EMBRACING UNCERTAINTY II: A Workshop to Jumpstart Your Creativity | Nov 7 to Dec 12| Taught by Tricia Park
EMBRACING UNCERTAINTY Part 2 of 2
A Workshop to Jumpstart Your Writing
open to all levels and genres
Parts 1 and 2 may be repeated or taken out of order
taught by Cleaver Editor Tricia Park
5 weeks
Nov 7, 14, 21, Dec 5, 12 (Note: No class Thanksgiving weekend, Nov 28)
5 Zoom classes, Saturdays 2-4 pm Eastern Time
$170 early bird / $200 regular
Class limit: 12
This class can be taken on its own or as a continuation of Part I
Questions: [email protected]
THE SPORT OF THE GODS, a novel by Paul Laurence Dunbar, reviewed by Dylan Cook
THE SPORT OF THE GODS
by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Signet Classics, 176 pages
reviewed by Dylan Cook
For the best experience, I recommend reading The Sport of the Gods outside on a cloudy day, rain threatening. As you fall in step with Paul Laurence Dunbar’s rhythmic prose, it’ll be easy to forget that you’re at nature’s mercy. Let the clouds decide whether or not you get to read uninterrupted. Subject to this force, you may more easily understand what the Hamilton family endures in this novel. As deceits and misfortunes pile on top of each other, the Hamiltons decide that nature can’t help but rain down upon them. Their breakdown is more than plain bad luck can explain, so they know that they are fighting, “against some Will infinitely stronger than their own.”
Even if you haven’t heard of Paul Laurence Dunbar, you’ve likely read lines of his poetry. Maya Angelou immortalized his poem “Sympathy” when she borrowed a line for the title of her memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Discussing her influences, Angelou lauded Dunbar in the same breath as Shakespeare. Dunbar was born to former slaves in Ohio in 1872, right in the middle of the Reconstruction era. He began writing seriously as a teenager, the only Black student in his high school. He had some early publishing help from his friends Wilbur and Orville Wright (yes, those Wright Brothers) before publishing his first poetry collection, Oak and Ivy. From this collection’s success, Dunbar launched a prolific career that spanned over a dozen poetry collections, three short story collections, and a handful of novels. In nearly all of his work, he seamlessly transitioned between standard and vernacular English, a feat that earned him both praise and criticism. Perhaps most miraculously, he produced all of this work amid recurring bouts of tuberculosis and alcoholism. Dying at the age of 33, Dunbar left behind a sprawling body of work that’s yet to be properly explored.
chop! chop! read more!WHEN I USE I: Writing the Persona Poem, a poetry workshop taught by Herman Beavers
WHEN I USE I Writing the Persona Poem A Poetry Workshop taught by Herman Beavers 5 Weeks October 16-November 13 $275 Class Limit: 15 Questions: [email protected] The persona poem is a staple of Western poetry. Whether it’s Andrew Marvel’s “To His Coy Mistress” or W.B. Years’ s “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death” or Ai’s cycle of poems written in the voice of J. Edgar Hoover, the persona poem offers the poet an opportunity to step out of her own skin and embody another personality, whose character traits may be a radical departure from her own but who gives the poet a mouthpiece through which to express feelings and ideas. The main ingredient of the persona poem is empathy, which offers poets the means for entering into the concerns and predicaments of another person. In this five-week workshop, we will devote time each week to reading and discussing persona poems, … chop! chop! read more!
THE ART OF FLASH, Workshop in Fiction and Nonfiction, taught by Cleaver Flash Editor Kathryn Kulpa | October 3-November 7
THE PROPULSIVE PICTURE, Image as an Engine in Poetry, a Workshop taught by Cleaver Poetry Editor Claire Oleson | September 19 to October 24
THE PROPULSIVE PICTURE
Image as an Engine in Poetry
Taught by Cleaver Poetry Editor Claire Oleson
5 weeks
September 19 to October 124
Class limit: 12
Questions: [email protected]
In this course, we will explore how images can serve as the engine in a poem: driving the language as a plot might in a story or novel. We will work primarily on generating new work, encouraging participants to push their boundaries and hone their voice to create memorable and authentic pieces. The workshop model will facilitate constructive responses from both peers and the instructor. Particular attention will be placed on the visual life of the poetry we read and write.
chop! chop! read more!URBAN WILDLIFE: WRITING TO COEXIST, Co-taught by Lucy Spelman and Susan Tacent | September 12 to October 3
URBAN WILDLIFE: WRITING TO COEXIST
Co-taught by Lucy Spelman and Susan Tacent
4 Saturdays
September 12, 19, 26, and October 3
1pm-3pm Eastern Time
Click here to register
$225 early bird / $250 regular
Open to writers of all genres and all levels of experience
Class limit: 10
This workshop is designed for writers of all genres who wish to express their love and concern for all creatures through writing that is both informed by science and emotionally charged. This is a hybrid workshop, with meetings on Zoom and written work via Canvas, a text-only platform for drafts to be shared in a supportive and practical environment. There will be weekly science presentations, craft discussions, readings, writing assignments, and group critiques. Writers interested in a particular animal will be able to tailor their research accordingly.
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CLOTEL OR THE PRESIDENT’S DAUGHTER, a novel by William Wells Brown, written in 1853, reviewed by Dylan Cook
In 1998, scientists performed a DNA test to answer one of the longest running rumors in American history. Historians could no longer deny the truth: Yes, Thomas Jefferson had fathered children with his slave Sally Hemings. But plenty of people already knew that. William Wells Brown knew this beyond a reasonable doubt when he published Clotel in 1853, a novel that imagines the lives and tribulations of Jefferson’s slave-born daughters. The characters are all fictional, but Brown’s creative liberties stray little from reality. Masters frequently made concubines of their slaves, so why would Jefferson be any exception? Jefferson’s words that “all men are created equal” were a farce in Brown’s eyes, because only in antebellum America could a president’s daughter be born in chains.
chop! chop! read more!THE DARK HEART OF EVERY WILD THING, a novel by Joseph Fasano, reviewed by Michael McCarthy
In the moral universe of poet Joseph Fasano’s debut novel, The Dark Heart of Every Wild Thing, death lurks in every corner of life. A father, bereaved of his wife, must journey through the teeming forests of British Columbia and hunt a fabled mountain lion, to him the very “mind of the wild.” Three years ago, it mauled his son, the father powerless to save him. Now, as he narrates his monomaniacal fight for survival, the hunt for the mountain lion becomes an obsession, borne of unfathomable grief, to exact revenge on a world that has stolen everything he loved.
chop! chop! read more!EMBRACING UNCERTAINTY II: A Workshop to Jumpstart Your Creativity | August 8 to September 5 | Taught by Tricia Park [SOLD OUT]
EMBRACING UNCERTAINTY II
A Workshop to Jumpstart Your Writing
open to all levels and genres
taught by Cleaver Editor Tricia Park
5 weeks
Aug 8, 15, 22, 29, Sept 5
5 Zoom classes, Saturdays 2-4 pm Eastern Time
$150 early bird / $200 regular
Class limit: 12
This class can be taken on its own or as a continuation of Part I
Questions: [email protected]
HOW WRITING FICTION HELPS ME—AND MAYBE YOU—DEAL WITH PAST TRAUMA, a craft essay by Kelly Fordon
In her essay “Nine Beginnings,” Margaret Atwood answers the question, “Why Do You Write?” nine different ways. In her honor, while completing my recent short story collection, I Have The Answer, I challenged myself to answer the question: “How does writing fiction help you deal with your own trauma?” nine different times.
chop! chop! read more!ON EARTH WE’RE BRIEFLY GORGEOUS, a novel by Ocean Vuong, reviewed by Claire Kooyman
Ocean Vuong’s writing is steeped in memories, the history of which sometimes precedes him chronologically. This was true of his poetry in the collection Night Sky With Exit Wounds, and it is also true of his first novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, recently released by Penguin Press. This novel is a recursive exploration of the path memories take through a family. The narrator’s life is impacted by the traumas his mother and grandmother suffered before he was born. As a very young child, Vuong’s narrator, Little Dog, learns quickly that not all authority figures can be trusted absolutely, and that even unconditional love has flaws. Throughout the novel, Vuong illustrates that we are all sharing space with the past, even as we exist in the present.
chop! chop! read more!An Interview with Mike Avery, author of THE COOPERATING WITNESS, by Andrea Caswell
In Mike Avery’s debut novel, an ambitious law student is determined to find the truth to save an innocent man accused of murder. But the truth is never black-and-white, and the secrets she discovers hit close to home. The Cooperating Witness is a compelling legal thriller in which the moral ambiguities of justice are on trial. Mike Avery mines his fifty-year career as an attorney and law professor to craft a suspenseful story of murder, the mob, and a young woman’s determined idealism. In the following interview, conducted via phone and email, the author discusses his novel, the freedom of writing fiction, and the complex intersection of our legal system and morality.
chop! chop! read more!CONNECTED BREATH: Glass Wind Instruments for Intimacy and Vulnerability by Madeline Rile Smith
CONNECTED BREATH Glass Wind Instruments for Intimacy and Vulnerability by Madeline Rile Smith Growing up, I never imagined I would become a visual artist, let alone an artist working in hot glass. In high school, I was required to take an art class, so I signed up for a glass elective, with no idea what I was getting into. At first, I was terrified of burning my fingers, but after a few sessions, the hypnotic presence of melting glass in a flame lured me in. Hot glass is always moving; it has rhythm. The artist must respond with her own movements. You cannot control glass on your own terms; the glass will always be the one to set the terms of engagement. When you work with glass you must be humble and accept that you will fail over and over. A day’s work might shatter into a hundred pieces if … chop! chop! read more!
IN THE WOODS, a visual narrative by Emily Steinberg
IN THE WOODS
Mid-June. It’s cool. It’s quiet. the sun-dappled path is rugged and craggy and I’ve been walking it one or another for 55 years. Gus pulls me along, his pantaloons jauntily swaying in the breeze, stopping at each watering hold with expectant, happy eyes. In here, I don’t have to think about 115,000 dead. In here, I don’t have to think about a 27-year old shot in the back in a Wendy’s parking lot or a 46-year old dying with a knee on his neck after 9 minutes…
chop! chop! read more!ENGAGED by Susan Tacent
You scratch because it itches. You’re over the moon with excitement. Good news always drives your histamine reaction and now you’re breaking out in hives. You drink a glass of water. You breathe, slow breaths, in, out, the way the yoga teacher and the meditation guru and the homeopathist and the ENT guy instruct. The itch gets funky, like a dance, up and down your arms, the backs of your thighs, a place between your shoulder blades you can’t reach. You ask Ben to reach for you and he says he won’t because scratching only makes it worse. If you’re going to marry this guy, you want to know. You tell him he has to and when he does, you know you made the right choice.
chop! chop! read more!SOME BRIEF THOUGHTS ON SELF-IMPROVEMENT by Reilly Joret
My wife fingered the remaining chocolate syrup from her bowl to her mouth and announced she was going to bed. I’ll admit The Tonight Show monologue that night wasn’t going to change her mind. It was all obvious punchlines about the president’s Asia trip, with some cheap shots at the end for the congressman with the Honduran mistress maid, and the reality TV star with the unflattering DUI mugshot. I feared this was becoming the norm. I followed my wife upstairs, hoping we might discuss this unsettling trend, or get in something cursory between the two of us, but she fell asleep in a way that suggested a medical condition.
chop! chop! read more!NORTHWEST STALKER by Jan Stinchcomb
The truth is, she misses everything from those days, the skirts they wore and the bangs they had, side swept, always on the verge of disappearing, like youth. Like life. It all slipped away, as her parents had warned her, even the people. Girlfriends you thought you’d have forever, poof, lost to marriage or motherhood or minds suddenly changed. They didn’t want to be girls anymore. They moved to other states. They changed their names and lost themselves.
chop! chop! read more!TWO POEMS by Jaewon Chang
Blindness
It began with a stove,
burnt mahogany dissipates in, wishing
the ember hinted the future: mother
running out of her favorite house,
home to the ancestors’ cedar trees. She had one last look
at her bedroom door, the one grandfather
painted pink, now dark red. I could only recall
SPECIFIC AIR by Rebecca Titus
It is midnight in early March and you are pacing the wood floors of your sweet, single-story house in East Nashville—a place with a pair of red-tailed hawks in the front yard and a pair of train tracks in the back. You are on the phone with your musician-botanist-projectionist friend, comparing the vibrant gardens of your childhood to coral reefs. Before it sold, she saw your parents’ house for herself last summer: the lightning bugs, the flowering vines, the fractal canopy suspended above the creek. She gets what you mean about the flowers. You jot down some notes, hang up, and go fill a water glass. You catch a flash of white light through the slats of your blinds and step on the back deck.
chop! chop! read more!THE LIVING AND THE DEAD by Melissa Brooks
The world was fuzzy. Victoria blinked. She blinked again and again until the room came into focus. A pixelated ceiling. A window opening to blackness. An unkempt man slouched in a chair, fist propping up a mess of greasy dark hair. He had sallow skin, dark bags beneath bloodshot eyes. Familiar eyes. Barry’s eyes? Benny? Billy? Billy.
chop! chop! read more!DON’T WORRY by Charles Holdefer
Squinting against whiteness the child left her mother beside the woodpile. With the sudden drop in temperature an icy crust had formed on last night’s new snow. “We’ll find it!” her mother called, watching the child walk on the surface while she stood shin-deep, clutching her stump to her breast. It was tightly wrapped in rags. Bleeding was stanched. The throbbing had slowed, perhaps due to the cold. But she was burning up, dizzy.
chop! chop! read more!MATRYOSHKA by Marion Peters Denard
When Mom died Rachel started asking questions. What did Mom make for Christmas morning? Egg casserole. When did Mom go back to school? I was fourteen, you were eleven. The questions got smaller and bigger, as though by their specificity they were magnified. What did she smell like? She wore Chanel No. 5. I know that, Tabbie. But what did she smell like? She smelled like orange honey and coral lipstick and bright green breath mints. What did her hugs feel like? They were nice. Tabbie. Like she was bringing you in and keeping you out at the same time.
chop! chop! read more!THE MYTH OF THE ARAN FISHERMAN: The Art of Jan Powell
Knitting transcends time, and is a dominant theme in Jan Powell’s life and work as an artist. Through her use and creative exploration of this craft, Jan has produced—over the past four decades—a tangible amalgam of heritage, feminism, and memory.
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SOULS FALLING INTO HELL LIKE SNOWFLAKES by Roy Bentley
Am I the only one in the Cleveland Art Museum today
looking for mercy? I’m looking at an artwork about Hell
or the end of the world, recalling my then-small son saying,
of the Challenger disaster, I’d have gotten out. In the painting,
there are boats and the boats are filling, the sea aswarm and
starkly bullying like the first dopplered image of a hurricane.
Angels with an artist’s idea of wings are manning the tillers,
captaining across a broth of larvae-white bodies, the deltas
UNDONE by Elaine Crauder
The banana bread would not bake. Maddy had followed the recipe to a T, only substituting canola oil for half the butter, honey for half the sugar, skim for whole milk, and nutmeg for cinnamon. Putting on long oven mitts and pulling the door open, she checked the loaf again. Three hundred and fifty degree heat swept into the kitchen, already filled with late summer swelter. Not wanting to take the time to lift the single bread pan onto the top of the stove, she pulled out the rack, took off one mitt and stuck a toothpick into the loaf. Raising it straight up, it was plain to the naked eye—her reading glasses were sitting idle on the kitchen table—that raw batter clung to the sliver of wood for dear life. If it had been at all cooperative it would let the toothpick withdraw, leaving no trace on the twig, as if untouched by the experience.
chop! chop! read more!GRAB, SNATCH by Michelle Ephraim
The hospice nurse is gloves-and-salve practical.
She says: your mother must want something from you.
My mother can’t walk or talk. Her body is bones wrapped in reams of moth skin. Her brain works in insect twitches.
chop! chop! read more!IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT by Brenna Womer
While shopping what’s left of the canned goods at the grocery store, an announcement at the top of the hour, robust and autotuned: “All employees must now perform a personal temperature check,” and I, in a pair of disposable vinyl gloves but not a facemask because Dr. Gupta says they’re unnecessary for the still- and now- and currently-healthy, holding the last can of Kroger no-salt garbanzos, recall they’ve always made this announcement, but two weeks ago they were checking the temperature of the meats.
chop! chop! read more!THE WOMAN IN THE DREAM by Mirande Bissel
hands the swaddled child over. A dream is no place
for a baby. She has seen revelers pour the baby
from a carafe—he’s white wine, fruity like the summer
he is born into, and they drink the baby in the purple
dusk of a dream-cafe. She’s always too late to stop them.
WALKING THROUGH THE UNDERWORLD by Stella Hayes
out my window colored heads bound in swiftness. in their decision to bring about movement
& motion. the snow is taking a break from falling, as it did just days before. the village is
painted in primordial gray, with roofs in color too happy even for a rainbow. eavesdropping
chop! chop! read more!TO LIFT US UP WHEN WE ARE FALLEN by Leonard Kress
There are three women installed in the living room when I arrive. Smartly dressed, young moms most likely, with highlighted loosely curled hair, gleaming toenails, and tailored pantsuits. All have open laptops and cell phones—new information and guidelines saturate the air. I arrive with a friend because this is where our weekly writing group meets, at Hope’s house—because she’s wheelchair-bound, and can’t easily secure a ride to our usual meeting places. The women are from the hospice—nurse, social worker, and gerontologist. It occurs to me that the more they deal with the dying, the farther away they get from death. They bring a pleasing scent to the room, perfume and doughnuts and pastries, which overpower the disinfectant used to clean up after Hope’s father’s renal stent failed in the middle of the night and urine soaked into the carpet.
chop! chop! read more!CLEANNESS, a novel by Garth Greenwell, reviewed by Nikki Caffier Smith
At its heart, Cleanness is a novel about duality: the duality of spirit, of desire, of self-perception. How one can be “dirty” and “clean” at the same time. With deft and expressive writing, Greenwell questions our understanding of these concepts. What does it mean to be dirty? What does it mean to be clean? To go outside or stay in. To stay in or go outside. Perhaps they are just two facets of the same thing.
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An Interview with Sharon Harrigan, author of the novel HALF, by Virginia Pye
Writers have a way of finding each other in Virginia, thanks to several strong literary non-profits. Sharon Harrigan teaches at WriterHouse in Charlottesville and I used to help run James River Writers in Richmond. We met years ago at the annual JRW Writers Conference. When my first novel came out, Sharon generously reached out and offered to interview me for Fiction Writers Review. I moved to Cambridge several years later, but we continued to keep track of each other’s careers, cheering on each new publication. I’m delighted to interview her now about her debut novel, HALF. In sparse, lyrical prose, it tells the story of identical twins who speak in one voice, until they can’t any longer.
chop! chop! read more!WHAT I CARRY, a YA novel by Jennifer Longo, reviewed by Aja Todd
From the very first moment of her existence, Muiriel was born alone. Found abandoned at a medical center with no parents to claim her, Muiriel has lived in foster care her entire life. But blessed with a book of survival by naturalist John Muir and her experience in nearly twenty different foster homes, seventeen-year-old Muiriel knows she will not let her past dictate her future:
Aging out is terrifying.
chop! chop! read more!ASK JUNE: Coronavirus II: The Old Marcher and the Masked Baby
A note to my readers:
Here are a few more coronavirus-related letters. Knowing what I know now, I would have submitted them all at once, a few weeks ago, instead of spacing them out. Things have changed so quickly since that first batch: problems like nagging mothers and the niceties of social-distancing behavior may seem petty and quaint as compared to the deadly-serious questions and sweeping protests following the murder of George Floyd. I will submit my second batch of letters now, but humbly, in hopes that they may provide a moment of entertainment for those of you who are taking a break from weightier matters, and that they may still be of use to those of you who are still worried about contracting the virus during normal daily activities.
chop! chop! read more!TO THE BONE, poems by Angela Narciso Torres, reviewed by Alina Stefanescu
To The Bone is a book about the particular sort of remembering that accompanies losing a parent to Alzheimer’s. The poet’s mother is brought tenuously, haltingly, on the page. A sense of slippage is accomplished through layering, repetitions, and fluctuating temporality to reveal how a disease of memory appears to the mind struggling to find shore in presence.
chop! chop! read more!HARD TACK by Jamie Alliotts
It’s a damp, drizzly November night—Thanksgiving—and I can’t help but think of Melville’s famous orphan, who sets out from this insular city of the Manhattoes, goes to sea with branded Ahab, and eats hardtack with his shipmates aboard the doomed Pequod. ■ Blinky grew up on a cattle ranch in Miami. As a boy, he spent time in foster homes, on the street. He tells me about his father—then asks me to leave him out of it. Saw his mother for the first time when he was 12 or 13, around the time he started smoking crack. Saw her again—and for the last time—a few years later.
chop! chop! read more!AFTERBURN A Workshop the Art of Flash Revision Taught by Cleaver Flash Editor Kathryn Kulpa | August 3 to August 22 [SOLD OUT]
AFTERBURN
A Workshop the Art of Flash Revision
Taught by Cleaver Flash Editor Kathryn Kulpa
3 weeks
August 3 to August 22
Click here to register
$125 early bird / $150 regular
Class limit: 12
Questions: [email protected]
MINOR DETAIL, a novel by Adania Shibli, translated by Elisabeth Jaquette and reviewed by Dylan Cook
Tables need at least three legs to stand; guitar strings only ring when taut around two points. Minor Detail, Adania Shibli’s third novel, takes its title as a challenge: how much can hinge upon one moment? How can a single moment of pain bridge the past to the present?
chop! chop! read more!THE BIG WARM HOUSE An Essay on the Art of Becoming a Writer by Emma Sloley
The thing I believe writers (and perhaps also readers) need to know about the big warm house is that it’s built on a foundation of contradiction. Everyone who lives inside must crave solitude but instead find themselves bumping up against furniture, beds, each other, themselves. They must be forced into intimacy and driven apart by failing to understand one another. The fictional house must always be full of people but also profoundly lonely. The house must represent safety but also danger—a waystation between two worlds, though never exposing in which direction lies folly and which salvation. Most importantly, the inhabitants of the story house must be torn between desperately wanting to get away, and wanting never to leave.
chop! chop! read more!THE PROPULSIVE PICTURE, Image as an Engine in Poetry, a Workshop taught by Cleaver Poetry Editor Claire Oleson | July 11 to August 15 [SOLD OUT]
THE PROPULSIVE PICTURE Image as an Engine in Poetry Taught by Cleaver Poetry Editor Claire Oleson 5 weeks July 11-August 15 SOLD OUT Class limit: 12 Questions: [email protected] In this course, we will explore how images can serve as the engine in a poem: driving the language as a plot might in a story or novel. We will work primarily on generating new work, encouraging participants to push their boundaries and hone their voice to create memorable and authentic pieces. The workshop model will facilitate constructive responses from both peers and the instructor. Particular attention will be placed on the visual life of the poetry we read and write. We will read a few selections of poetry weekly that demonstrate the potential of images as communicative engines. The readings will be brief but rich, with the intent of inviting multiple re-readings, close readings, note-taking and flexibility for everyone’s lives and … chop! chop! read more!
TELLING TRUE STORIES A Workshop in Creative Nonfiction Taught by Cleaver Editor Sydney Tammarine | October 19–November 20
TELLING TRUE STORIES A Workshop in Creative Nonfiction Taught by Cleaver Editor Sydney Tammarine 5 weeks October 19–November 20 Click here to register $150 Class limit: 12 Questions: [email protected] Writer Dinty W. Moore says that creative nonfiction equals curiosity plus truth. CNF comes in a variety of forms: from expansive memoir to intimate personal essay to the lightbulb “eureka!” of flash. But in any form, the CNF writer is a guiding voice in the dark: a storyteller seeking truth, thinking alongside the reader toward a deeper understanding of ourselves and our world. In this class, we’ll practice the essay in its most dynamic form: a verb that means “to test; to practice; to taste; to try to do, accomplish, or make (anything difficult).” Each week, we will read and discuss one or more example essays and generate new work from prompts. Students will share their work for peer and instructor … chop! chop! read more!
THE ART OF THE SCENE: A Workshop in Fiction and Creative Nonfiction taught by Lisa Borders | August 2 – September 4 [SOLD OUT]
THE ART OF THE SCENE A Workshop in Fiction and Creative Nonfiction Taught by Lisa Borders 5 weeks August 2 – September 4 introductory Zoom meeting at 2 pm ET on Sun Aug 2 SOLD OUT $200 early bird / $225 regular Class limit: 12 Questions: [email protected] The writer Sandra Scofield describes a “pulse”—that spark that makes the story come alive— as a vital element to all scenes. This pulse is especially crucial for opening scenes, as many agents and editors report that if they are not hooked on a manuscript within the first five pages, they will not read on. But what is a “pulse,” and how can a writer ensure that each scene—not just the opening— has one? How can we write in such a way that our characters come to life, that a scene breathes emotion and urgency, while moving the plot forward and keeping tension taut? … chop! chop! read more!
MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF CARSON MCCULLERS, a memoir by Jenn Shapland, reviewed by Claire Oleson
Jenn Shapland’s hybridized memoir and biography straddles what its seemingly-impossible title suggests: an ability to write about oneself by writing about someone else. Far from taking on a myopic or narcissistic project, My Autobiography of Carson McCullers is eager to talk about the self for the sake of empathy, to revive written-off lives, to question presumed heterosexualities, and to make a bodily connection with now-irrecoverable marginalized bodies.
chop! chop! read more!EMBRACING UNCERTAINTY, a Workshop to Jumpstart Your Writing, taught by Tricia Park | September 19 to October 17
EMBRACING UNCERTAINTY, Part 1 of Two A Workshop to Jumpstart Your Writing open to all levels and genres Parts 1 and 2 may be repeated or taken out of order taught by Cleaver Editor Tricia Park 5 weeks Sept 19, 26, Oct 3, 10, 17. 5 Zoom classes, Saturdays 2-4 pm Eastern Time $175 early bird / $200 regular Class limit: 12 Questions: [email protected] EMBRACING UNCERTAINTY is a five-week online generative writing course for writers of all levels and genres. In these days of uncertainty and rapid change, it’s difficult to know what to hang onto. And social distancing leaves us struggling to maintain our mental wellness during this undetermined period of isolation. But what if we can use this time to develop a skill; start a new project; follow a passion? What if this sudden surplus of time is an opportunity for experimentation? What if we embrace our vulnerability and … chop! chop! read more!
Emily Steinberg’s QUARANTINE JOURNAL
Dispatches from inner and outer space…
chop! chop! read more!TELLING TRUE STORES, a Workshop in Creative Nonfiction, by Sydney Tammarine | July 27 – August 28 [sold out]
TELLING TRUE STORIES A Workshop in Creative Nonfiction Taught by Cleaver Editor Sydney Tammarine 5 weeks July 27 – August 28 [sold out] $125 early bird / $150 regular Class limit: 12 Questions: [email protected] Writer Dinty W. Moore says that creative nonfiction equals curiosity plus truth. CNF comes in a variety of forms: from expansive memoir to intimate personal essay to the lightbulb “eureka!” of flash. But in any form, the CNF writer is a guiding voice in the dark: a storyteller seeking truth, thinking alongside the reader toward a deeper understanding of ourselves and our world. In this class, we’ll practice the essay in its most dynamic form: a verb that means “to test; to practice; to taste; to try to do, accomplish, or make (anything difficult).” Each week, we will read and discuss one or more example essays and generate new work from prompts. Students will share their work … chop! chop! read more!
THE ART OF FLASH, Workshop in Fiction and Nonfiction, taught by Cleaver Flash Editor Kathryn Kulpa | May 9 — June 6, 2020 and June 20 — July 25, 2020 [both sections sold out]
THE ART OF FLASH A Workshop in Fiction and Nonfiction Taught by Cleaver Flash Editor Kathryn Kulpa Both sessions of Kathryn Kulpa’s The Art of Flash are sold out—new classes by Kathryn will be announced shortly! Session 2: 5 weeks June 20 — July 25, 2020 $125 early bird / $150 regular Class limit: 12 Questions: [email protected] [sold out] Session 1: 5 weeks May 9 — June 6, 2020 $125 early bird / $150 regular Class limit: 12 Questions: [email protected] [sold out] Flash is a genre defined by brevity: vivid emotions and images compressed into a compact form. We most often see flash fiction, but flash can also encompass prose poetry, micro memoir, lyric essays, and hybrid works. In this class, we will take a close look at different styles and forms of flash fiction, as well as flash nonfiction, hybrid, and experimental works. Each week, we will read and … chop! chop! read more!
THE ROYAL ABDULS, a novel by Ramiza Shamoun Koya, reviewed by Beth Kephart
During the day and a half that I ravenously read Ramiza Shamoun Koya’s debut novel, The Royal Abduls, I asked myself these questions. I leaned into the lives of Koya’s magnificently drawn characters, into the nest of troubles they inadvertently twigged together, into the love they did not know how to express. Or forgot to express. Or ran out of time to express.
chop! chop! read more!ASK JUNE: The Quarantine Edition
Dear Readers,
First, let me apologize to you for not having posted in so long. What with one thing and another, my alter ego in the real word became preoccupied. But the pandemic has vastly increased her free time: once she has decontaminated the day’s deliveries, Zoomed for an hour or two, walked the dog, done a little reading and writing, sent off a few irate messages to our elected (who knows how, as Gerard Manley Hopkins would say) officials, and beaten back despair and other existential stuff with carbs and Netflix, there’s really nothing left to do except cleaning and giving advice. So here I am; and, happily, my re-emergence has coincided with a flurry of novel-coronavirus questions. Ahem!
—Love, June
chop! chop! read more!An Interview with Claire Oleson, author of THINGS FROM THE CREEK BED WE COULD HAVE BEEN, by Andrea Caswell
Claire Oleson’s chapbook, Things From the Creek Bed We Could Have Been, is the winner of the Newfound 2019 Prose Prize, awarded annually to a chapbook-length work of exceptional fiction or nonfiction that explores how place shapes identity, imagination, and understanding.
In this following interview by Andrea Caswell, Claire discusses the work, and how making art can reshape our understanding of what we see in the world.
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