Grub Street Events

Grub Gone...Blue

Grub Street — 2010-03-12

In Advance: $8/$5 members
At the Door: $10/$7 members
The “Grub Gone…” series is back! This time, join visiting author Diana Joseph, Grub instructor KL Pereira, member Randy Ross, two "blue" writing contest winners, and host Steve Almond for a night of Grubbies reading from their "blue" periods. What does that mean? Come and find out. In between and after the readings, there will be music, drinks, food and maybe even some dancing. Around 10PM, we'll open up the mic in the front room to anyone who'd like to read a blue-themed story, essay or poem (for 5 minutes or less). A great way to reconnect with old Grubbie friends or make new ones. Readings begin at 8:30. Limited to 200; tickets sell out quickly! Call 617.695.0075 to buy.

Writing the Illness Narrative

Grub Street — 2010-03-13

Instructor: Grace Talusan and Nancy Nichols
$115/$95 members
Registration Deadline: March 9th
Level: All
***This class is SOLD OUT! Please email sonya@grubstreet.org to be put on a waiting list.***
The story of an illness often follows a traditional narrative arc. There’s a crisis, a journey or quest, setbacks, and triumphs. Exploring the relationship of the body and mind, especially through the lens of disease, with candor and artfulness is an opportunity to represent a central human experience. Whether you want to write about your own experience with illness, physical or mental, or from the perspective as a witness or caregiver, this one day class will prepare you to write medically-themed personal essays. While this class will focus on narrative nonfiction, fiction writers and poets can also benefit from discussions about what works in writing about health and the body. Through a combination of mini-lectures, discussions of published essays, writing exercises, small group feedback sessions, and a session on publishing plus a list of medically-themed publications, students will leave with many resources to further the writing of their illness narratives. Although not required, you are invited to bring in 3 double spaced pages (maximum) of a draft illness narrative with enough copies for the class. This class will be team-taught by Grace Talusan (published in Best American Medical Writing 2009) and Nancy Nichols (author of Lake Effect).

How To Write A Lot

Grub Street — 2010-03-13 / 2010-03-14

Instructor: Hillary Rettig
$220/$195 members
Registration Deadline: March 9th
Level: Beginner/Intermediate
***This class is SOLD OUT! Please email sonya@grubstreet.org to be put on a waiting list.***
This weekend version of one of our most popular new courses asks: why do some writers seem to write effortlessly, turning out page after page, chapter after chapter, and book after book, while so many others
struggle over every word? Answer: the difference often comes down to how one relates to one's work. If you feel a lot of fear and ambivalence when you write, or set too-high expectations for productivity or quality, then writing will probably be hard. But if you can avoid those traps, it becomes easier and even a joy. Through workshops and exercises, this weekend workshop will teach you strategies to do just that. We'll begin by
identifying the forces that create procrastination and blocks, including our own fears, damaging societal messages, and the pernicious habits of perfectionism and negativity. Then we'll work on solutions, including "compassionate objectivity," writing without hesitation, writing through "the wall," and using timers and other tools.

The Hook and the Book

Grub Street — 2010-03-13 / 2010-03-14

Instructor: Sorche Fairbank
$220/$195 members
Registration Deadline: March 9th
Level: Advanced
***This class is SOLD OUT! Please email sonya@grubstreet.org to be put on a waiting list.***
Most literary agents receive at least one hundred query letters each week, yet respond positively to a very select few - generally less than two percent, and decisions on writing samples are often made within the first five pages. Would yours make the cut? Do you know the secrets to writing a winning query? Join agent Sorche Elizabeth Fairbank of Fairbank Literary Representation for a weekend of intensive query and writing critique, lessons on the basics of a powerful synopsis, help on the first five pages, review of a laundry list of Dos and Don’ts, and group and one-on-one analysis of your submission package.

Please prepare and email to sonya@grubstreet.org no later than 5pm on Tuesday, March 9th, a query letter of no more than 400 words, and the first five pages of your manuscript (double spaced, single sided, 12pt font, pages numbered) for the instructor, and bring four copies of the query and the first five pages to the first class for group review. Limited to 12 students.

Important: On Day One, bring four copies of your query letter of no more than 400 words. Also bring four copies of the first five pages of your manuscript (double spaced, single sided, 12pt font, pages numbered). Note: you will be reworking your query and first five pages between classes.

For Day Two: Please bring thirteen copies of your reworked query and first five pages. If the class size is smaller than 12, you will be notified on the correct number of copies.

Reality Hunger

Grub Street — 2010-03-14

Instructor: David Shields
$115/$95 members
Registration Deadline: March 9th
Level: Intermediate/Advanced
Seattle-based author David Shields, one of the most prominent (and sometimes controversial) voices in the world of non-fiction, will visit Grub Street for one day only to lead this one-day seminar. David says: “We'll look at several theoretical essays and several personal essays as a way to get at such immemorial questions as: What is art? What is the relation of the artist to his or her material? What is the relation between 'fiction' and 'nonfiction'? What's public, what's private? What's remembered? What's imagined? What's 'true'? What's 'real'? Answers provided at the end of the day.”

Unruly Fictions

Grub Street — 2010-03-14

Instructor: Tim Horvath
$115/$95 members
Registration Deadline: March 9th
Level: All
All successful fiction is somewhat unruly. Any story that sticks its talons into our brains, gets under our skins, making us ponder or sending us sprawling, simply cannot be playing it entirely safe, “hugging the shore,” to use John Updike's expression. In any story with power, something is alive, mysterious, wild; the surface might be deceptively calm, but beneath is an undertow lurking and making its way toward us.

In this class, we'll look in particular at works that have been dubbed "experimental," flagrantly challenging the conventions of narrative order and logic, cause and effect, plot and characterization, time and space. In several cases, they don't even look like stories. By trying out the exercises in this class, you will stretch yourself and explore some unconventional narrative modes. But this class is by no means geared exclusively toward those who already find themselves drawn to the literary avantgarde. The guiding assumption is that all writers can benefit from the ways in which such work galvanizes our minds and our pens, uncovering latent potential in whatever work we are already doing. By trying out everything from stream of consciousness to Oulipean games, montage to typology, you'll get fresh vantage points on your characters and storylines already in progress, whether in your mind or on the page. Optional: Bring in a draft of something in progress to which you can apply some of the techniques we'll cover.

Mondays in March

Grub Street — 2010-03-15

FREE! (Limited to members and members’ guests.)NOTE SPECIAL TIME FOR THIS WEEK'S "MONDAY IN MARCH."
Kick-start your writing week at Grub Street this March! Come to the Grub office from 9 AM to 10 AM every Monday to find inspiration and connect with other Grub members. Each meeting will include a short period of conversation about a specific topic as well as time to mingle.

This week’s topic will be “No Excuses.” What keeps you from getting work done? Do you truly need more time, or better discipline? We’ll examine what derails writers and offer pragmatic suggestions to help you make the best of your writing time.

Crash Course in Guerrilla Book Promotion

Grub Street — 2010-03-15

Instructor: Ethan Gilsdorf
$65/$50 members
Registration Deadline: March 10th
Level: Advanced
If you're about to publish a book, you've probably got questions about how to best publicize and sell it --- as well as wondering what to expect. In this seminar, Ethan Gilsdorf reports on the lessons learned from his 50+ city budget book tour and six month guerilla effort to promote his book Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms. Whether you have a big or small publisher, or chose self-publishing, there are both traditional and non-traditional methods to identify and reach your target audience and build an audience in various potential book-buying communities. We'll discuss setting up a promotional budget; creating a book tour (and not just at bookstores but other venues) and brainstorming special contests, promotions and giveaways unique to your book; establishing yourself as an expert and tying in your book to current events; using traditional media like print, TV and radio; and jumping on social media like Facebook and Twitter to develop a fan base and create buzz about your book. We'll also over what your publisher should do and what you can do (and how you can work with your publicist), and the problems that self-publishing creates. Finally, managing expectations is the crucial mental element to book promotion. Come with questions.

How To Survive As a Writer (Without Selling Your Plasma)

Grub Street — 2010-03-15

Instructor: Steve Almond
$65/$50 members
Registration Deadline: March 10th
Level: All
Very few of us -- aside from the criminally insane -- pursue writing as a means to unreasonable wealth. In fact, most writers eventually face financial difficulties, particularly those drawn to writing for artistic reasons. In this intensive (and potentially incoherent) seminar, Steve Almond will discuss how to balance the creative work you want to do with the stuff that pays the bills. Steve's bankruptcy attorney, Sheldon Pivnick, will be our Special Guest.

All The Right (Opening) Moves

Grub Street — 2010-03-15

Instructor: Jasmine Beach-Ferrara
$65/$50 members
Registration Deadline: March 10th
Level: All
A revised reprise of the sold-out seminar from Winter 2008: We all hear that the opening moves of a story or novel must grab the reader and capture her imagination. But how exactly does that happen? In this seminar, we will look closely at the first two pages of a range of short stories and discuss the strategies they use to immediately activate character and plot. You'll then have the chance to try these strategies out with the opening of one of your fiction projects.

Revision Clinic

Grub Street — 2010-03-15

Instructor: Jill McDonough
$65/$50 members
Registration Deadline: March 10th
Level: All
Do you want to polish up a packet of writing for publication or admission to a graduate program? Do you have some old pages languishing in a drawer that you haven’t looked at in a while? In this one-night class, we will work together to read and revise your drafts of poetry and short fiction, coming up with individualized strategies and plans that will strengthen and revise your work. Freewriting, individual assignments, and discussion of your goals will give your work the boost it needs, and inspire you to start some fresh writing.

Writing From Real Life

Grub Street — 2010-03-20 / 2010-03-21

Instructor: Judah Leblang
$220/$195 members
Registration Deadline: March 16th
Level: Beginner/Intermediate
The Full Weekend Version of a popular one-day workshop: Writers are observers, continually examining our lives and the lives of others. For memoir writers, and for those who write in other genres, our life experiences become the raw material of our creative work. In this seminar, we will focus on the key challenges in our lives today, and other hurdles we’ve overcome – in other words, difficult circumstances that might become the rich “raw material” for new work. We will discuss strategies for developing this material in a way that avoids the sentimental and general, and look at a few short examples of how other writers (i.e. Didion, Ehrenreich, Sedaris) use essays as a way of making meaning of difficult circumstances. By the end of the day, you will have chosen a topic and be on your way to writing about it in a thoughtful and critical way. Limited to 12 students.

Revision Bootcamp

Grub Street — 2010-03-20 / 2010-03-21

Instructor: Michelle Hoover
$220/$195 members
Registration Deadline: March 16th
Level: Intermediate/Advanced
A reprise of the hit workshop from Winter 09! Working with Robert Boswell's concept of "transitional drafts," students will receive feedback on their work in small groups before beginning a step-by-step revision process. We will start with the deeper concerns of theme, structure, character, and conflict, and move on to issues in setting, dialogue, pacing, and refining our sentence style. At the end of the weekend, students will have made their way through several revisions and be closer to a completed story. We will spend the majority of our time doing the individual work of revising, so please bring your laptops if you regularly write at a computer and/or a journal if you write by hand. To start us off, please also bring five copies a short story or novel excerpt (first chapter preferred) that you are ready to revise and willing to share.

Publish That Chapbook!

Grub Street — 2010-03-20

Instructor: Wendy Mnookin
$115/$95 members
Registration Deadline: March 16th
Level: All
Back by popular demand, the chapbook workshop will continue working on manuscripts to uncover the best arrangement of poems. In class discussion and through peer review, we will consider temporal chronology, interruptions of memory, emotional arc, weaving poems together through image as well as first and last lines, and manuscript and poem titles. Please bring two copies of about 24 poems, along with 11 copies of your first and last poems and Table of Contents. This workshop is open to new as well as returning students. Limited to 10 students.

Fiction Writers' Workout

Grub Street — 2010-03-21

Instructor: Lisa Borders
$115/$95 members
Registration Deadline: March 16th
Level: Beginner/Intermediate
Spend the day with one of Grub Street’s most popular instructors generating new scenes, characters and descriptions. What you write on this day can either be integrated into current stories and novels or serve as springboards for future narratives. Along the way, you’ll look briefly at some published texts and examine them as writers. By the end of the day, we’ll have made sure that you’ve produced pages of new material ready for revision or development when you get back to them on Monday morning.

Mondays in March

Grub Street — 2010-03-22

FREE! (Limited to members and members’ guests.)
Kick-start your writing week at Grub Street this March! Come to the Grub office from 9 AM to 10 AM every Monday to find inspiration and connect with other Grub members. Each meeting will include a short period of conversation about a specific topic as well as time to mingle.

This week’s topic is “What’s Your Story?” Can you give interested parties a concise one- or two-sentence description of your story or book? Share your synopsis with us to see if it clearly articulates the big picture. This matters...come find out why!

Winning Things: An Evening of Inspirational Plotting

Grub Street — 2010-03-22

Instructor: Jill McDonough
$65/$50 members
Registration Deadline: March 17th
Level: Advanced
There are a billion magazines out there that want to publish your work, places that want to give you fellowships and time to write and grant money to make it happen. Not a lot of money, sure, but enough. How can you get it? If you are an experienced writer and you wonder if you're ready to put yourself out there and try to publish some writing and win some stuff, come to this session. We'll get into the nitty gritty of writing proposals, ideas about where to find the perfect venue for your work, and strategies for dealing with the hassles and insecurities that keep us from setting our work loose in the world.

The Art of Column Writing

Grub Street — 2010-03-22

Instructor: Suzette Martinez Standring
$65/$50 members
Registration Deadline: March 17th
Level: All
With the explosion of blogs and websites, everyone is a columnist with a memory, opinion or skill to be shared. But creating compelling prose in 500 words or less is a special art. Vivid and insightful columns written in a unique voice catch an editor’s eye or a syndicate’s attention. The skills required to craft a taut and memorable column improve all types of writing. Learn the tips and techniques used by award-winning newspaper columnists to stand out and fuel a faithful readership. An expanded version of the “Hour of Power” seminar at the 2009 Muse and the Marketplace conference.

Crank the Tunes, Crank the Prose: Music as the Path to Literary Improvement

Grub Street — 2010-03-22

Instructor: Steve Almond
$65/$50 members
Registration Deadline: March 17th
Level: All
Have you ever wondered whether listening to music can improve your prose? It can. Certified Music Geek will explain how, using actual songs, by actual musicians, as his text. There will be a writing exercise, though it will not involve Steve doing his famous "Freebird" air guitar solo. (Unless the class begs).

Crafting the Villain

Grub Street — 2010-03-22

Instructor: KL Pereira
$65/$50 members
Registration Deadline: March 17th
Level: All
Some of the best and most memorable characters in literature are villains, rough and tough monsters, sly and sexy femme fatales, and naughty and deceitful oligarchs. They unnerve and excite us, sending a chill down our spines, and striking fear into our hearts. Yet when creating our own villains we often fail to overtly acknowledge the complexity and moral ambiguity that compels them to cause mayhem, delegating their motivation to a need to cause evil for evil’s sake and resulting in two-dimensional baddies. In this one-day seminar we will discuss traditional and non-traditional villains, why they are an essential part of any juicy tale, and how we can develop truly sinister and captivating characters that will antagonize, needle, and provoke even the bravest reader.

Brown Bag Lunch Series

Grub Street — 2010-03-24

FREE!
Do you work downtown and want to fit some writing into your day? Or do you have a schedule that gives you free afternoons instead of evenings? Bring your lunch and come on over to Grub Street for a Brown Bag Writing Workshop – a series recently profiled in the Boston Globe. For 45 minutes, you’ll meet fellow writers and get your creative juices flowing with some cool writing exercises. Led by the awesome Sonya Chung (www.sonyachung.com). Best of all, you’ll leave lunch with some new ideas to ponder for the rest of your day…and beyond. No need to reserve a spot; just come to 160 Boylston Street, 4th Floor.

Winter Season Showcase

Grub Street — 2010-03-25

Join Grub students from the Winter 2010 term, plus two of our award-winning instructors, as they read (for 5 minutes each) from recent work. You’ll hear great fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and maybe even a screenplay or two. Open to all, but reading spots are available only to students who’ve taken courses, seminars or weekend workshops during the Winter 2010 term (January -March 2010). Everyone gets free snacks and drinks. Sign-ups begin around 8pm. A great event for current Grubbies and those who want to check us out. Bring friends!

YAWP (Young Adult Writers Program)

Grub Street — 2010-03-27

FREE!
Are you – or do you know – a teen who likes to write poems, lyrics, stories, novels or screenplays? Come to YAWP, a free monthly teen writing workshop for Boston-area teens 12-17. YAWP provides writing exercises in small groups, feedback from working writers, pizza and inspiration. You provide the energy to write, share your work, and try new things. Please sign up in advance by emailing info @grubstreet.org or calling Whitney Ochoa at 617.695.0075. See website to sign up for specific groups such as poetry, screenwriting, fiction, graphic novel, songwriting, etc.

Mondays in March

Grub Street — 2010-03-29

FREE! (Limited to members and members’ guests.)
Kick-start your writing week at Grub Street this March! Come to the Grub office from 9 AM to 10 AM every Monday to find inspiration and connect with other Grub members. Each meeting will include a short period of conversation about a specific topic as well as time to mingle.

This week’s topic will be “Making Connections: Writers Groups, Colonies, and Conferences.” Members are fortunate to have the support of the Grub Street community, and many of you have expressed interest in forming writing groups. Let’s mingle with intention to connect with other writers and consider the possibility of sharing work. We’ll also talk about connecting beyond the Grub Street community at colonies and conferences.

Brown Bag Lunch Series

Grub Street — 2010-03-30

FREE!
Do you work downtown and want to fit some writing into your day? Or do you have a schedule that gives you free afternoons instead of evenings? Bring your lunch and come on over to Grub Street for a Brown Bag Writing Workshop – a series recently profiled in the Boston Globe. For 45 minutes, you’ll meet fellow writers and get your creative juices flowing with some cool writing exercises. Led by the inimitable Dan Pritchard. Best of all, you’ll leave lunch with some new ideas to ponder for the rest of your day…and beyond. No need to reserve a spot; just come to 160 Boylston Street, 4th Floor.

YAWP (Young Adult Writers Program)

Grub Street — 2010-04-24

9th Annual Muse and the Marketplace Literary Conference

Grub Street — 2010-05-01 / 2010-05-02

This two-day symposium, held at the Boston Park Plaza Hotel, is designed to give aspiring writers a better understanding of the craft of writing fiction and non-fiction, inside information about the publishing world, and thoughtful networking opportunities. Prominent nationally-recognized authors lead craft seminars on various topics; editors, agents and publicists lead sessions on the business aspects of creative writing. The Manuscript Mart pairs aspiring writers in one-on-one sessions with agents and editors who have read their work in advance. Your conference fee (prices vary) includes:
• your choice of four or eight craft seminars, industry-focused panels and/or lectures
• sit-down lunch with the option of being seated with 5 authors, agents or editors of your choice ($50 extra).
• Manuscript Mart, where writers have 20 minutes to discuss your work with a prominent literary agent or editor, who will have read the manuscript in advance ($130 extra).
• 40 guest authors leading craft sessions
For more information, including pricing and registration, visit www.museandthemarketplace.com

YAWP (Young Adult Writers Program)

Grub Street — 2010-05-22