The "Godfather" of Creative Nonfiction, Lee Gutkind, and Jawbox Frontman J. Robbins Highlight Winter Season

The Writer's Center is stoked about its 2010 winter events & workshop season. We've got more workshops--including new workshops--across all genres, and we've even added a couple new ones this past year. We're also pumped by Lee Gutkind--the "Godfather of Creative Nonfiction--and his arrival at The Writer's Center. He'll teach a master workshop AND we'll host the official relaunch of Creative Nonfiction right here. Then there's J. Robbins, frontman of Jawbox, who will perform as part of Story/Stereo on February 19th. Keep reading to see what we've got in store for you this winter.


Workshops

This winter we've expanded our corps workshops by bringing in the "Godfather" of creative nonfiction, Lee Gutkind, who will offer a master workshop in the form. And Emerging Writer Fellow Marianne Villanueva will teach a visiting writer workshop on Using Memory in Memoir and Fiction in February. Those of you interested in screenwriting will be happy to know that we've got even more workshops in this genre this quarter, including a new documentary screenwriting workshop with David A. Taylor (who should know something about documentary films: His documentary "Soul of a People" is featured on the Smithsonian Channel and his winning plenty of accolades). All writers should be interested in Buzz Mauro's new Reading Your Work: Public Speaking, a workshop designed to make writers better performers of their work. Writer's Center staff had a foretaste of this workshop this past autumn--and let me tell you, it was amazing, and fun. I may take the workshop myself. Folks interested in comedy can get their fill with former comic Basil White in his Applying Standup Comedy Techniques to Your Writing workshop.

Selected January workshops include Creative Fiction: Internet (Bausch), Improv and the Writer (Jacobs), New Year's Resolution Workshop (Block), Songwriting: Digging Deeper (Fink), Writing the Personal Essay (Toutant), Words Out Loud: Writing for Radio (Davis), Starting a Documentary Film Project (Taylor), Dramatic Storytelling for Trial Lawyers (Baxter), How to Write a Grant Proposal (Seitchek), How to Talk the Talk: Focus on Dialogue (Pietrzyk), and Extreme Novelist (Johnson).And a second session of Extreme Novelist.


Here's the special deal for readers of this blog: Mention this blog post when you register for a workshop and you can get $50 off ANY six or eight-session workshop. That's right, $50. The only restriction to this is that you cannot register for your workshop online and get your discount. Right now our Web site simply won't accommodate special deals.

Events

We continue our trend of adding offering more and terrific events (we think, but we're admittedly biased). The complete list of events can be found at http://www.writer.org/. If you're on Facebook, please consider becoming a Fan of The Writer's Center. Each week we send one event update (and occasionally offer special deals. And we like to engage our community by encouraging conversation.

Some highlights:

On Sunday, January 17, poet David Gewanter (War Bird) joins Wayne Karlin (Wandering Souls: Journeys with the Dead and Living in Vietnam).

On Saturday, January 30, Writer's Center "alum" Pagan Kennedy returns and is joined by internationally acclaimed poet Carolyn Forche at our 33rd birthday celebration. This event is the only charged event of the season. $20. But it's a catered event and it should be tremendous. Both authors are featured in the current issue of The Carousel, and I may repost those features as we move closer to the date.

Beltway Poetry Quarterly celebrates its 10th anniversary on February 7.

Story/Stereo: A Night of Literature and Music has two dates:

February 19 with Marianne Villanueva (Mayor of the Roses) and Steve Fellner (All Screwed Up), along with musical guest J. Robbins. J. Robbins is the frontman of Jawbox. Jawbox reunited for a special show on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon last night. You can view that video on the DCist's Web site here.

March 19 with Kathleen Flenniken (Famous) and Anthony Varallo (Out Loud) with a musical guest TBA.

American Ensemble Theater, a new theater founded by workshop leader Martin Blank, will present a staged reading at The Writer's Center on February 26. More info can be found at their Web site.

Mark your calendars for a Creative Nonfiction inspired event called Writing the Future, which will be held in conjunction with a new rollout of Creative Nonfiction magazine with Lee Gutkind. See Gutkind on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart on the above link.

And finally, don't forget--especially those of you out in northern Virginia--that we have some really great events out in Leesburg as well. These are part of our The Writer's Center at Leesburg First Friday events at the beginning of each month. One event includes C.M. Mayo in March, and more will be announced as they come in.

Good writing and reading! We hope to see you early, and often, in 2010.