Description
Great writers are alchemists. With nothing but keen observation, imagination and words, they can turn any situation into literary gold. PEN/Hemingway prizewinner Teju Cole transformed a dismal Arizona immigration courtroom scene into a haunting meditation on place, belonging and the routine violence of the deportation process. Alice Munro translated waiting for a train into a vivid, almost musical passage. George Orwell made magic of restaurant flies and a passing corpse. Virginia Woolf used heightened sensibility to turn an ordinary day into an existential crisis. If you’ve ever wrestled with unpromising or difficult material — a scene that’s not scenic, an awkward or embarrassing encounter, an unpleasant incident — you know how hard it is to make it come alive. More than good description is required. The writer needs to discard cultural blinders and conventional preconceptions and see with fresh eyes. It’s the vision of the writer that makes the reader see the world anew. In this workshop, participants will learn to find the action in inaction, the singular in the ordinary, the particular in the general, the familiar in the strange and the fascinating in the repellent. We’ll look at how great writers have used point of view, diction, tone, figurative language, juxtaposition and other devices to make apparently unpromising situations come alive. Then we’ll try it ourselves in short writing exercises. Volunteers will read their pieces aloud for guided discussion. Participants will return to their own projects with the tools they need to write more confidently and effectively. Bring paper, pen and an open mind.
Signe Hammer’s memoir, By Her Own Hand: Memoirs of a Suicide’s Daughter, was a New York Times Book Review Notable Book. Her other books include Daughters and Mothers: Mothers and Daughters — a Literary Guild and Book-of-the-Month Club Alternate Selection and a German best-seller — Passionate Attachments: Fathers and Daughters in America Today, and Women: Body and Culture: Essays on the Sexuality of Women in a Changing Society.
