Knoxville Writers' Guild Summer Workshops 2010 (fees given
are for member/nonmember)
Our annual summer workshops will be held July 12-15 and July 19 to 22 at Pellissippi State College.Checks can be sent to Knoxville Writers’ Guild, P.O. Box 10326, Knoxville TN 37939 or via paypal at our website http://www.knoxvillewritersguild.org/. For more information, contact Guild Vice President Terry Shaw at tshaw05@comcast.net or 865.963.7633.
Monday, July 12
Writing (And Reading) Your First Screenplay (Part I)
A screenwriter faces a particular set of challenges as he or she attempts to craft a winning screenplay that is, at the same time, readable for the industry insiders, filmable by the director and producers and watchable for its audience. Using various produced scripts as examples, this crash course in screenwriting will explore a range of topics including format, concept, character and scene development, dialogue, the business of screenwriting and tricks of the trade.
Russell Schaumburg
6 to 8 p.m.
$40 members, $56 non-members (covers two nights)
Place and Persona: the Where and Who in Your Writing
We can only talk about ourselves in the language we have available. If that language is rich, it illuminates us. But if it is narrow or restricted, it represses and conceals us. – Joan Whitehead
Making a conscious decision to discover or deepen our voice, we will explore setting and point of view in our writing. In addition to looking at published writers, we will also discuss drafts and revisions if there is time, so please come prepared to write and bring along some work you’ve already begun.
K.B. Ballentine
6 to 9 p.m.
$30 for members, $42 for non-members
Public speaking
Will give the basics of how to present a program to an audience, how to overcome butterflies, what to say and how to say it. Tips on how to be prepared, use of notes and eye contact. General speaking skills taught by Toastmasters International.
Grant Fetters
6 to 9 p.m.
$30 for members, $42 for non-members
Tuesday, July 13
Promotion Strategies
Identifying markets and ways to reach them. In a rapidly evolving world, marketing expertise, technology and common sense work together to create an incredible array of promotional options, from word of mouth to print pieces, news releases, paid ads, email marketing, websites, blogs and social media.
Kelly Norrell
6 to 9 p.m.
$30 for members, $42 for nonmembers
Basic Playwriting
Workshop introduces basic techniques of playwriting structure and dialogue in with focus on creating action (Action is important and the key to all great plays). Participants will take part in a writing and improvisational acting exercise.
Kali Meister
6 to 9 p.m.
$30 for members, $42 for non-members
Wednesday, July 14
“How to Discover, Sell and Promote the Book You Want to Write” (Session 1)
In order to have a successful book, the author needs to supply what publishers want. This session reveals insider knowledge about the business, including differences between fiction and non-fiction proposals, how publishers choose, and what you need to know about bookstores and online booksellers. That information forms the basis for learning to develop a project from scratch using the author’s life experience and knowledge. We will discuss the pros and cons of various publishing options and will conclude with step-by-step advice on writing a winning book proposal. Time will be made available for questions and discussion. Participants are welcome to bring in their own work for critique and advice on placement, etc. The focus of the workshop will be on the business of writing for income, as opposed to developing one’s creative writing skills.
John Tullock
6 to 9 p.m.
$60 for members, $84 for nonmembers
Eighty Degrees West and Three Hundred Years: Continuing the Celtic Tradition
Ron Rash’s Appalachian roots had their beginnings across the Pond. Influenced by Patrick Kavanaugh, Seamus Heaney, and other Celtic writers, Rash’s poetry continues the cultural connection between America and Ireland/the British Isles. This seminar will focus on the language and landscape of four poems from Rash in relation to Kavanaugh and Heaney’s work.
K.B. Ballentine
6 to 9 p.m.
$30 for members, $42 for non-members
Thursday, July 15
Promotional Writing
Such prose must be persuasive and crystal clear, be it for news releases, ads, video, websites, blogs, newsletters, annual reports or brochures. Each medium has its own style but there are secrets that apply to them all. We will discuss these.
Kelly Norrell
6 to 9 p.m.
$30 for members, $42 for non-members
Mining the Gold of Family Experience
Linda Parsons Marion will use her poetry collection, Mother Land, and the work of other established poets to guide participants in writing about family dynamics. Mother Land combines gardening poems with work about her mother, who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder late in life. Marion’s poems often join the inner and outer landscapes to bring about understanding and healing. Writing exercises will be provided and selected work from participants discussed. In early July, participants should e-mail a poem for possible discussion to Marion at lindapmarion@yahoo.com.
Linda Parsons Marion
6 to 9 p.m.
$30 for members, $42 for nonmembers
Erotica Writing
Workshop will focus on creating a comfortable environment to overcome the barriers, and develop skills and abilities that are necessary to write erotica. Participants will learn to explore writing that arouses or sexually stimulates using soft, sensual imagery through writing exercises and discussion of published erotic fiction (excerpts will be supplied during workshop). This workshop will broaden the writers’ boundaries and encourage fearless writing. WARNING: This workshop is open to people 18 years and older only.
Kali Meister
6 to 9 p.m.
$30 for members, $42 for nonmembers
Monday, July 19
Imagery in Poetry
This workshop will focus on voice and imagery in poetry. Struggling to find our voice in writing, we want to produce poetry a reader will listen to and read. We will explore subject matter, diction, point of view, syntax and grammar, and imagery to allow the voice of our poetry to distinguish itself from others’. Images can be literal or figurative, translating the world through our five (or six) senses so they produce insights for a reader. In addition to looking at published poets, we will also discuss drafts and revisions, so please come prepared to write and bring along some work you’ve already begun.
K.B. Ballentine
6 to 9 p.m.
$30 for members, $42 for non-members
“How to Discover, Sell and Promote the Book You Want to Write” (Session 2)
Once you’ve made a sale, the real work begins. This session follows the book publishing process from acceptance by a publisher to promoting the finished product. Participants will learn how to work with editors, designers and public relations specialists to get a manuscript into print and to achieve the highest possible sales for the book. Promotion will be a major focus of this session. Advice on creating promotional materials, landing book signing agreements, interacting with media professionals, and using the Internet will all be covered.
John Tullock
6 to 9 p.m.
$60 for members, $84 for nonmembers (covers two sessions)
Column writing/reviewing
Opinions are like ... well, you know how the saying goes. But some people actually get paid to share their opinions, in the form of reviews and columns. What makes these opinions more relevant than those of the average Joe on the street? We'll look at the art of writing reviews and crafting personal columns, of touching readers through words and of writing from the heart to get your point across.
Steve Wildsmith
6 to 9 p.m.
$30 for members, $42 for nonmembers
Tuesday, July 20
Building Character
This workshop is not about making you a better person, it’s about making your fictional characters become so three dimensional they begin to tell you their story. This class is part lecture, but mostly exercises that allow you to go home with a substantial amount of material to use toward short fiction or a novel in progress. If you’d like to write fiction and don’t have a character or story, this workshop can give you a good place to start. If you have a character or characters who need filling out, you’ll learn to put meat on their bones.
Darnell Arnoult
6 to 9 p.m.
$30 for members, $42 for nonmembers
You don’t have to be a liar to make this stuff up
Where else but in East Tennessee would inmates let themselves back into jail after breaking out?
Where else would a high school senior select a blow-up doll as his date for the prom—and have his mother custom-sew a dress for her?
Where else would a 30-car funeral cortege hit the drive-thru window at KFC en route to the cemetery?
Yes, these events actually occurred, and were featured in Sam Venable’s column in the Knoxville News Sentinel. During 40-plus years in the newspaper business, he has chronicled the bizarre, the nutty, the hilarious and the offbeat, as well as the serious and poignant.
In this workshop, Venable will share some of these accounts and offer tips and suggestions for finding the absurd—or having it find him—and then writing about it.
Sam Venable
6 to 8 p.m.
$20 for members, $28 for non-members
The Personal Essay
Writer David Cooper argues that skillful practitioners of the personal essay “remind us that seemingly ordinary, even ephemeral things—like a train whistle, a mantle photograph, some misplaced keys, a snow fall, the smells of a mother’s cooking—often hold the key to unlocking extraordinary insight into family, culture, personal history, place, and time.” This class focuses on helping writers discover their preferences, irritations, jubilations, aches, humor, and prejudices through writing the personal essay. Writers will study, read and practice writing true stories that strike a universal chord while considering some of the qualities unique to the personal essay: a recognizable and well-pointed voice, a well articulated point of view, and vivid descriptions of character and place.
Marianne Worthington
6 to 9 p.m.
$30 for members, $42 for nonmembers
Wednesday, July 21
Have You Written a Hit Song?
You've been scratching out catchy song ideas and lyrics on the backs of napkins and telephone bills. Your friends expect to see you on the next Grammy Awards show. A local bluegrass band has started playing a song of yours at their gigs. Folks are starting to talk. Have you written the next No. 1 song? Is your song-writing at a level that can compete with the pros in Nashville? Take this class and find out!
Steve Leslie
6 to 9 p.m.
$30 for members, $42 for non-members
The Short Story
Form and Structure: Using outside reading examples and story writing exercises, this course will engage in a discussion of basic short story form, along with essential elements of craft. Attention will be paid to dramatic structure, building characters and conflict and sense of place.
Michael Knight
6 to 9 p.m.
$30 for members, $42 for non-members
Travel writing
Whether keeping a journal of notes and observations, or collecting memorabilia for a traveler's scrap book, or writing for travel magazines, or compiling a travel/adventure manuscript for publication as a book, this course will give you pointers to achieve your goals.
Alex Gabbard
6 to 7 p.m.
$10 members, $14 non-members
Thursday, July 22
The Lyric: Poetry's Commercial Cousin
"When lonely feelings chill the meadows of your mind/ Just think if winter comes, can spring be far behind?/ Beneath the deepest snows/ the secret of a rose/ Is merely that it knows/ You must believe in Spring"- Alan and Marilyn Bergman. Song Lyric or Poetry? A little of both? Discover the similarities and differences between these related art forms. Who knows? Maybe there's a hit song or two hiding underneath "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings recollected in tranquility."- William Wordsworth.
Steve Leslie
6 to 9 p.m.
$30 for members, $42 for non-members
Writing (And Reading) Your First Screenplay (Part II)
A screenwriter faces a particular set of challenges as he or she attempts to craft a winning screenplay that is, at the same time, readable for the industry insiders, filmable by the director and producers and watchable for its audience. Using various produced scripts as examples, this crash course in screenwriting will explore a range of topics including format, concept, character and scene development, dialogue, the business of screenwriting and tricks of the trade.
6 to 8 p.m.
Russell Schaumburg
$40 members, $56 non-members (covers two nights)
Mining the Mother Lode
This workshop is for poets, fiction writers, memoirists and essayists. In this one-evening course we will employ a variety of exercises to stir up your material from the murky depths of the foggy past. What lurks there just out of sight is the basis for all your creative writing, and we will dredge some of it up to enhance the qualities and details that give any kind of writing verisimilitude and emotional resonance.
Darnell Arnoult
6 to 9 p.m.
$30 for members, $42 for nonmembers
Presenters
- Darnell Arnoult is the author of “What Travels With Us: Poems” and the novel “Sufficient Grace.” Her poems and prose have been published in a variety of journals. She holds an MFA from the University of Memphis and teaches workshops around the Southeast. Visit her website and blog “Dancing With the Gorilla’ at www.darnellarnoult.com
- KB Ballentine received her MFA in Poetry from Lesley University. She has participated in writing academies in both America and Britain and holds graduate and undergraduate degrees in English. She currently teaches high school theatre and creative writing and adjuncts for a local community college. Her books Gathering Stones (2008) and Fragments of Light (2009) were published by Celtic Cat Publishing.
- Grant Fetters has been involved with Toastmasters for the past six years. His day job is as a mechanical design engineer. He and his wife, Sharon, have owned and operated several businesses, including the Asheville Comedy Club and Grant's Studio of Photography. As a small business owner Grant has developed and schemed his way into the public's eye in countless ways.
- Alex Gabbard is the author of 17 books, three receiving Book of the Year awards in their fields. Author of hundreds of published newspaper and magazine features, thousands of published photos, and recipient of an International Automotive Media Association Silver Medal for automotive travel.
- Steve Leslie, who wrote the title cut to Ricky Skagg’s Grammy winning album “Brand New Strings,” has been a professional songwriter for 18 years. His songs have been recorded by Kenny Rogers, George Straight, Darryl Worley and many others. He received his BM in Guitar/Jazz Studies from Morehead State University. After teaching privately in Tallahassee, Florida for eight years, he moved to Nashville in 1992.
- Kali Meister is a performance artist, writer, activist (loud mouth), teacher, and hobbied jam maker. She is a graduate of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and hold an MFA in creative writing, with a concentration in playwriting from Goddard College. She was the 2008/2009 Jack E. Reese Writer in Residence at Hodges Library. Her work has been published in Asheville Poetry Review, Caduceus, Circle Magazine, Outscape Anthology, and Prism.
- Michael Knight is the author of two collections of short stories, a collection of novellas and two novels, including The Typist forthcoming from Atlantic Monthly Press in August. His fiction has been published in places like Esquire, The New Yorker, Paris Review and Oxford American and has been anthologized in Best American Mystery Stories and New Stories from the South: The Year's Best 1999, 2003, 2004 and 2009. He teaches at the University of Tennessee.
- Linda Parsons Marion is the author of poetry collections Home Fires and Mother Land. She served as poetry editor of Now & Then magazine for 14 years and is widely published. She is an editor at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.
- Kelly Norrell is a writer, editor and public relations specialist in Knoxville. She is communications director for The Episcopal School of Knoxville, where she creates and oversees ad campaigns, tends a website, writes news releases, creates a weekly online newsletter and takes a lot of photos. Her work includes news and feature articles for newspapers and magazines, including a recent monthly series in the Knoxville News Sentinel on newly published authors. Her photos are also published regularly in print and on websites, and include a recent ad in Newsweek.
- Russell Schaumburg wrote the screenplay for Tennessee, a 2008 film produced by Lee Daniels. He graduated from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois and Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles, California. He studied acting at the Joanne Baron/D.W. Brown Studio in Santa Monica.
- John Tullock is the author of 14 non-fiction books and hundreds of magazine articles. His most recent book, Pay Dirt: How to Make $10,000 a Year from Your Backyard Garden, was released by Adams Media in February. His previous book, Growing Hardy Orchids, was named one of the five best gardening books of 2006 by the American Horticultural Society. An earlier book, Natural Reef Aquariums, has enjoyed five printings since its release in 1997. He worked for six years for Barnes & Noble as community relations manager. He is currently employed full time by Lowe’s and also teaches environmental science as an adjunct professor at National College of Business Technology. He has a master’s degree from UT.
- Sam Venable, an award-winning writer for the Knoxville News Sentinel, is author of 10 books, including his latest, “Someday I May Find Honest Work: A Newspaper Humorist’s Life.”
- Marianne Worthington is editor of the Motif Anthology series from MotesBooks and poetry editor for both Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine and the online literary journal Still. She teaches communication and journalism at University of the Cumberlands in Williamsburg, Ky.
- Steve Wildsmith is the Weekend editor, entertainment writer and columnist for The Daily Times of Blount County. Born in Knoxville, he has worked as a writer and journalist since 1993 in Middle Tennessee and South Carolina, where he served as the music writer in Myrtle Beach for two years. He has been with The Daily Times since April 2001. A recovering drug addict, he's been active in the East Tennessee recovery community and local 12-Step programs for eight years and writes a regular column on addiction and recovery.
NOTE:
Please note that all workshops are in the McWherter Building on Pellissippi
State's main campus on Pellissippi Parkway.
For more information,
email Terry Shaw at Tshaw05 @ comcast.net
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