Poetry and Prose From The Workshops

As many of you know, our 2:00 p.m. Sunday Open Door readings usually are an opportunity to meet featured authors, who are often reading from their books or from a journal or anthology in which their work has appeared.  We also have a long tradition of poetry and prose open mic readings, with a range of writers, including some who are reading in public for the first time. This Sunday, November 24, we're celebrating just a fraction of the very good writing that is being generated in workshops.  The emails came flying in after we invited workshop leaders to suggest writers whose work should be featured. As expected, there were far too many good authors to be able to include them all. 

Ellen Herbert ("Writing from Life"), one of the workshop leaders who suggested workshop participants, recently emailed about the many essays that have been published:

"By my count at least 26 essays generated from our class have appeared in print, such as The Washington Post's "Style" and "Style Plus" sections, The Washington Post Magazine, The Washingtonian Magazine, the Christian Science Monitor, Bethesda Magazine, as well as literary magazines such as The Little Patuxent Review, The Sonora Review, The Flint Hills Review, numerous online magazines as well as many themed anthologies. "Writing From Life" also had the privilege of reading drafts from Glen Finland's wonderful memoir Next Stop, published by Putnam."

We'll have a reception after the reading, which is free and open to the public.  We've asked the featured writers for brief profiles, posted below, and we've added a few links to their text. 

Before flowering as poet on Whidbey Island, Washington, in the early years of the twenty-first century, Ann Gerike was a graduate student in Glasgow and London for four years (the 1950s); a faculty wife, mother, and university press book editor in Lincoln, Nebraska (the 1960s and 1970s); and a midlife graduate student, clinical psychologist (PhD 1983), gerontologist, and anti-ageism activist (Houston and Minneapolis, 1980s and 1990s). She is author of a collection of poems, About Face: World War I Facial Injury and Reconstruction.  Her previous book, Old is Not a Four-Letter Word, was published by Papier-Mache Press in 1997.  In 2007 and 2008 she won the Stafford Prize in the Washington Poets Association contest, and her poems and stories have appeared in the Crab Creek Review, Cascade, Soundings Review, Alehouse, and four volumes published by the Whidbey Island Writers Association (Gull Rock Press).  Ann recently participated in a poetry workshop with Nan Fry.

Lynne McKelvey divides her fiction writing career into two phases. As a child growing up in  California, she began writing stories in grade school. When she was a freshman in high school, she won the Seventeen magazine short story contest. At that point, her fiction writing came to a screeching halt.  For the next three decades, she read other people's fiction, taught expository writing, and produced papers in various academic settings. Along the way, she married, had children, and started a singles club in Santa Monica, California. With these distractions under control or out of the way, she moved to Washington, where she enrolled in Joyce Kornblatt's fiction class at The Writer's Center and gradually found her way back to writing fiction. Since then she has participated in a number of workshops, including Jenny McKean Moore workshops at GW University taught by Gloria Naylor and Mary Morrissey, Dos Brujas workshops led by Cristina Garcia in New Mexico and Miami, and, most recently, in a year-long master class in the novel taught by Amin Ahmad at TWC. A Real Daughter is her second novella.   

Timothy Redmond is an attorney working at NIH (in a non-attorney position).  A veteran of the Afghanistan War, Tim has been published in 0-Dark-Thirty, a literary journal for veterans that is published by the Veterans Writing Project.  He has been taking workshops both at The Writer's Center and at Johns Hopkins University since  the Fall of 2010, when he enrolled in an NEA-funded free workshop for veterans.  He most recently attended a fiction workshop with Jim Mathews at The Writer’s Center. Tim is working on his first novel about his time serving in Afghanistan with the Special Forces, and hopes to complete it this year.  

Emily Rich is a former Federal employee and community college instructor who is taking some time off to write. She has taken numerous workshops the Writers Center both at the Bethesda location and online. Last summer she was accepted to the Tin House Writer’s Workshop in Portland, OR. Her work has been published in a number of journals including Little Patuxent Review, Greenbrier Review, River Poet’s Journal and Welter. She has just begun volunteering for Little Patuxent Review as a non-fiction reader. Emily lives in Arlington Virginia with her husband and a too-rapidly emptying nest. Emily recently attended Ellen Herbert's Writing from Life workshop.

Susan Silk is the Director of the Division of Policy and Education in the Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare at the National Institutes of Health where she writes policy for the national animal welfare program. During her 30 year career in science and scientific communication, she has served in many positions at NIH including as the senior scientific speechwriter at the National Cancer Institute and as the founding director of the Office of Mice Advice. Susan has participated in writing workshops including the 2013 Santa Fe Science Writers Workshop, Lynda Barry's Writing the Unthinkable Workshop and Ira Wood's Humor Writing Workshop. Closer to home, she has participated in The Writer's Center Workshops including David Taylor's Science Writing, Pamela Toutant's Creative Nonfiction and Liz Reese's Getting Started Creative Writing. Susan has a BFA in Design from Maryland Institute College of Art, a BS in biological illustration from University of Maryland and an MS from University of Maryland in Immunogenetics. 

Cathy Wu has slowly returned to writing after a long hiatus by participating in four Writers’ Center workshops over the past few years, including “My Life, One Story at a Time” with Pat McNees. She has also been using National Novel Writing Month, or Nanowrimo, to put some words on paper, and wishes the best of luck to other Nanoers, especially other non-fiction "rebels." Cathy writes about her family and cross-cultural experiences.

 

 

Diving into the Wreck

By Sara Taber, The Writer's Center Workshop Leader

In 2004, I was so moved by my last class of students that I had to write this. Thank you for this work that gives me such deep amazement and pleasure. Sometimes teaching leaves me breathless, knocks me back. What does the knocking is my students’ fearlessness, their willingness to go for broke, to plunge into murky waters - into danger.

When I was a girl, there was a particular type of documentary that set me to sitting up rigid as a mast, biting my nails. These were films by Jacques Cousteau - the ones where divers swam deep into the sea to locate disappeared ships, to uncover the mystery that caused the swallowings-up and to learn something of the lost lives of those who’d sunk with the vessels assigned to protect them, into the drink.

As the sleek, tawny-skinned divers with French accents ventured into the labyrinthine channels of the hulks at the bottom of the sea, the perils multiplied. Their oxygen was about to give out, they couldn’t open the trap into the next chamber where they were sure the captain’s log was cached (and who knew what lurked within) ravenous sharks circled…I sat riveted, breathing shallowly, trying not to use up my air, as I shone my light with them into the ship’s hold – now claimed and denied by a formidable sea - which might, at any moment, yield a fleeing princess’s lode of coins, but more probably flash a terrifying skull. How the heart in my skinny, 14-year-old body thrilled, back on Thornapple Street in Chevy Chase, when the divers emerged from the sea dangling secrets from their gloves.

I sit just as mast-like and gripped, often, during the classes I teach here at The Writer’s Center, in Bethesda - only a mile from the little den where I used to watch that tiny black and white television.

But recently, I taught a class which left me particularly breathless. At ten o’clock, I would drive home in a trance, gob-smacked by the courage of what looked from the outside to be ordinary, everyday human beings. For, from this innocent looking collection of adult night students - these people who struck out into the dark every Tuesday - emerged stories, one by one, of: a child’s suicide; the crash of a small plane that had left the writer parentless at age eight; PTSD contracted during postings war-ravaged to African countries; a threatening genetic disease; cancer; an elementary school student so abused she could barely speak…Every person in the class wrote, eloquently, with hard nouns and soft similes—and with more bravery than any French diver might boast of. There is physical courage and then there is another sort of heroism - that of those who brave searing emotions to show the rest of us certain truths. Heedless of the imperfection that would be revealed, of the re-lived sorrow that would course through them, these students, sharing their humanity, in each other’s company, holding hands—so kind, so trusting, so dear they were to one another - opened their watery lodes and passed around their bones and riches. I have a name for what these students did - what the brave students at TWC do each and every day; what they give to the world, through language, with utter fearlessness; and what leaves me gasping with awe. I call it diving into the wreck. As their teacher, as their lucky, lucky witness, I salute them.


SARA MANSFIELD TABER received a Bergeron Fellowship to teach writing in London, and was a William B. Sloane Fellow in Nonfiction at the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference. She is the author of Dusk on the Campo: A Journey in Patagonia, Of Many Lands: Journal of a Traveling Childhood, and Bread of Three Rivers: The Story of a French Loaf. Her short pieces have appeared in anthologies, such as Unrooted Childhoods: Memoirs of Growing Up Global and in literary magazines and on public radio. Her memoir, Born Under an Assumed Name: The Memoir of a Cold War Spy’s Daughter, is in press.

Where Do You Get Your Ideas? or Why I Read

We’re very glad to continue a longstanding Writer’s Center tradition of hosting readings by winners of the Washington Writers’ Publishing House competitions.  This Sunday, October 27 at 5:00 p.m. the latest winners, Robert Herschbach and Kathleen Wheaton will read.  We will have a reception and book signing following the reading.  Please note that the reading begins at 5:00 p.m. We're fortunate to post a blog entry by Kathleen Wheaton, author of the prize winning fiction collection, Aliens and Other Stories.

 

Where Do You Get Ideas? Or Why I Read

By Kathleen Wheaton

 

When I took my first creative writing workshop in college, our young and handsome instructor, who’d recently published a story in the New Yorker, imparted tips on craft that everyone made eager note of: show, don’t tell; have your characters desire something, read your own words aloud to find your voice.

 

He also urged us to spend as many waking hours as possible reading. This sounded humorous, like telling members of the football team to be sure and get plenty of exercise. But as the term progressed, it became obvious that some students hadn’t--and didn’t--read all that much. Their impulse to write seemed more organic than mine, to spring from an internal well of imagination I didn’t possess.

“Creativity” was big on campuses in the late 1970s (you could take a class in it), and it bothered me that a quiz administered by the psych department revealed that I was too cautious, my habits too orderly, my homework too promptly finished, for me to qualify as a creative personality. And the stories I wrote for the instructor (himself a natty dresser with neat penmanship) were usually a response to something I’d read: about a trip to a new place, a romance gone wrong, an old person looking back on life. Writing, I felt, was an ongoing conversation between someone long dead or far away, and me.

 

I moved to Spain after college and taught English, and then moved a lot more, to Boston, New York, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, and Tepoztlan, Mexico. It was several years before I had enough freelance newspaper and magazine assignments to be able to say that I made my living as a writer.

 

With journalism, your inspiration is clear: your editor gives you an assignment, you do it and hand it in--it’s like having homework for the rest of your life.  But I continued to write short stories, and here the “why” was murkier, especially after I was married and had two children. I could claim that I turned down assignments and spent money I wasn’t earning on babysitters because it turned out that I actually was creative, because I had a deep-seated drive to invent and imagine. The truth is that some other writer was doing the imagining first, and that was what always got my own wheels turning--to want to describe my peculiar neighbors, the view from my window, my midnight epiphanies.

 

Living much of the day in another language, and writing what I hoped were indisputable facts, I looked forward to sinking under the covers at night with a novel. In the early 90s, before books could be turned into bytes, they were expensive to mail or took up precious space in suitcases, so I chose carefully, and reread a lot. And then I’d want to sit down and reply to my invisible, distant, dear friends.

 

The British novelist Anthony Powell once said that when writers read they’re always thinking about how they’d have told that story. I don’t think he meant that they’re nitpicking or criticizing (though they also do that) as much as working out what they’ll say when they get their turn at the mic.

 

Of all the arts, we view writing as the least collaborative--songs are written and movies made and dances performed and even murals painted with and alongside others. A book written “with” someone else is ghostwritten, somehow bogus. Writing is only properly done alone, we’re told, in that hard-won room of one’s own. To say that you rely on others for your ideas, your techniques, your stories, seems to skate dangerously close to confessing to plagiarism. But I’m not talking here about about passing off someone else’s work as your own. I’m saying that stories, like language itself, evolved from a long-ago mother source. Nobody is born speaking a language--you listen, imitate, practice, until your words sound like you. And you have to know the story--in as many iterations as possible, as close as you can get to the ur-version grunted around the campfire while the mastodon sizzled--before you can tell yours.

 

 

The Writer's Center Partners with Fall For The Book

The Writer's Center has a longstanding annual tradition of hosting a reading as part of Fall for the Book.  This year, the September 22 reading by Clifford Garstang and Hailey Leithauser and the September 27 reading by Jon Pineda and Sarah Pleydell are both included in the festival. We're glad to post Art Taylor's blog about the upcoming festival.

 

Novelist Sarah Pleydell

From a Pulitzer Prize-winning humorist to one of the most important figures in today’s political landscape to the memoirist whose adventures launched Oprah’s Book Club 2.0, this year’s Fall for the Book Festival welcomes some of the nation’s most exciting and provocative writers to its landmark 15^th annual festival, September 22-27. Dave Barry, Ralph Nader, and Cheryl Strayed join thriller writer David Baldacci and poet Sonia Sanchez to headline the festival, which hosts events at locations throughout Northern Virginia, DC, and Maryland. And as part of its continuing partnership with Fall for the Book, The Writer’s Center will be welcoming acclaimed authors Clifford Garstang and Hailey Leithauser on the festival’s opening day and Sarah Pleydell, and Jon Pineda on the closing evening.

 

On Sunday, September 22, at 2 p.m., The Writer’s Center hosts poet Hailey Leithauser and novelist Clifford Garstang for readings from their recent and upcoming works. Leithauser is author of Swoop, which won the Poetry Foundation’s Emily Dickinson First Book Award and is forthcoming from Graywolf Press, and Garstang’s novel, What the Zhang Boys Know, published by Press 53, has been named a finalist for the 2013 Library of Virginia Award in Fiction, alongside  Christopher Tilghman’s The Right-hand Shore and Kevin Powers’ The Yellow Birds.

Then on the festival’s closing night—Friday, September 27, at 7:30 p.m.—The Writer’s Center hosts readings by first-time novelists Jon Pineda and Sarah Pleydell, writers who have each earned distinction in other genres before earning praise for their fiction. Pineda’s new novel, Apology, winner of the 2013 Milkweed National Fiction Prize, follows on the heels of his memoir Sleep in Me, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and his poetry collections The Translator’s Diary, winner of the 2007 Green Rose Prize, and Birthmark, winner of the 2003 Crab Orchard Award Series Open Competition. Sarah Pleydell, whose debut novel Cologne has been described by The Washington Post as “crisply and elegantly written,” is an award-winning writer, performer and playwright who has worked with institutions including The Wolf Trap Institute for Early Learning Through the Arts, The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and the Luce Institute.

Beyond these events at The Writer’s Center and the festival’s five headliners, Fall for the Book welcomes a wide range of authors across a diverse set of genres, including:

• Novelists Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Bonnie Jo Campbell, Ellen Crosby, Anton DiSclafani, Allison Leotta, Thomas Mallon, Benjamin Percy, Bob Shacochis, and more
• Poets Eduardo Corral, Judith Harris, Karen Ah-hwei Lee, William Logan, Robyn Schiff, and more
• Historians and biographers Marie Arana, Scott W. Berg, Robert Dorr, Dean King, Cate Lineberry, and Daniel Stashower, among others
• Memoirists Josh Hanagarne, E. Ethelbert Miller, and Elisabeth Petry (daughter of novelist Ann Petry), and more
• Honest Tea founder Seth Goldman
• And the festival’s first major cooking and food event, with discussions and demonstrations by Norman Davis, Todd Gray and Ellen Kassoff Gray, Krista Gallagher and Kris Schoels, Dave and Claudia Lefeve, Forrest Pritchard, Michael Stein, Joe Yonan, and Peter and Laura Zeranski
• Plus much, much more!

For a full list of authors attending this year’s festival—September 22-27 at George Mason University and locations throughout Northern Virginia, DC, and Maryland—visit www.fallforthebook.org.

 

   

Publish Now!

Last year we presented “Publish Now!,” a popular one-day program focusing on rapid changes in the publishing world and the resulting opportunities and challenges for writers. The event was a great success – the room buzzing with conversation at the reception following the close of the formal program -- so we’re glad to offer a second “Publish Now!” program on Saturday, October 26.  The day-long program will offer insights into the world of self-publishing in the digital age, Speakers include Amy Abrams, Ken Ackerman, Laura Ambler, Austin S. Camacho, Barbara Esstman, Neal Gillen, C.M. Mayo, Margaret Meacham, Jennifer Miller, Phil Sexton, and Wilson Wyatt.

 

Phil Sexton, Writer's Digest Publisher

The "Publish Now!" annual seminar is designed to give all writers the latest information they need to publish their work in print or e-book format in the digital age. Self publishing once carried a tremendous stigma, but a Writer’s Digest survey of 5,000 authors revealed how attitudes are changing.  The survey found that 70% of traditionally-published authors who had also self-published actually preferred self-publishing. It's easy to understand the appeal:  self-publishing can be more lucrative for authors than the traditional payment arrangements with established publishers; authors can also have more control over the final products, whether in the form of print books or e-books. Additional control implies extra responsibilities for authors seeking to successfully self-publish.  Our speakers will address the challenges they have faced and ways avoid many of the common pitfalls of self-publishing. 

 
Wilson Wyatt, an author and photographer active in the Delmarva writing community, has observed significant changes in the publishing landscape: “Self-publishing stands on its own feet and competes head-to-head with traditional publishing. Writers can now take control of their own publishing experience.” Wyatt, a founder and executive editor of The Delmarva Review, played a prominent role in organizing both Publish Now! programs. 

Writer’s Digest publisher Phil Sexton will offer a writer’s perspective in his opening talk, which will address the current  trends in publishing. Sexton has worked with Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Books-a-Million and many other major book retailers and wholesalers in the country. He is also the author of A Picture is Worth 1000 Words, Legends of Literature and The Writer’s Lab.

The program will run from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, October 26.  Sessions will cover: preparing and editing your manuscript, alternative publishing techniques, self-publishing choices and costs, business and legal issues and proven marketing strategies. In addition to novels and nonfiction, specialized breakout sessions will be devoted to publishing children’s and young adult, memoir, art and photography, travel and interactive books.

Space is limited and early registration is recommended. Tickets are $100 ($85 for Writer's Center members and $50 for full-time students and military veterans.)  A $25 increase will go into effect after Oct. 1.

Getting a Fresh Start in the Fall

by Kathryn Johnson

Autumn always seems a particularly productive time of year for writers. Cooler weather energizes us. Youngsters return to school—for some of us parents, and grandparents, providing the luxury of more time to write. We have the gift of a glorious few months between summer vacation and the onset of the hectic holiday season during which we can immerse ourselves in the creation of new stories, poems, screenplays, essays, articles, and even novels. To my mind, there is no better or less distracting time of the year in which to start a new project, finish an ongoing one, or learn something new about our craft. I start a new novel every fall and work right alongside my students. And I’m often laboring over another book’s revisions at the same time. I’d love for you to join us while pursuing your own literary adventure this fall!

You’ll discover lots of classes to choose from in the Fall catalogue. All of the instructors at The Writer’s Center work hard to develop the kinds of courses you’ll enjoy while picking up new skills and refining those you’ve used for years.  Meanwhile, here’s a quick preview of the classes I’ll be offering my students between now and the end of 2013. You’ll find days, times, and additional details in the catalogue, as well as online at The Writer’s Center website: www.writer.org.

The Extreme Novelist gives each student a chance to work on a rough draft of their own novel, under the instructor’s guidance—with support, encouragement, and nudges from the class. This 8-week course requires dedication to an intense program of daily writing with a goal of completing a full draft of a novel in 8 weeks. Be brave—what have you got to lose?

The Fiction Master Workshop is an advanced 4-week course that addresses what to do with your novel, novella, creative nonfiction, or short story after you’ve finished a draft. A practical self-editing, fine-tuning course, with marketing tips. Its goal? To increase your odds of publication by: 1) avoiding the most common pitfalls that result in immediate rejection, 2) including elements most desired by readers and acquiring editors.

And a variety of ½-day single-focus seminars served up with coffee and pastries:

Historical Fiction celebrates the rebirth of the genre. HF accommodates just about every genre from mysteries to adventure, from generational sagas to sea stories, Westerns and romances. Experiment with setting your story in a past time and place, and attract devoted readers.

Creating Conflict discusses how to build emotional conflict into any plot, thereby creating the necessary tension to capture readers’ attention and keep them engaged.

Life’s Characters gives writers a fresh way of looking at characterization that will breathe life into their paper people and make readers care deeply about them.

Powerful Beginnings spotlights the task of creating a strong opening for your stories. Editors today, sadly, often reject on the basis of having sampled only the first few sentences or paragraphs of a story. Learn how to avoid the knee-jerk rejection by starting strong.

Holiday Stories—who doesn’t love ‘em? Learn how to shape a story around the emotions and traditions of the seasons. Publishers are always looking for the next classic.

Come-Alive Fiction is all about creating vivid scenes through natural sounding dialogue, believable action, and realistic settings. Readers want to “participate” in the stories they read and feel they are “there”. We’ll learn how to weave these elements into any story.

50 Shades of Romance isn’t just about erotica or even romance. We’ll discover how romantic elements can add emotion, realism, urgency, and color to a wide variety of story types. Agents often claim that anything with a love story is an easier sale. How can you make the most of this opportunity in your own fiction?

If you have questions, feel free to contact The Writer’s Center: 301-654-8664. And by all means, check out the many other courses and seminars offered at the Center this semester. I’m sure you’ll find something to inspire and inform!



Kathryn Johnson's novel, The Gentleman Poet: A Novel of Love, Danger, and Shakespeare's "The Tempest" was winner of the 2011 Bookseller's Best Award for Young Adult Novels

 

 

Writing About Music Panel Discussion

The Writer’s Center will present a special event Saturday, October 5 bringing together four music journalists to discuss writing about music, with a particular focus on jazz. The program, which has been organized by Willard Jenkins, recipient of the 2013 Lifetime Achievement Award in Jazz Journalism from the JazzJournalists Association, takes place from1:00 to 4:00 p.m. at The Writer’s Center, and will be followed by a wine and cheese reception.   

Jenkins notes that the writers will discuss the changing landscape of music journalism: “Music journalism and criticism has evolved over the last 50 years -- particularly with the explosion of pop music in that time -- into its own very distinct writing craft.  Writing about jazz music is one of the oldest and most vibrant branches of the music writing craft that has broadened considerably with new technology and the changing face of hard-copy print media.  Join our panel of print and electronic jazz journalists - with experiences ranging from the Washington Post and the NPR jazz blog, to international magazines and books -- as we explore how writers endeavor to write about the mysteries of music.  As the great Duke Ellington once said, ‘...there are only two kinds of music -- good music and bad music.’"

 

Writing About Music

1:00 – 4:00 p.m. Saturday, October 5

The Writer’s Center

4508 Walsh Street

Bethesda, MD 20815

$15, $10 members, $5 students and military service members

301-654-8664

 

Patrick Jarenwattananon is host of NPR’s A Blog Supreme, which describes itself as “an ongoing conversation about Jazz for both indoctrinated fans and curious listeners.”

Willard Jenkins is Artistic Director of Tri-C JazzFest. His work has appeared in several publications, including JazzTimes, Inside Arts, Down Beat, Schwann Spectrum, Schwann Opus, Jazz Report, Jazz Forum, The Antioch Review, Attache, Jazz Education Journal, and All About Jazz, He has also conducted extensive oral history interviews for the Smithsonian Institution, the Rhythm & Blues Foundation, and 651 Arts. 

John Murph is a music, art and pop culture journalist based in Washington, DC. His work has appeared  widely in magazines, newspapers, online and on radio, including in JazzTimes, Down Beat, JazzWise, Vibe, the Washington Post, Washington Post Express Washington City Paper, NPR, BET Interactive and the Root Web sites, and on WPFW, 89.3 FM. 

Michael J. West is a freelance contributor to Washington City Paper, JazzTimes, DownBeat, and The Washington Post. He has also published in  Monterey County Weekly, East Bay Express, A.V. Club (Washington, D.C.), and “A Blog Supreme” on NPR.

 

 

Writing Neighborhood Histories

Neighborhoods and their histories can be a rich source of material for writers working in many genres.  We’re fortunate to offer workshops with David Taylor at Hill Center on Capitol Hill and also a new venue for us, Sandy Spring Museum.  As an added bonus, his blog post links to his Washington Post feature article detailing aspects of the life of Joaquin Miller. Miller’s name is kept alive because of a great Washington tradition, the Miller Cabin poetry reading series offered every summer by The Word Works. 

 

Harlem’s Lenox Avenue, when Ralph Ellison was a writer for the Works Progress Administration

Weaving It All into a Narrative

by David Taylor

Sometimes a story or subject –a personality, a landmark or event – haunts us to track it down through any means we can lay our hands on: manuscripts, biographies, snapshots, even walking tours. And sometimes the narrative that emerges from that hunger can feel more like a quilt than whole cloth. It has a rich texture but still, as a narrative it has to hold together.

One spring day 11 years ago, I took a walk and bus ride across Harlem that gave me the spine of a story about Ralph Ellison’s Harlem for Village Voice, on the 50^th anniversary of the publication of his Invisible Man.

Later the contrast of Meridian Hill Park’s position as a forested slope at the edge of DC in 1884, and a Meridian Conference held to establish ground zero for a world clock, gave focus to my article for the Washington Post magazine.

Recently for a new way into the story of the War of 1812, I worked with former National Geographic archivist Mark Collins Jenkins to gather firsthand accounts buried in the Library of Congress – from its manuscripts collection to its Rare Book Room (where white gloves are required) and its regular stacks. I also tagged along with an archaeological dive team in the Patuxent, searching for ships sunk when the British attacked Washington. With these, we stitched together a new picture of that divisive and perilous time, showing a wide range of people and backgrounds caught up in it: African-American freedmen in Maryland, naval clerks at the Washington Navy Yard, spies and runaways, blockade runners, husbands and wives.

For any writer, it’s easy to lose your way among the glittering bits and research. We all need handles for pulling these pieces together and making a textured whole that gives readers a larger, moving narrative. Because even when history is very local, it can be big as life.

So last summer within sight of the Library of Congress we tested a first workshop on Researching and Writing Neighborhood Profiles. It was hands-on and the students turned up a blast of discoveries: lives and hideaways that took us from DC’s Brookland neighborhood to Route 66 and on to the Kentucky-Tennessee border. Our group had wide-ranging curiosity and together we talked through how to tie the strands together. We got help from Sharon Leon of George Mason University’s Center for History and New Media for trying out new tools for historians and storytellers.

This fall we’ll do it again, starting with a one-session workshop at The Hill Center, on September 25. A four-session workshop starts a month later, digging further into these ways of drawing on research for writing powerful local stories and photo essays. I hope you’ll come, share your obsessions and explore how to pull them together.

Finally - though some argue against research for fiction – I find the same process can help fiction writers too (and possibly poets). Many possibilities. We look forward to seeing you at Hill Center or Sandy Spring Museum.

 



Joaquin Miller, poet of Meridian Hill in the 1880s.

 

Credits for images:

Joaquin Miller: Library of Congress

Harlem's Lenox Avenue: New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations

(We are offering several workshops at Hill Center starting in September.  Click here to see the list, and here to register for David's workshop at Sandy Spring Museum.)

 

Politics & Prose Publishes District Lines

Politics & Prose Bookstore recently published the debut issue of District Lines, an anthology of original local work by writers from in and around the Washington, D.C. area. The anthology is a valuable addition to the literature of the metro area, and several contributors are long-time members and friends of The Writer’s Center. We recently asked Susan Coll, a member of the editorial staff, about the anthology, and we’re glad to post her comments here.  Susan also sent us a link to video from the publication reading at P& P, and to submission guidelines for writers who'd like to submit work for Volume 2. 

 

Does the anthology fill a void in the DC literary scene?

In some sense there will always be some sort of void in an arts or literary scene. But judging by the enthusiastic response we’ve had so far, and the number of submissions we had for the last Volume and now Volume 2, there are a lot of talented writers in this area and not enough outlets for them to publish.  

 

How did the fact that you are a brick-and-mortar bookstore inform the way you edited?

We wanted this to be an anthology of local writing and to be more inclusive than not—we saw this less as an attempt to be Granta or The Paris Review than to be a community-building endeavor. We wanted to encourage both veteran and novice writers to think about the communities in which they live and work. That said, we did look for work that hit the sweet spot of being on topic and well written, and because we received so many submissions, we had to be somewhat selective.

 

How did the anthology help build or reinforce the P & P community? Were there outliers in the community that the anthology helped to bring into the fold?

I think it really turned out to be more of a community builder than I would have expected. For one thing we had submissions from all over the metropolitan region. One woman wrote her essay at a senior center in Annapolis and came into DC for the event. We also had someone write about the experience of being a Chinese immigrant in Centerville, Virginia.

We also had great attendance at the event itself. People hung around and mingled for a long time to chat about writing and living in the DC area, so it really did feel like a great community event in that sense, as well.

 

Did you have any expectations about what rough percent of submissions would be poems, fiction, and nonfiction, and were you surprised by the mix of submissions, by genre.

We had no expectations whatsoever---we weren’t sure we’d get any submissions, so it was a nice surprise to get a nearly perfect blend of poetry, fiction, and essays. We’d love more graphics, next time.

 

How did you get the word out to attract submissions?

We put the word out through our own email list, which reaches nearly 30,000 people, and also via social media. I also asked friends, including friends at The Writer’s Center, to help spread the word. It was amazing to see how far afield submissions came from—many submissions came from around the country from people who used to live in D.C. and have since moved away.

Were there particular surprises, or new things you learned about the Washington area as a result of the submissions?

Yes! There was a great essay about a period during the 1960s when people thought the Capital Beltway was actually speaking to them; evidently this story did the 1960s equivalent of going viral. There was also a lovely essay by Faye Moskowitz about Cleveland Park that taught me things about the history of my own neighborhood. And someone whose husband had worked as the plumber at the White House from the Truman through the Carter administrations had some great anecdotes.

 

Do you anticipate having more District Lines anthologies, and if so, roughly how often? 

We are hoping to publish twice a year. We hope to put out our next Volume sometime this winter.

How do you see the Opus printer influencing literature in the DC area?

Opus provides a unique opportunity for local writers to publish independently. We’ve had authors use Opus for all manner of publications—everything from poetry anthologies and short story collections to personal narratives, memoirs, and even textbooks. We’ve had events at the store where Opus-published authors can read their own work, which we think brings together a community of writers who aren’t published elsewhere. Of course, Opus was also instrumental in enabling us to put together and produce District Lines. I’m not sure we would have done it if we hadn’t had ready access to the machine; it made the whole process easy and affordable.

 

 

 

Free Fiction Workshop for Veterans, Active Duty Personnel and Family Members

 

The Writer’s Center has received funding from The National Endowment for the Arts to offer a tuition-free writing workshop starting September 23.  The workshop, which is offered to military veterans, service members and their families, meets at Hill Center, 921 Pennsylvania Avenue, SE, in Washington, D.C., two short blocks from the Eastern Market Metro station on the orange and blue line.  To register please email laura.spencer@writer.org and put “Free Workshop for Military” in the subject line.  We’d like to thank the NEA for funding this workshop  and Hill Center for generously providing a room.  A tuition-free nonfiction workshop, also funded by the NEA, will be offered at The Writer’s Center in 2014.

Fiction workshop at Hill Center
6 Mondays
September 23 through October 28
6:30 – 9:00 p.m.

This fiction workshop is offered to military veterans, service members, and their adult family members. It focuses on intensive writing and revision, with some required reading. Participants will submit short stories or novel chapters to the instructor and to their peers for critique. Typically, one or two stories or chapters are submitted during a workshop. Workshop participants will also submit detailed critiques of their fellow students' writing. The workshop is provided at no cost to the participants. Readings and some directed writing projects will be assigned by the instructor. Maximum attendance: 12.

Workshop Leader:  Ron Capps, founder  and director of the Veterans Writing Project,  served 25 years in the Army and Army Reserve and is a combat veteran of Afghanistan. He is a contributor to Time Magazine’s Battleland blog and to Foreign Policy; his literary writing has been featured in JMWW, The New York Times, Little Patuxent Review, Prime Number, and Riverlit. The Washington Post called his 2009 essay Back From the Brink, “stunningly good.” His essay The French Lieutenant’s iPod won first prize for creative non-fiction in Press 53′s 2011 Open Awards competition, and his 2011 essay Yellow was listed as a Notable in Best American Essays of 2012. He has been a featured speaker on National Public Radio's All Things Considered, Pacifica Radio, the BBC World Service and has been a consultant to Time, Rolling Stone, and public broadcasting’s Frontline. His book, Writing War: A Guide to Telling Your Own Story serves as the curriculum for VWP seminars and workshops. A memoir, The French Lieutenant’s iPod, is forthcoming in 2014 from Schaffner Press.
 

 

 

Hal Wilson, left, of the Eastern Shore Writers Association, interviews Ron Capps in Delmarva Public Radio’s studio (WSDL-FM, Salisbury) – Photographed by Wilson Wyatt. Click here to hear the interview.

 

 

 

Trialogue: Poetry in Translation

We're looking forward to hosting Trialogue, an afternoon of poetry and discussion about the art of translation, at 2:00 p.m. on Sunday, June 30, and we'd like to thank the Goethe Institut Washington for this First Person Plural blog posting.

 

Imagine a neighborhood that spans three continents, inhabited by people of diverse interests and varied backgrounds, and who speak at least three different native languages. That, in a nutshell, is what Trialogue is all about—a three-way conversation across time and distance undertaken in the hope of helping turn former enemies and uneasy strangers into neighbors.

 

Since February this year, the Goethe Institut Washington, the Confucius Institute at George Mason University, and the D.C. Public Library System have collaborated on a series of readings featuring poems by German, Chinese, and American poets, each of which have been translated into the other two languages. The focus of all the poems was “passions”—things that generate excitement in many cultures—from art, to sports, to political protest, to life after dark.

 

The final reading in this series, to be held at the Writer’s Center, on Sunday June 30, will focus on the challenge, frustration, and fun of translation itself—particularly the translation of poetry.  It will feature live readings in German and Chinese (including a performance via phone-link with Germany’s champion rap-poet Bastian Boettcher) as well as original poems in English by Sarah Browning, Joseph Ross, and Fred Joiner.  In addition, professors Peter Beicken from the German Department at the University of Maryland and Dr. Lihong Wang, who teaches comparative literature and Chinese at George Mason University, will be on hand to discuss the translation process and their own personal experiences with literary translation. 

 

Moderating the session will be Lane Jennings, whose activity over the years as poet, scholar, and translator “without portfolio” gives him a non-professional’s perspective on the translation process.  As an enthusiastic amateur, translating only what he likes for the sheer fun of it, Jennings insists that no translation is ever finished—merely abandoned, that no existing translation should ever be considered “definitive,” and that even badly flawed translations can have real literary value.

 

Poets will read their own work and react to hearing others read that same work in translation, discuss which elements of poetry can and cannot be accurately passed back and forth between languages, and be available to respond to questions and comments from the audience.

 

More about the poems in the Trialogue project can be found at www.goethe.de/usa/trialogue.