WRITING CHILDHOOD
with David Means
author of Assorted Fire Events;
The Secret Goldfish; and other works
The English Department of
Keynote Speaker
David Means is the author of three short story collections: Assorted Fire Events, A Quick Kiss of Redemption and The Secret Goldfish. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, Esquire, The O. Henry Prize Stories, and The Best American Short Stories. He lives in Nyack, New York--as did one of his artistic influences, Edward Hopper--and teaches at Vassar College. Contemporary Authors writes: "With Means's second collection, Assorted Fire Events: Stories, he was compared favorably to such esteemed writers as Raymond Carver and Alice Munro and praised by critics for his sharp prose." James Wood, in The London Review of Books, notes that "Means' language offers an exquisitely precise and sensuous register of an often crazy American reality. Sentences gleaming with lustre are sewen through the stories. One will go a long way with a writer possessed of such skill. You can hear the influence of Flannery O'Connor in Means' prose: in the scintillating shiver of the beautiful imagery, in the lack of sentimentality, in the interest in grotesque violence, and gothic tricksterism." Means' newest book, The Spot: Stories, is forthcoming in May from Faber/FSG.
Special Guest
We are also very pleased that Nahid Rachlin will lead an afternoon writing workshop in memoir. Rachlin's
publications include a memoir, Perisan Girls (Penguin), four novels, Jumping Over Fire (City Lights), Foreigner (W.W. Norton), Married to a Stranger (E.P.Dutton), The Heart's Desire (City Lights), and a collection of short stories, Veils (City Lights). Her short stories have appeared in about fifty magazines, including The Virginia Quarterly Review, Prairie Schooner, Redbook, and Shenandoah. She has written reviews for The New York Times, Newsday, and The Los Angeles Times. She has held a Doubleday-Columbia fellowship and a Wallace Stegner Fellowship (Stanford). The grants and awards she has received include the Bennet Cerf Award, a PEN Syndicated Fiction Project Award, and a National Endowment for the Arts grant. Her work has been translated into Portuguese, Dutch, Arabic, and Farsi. For more info, visit her website: http://www.nahidrachlin.com
Creative Writing Contest
This year we are glad to offer a $300 prize to the best manuscript we receive for our 2010 contest. Poetry, fiction, or creative non-fiction submissions are all eligible--please see the Writing Contest link (in left column on this page) for details. The entry fee for the contest is included in the conference registration fee; you must be registered for the conference to enter the writing contest.
Cost
The fee for this all-day conference includes a light breakfast, the plenary reading, two workshops or panels (one in each session--afternoon & morning), and a full lunch--as well as the Creative Writing Contest entry fee. Regular: $50; WPU Alumni: $40; Registered WPU Graduate Students: $30; Registered WPU Undergraduate Students: $20; late registration (after April 7th): $60. The entry fee for this year's Creative Writing Contest is also included.
| 9:00 AM - 9:45 AM | Check-in, Registration, Orientation & Breakfast, in the Atrium Lobby |
| 9:45 AM-11:15 AM | Plenary Reading with David Means, in the Atrium Auditorium |
| 11:15 AM - 12:45 PM | Morning Session of Workshops and Panels, locations to be announced |
| 12:45 PM - 2:00 PM | Buffet Lunch, in the Atrium Lobby |
| 2:00 PM - 3:30 PM | Afternoon Session of Workshops and Panels, locations to be announced |
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MORNING WORKSHOPS & PANEL |
AFTERNOON WORKSHOPS & PANEL |
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Panel: Publishing Adolescent Writing. Three young adult authors will discuss their own work and the vital, flourishing field of young adult literature. This panel offers an opportunity to learn more about the possibilities opened up by the young adult market and the exciting work that is being published in the field today. A question and answer session will conclude the discussion. The panel will be moderated by Marina Budhos. |
Panel: Editing, Publishing & Marketing. This afternoon discussion, led by experienced, professional editors from Random House and HarperCollins, will focus on how books are edited, published, promoted and marketed. Following brief presentations, editors will respond to questions from the audience. The panel will be moderated by Martha Witt.
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Remembering: Memoir, with Judith Broome. A memoir can begin with a single memory; or, in the case of childhood memory, with an image, a scent, a song. We will read one or two short memoirs that center around a childhood memory and gradually spin outward to connect the past with the present. We will examine the ways that a childhood memory can be developed into a reflection on our contemporary lives. Students will choose a persistent memory from childhood and explore the way that memory can be a catalyst for thoughtful and revealing writing. Judith Broome teaches British and Global literature in the English Department at WPU. Her translations of Latin American fiction have been published in TriQuarterly, Fiction, and Webster Review, and her short story, “The Effect of Light upon Water,” appeared in Primavera. Her book, Fictive Domains: Body, Landscape, and Nostalgia, 1717-1770 was published in 2007 by Bucknell University Press. |
Advanced Editing for Grammar & Style, with Alice Deakins. Both teachers and writers need to know how to edit for grammar and style. Editing for sentence level grammar involves knowing the minimal structures of the English sentence as well as the conventions of sentence punctuation in formal written English. These—structures and conventions—are the foundations on which sophisticated writing is constructed by adding the mortar of cohesion, the architecture of information structuring, and the bricks of extra information that characterize published writing. By using a sentence model that is both pedagogically useful and stylistically sophisticated, this workshop will introduce participants to powerful editing practices that will produce both correct and powerful writing. Alice H. Deakins (PhD Columbia University) is a Professor of English at William Paterson University. Her areas of teaching and research are gender and language, mothers and daughters in literature, and pedagogical grammar. |
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Playwriting, with Brian Ó Broin. An introductory class on playwriting, focusing on one major element: dialogue. The seminar will particularly examine how to incorporate children and memories of childhood into a script. |
Poetry, with Timothy Liu. In his Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke famously remarks, "Even in prison, you would have a childhood." What does this sentence mean and how can it help us in writing poems? Does Rilke mean to suggest an actual prison and/or a metaphorical one? What does it mean to "have a childhood" as an adult? What might the relation be between incarceration and imagination? These questions (and more) will be explored. Timothy Liu is the author of six books of poems, including Of Thee I Sing (2004), selected by Publishers Weekly as a 2004 Book-of-the-Year, and Vox Angelica (1992), which won the Poetry Society of America's Norma Farber First Book Award. His most recent book is Bending the Mind Around the Dream's Blown Fuse. Timothy Liu on the web |
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| Prose Poetry, with Martha Witt. In this workshop, we will explore our own childhood memories through writing prose poetry. This border genre, particularly suited to rendering memory in both narrative as well as lyrical prose, will simultaneously challenge traditional notions about genre separation and offer writers a new entrée into old material. We will begin by attempting to define what constitutes a prose poem, read practitioners of the form such as Juan Felipe Herrera, Naomi Shahib Nye, and Charles Simic, and then address aesthetic questions that arise from our reading. With the majority of the workshop devoted to guided writing exercises, oral sharing, and feedback, writers should emerge with a deeper and broader sense of the possibilities for structuring their work. Martha Witt grew up in Hillsborough, North Carolina, the setting of her first novel, Broken As Things Are. She has received grants from the New York Times Foundation as well as the Thomas J. Watson Foundation and has held residencies at both the Yaddo and Ragdale artist colonies. Her translations and short stories have appeared in several literary journals and anthologies. She currently lives in New York City with her husband, daughter, and son. www.marthawitt.com |
Coming of Age Fiction, with Marina Budhos. This workshop will explore how we mine the coming of age experience to create vivid fiction. How do we move from our own experience, with its particulars, to imagine a fictional creation? How do we evoke and stay true to the experience of childhood and adolescence? What is the role of the adult, reflective voice? We will be discussing coming of age fiction in adult works and in young adult works. Participants should come with 5 pages of material, if possible; we will also perform in-class writing exercises. Marina Budhos is an author of award-winning fiction and nonfiction. She has published the novelsAsk Me No Questions (Simon & Schuster, 2006), an ALA Notable and winner of the first James Cook Teen Book Award, The Professor of Light (Putnam, 1999), and House of Waiting (Global City Press, 1995), as well as a nonfiction book, Remix: Conversations with Immigrant Teenagers (Henry Holt, 1999). www.marinabudhos.com
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