Ethel’s Song has won the 2023 Paterson Prize for Books for Young People, Grades 7-12 and was named a 2023 Bank Street College Best Book…Facing the Enemy: How a Nazi Youth Camp Tested a Friendship, a Junior Library Guild selection, debuted December 5, 2023. Up next: Working on a YA novel in verse about how three young men–two New York Jews and one Mississippi black–worked together for social justice in Freedom Summer until their heinous murder by the KKK.
Writing the Past
Everyone Has a Story to Tell
Writing the Past workshops offers writers of all genres and all levels the opportunity to bring the stories they’ve heard or imagined onto the page. Using the Amherst Writers & Artists (AWA) method, , we’ll meet online via Zoom using time-based prompts as inspiration. All material is considered fiction and all work receives responses about what resonates, what is memorable or sticks. There is no critique. AWA Certified Affiliate Barbara Krasner provides provide the prompts.
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Writing Family History Workshop
Perhaps you’ve come across a photo or a family heirloom that intrigues you. Maybe you’ve found your immigrant grandparents’ citizenship papers. Or perhaps you can’t stop thinking about the last time you saw Cousin Ellen at Aunt Helen’s funeral and the conversation did not go well. Maybe that story Uncle Irving told you about your great-grandparents still commands your attention. Or that cookbook your mother inherited that became the basis of holiday meals.
In each session, we’ll write to timed prompts to help you put your thoughts on the page. Family history can be preserved forever if someone, maybe you, writes it down.
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Writing the Past Memoir Workshop
Memoirist Sue William Silverman writes in her craft book, Fearless Confessions, that memoir involves the connection between the voice of experience and the voice of innocence. We’ll write to a variety of prompts to bring these voices together with insight and respect. We’ll meet via Zoom for two hours each week in a four-week cycle.
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52 Snapshots: Writing Micro Memoir
Using Sonja Livingston’s Fifty-two Snapshots: A Memoir Starter Kit as a guide, we’ll write in ten-minute sprints to create a collection of micro essays (about 300 words each). Sessions will last 90 minutes. Day and time for this workshop have not yet been set. If you’re interested, please let me know what days and times would work for you.
Sundays, 10:00 to 11:30 am ET, $35/session for $140 for four-week cycle
Creating Your Full First Draft | A Revision Workshop
Maybe you’re like me with loads of bits and pieces of writing that need to be knitted together into a whole, cohesive narrative. In this workshop, I’ll introduce some tools to help you:
- Week 1 – Organize
- Week 2 – Find the Arc
- Week 3 – Plot the Emotional Journey
- Week 4 – Transition
Using exercises of freewriting, storyboarding, and honest assessment, by the end of this workshop, you’ll have a collection of pages that now have flow and meaning.
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Submission Party!
Join fellow writers in a nurturing hour to send your literary work out into the world! At the onset of the hour, we’ll share our submission goals. Then we’ll go off to do the work and return to share and celebrate what we’ve accomplished.
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