Tag Archive for writing workshop

COME TO ASSISI!

February 9, 2024 / / No comments

The world is going to hell. You want to write about it, a novel, but you don’t know where to start.

The world is going to hell. You want to escape it, just briefly, and write a novel, but you don’t know where to go.

You’ve started to write a novel, but it’s become such a mess that you wish the entire thing would go to hell.

Come to Assisi!

I’ll be leading a two-week fiction writing workshop from the tail end of June into early July at Art Workshop International in Assisi, Italy. I’ve been doing this for many years. Assisi is beautiful, the hotel is beautiful, and you’ll hang around with writers and artists making beautiful work.

We’ll get you started, or keep you going, unknot the mess and straighten things out. You’ll critique and be critiqued by others in the workshop and, not entirely incidentally, eat wonderful food. You’ll sit on the terrace and watch the sun go down.

Come to Assisi!

You need more pix?

COME TO ASSISI!

 

We interrupt the Cuba posts…

January 20, 2020 / / 2 comments

They’ll be back. But I want to talk about Assisi. Every time I say, “Hey, I’m teaching in Assisi this summer, come do a workshop!” some of you say you wish you’d known sooner, and some say, yes, you’ll come some year…

So here’s the thing. For you folks who wish you’d known sooner, it’s January and the program starts at the end of July! This is about as soon as I could tell you!

For you folks saying some year, I get it, I really do, but: Notre Dame will be under scaffolding for the next 20 years. Yes, I know that’s not in Italy. My point: if you’d been saying “some year” about seeing Notre Dame…

I understand if you can’t afford it. Though keep in mind that one, right now the workshop has an early bird 10% off special; and two, many organizations give in-service kinds of grants to help with this type of thing, especially if you’re an educator. The dollar is strong right now and flight prices are low.

But if something besides money is holding you back, let me entice you: the hotel is lovely (we all stay there, all classes are held there, we all dine together), the food is wonderful, the town is quiet and beautiful, and — your book isn’t writing itself!

COME TO ASSISI!

 

 

 

More Assisi, and a little Bastia

August 4, 2017 / / One comment

I had the best of intentions of blogging often. I was thinking Ah, I’ll be lounging about, drinking a little cappuccino, laptop on my lap… My tenth year here at Art Workshop International in Assisi and I still haven’t figured it out. Between teaching and hanging with my buddies, between walks and art and my local friends I only see once or twice a year, all that lounging time doesn’t exist.

So here I am, belatedly, back again, with some photos. Most of them are from Assisi, though we took a little trip — and I mean little, literally 4 minutes on the train (though of course you have to walk down to Santa Maria degli Angeli to get the train, and then wait for the train, so from the hotel the trip is about an hour and 4 minutes) — to Bastia, and strolled around.

View from our favorite cafe

 

Breakfast at the Hotel Giotto (plus a little fruit for lunch…)

 

The hard-working guys holding up the rose window at San Rufino

 

Below street-level plantings. Don’t show this to Grow Dammit, he’ll feel insecure.

 

Flower pot on the wall

 

Sunflowers, almost ready for harvest

 

Bastia: the market’s over

 

Bastia: painted wall

 

Filipina nuns in habits and identical straw hats waiting for the bus.

 

Bastia: I don’t think this is the police station any more…

 

…or else some cop has a very green thumb.

 

Dragon sings karaoke

A great idea! In fact, two.

July 8, 2017 / / No comments

I’m just loving this: ice stupas!

To bring water to drought-stricken areas.

Photo by Sonam Wangchuk.

And speaking of the Himalayas, come to Kathmandu!  Click the link for details. (Not the photo, the link.) See you there!

http://www.himalayanwritersworkshop.com/mystery-writing-in-kathmandu

 

Horses, too

May 20, 2016 / / 2 comments

The Cedar Valley Retreat Center has rolling grounds, many outdoor spaces for sitting and thinking, hills to climb, woods to stroll through, plus of course a couple of buildings for residence, meetings and classes. The place has another mission, too, carried out in a few buildings and fields at the front of the property. Besides hosting retreats like the the Wisconsin Writers’ Association Novel-in-Progress Bookcamp, they also do horse rescue. The first year I was here a couple of retired goats were also in residence, and their climbing structure remains though they seem to be gone. But at least two horses are living out their twilight years here. One of them plodded out of the barn yesterday to post picturesquely for both a long shot and a close-up.

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Chapel on the hill

May 19, 2016 / / No comments

Cedar Valley Retreat Center, where I’m teaching right now, is a non-denominational (but Christian-leaning) religious retreat a group like this one can rent. One of the buildings on the grounds is a chapel. This is its interior in the morning light.

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4 Storytellers/4 Friends redux

March 25, 2016 / / No comments

In case you needed to know what we looked like. My stage debut! Or as close as I’ll get. I have no problem with the idea of reading my work, or of speaking to a crowd. No problema. But acting? Doing someone else’s words justice? Arrggh. My buddies made it easy, though.

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Greetings, earthlings

March 11, 2016 / / No comments

SJR coming to you from the Newark Airport United Club, my home away from home in Terminal C. I seem to spend half my airport life in Terminal A, where the short hops go from, and I expected this flight to Cleveland to leave from there, too. Terminal C in my mind has always been for international adventure — the flight I take to Rome (for the Assisi program you’re all going to come study with me in this year) leaves from here, as well as flights to Shanghai, Hong Kong, Seoul (which is for Mongolia as well), Tokyo. And such non-short-hop US destinations as Portland and San Francisco. Love me some Terminal C.

But lo, Cleveland takes off from here, too. This is a good thing, because this is where the Club is — no such comforts in down-market Terminal A — and I need a nice place to sit and drink a nice cup of tea, because I’m 2 1/2 hours early. Which is about an hour longer than the flight. (Remember, I went to Oberlin, I know this trip.) I heard a horror-story report on the news last night about hour-plus waits at security even for TSA Pre-check passengers, and I figured it’s Friday so lots of people would be traveling. So I cleverly left very early. Here’s the thing, though: TSA workers denied it, but the news story smelled to me like an unauthorized work slowdown to protest understaffing. (Apparently TSA has stopped paying overtime, which means fewer workers per security station.) I guess they got their point across, because I breezed through that Pre-check line like grass through a goose and now here I sit.

And by now you’re asking, “That’s all very well, but why are you going to Cleveland?” For this: Sisters in Crime Northeast Chapter’s Death March Conference. I’m giving the keynote, on “Categorization and Its Discontents.” Hope to see some of you there! The rest of you, as the poem has it:

Write right
Right wrong
Sing song
Long gone

I’ll report from beautiful Ohio.

Atlantic Center for the Arts

January 5, 2016 / / No comments

Three of the happiest weeks of my life were the ones I spent as a Master Artist at the Atlantic Center for the Arts.

It’s one of the best-kept secrets in the art/literature world, a retreat where you can go to study with people whose work interests you.  Each Master Artist has 8-12 Associate Artists in workshops, in a beautiful, secluded setting hidden on the coast of central Florida.  (Birdwatching! Manatees! The beach!)  There’s an application deadline coming up soon, and if these aren’t people you want to study with, keep checking back.

I won’t be teaching there; this isn’t a promo for me, it’s just because of how much I loved my time there.  (If you insist on studying with me, check my website).

 

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A short course in the short story

December 11, 2015 / / 2 comments

Some of you have asked whether I teach workshops in NYC.  Well, this winter I will.  I’m teaching a six-week course in The Crime Fiction Short Story, Saturday mornings starting Jan. 23.  Details on the CFA website, so check it out and come on down.

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