, Boosts are available via a phone call or Skype session as well.To proceed, fill out the following form and Grub Street will follow up with you about payment and scheduling.
30-Minute Short Story/Nonfiction Boost (For a Short Piece of up to 3000 words)
In this consultation, the instructor will start by reading and reviewing one of your stories (or part of a story) that has already been workshopped and spend time discussing the strengths of the piece and, more importantly, why they are strengths. Not only will this bring you confidence, but it will also help you understand your strengths and how you might use them to best effect. If appropriate, you will also receive personally tailored tasks that seek to bring you confidence in areas where you need it. Short Fiction or Non-Fiction Boosts can be booked one at a time, or as a string of ongoing consultations. 60-Minute Book-Length Boost (For an Ongoing Novel, Novella or Book-Length Manuscript)
In this consultation, the instructor will look at an overview or outline of your project, along with an excerpt/excerpts from your manuscript in progress. The focus will be on your strengths so far and why they are strengths. Your instructor will also examine how you might best make use your talents in the rest of your project. Time will be taken to study any feedback that you received in class and put it to use in positive ways. Book-Length Boosts can also involve mini-tasks that will help you to work on your skills in a precise way, with the promise of motivational feedback. These Boosts can be booked one at a time, or as a string of ongoing consultations. 30- or 60-Minute Writing Career Boost
All writers deal with rejection. In fact, it is part and parcel of a successful writing career. But when it comes to getting published, it is all too easy to grind to a halt in the face of ongoing rejection slips. Yet submission is how we move forward, and as Pamela Painter advises, it can help to “keep hope in the mail.” In this Boost, you will discuss your career and/or aspirations with an instructor who has been an editor at a literary magazine and is a Senior Editor at an indie press. Not only will you discuss ways of dealing with ongoing rejection while continuing to write more rather than less, but you will also consider alternative ways of showcasing your work and receiving meaningful feedback as you move forward. This Boost can also involve a review of your cover letter and advice on researching markets/venues for your work.
In this consultation, the instructor will start by reading and reviewing one of your stories (or part of a story) that has already been workshopped and spend time discussing the strengths of the piece and, more importantly, why they are strengths. Not only will this bring you confidence, but it will also help you understand your strengths and how you might use them to best effect. If appropriate, you will also receive personally tailored tasks that seek to bring you confidence in areas where you need it. Short Fiction or Non-Fiction Boosts can be booked one at a time, or as a string of ongoing consultations. 60-Minute Book-Length Boost (For an Ongoing Novel, Novella or Book-Length Manuscript)
In this consultation, the instructor will look at an overview or outline of your project, along with an excerpt/excerpts from your manuscript in progress. The focus will be on your strengths so far and why they are strengths. Your instructor will also examine how you might best make use your talents in the rest of your project. Time will be taken to study any feedback that you received in class and put it to use in positive ways. Book-Length Boosts can also involve mini-tasks that will help you to work on your skills in a precise way, with the promise of motivational feedback. These Boosts can be booked one at a time, or as a string of ongoing consultations. 30- or 60-Minute Writing Career Boost
All writers deal with rejection. In fact, it is part and parcel of a successful writing career. But when it comes to getting published, it is all too easy to grind to a halt in the face of ongoing rejection slips. Yet submission is how we move forward, and as Pamela Painter advises, it can help to “keep hope in the mail.” In this Boost, you will discuss your career and/or aspirations with an instructor who has been an editor at a literary magazine and is a Senior Editor at an indie press. Not only will you discuss ways of dealing with ongoing rejection while continuing to write more rather than less, but you will also consider alternative ways of showcasing your work and receiving meaningful feedback as you move forward. This Boost can also involve a review of your cover letter and advice on researching markets/venues for your work.
- Instructor: Sue Williams
- Sue Williams is published in over thirty books and magazines, including Narrative, Night Train, Greatest Uncommon Denominator, Smokelong Quarterly, Salamander, Gargoyle, and Hint Fiction: a Norton Anthology. She has garnered several literary awards, including first place in the 2009 Carolyn A. Clark Flash Fiction Prize and the Glimmer Train Best Start Award. She has worked as an Assistant Editor at Narrative Magazine and is a writing instructor at Grub Street in Boston. Sue can be found online at www.suewilliams.co.uk.
The Hero of a Thousand Stories: Unlocking the Power of Myth for Your Story Structure
Friday, August 9th, 10:30am-1:30pm at Grub Street headquarters.
Joseph Campbell’s Hero of a Thousand Faces has influenced writers and filmmakers for decades. The book accesses centuries of myth and culture to reveal that all stories follow a similar pattern. By understanding that pattern, the writer can deeply connect with their audience. “The Monomyth” has been used by creators such as George Lucas, J.K. Rowling, Neil Gaiman, and Philip Pullman and has influenced films as diverse as The Matrix and Darren Aranofsky’s Black Swan. By the end of this seminar, writers will have a better understanding of the seventeen stages of the Monomyth and be able to use these archetypical scenes to add power and meaning to their work. We will discuss the various stages of the Monomyth while using examples from novels and films to illustrate each stage. During the question-and-answer segment, students may share their work in order to see how the Monomyth fits their writing. This seminar is perfect for novelists, screenwriters, and short story writers interested in using the power of myth to enhance their writing. This class is a great compliment to Screenwriting I or II and Novel in Progress.
- Instructor: Mark Fogarty
- Mark Fogarty is the president and Co-founder of the Rhode Island Film Collaborative (RIFC), a non-profit created to help local filmmakers find resources in the Ocean State. The RIFC has more than 1,900 members and has been involved in the production of dozens of films. For more information, visit www.rifcfilms.com. Mark started Exile Movies in 2003 and has worked as a director of photography and editor on feature-length and short films. Mark recently directed the feature-length epic, smalltown, from his screenplay. You can find out more about the film at www.smalltownmovie.com. As an actor, Mark has been in dozens of films and uses his knowledge of acting to inform his writing. Mark graduated from Emerson College with a degree in filmmaking, and works as a freelance editor and writer.
There are 12 seats remaining in this class.
register as a member $50 register as a non-member $65Not a member? Become a Grubbie today!
Tackling Novel Revision: Techniques and Tips
Friday, August 9th, 10:00am-5:00pm at Grub Street headquarters.
Your novel’s first draft is done; now to revise. But how to create order from chaos? How to keep the big picture in mind while focusing on details? How to keep track of story elements and deepen themes? For students with a completed novel draft, this workshop offers helpful techniques and practical approaches to tackling revision in order to ready your work for submission. Bring along your own methods to share, and bring your novel draft to class on your laptop or as a hard copy, along with writing implements, highlighters, sticky notes, and paper. Be prepared to dive into revision.
- Instructor: Holly Thompson
- Holly Thompson (www.hatbooks.com) is the author of two young adult novels in verse: The Language Inside and Orchards, winner of the APALA Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, both published by Delacorte/Random House. She is also author of the adult novel Ash and the picture book The Wakame Gatherers. Raised in Massachusetts but a longtime resident of Japan, she recently edited Tomo: Friendship Through Fiction—An Anthology of Japan Teen Stories. A graduate of the N.Y.U. Creative Writing Program, she writes poetry and fiction for children, teens and adults, serves as regional advisor for the Japan chapter of SCBWI, and teaches creative writing and literature at Yokohama City University.
There are 12 seats remaining in this class.
register as a member $95 register as a non-member $115Not a member? Become a Grubbie today!
Making Stuff Up: Creative Research Methods
Friday, August 9th, 2:30-5:30pm at Grub Street headquarters.
What do creative writers mean by research and development? How do you plan and prepare to write? How do you develop your own unique writing practice? This 3-hour seminar will introduce you to four ways of thinking about a new project -- question, study, observe, and imagine -- and give you concrete tools and writing exercises to help you master the blank page. Designed for playwrights, screenwriters, novelists, and short fiction writers.
- Instructor: Nina Louise Morrison
Nina Louise Morrison is a playwright, actor, director and dramaturg. Her plays include Mad Props, House Rules, The Red Plague, Constitution and Three Patriotic Acts. She is a Richard Rodgers Fellow, a Shubert Foundation grantee, and an affiliated artist with Free Hands Theatre Company, Boston Bohemia, Playwrights Commons' Freedom Art Retreat and Company One’s Playground. Before moving to Boston, Nina was the Senior Program Associate at the Philadelphia Theater Initiative. Training: MFA Columbia University, the National Theatre Institute at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center, the New Actors Workshop, and Oberlin College. More info at ninalouisemorrison.wordpress.com.
There are 12 seats remaining in this class.
register as a member $50 register as a non-member $65Not a member? Become a Grubbie today!
How to Plan, Write, and Develop a Book
Saturday, August 10th, 10:00am-5:00pm at Grub Street headquarters.
Books often start with a simple yearning to explore new territory: fascinating topics, characters who won’t leave you alone, a good story. But manuscripts get unwieldy, fast. Nine out of ten writers never finish their manuscripts because most first-time book writers get lost without good structure and planning. Mary Carroll Moore, award-winning author of 13 books in three genres and a PEN/Faulkner nominee, will guide you through a simple and successful book-writing process that can take your book from idea to publication, a process using a three-act structure that eases organization and makes a manuscript vivid and engaging to readers. Find out why Aristotle believed that three acts formed a perfect structure for all stories, why humans lean toward beginning, middle, and end, and why we crave the emotional catharsis of that format in literature too. For all levels of writers working on nonfiction, memoir, or novels, at any stage from seed idea to draft. Learn why strong structuring is the key to selling a book in today's competitive publishing industry.
- Instructor: Mary Carroll Moore
- Mary Carroll Moore’s twelve published books include the PEN/Faulkner nominated novel Qualities of Light (Bella Books); How to Master Change in Your Life: Sixty-seven Ways to Handle Life’s Toughest Moments (Eckankar Books); Cholesterol Cures (Rodale Press), and the award-winning Healthy Cooking (Ortho Publications). Your Book Starts Here: Create, Craft, and Sell Your First Novel, Memoir, or Nonfiction Book, based on her How to Plan, Write, and Develop a Book writing workshops, will be released in fall 2010. A former nationally syndicated columnist for the Los Angeles Times, over 300 of Mary’s essays, short stories, articles, and poetry have appeared in literary journals, magazines, and newspapers around the U.S. and have won awards with the McKnight Awards for Creative Prose, Glimmer Train Press, the Loft Mentor Series, and other writing competitions. She teaches creative writing in New York, Boston, New Hampshire, and Minnesota and writes a weekly blog for book writers at http://howtoplanwriteanddevelopabook.blogspot.com.
There are 12 seats remaining in this class.
register as a member $95 register as a non-member $115Not a member? Become a Grubbie today!
"Boosts" for Your Writing Project or Career
Tuesday, August 13th, 1:30-4:30pm at Grub Street headquarters.
In most workshops, instructors tend to focus on constructive criticism rather than constructive praise. Instructors do this mostly in the interest of time, and because constructive criticism is often easier to illustrate with examples or to compare with texts that are "working better." But these 1-on-1 Boost consultations work in a different way, focusing instead on what you are doing well. Choose from a 30-minute boost for $37.50 or a 60-minute boost for $75. You don't need to email any work in advance. All pages are looked at within the Boost session itself. If you're unable to meet in person, Boosts are available via a phone call or Skype session as well.To proceed, fill out the following form and Grub Street will follow up with you about payment and scheduling.
30-Minute Short Story/Nonfiction Boost (For a Short Piece of up to 3000 words)
In this consultation, the instructor will start by reading and reviewing one of your stories (or part of a story) that has already been workshopped and spend time discussing the strengths of the piece and, more importantly, why they are strengths. Not only will this bring you confidence, but it will also help you understand your strengths and how you might use them to best effect. If appropriate, you will also receive personally tailored tasks that seek to bring you confidence in areas where you need it. Short Fiction or Non-Fiction Boosts can be booked one at a time, or as a string of ongoing consultations. 60-Minute Book-Length Boost (For an Ongoing Novel, Novella or Book-Length Manuscript)
In this consultation, the instructor will look at an overview or outline of your project, along with an excerpt/excerpts from your manuscript in progress. The focus will be on your strengths so far and why they are strengths. Your instructor will also examine how you might best make use your talents in the rest of your project. Time will be taken to study any feedback that you received in class and put it to use in positive ways. Book-Length Boosts can also involve mini-tasks that will help you to work on your skills in a precise way, with the promise of motivational feedback. These Boosts can be booked one at a time, or as a string of ongoing consultations. 30- or 60-Minute Writing Career Boost
All writers deal with rejection. In fact, it is part and parcel of a successful writing career. But when it comes to getting published, it is all too easy to grind to a halt in the face of ongoing rejection slips. Yet submission is how we move forward, and as Pamela Painter advises, it can help to “keep hope in the mail.” In this Boost, you will discuss your career and/or aspirations with an instructor who has been an editor at a literary magazine and is a Senior Editor at an indie press. Not only will you discuss ways of dealing with ongoing rejection while continuing to write more rather than less, but you will also consider alternative ways of showcasing your work and receiving meaningful feedback as you move forward. This Boost can also involve a review of your cover letter and advice on researching markets/venues for your work.
In this consultation, the instructor will start by reading and reviewing one of your stories (or part of a story) that has already been workshopped and spend time discussing the strengths of the piece and, more importantly, why they are strengths. Not only will this bring you confidence, but it will also help you understand your strengths and how you might use them to best effect. If appropriate, you will also receive personally tailored tasks that seek to bring you confidence in areas where you need it. Short Fiction or Non-Fiction Boosts can be booked one at a time, or as a string of ongoing consultations. 60-Minute Book-Length Boost (For an Ongoing Novel, Novella or Book-Length Manuscript)
In this consultation, the instructor will look at an overview or outline of your project, along with an excerpt/excerpts from your manuscript in progress. The focus will be on your strengths so far and why they are strengths. Your instructor will also examine how you might best make use your talents in the rest of your project. Time will be taken to study any feedback that you received in class and put it to use in positive ways. Book-Length Boosts can also involve mini-tasks that will help you to work on your skills in a precise way, with the promise of motivational feedback. These Boosts can be booked one at a time, or as a string of ongoing consultations. 30- or 60-Minute Writing Career Boost
All writers deal with rejection. In fact, it is part and parcel of a successful writing career. But when it comes to getting published, it is all too easy to grind to a halt in the face of ongoing rejection slips. Yet submission is how we move forward, and as Pamela Painter advises, it can help to “keep hope in the mail.” In this Boost, you will discuss your career and/or aspirations with an instructor who has been an editor at a literary magazine and is a Senior Editor at an indie press. Not only will you discuss ways of dealing with ongoing rejection while continuing to write more rather than less, but you will also consider alternative ways of showcasing your work and receiving meaningful feedback as you move forward. This Boost can also involve a review of your cover letter and advice on researching markets/venues for your work.
- Instructor: Sue Williams
- Sue Williams is published in over thirty books and magazines, including Narrative, Night Train, Greatest Uncommon Denominator, Smokelong Quarterly, Salamander, Gargoyle, and Hint Fiction: a Norton Anthology. She has garnered several literary awards, including first place in the 2009 Carolyn A. Clark Flash Fiction Prize and the Glimmer Train Best Start Award. She has worked as an Assistant Editor at Narrative Magazine and is a writing instructor at Grub Street in Boston. Sue can be found online at www.suewilliams.co.uk.
Writing Dialogue
Saturday, August 17th, 10:00am-5:00pm at Grub Street headquarters.
"Writing dialogue can be one of the most difficult and significant tasks a writer faces. The techniques a writer learns along the way may prepare them for every kind of prose, but when faced with dialogue, the writer is lost. How do you create dialogue that feels and sounds real, yet also works to communicate your story? This workshop is designed for playwrights, screenwriters, novelists, and short fiction writers interested in writing crisp, realistic-sounding dialogue. We will study several great scenes from films, plays, and fiction to break down what makes the dialogue so effective.
Topics explored will include creating subtext, hiding exposition, working with slang, and how to get the characters in your head speaking with a voice of their own. You will learn how to break down a scene into beats and intentions, and approach the scene as an actor would. Most importantly, during the workshop portion, we will act out your dialogue so you may hear it the way dialogue is meant to be heard -- out loud. The first half of the class will be spent discussing techniques for creating effective dialogue. During the second session, students will use what they have learned to write a dialogue scene and receive peer and instructor feedback."
- Instructor: Mark Fogarty
- Mark Fogarty is the president and Co-founder of the Rhode Island Film Collaborative (RIFC), a non-profit created to help local filmmakers find resources in the Ocean State. The RIFC has more than 1,900 members and has been involved in the production of dozens of films. For more information, visit www.rifcfilms.com. Mark started Exile Movies in 2003 and has worked as a director of photography and editor on feature-length and short films. Mark recently directed the feature-length epic, smalltown, from his screenplay. You can find out more about the film at www.smalltownmovie.com. As an actor, Mark has been in dozens of films and uses his knowledge of acting to inform his writing. Mark graduated from Emerson College with a degree in filmmaking, and works as a freelance editor and writer.
There are 12 seats remaining in this class.
register as a member $95 register as a non-member $115Not a member? Become a Grubbie today!
Novel Intensive: Section B
Monday-Friday, 2:30-5:30pm from August 19th-23rd at Grub Street headquarters.
Do you have a great idea for a novel but don’t know where to start? Or maybe you’re well on your way, but lately your manuscript has become a flabby mass of pages? Either way, this course will whip that novel into shape. Over the course of five days, we will focus on the elements of craft necessary to sustain a book-length narrative, from structure to scene, character arcs to subplots. We will read excerpts from a range of published novels, pick them apart as writers, and apply these lessons to our own projects. The course will include substantial in-class writing time and an optional homework assignment every evening and will culminate in a one-on-one meeting with the instructor to discuss your opening chapter and outline. Writing a novel is a long, unpredictable journey, but you will end this course with a new set of tools to navigate your way.
- Instructor: Steven Lee Beeber
- Steven Lee Beeber is the author of The Heebie-jeebies at CBGB's: A Secret History of Jewish Punk (Chicago Review Press), the editor of AWAKE! A Reader for the Sleepless (Soft Skull Press), and the associate editor of the literary journal Conduit. His work has appeared in The Paris Review, Harper's, Fiction, Bridge, Memorious, The New York Times, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA in Fiction from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and teaches creative writing and creative nonfiction at Lesley University.
There are 11 seats remaining in this class.
register as a member $240.00 register as a non-member $260.00Not a member? Become a Grubbie today!
Activate Your Characters
Wednesday, September 4th, 6:00-9:00pm at Grub Street headquarters.
Want to make your characters feel more "real"? Designed for playwrights, screenwriters, novelists, and short fiction writers, this interactive workshop will teach you how to use action to bring your characters to life. Using dynamic writing exercises, we will explore what your characters want and how to compel them to go after it. Concepts covered will include objectives, tactics, obstacles, given circumstances, and conflict. Please bring ideas for one or two characters you would like to explore, including one paragraph that either describes OR is in the voice of that character.
- Instructor: Nina Louise Morrison
- Nina Louise Morrison is a playwright, actor, director and dramaturg. Her plays include Mad Props, House Rules, The Red Plague, Constitution and Three Patriotic Acts. She is a Richard Rodgers Fellow, a Shubert Foundation grantee, and an affiliated artist with Free Hands Theatre Company, Boston Bohemia, Playwrights Commons' Freedom Art Retreat and Company One’s Playground. Before moving to Boston, Nina was the Senior Program Associate at the Philadelphia Theater Initiative. Training: MFA Columbia University, the National Theatre Institute at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center, the New Actors Workshop, and Oberlin College. More info at ninalouisemorrison.wordpress.com.
There are 12 seats remaining in this class.
register as a member $50 register as a non-member $65Not a member? Become a Grubbie today!