the muse & the marketplace 2010
session 3
Saturday, May 1st, 2010, from 2:15am to 3:30pm
***SOLD OUT*** SESSION 3A: “Keeping Fiction Wild”
Description: The primary way in which stories are shaped these days is via the workshop method, with its emphasis on craft and technique (elements of balance) without sufficient (if any) attention to urgency and necessity, to mention two elements that define wildness. The result is an enormous number of prim, proper, but dull stories. How do we recognize wildness in our fiction, how do we sustain it? We will try to answer these questions through examples drawn from Denis Johnson and Jorge Luis Borges.Type: Lecture with Q&A and Discussion
Author: Pablo Medina. Pablo Medina is the author of 11 books of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and translation, among them the poetry collection Points of Balance/Puntos de apoyo (2005) and the novel The Cigar Roller (2005). In January 2008, Medina and fellow poet Mark Statman published a new English version of García Lorca’s Poet in New York, which John Ashbery called “the definitive version of Lorca’s masterpiece”. Acclaimed as “lyrical and powerfully evocative” and “deserving a prominent spot in today’s literature of exile,” Medina’s work has appeared in various languages, among them Spanish, French, German, and Arabic, and in periodicals and magazines throughout the world. Winner of numerous awards, among them grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the NEA, the Lila-Wallace Reader’s Digest Fund, and others, Medina is currently professor in the Department of Writing, Literature and Publishing at Emerson College in Boston and is on faculty at the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers.
SESSION 3B: “Demons, Scoundrels and Scalawags”
Description: Great villainy is hard to pull off, but villains are central to great literature. Often it is only through a confrontation with a foe that a character is able to define his own identity. How do authors depict evil characters without resorting to absurdity or silliness? What makes a character truly terrifying? Better yet, what makes an evil character convincing? And can a character be both comic and truly evil at the same time? Exemplary passages may be selected from the work of some of the following authors: Mikhail Bulgakov, Shirley Jackson, Henry Darger, James Ellroy, Flannery O’Connor, Kazuo Ishiguro, Jim Thompson, and Roald Dahl.Type: Discussion
Author: Nathaniel Rich. Nathaniel Rich is the author of The Mayor’s Tongue, a novel, now available in paperback. He has written essays on literature and film for The New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, The Nation, Slate, The Daily Beast, and The New Republic, among other publications, and he is also the author of a book of film criticism, San Francisco Noir: The City in Film Noir from 1940 to the Present. He can be hunted down on the Internet at www.nathanielrich.com.
SESSION 3C: “Writing High-Concept Fiction”
Description: In the current tough publishing market, it’s more important than ever to develop a high-concept idea that is both unique and universally appealing. This discussion section will explore the high-concept novel, as well as cite examples of high concept novels and why they were resonant and successful with the reading public. I will then open up the floor to a Q/A on my own high-concept novels to anything else that encompasses pull together a highly-marketable book idea. From there, we’ll work together to hone your own high-concept novel pitches. Please come prepared with your own high-concept ideas: I will call on students at random and will give you my on-the-spot reaction and feedback, and we will work together as a group to solicit ways to tweak the idea, when necessary, and make it stronger. Please note that we will work through as many ideas as time allows, but may not have time to hear ALL ideas.Type: Discussion & Exercises
Author: Allison Winn Scotch. Allison Winn Scotch is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Time of My Life and The Department of Lost and Found. Her next novel, The One That I Want, will be published on June 1, 2010. She is also a magazine writer whose work has appeared in numerous publications, including Parents, Glamour, Redbook, and Shape. She lives in New York with her husband and two children.
SESSION 3D: “Don’t Give Up: First-Aid for the First-Person Narrative”
Description: This class is designed specifically for frustrated writers who have tried and failed to complete a first-person nonfiction narrative. Nothing is more discouraging than knowing you have a compelling, true story to tell—whether it is based on personal experience, the lives of others, or original research—and watching it fade and fail on the page. Bring your frustrations; bring a one- or two-sentence synopsis of the story you want to tell. We’ll discuss them along with a few opening paragraphs of published memoirs, topical nonfiction, and reflective essays, paying particular attention to the distinct roles assigned to writer, narrator, and character. Because you can’t do it alone: it takes three of you to bring a first-person story to life.Type: Discussion
Author: Michael Downing . Michael Downing’s novels include the national bestseller Perfect Agreement and Breakfast with Scot, which was adapted as a movie that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. In addition to Shoes Outside the Door: Desire, Devotion, and Excess at San Francisco Zen Center, a narrative history of the first Buddhist monastery outside of Asia, Michael’s nonfiction includes the updated 2009 edition of Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time, and a memoir, Life With Sudden Death: A Tale of Moral Hazard and Medical Misadventure. His essays and reviews appear in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. A frequent commentator on clocks, Congress, and confusion about daylight saving on NPR, PBS, and network and cable news programs, Michael teaches creative writing at Tufts University. You can read more about his work at www.michaeldowningbooks.com.
***SOLD OUT*** SESSION 3E: "Stuck? How to Problem-Solve and Break the Strangle-Hold On Your Novel"
Description: The title says it all here. Anita Shreve, beloved, critically acclaimed and best-selling author of more than fifteen books, will share her ideas for how to use the work you’ve already completed to push through to the next stage of your story or novel. Bring a paragraph of something you’re working on, and plan to use that paragraph as a springboard to new directions and possibilities for your work.Type: Guided Writing
Author: Anita Shreve. Anita Shreve grew up in Dedham, Massachusetts. After graduating from Tufts University, she taught high school for a number of years in and around Boston. In the middle of her last year, she quit to start writing. "I had this panicky sensation that it was now or never." Joking that she could wallpaper her bathroom with rejections from magazines for her short stories, she published her early work in literary journals. One of these stories, "Past the Island, Drifting," won an O. Henry prize. Despite this accolade, she quickly learned that one couldn't make a living writing short fiction. Switching to journalism, Shreve traveled to Nairobi, Kenya, where she lived for three years, working as a journalist for an African magazine. One of her novels, The Last Time They Met, contains bits and pieces from her time in Africa.
Returning to the United States, Shreve was a writer and editor for a number of magazines in New York. Later, when she began her family, she turned to freelancing, publishing in the New York Times Magazine, New York magazine and dozens of others. In 1989, she published her first novel, Eden Close. Since then she has written 14 other novels, among them The Weight of Water, The Pilot's Wife, The Last Time They Met, A Wedding in December, and, most recently, A Change in Altitude (2009) and Testimony (2008).
In 1998, Shreve received the PEN/L. L. Winship Award and the New England Book Award for fiction. In 1999, she received a phone call from Oprah Winfrey, and The Pilot's Wife became the 25th selection of Oprah's Book Club and an international bestseller. Still in love with the novel form, Shreve writes only in that genre. ***SOLD OUT*** SESSION 3F: ”Understanding Plot, Part II: Scene, Presentation and Time”
Description: This workshop builds on Understanding Plot, Part I, so it is recommended but not required to attend Session 2F before you come to this one. Here we will look further into plot and structure, with an emphasis on presentation, including scenic variety, discoveries vs. disclosure, timeline, movement, and pace in constructing complete and satisfying stories.Type: Lecture with Q&A
Author: Lynne Barrett. Lynne Barrett is the author of the story collections The Secret Names of Women and The Land of Go and she co-edited the anthology Birth: A Literary Companion. She has received the Edgar Allan Poe award of the Mystery Writers of America for best mystery story and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. Recent stories have been published or are forthcoming in Night Train, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Delta Blues, A Hell of a Woman, One Year to a Writing Life, Miami Noir, A Dixie Christmas, and many other anthologies and literary magazines. Editor of The Florida Book Review, she is a professor at Florida International University, where she teaches in the M.F.A. program. You can read more here.SESSION 3G: “The Essentials of Setting and Character”
Description: Setting can be one of the most misused (or underused) literary devices and one of the most powerful ways to express your theme and character, as well as forecast your plot. We will discuss what to attempt and avoid and examine examples of interior and exterior landscapes in prose. The finest handling of setting can invoke a story’s deepest concerns, a protagonist’s psychology, back story, and desires, and promise the direction the story will go. Bring your notebook or laptop and a narrative-in-progress.Level: Beginning/Intermediate
Type: Lecture with Q&A and Discussion
Author: Michelle Hoover. Michelle Hoover is a full-time instructor at Boston University and has published short stories and novel excerpts in numerous journals, including Prairie Schooner, The Massachusetts Review, StoryQuarterly and Confrontation. 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 novel, The Quickening, will be published by Other Press in June 2010.***SOLD OUT*** SESSION 3H: Marketplace Lecture: “The Art of the Query Letter”
Description: Most agencies receive at least a hundred query letters each week, yet respond positively to a very select few. Do you know the secrets to writing a winning query? Do you want to know the most common reasons for rejection? Join agent Sorche Fairbank of Fairbank Literary Representation for lessons on the basics of a powerful query, a laundry list of Dos and Don’ts, and as time allows, some individual feedback.Type: Lecture with Q&A and Discussion
Author: Sorche Fairbank. Since establishing Fairbank Literary Representation in 2002, Sorche Elizabeth Fairbank has had the pleasure of working with a dynamic and varied list, representing best-selling authors, Edgar recipients, award-winning journalists, and of course plenty of one of her favorite kinds of client -- the first-time author. Her tastes in novels tend toward literary fiction, international voices, and women's voices, and the occasional mystery/suspense novel. On the nonfiction side, she is most likely to take on books that tackle current events and societal issues with a narrative treatment. She has a strong interest in women's voices and class and race issues, popular science, quality lifestyle books (food, wine, craft, and home design), and humor(!) and pop culture, which have been exceptionally strong sellers lately. Subjects and genres not of interest include: sci-fi and fantasy, children’s and YA, self-help, romance, sports fiction, or generally anything that opens with a dream scene and/or exhaustive descriptions of weather. Unless, of course, it’s really really REALLY good.
Authors and books represented by Fairbank Literary include: O. Henry Prize winner Charlotte Forbes; Pulitzer nominee and LA Times Cairo Bureau Chief Jeffrey Fleishman; Matthew Frederick and his best-selling 101 Things I Learned In _______ School series; the estate of Robin Moore (The French Connection, The Green Berets); Xaviera Hollander (The Happy Hooker); journalist Ethan Gilsdorf (Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks); Darci Klein (To Full Term, A Mother's Triumph Over Miscarriage); Jonathan McCullough's A Tale Of Two Subs; syndicated cartoonist and Georgia Author of the Year Man Martin (Days of the Endless Corvette and Paradise Dogs), Edgar-winner and host of Anatomy Of A Mystery, Rex Burns; Robert McKinnon (Actions Speak Loudest, a collection of essays by such luminaries as Jimmy Carter, Paul Simon, Dave Eggers, Mia Hamm, Richard Louv); essayist Jessica Handler; and Eudora Welty prize in Fiction winner Miroslav Penkov and his debut collection Bulgari, a country, in stories, forthcoming from FSG. Updated information on Sorche Fairbank and Fairbank Literary, their clients, and recent deals can be found here.SESSION 3K: Marketplace Panel: “Promotion and Publicity”
Description: Now more than ever, authors are expected to be their own publicists, and build their own audiences, both before and during the publication of their books. If they can’t, they often need to find someone who can help them with this process. This session is designed for the writer who is under contract for a book, or has published a few stories or even a full-length work or two – and, of course, the writer who plans to do so ASAP. Topics discussed include strategies (guerilla and traditional) that authors can employ to get the word out about them and their work, the role of the publicist at small and large houses, book clubs and blogs, and how not to feel embarrassed or self-conscious or about the necessary self-promotion you’ll have to do to survive in the changing landscape of publishing.Level: All
Panelists: Jennifer 8. Lee, Kelley & Hall Book Publicity, Randy Susan Meyers, and Christine Pride. Moderated by Jenna Blum