06/06/2010 9:00 am
06/11/2010 5:00 pm
Rosemont CollegeLocated on a 56-acre campus in an attractive, historic suburban community, Rosemont College is a peaceful sanctuary located just minutes by train from center city Philadelphia. Each day will begin with an elective yoga session. Afternoons will be spent in an intense three-hour workshop run by an instructor who is not only an accomplished writer in her own right, but also an experienced teacher. Workshops will be limited to no more than twelve participants, ensuring that each author will have plenty of critique time. Nightly faculty readings and receptions, along with an open mic, will offer plenty of networking opportunities, but the emphasis will be on immersing yourself in the writing life and your own work. Full access to the Rosemont computing and fitness facilities will be available. For more information, contact Carla Spataro at cspataro@rosemont.edu
Dates: Sunday, June 6th - Friday, June 11th
Tuition: $595 (Partial merit scholarships are available. Scholarship Application Deadline: May 6, 2010)
Room & Board: $200
Yoga: $20
The Faculty
Elise Juska, short story
Lise Funderburg, creative non-fiction
Liz Abrams-Morley, multi-genre (Wooing Your Muse)
J. C. Todd, poetry
Elizabeth Mosier, novel writing
THE WORKSHOPS
elise juskaI. Elise Juska, Short Story
WORKSHOP TITLE: The Whole Story: Exploring the Possibilities of Voice in Short Fiction
"The voice of the story is the whole story," said the venerable short story writer Grace Paley. This workshop will delve into the quality and importance of voice in fiction through a series of diverse readings, daily writing exercises, and generous amounts of peer feedback. Participants should submit one short story to the Conference by May 28. The crux of our workshop will be thoughtful, detailed discussion of participants' work. Instructor will provide written critique.
Elise Juska has published three novels with Simon & Schuster: One for Sorrow, Two for Joy; The Hazards of Sleeping Alone; and Getting Over Jack Wagner, which was a “Critic’s Choice” in People magazine and optioned for feature film. Her short stories and essays have appeared in numerous publications including The Hudson Review, The Missouri Review, Harvard Review, The Carolina Quarterly, Good Housekeeping, The Seattle Review, The Philadelphia Inquirer and Esquire.com. She teaches fiction writing at The New School in NYC and the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, where she received the Director’s Award for Teaching Excellence.
Elizabeth MosierII. Elisabeth Mosier, Novel Writing
WORKSHOP TITLE: Trouble-Shooting Strategies for Novelists
Writing a novel requires more than just endurance–it requires using familiar tools in an unfamiliar way to solve narrative problems. Bring your complete, in-progress, or long-abandoned novel to this weeklong workshop. We’ll tackle the mental blocks that keep us fixed instead of finished, and practice new strategies for planning, plotting, and pacing a novel-length work. Please submit 3,000 words you want to throw out the window by May 15.
Elizabeth Mosier is the author of the novel, My Life as a Girl (Random House) and numerous short stories and essays published in magazines including Seventeen, Child, and Poets and Writers. A graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, she teaches writing in a variety of settings, including Bryn Mawr College. More information is at http://www.ElizabethMosier.com.
Liz Abrams-MorleyIII.Liz Abrams-Morley, Multi-genre
WORKSHOP TITLE: Wooing Your Muse
Anxious to write or anxious about not writing? Whether you write fiction, memoir, or poetry, are a long time writer feeling stuck and stale midway through a project, or see yourself as a beginner wanting to explore your writing voice, this workshop is designed to get you going, keep you going and arm you with an arsenal of ways to get or keep your creative work going after you leave the retreat. We will write from a wide variety of prompts and woo our muses with serious play.
Liz Abrams-Morley is the author of two full-length poetry collections, (Necessary Turns, Word Press, 2010; Learning to Calculate the Half Life, Zinka Press, 2001) and two chapbooks. Her stories and poems have appeared in nationally distributed anthologies and journals and have been featured on NPR. Co-founder of Around the Block Writers’ Collaborative, (www.writearoundtheblock.org) Liz teaches MFA students at Rosemont College. She and her partners at ATB are currently completing a book of prompts to woo the muse.
JC ToddIV. J.C. Todd, Poetry
WORKSHOP TITLE: This Much I Don’t Know For Sure: Unsettling Image and Line
A poem begins in a flash—a question, a glimpse that unsettles what you think you know. How can the poet sustain this initiating surge through images and lines that explode or subvert expectation, yet home in on a disturbingly true closure? We’ll explore model poems that veer surprisingly, yet set a course that’s true from first line to last, then experiment by writing a new poems of our own.
J. C. Todd is author of What Space This Body (Wind Publications 2008), Nightshade, and Entering Pisces, and has poems in APR, The Paris Review and other journals. Awards include fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Leeway Foundation, and artist colonies in Europe and the US with an MFA from Warren Wilson College, she teaches creative writing at Bryn Mawr College and in the graduate program at Rosemont.
Lise FunderburgV. Lise Funderburg, Creative Nonfiction
WORKSHOP TITLE: Sleeves Rolled Up: Revising Your Personal Essay
Revision is typically considered the geekiest of creative writing undertakings--the last to be picked for the team or asked for a dance. Wasn’t it enough, many writers wonder, to make the Herculean leap from blank page to first draft? The truth is, revision is its own art and can be a wildly beneficial part of the creative process…if you allow it to be. In this workshop, we’ll focus on your crappy or not-quite-there draft of a personal essay, and through targeted exercises, assignments, readings, and workshops, move it closer to being publication-ready.
Lise Funderburg’s latest book is the memoir, Pig Candy: Taking My Father South, Taking My Father Home (Free Press), a contemplation of life, death, and barbecue. She has been a regular contributor to O, The Oprah Magazine and has written for The New York Times, TIME, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Nation, and Prevention. Lise is a graduate of Columbia University School of Journalism and a creative nonfiction writing instructor in at the University of Pennsylvania and Rutgers.
