Announcing our 2017 Undiscovered Voices Fellow: Julia Tagliere!

by: B. Rae Perryman

The Writer's Center is pleased to announce our
Undiscovered Voices Fellowship
winner for 2017:

Julia Tagliere

Each year, The Writer's Center awards a Washington, DC area writer earning less than $25,000 per year with this exclusive fellowship. We believe that writers of all backgrounds and experiences should have an opportunity to devote the time and energy toward their craft. Of the many qualified applicants, this year's winner was Julia Tagliere, who submitted a short story that wow-ed our judges.

Ms. Tagliere is a freelance writer and editor whose work has appeared in The Writer, The Bookends Review, Potomac Review, and Hay & Forage Grower (yes, that’s a thing), as well as in several anthologies, including Here in the Middle: Stories of Love, Loss, and Connection from the Ones Sandwiched in between; Candlesticks and Daggers—An Anthology of Mixed Genre Mysteries; the juried photography and prose collection Love + Lust; and The Way to My Heart: An Anthology of Food-Related Romance. Her short story, “Te Absolvo,” was named Best Short Story in the 2015 William Faulkner Literary Competition. Julia currently resides in Maryland with her family, where she recently completed her M.A. in Fiction Writing at Johns Hopkins University. To learn more, visit her at justscribbling.com.  

Our Development & Community Outreach manager, Bethany Perryman, caught up with Ms. Tagliere. 

Read her exclusive interview below:

Bethany: First of all, congratulations on winning our Undiscovered Voices prize for 2017! We are so excited for you to be a part of our prestigious cadre of writers and literature lovers. Your short story was selected by judges as the best of many qualified candidates. How does it feel?

Julia: I'm incredibly honored and excited to see what the year ahead will bring. 

BP: You've also won other prizes for your short stories. Can you tell us what you think makes a great short story? 

JT: As a writer, there's no way to answer that without sounding like far more of an expert than I consider myself to be at this point in my writing--I mean, if there is a formula, I'd certainly love to learn it. As a reader, however, I find that the stories I most appreciate, first and foremost, move me in a way that lingers long after I've finished reading. It could be a really well-developed character, an unexpected twist in the narrative, lush imagery or rich, vivid language; in the best stories, all of those elements are present.  

BP: I'm personally curious: What's your process when you begin a new story? Do they come to you in a flash or inspiration, or...?

JT: Flash implies a much speedier process than what I normally experience. Sometimes the inspiration comes from an image or a feeling, a face I see, maybe something I see on the news. That thing, whatever it is, gets stuck in my mind like a grain of sand in an oyster, and I find myself coming back to it over and over again, worrying at it. It either drives me crazy, or it starts to grow and take shape into what I think might be a workable piece--usually both, if I'm being totally honest. 

BP: What are your plans for your next year at The Writer's Center? Any books or stories in the works?

JT: I have a novel in progress I've been twiddling away at for a while now, and I'm planning to use this next year with TWC to finally complete it. 

BP: What's the biggest setback you've encountered in your writing career? How do you deal with it?

JT: My biggest setback was probably being rejected repeatedly by a particular M.A. program some years back. It really stung for a while, to keep applying and keep being rejected. But I understand now that I wasn't prepared at that time--I had a lot of growing I needed to do as a writer to be ready for a program of that nature. I dealt with it by spending the next several years after my third and final rejection doing a lot of reading, independent studying, and connecting with other writers to try to reach a point where I felt comfortable applying again. 

BP: What's your favorite type of writing to do, and why? Tell us a little more about what turns your gears.

JT: I used to think I preferred writing novels, but since I've been working more in shorter forms lately (short stories, flash), I must confess, I enjoy the greater frequency of those moments of gratification that come from actually completing a story. Those moments take so long to arrive when writing a novel; it's easy to become discouraged. 

BP: Any last words of advice for students at the Center and other aspiring or emerging authors? What about for writers who are hoping to enter contests and fellowships? What's your secret, besides great work?!

JT: Writing can be a very lonely business, if you let it be. Step away from your keyboard for a while and engage with other writers. Take classes, attend conferences, engage with folks online via social media, form a writing group of your own, support local writers in their endeavors. Those connections not only can sustain you when you get down in the dumps about a given work-in-progress--and you will--but they can also help you learn about opportunities that will contribute to your growth as a writer. That's what it's all about, isn't it? 

For more information about the Undiscovered Voices Fellowship, please contact Bethany at b@writer.org.

By and By: The Copybook Songs of Isaac P. Anderson

By and By: The Copybook Songs of Isaac P. Anderson

Part of a full length book and album project called "By the By: The Copybook Songs of Isaac P. Anderson," workshop leader David Keplinger has put a lyric written by his great great grandfather in 1869 to music. Below is the song they made together!


David Keplinger, vocals, guitar; Helen Hausmann, violin, Ira Gitlin, banjo.

Buy the EP on iTunes today!.

Also, check out David's upcoming workshop, Managing Imagination.

David Taylor's Soul of a People

There is no denying it's Monday, but there's also no denying that David Taylor's award-winning documentary Soul of a People is bringing the beginning of the week back in a big way.

Soul of a People: Writing America’s Story is an award-winning Smithsonian documentary film about a diverse group of unemployed men and women who found relief from the Great Depression on the WPA Writers’ Project. To survive, they reported on local history and life for state guidebooks. They ended up producing an epic and controversial self-portrait of America, with effects that reverberated for decades. A few of them became famous later -- including Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, pulp writer Jim Thompson, John Cheever, May Swenson and Studs Terkel -- while others are less known today. Soul of a People offers a fresh look at the WPA writers, their lives and their legacy. Narrated by Patricia Clarkson, with readings and commentary by Studs Terkel, Richard Ford, Dagoberto Gilb, Amy Bloom, Reynolds Price and others.

Check out two venues that are discussing his work this Monday and Tuesday:

A screening of Soul of People: Writing America's Story (followed by a Q&A)
Tonight, Monday, September 19, at 7:00PM
at DC Tenley Neighborhood Library

A discussion about the book Soul of a People
Tomorrow, Tuesday, September 20, at 7:00PM (Room #307)
at MLK Memorial Library

Both events are FREE, and give a chance to explore how a dramatic episode from history unfolds in two different formats.

If you can't make it out this week (or heck, even if you can!), but can't get enough David Taylor, consider signing up for one (or both!) of his upcoming fall workshops Writing Brilliantly About Science on September 27, or Writing a Documentary Treatment on October 29. Click on the links for more information and registration.

Writing Dialogue for Actors by Richard Washer

Enough with the "he said-she said." It's time to show--not tell--your story. Playwright and TWC workshop leader Richard Washer on the collaborative experience that is dialogue and playwriting:



Writing Dialogue for Actors
by Richard Washer

Each genre of writing presents its own set of unique challenges for writers. Playwriting is no exception. Some of the basic tools and skills can be gleaned from reading one or more of the plethora of books on playwriting, or by taking workshops where a writer can practice, test, and hone such skills. But playwriting, at the end of the day, is a collaborative craft and as such playwrights write for other interpretive artists. The more a writer understands the craft of these artists, the better the blue print we call a play script is likely to be.

This is hard to convey in a workshop. I provide anecdotes from my experience as a writer, director, and dramaturge to convey a sense of how much an actor or designer can bring to all aspects of a play. While this is helpful, I can see in the eyes of everyone around the table the hunger to experience this. And in these moments I am reminded that the best instruction I received came from watching seasoned and talented actors take my words through the paces of rehearsal, previews, and production. However, as ideal learning experience as this might be, it’s not a practical one. It should come as no surprise that theatres are not likely to spend any of their budgets on helping a new playwright learn.

So, I started to look for a way to bring this experience to my playwriting workshops. I brought in actors for the last meeting of a workshop so that the writers in the group could hear their words performed. But the lack of follow-up always troubled me. There was no time to comment, discuss, or debrief on this experience and focus on lessons learned.

A while back a local high school invited me to offer some playwriting workshops and figuring there was safety in numbers I asked an actor (Hope Lambert) to join me. Hope not only brought her experience of working on new plays in New York, Washington D.C., and National Tours to the workshop, she also articulated and demonstrated the actor’s approach to the craft in a friendly, fun and inviting series of exercises. Watching her I realized that she brought my anecdotes to life and even more importantly, made the writers active participants in the lesson.
Hope and I now offer various presentations of this workshop (one-day or one-weekend seminars, short-term workshops of four to six meetings and longer-term workshops). In all of these the focus is on developing a basic understanding of the actor’s craft and using that knowledge to write dialogue that engages an audience in a story.

If you are new to playwriting or you are frustrated with trying to bring your dialogue and characters to life, this workshop will help you: better understand what the actor looks for in a new script; break out of the habit of TELLING the story and move into showing the story by appealing to the actor’s skills in your writing; have fun in a safe environment trying out some new acting skills and applying them to your plays; and along the way, add to your writing toolbox a deeper knowledge of the collaborative journey you take the instant you put dialogue on paper.

Richard Washer will be leading “Dialogue: A Practical Approach” at The Writer’s Center starting September 27.

Richard Washer, M.F.A., playwright and director. Richard was a co-founder of Charter Theater, a company devoted to developing and producing new plays. His recent productions include Quartet at the Hamner Theater and Getting It produced at the National Conservatory for Dramatic Arts. Richard is the Inaugural Playwright in Residence at First Draft Theater and a workshop leader at The Writer’s Center since 1994.

Freedom and Form in Poetry by Nan Fry

This week on First Person Plural, Tuesday is Fry-day. TGIF? I think so, and you will too after reading below!


Freedom and Form in Poetry
by Nan Fry

Ezra Pound has said that “…some poems have form as a tree has form, some as water poured into a vase.” For years, I preferred the organic form of the tree and saw symmetrical
structures as unnecessarily restricting. Why then am I teaching a workshop entitled
“Poetry Free and Formal”? I have come to realize that the terms “free” and “formal”
are not so much opposites as points on a continuum.

Several years ago, when I attended Westchester University’s Conference on Form and Narrative in Poetry, I told myself and others that I was there for the narrative only. Then I realized that I write riddles and that such poems do indeed have a form, albeit a flexible one, as they use metaphor, imagery, and sometimes paradox to present something familiar in a way that is mysterious. In this case, the form is more a model or a goal, rather than a confining structure. It gives me a direction to go in but does not limit the paths I can choose.

Form can also be liberating. Recently, in “Making It New,” a workshop I just taught at The Writer’s Center, I saw this principle in action. I’d suggested that the participants try a poem modeled on Wallace Stevens’ “Disillusionment of Ten O’clock,” a list of all the things that were not happening in the speaker’s neighborhood at night. One student came in the next week with a poem on the stock exchange—the things it cannot do. I think we were all surprised that she had written so well on something so timely yet seemingly unpoetic. As we discussed her work, she said, “Form is amazing—it gives you permission to do whatever you want.” Later, she said that she had been surprised by what she had written and that she probably couldn’t have done as well if she had approached the subject directly.

That is the delight of poetry—either free or formal—we surprise ourselves and discover our poems as we write them. As Theodore Roethke said, in his wonderful villanelle, “The Waking,” “I learn by going where I have to go.” In “Poetry Free and Formal,” we will explore ways to give our free verse shapeliness and musicality and will experiment with flexible and symmetrical forms that may suggest direction and perhaps open up new possibilities.

Nan Fry will be leading “Poetry Free and Formal” at The Writer’s Center starting September 22.

She is the author of two collections of poetry, Relearning the Dark and Say What I Am Called, a chapbook of riddles she translated from the Anglo-Saxon. She taught in the Academic Studies Department at the Corcoran College of Art + Design for over 20 years. Nan has poems forthcoming in the Delmarva Review and Spillway as well as an essay in the winter issue of Poet Lore. Her work can also be found online in the archives of the Poetry Society of America and of The Rambling Epicure.

Facing the College Application

What I remember most about applying to college was the endless hours agonizing over the essay portion of the application. Whether my words put me in the right light? And what exactly was the right light? I knew a few people who went temporarily insane as they believed their entire life depended on wowing the admissions committee. It was all very funny in retrospect but painful to live through, in that transient period.

I’m sure the game hasn’t changed that much since I was a senior in high school. People are still procrastinating and fearful. To help with this, I’m leading the workshop, Write Yourself into College. It’s a one-day intensive. And I wanted it to be a kind of antidote to procrastination, worrying, and those given to anxiety-induced panic attacks.

This workshop is intended to help all of those applying to a four-year university who waited to the last minute and need a little push.

Here’s what you can expect:

come to the workshop ready with the essay prompts from your school of choice;
critique a sample essay with your peers, finding out what makes the essay strong and not so strong (noting some alternative choices the author could have made);
work on your first draft, read it out loud, and receive feedback from peers and myself;
then work on your rewrite

By the end of the day, you should be well on your way to completing your first essay for one of your colleges. You also have the option of sending me the final draft before you send it off.

Write Yourself into College will be offered on Saturday, October 10 at The Writer’s Center. For information about this workshop, please drop me a line at abdul.ali@writer.org

Wednesday Guest Instructor: Adele Steiner

Today's guest is Adele Steiner. The photos you see below are from her Look Ma, "Hands" on Poetry reading, which took place at the Center earlier this fall. Adele Steiner holds a B.A. & M.F.A. in English Literature and Creative Writing (Poetry) (University of Maryland). She's also been a Poet-in-the-Schools for the Maryland State Arts Council; a Veteran Artist in Residence, Georgetown University Hospital; and she is the author of Refracted Love , Freshwater Pearls, and most recently The Moon Lighting. Her work has appeared in Wordwrights, Maryland Poetry Review, Gargoyle, Smartish Pace, Promise, and So To Speak, among others. Here she is.



In my new book, Look Ma, “Hands” on Poetry, I deliberately created writing workshops in which students would be asked to use their five senses to help them learn how to read, understand, and write poetry. In other words, I wanted to get them physically involved in activities and artistic endeavors so that they would have a first-hand experience to write about. You often hear well-known authors advise aspiring writers to “write about what they know” because it is the “up close and personal” experience that provides writers with the kind of raw material that is crucial for crafting the authentic and honest writing that readers crave.




In one of the workshops in Look Ma, for example, I asked some younger students to spend 5-10 minutes enjoying a Tootsie Pop. I then requested that they engage their five senses and relate that experience in a poem. I enjoyed reading about “…crunchy crispy thunder,” a “honey bun” that was “blue, “ and “…looked like a shoe…falling into a mouth.” There were also tales of the moon “…made of popsicles and cherry ice cream,” and readers were advised to “Eat the moon with a spoon.” Another student said that she preferred the candy lollipops with bubble gum (not Tootsie Roll) inside because she could blow bubbles after the candy was gone and, perhaps, blow one “…that’s big enough to take to the purple sky until it pops,” and she falls down into a “purple pool” that she can swim in. As a result, my students didn’t just describe how they ate a Tootsie Pop—They had an experience with the candy that they wove into some magical poems.




Older students really enjoy an experience-oriented workshop as well. Both middle school and high school students jump at an opportunity to participate in my Cloud Poem Workshop. If you don’t believe me, I challenge you to find a student from this age group who wouldn’t like to spend an English period outside on a beautiful day, lying in the grass, and watching clouds go by so that they can use their musings as the inspiration for a poem. In this workshop, I’ve learned that clouds are “shadowy figures…sky crawlers…and climbers.” They are hats “because they cover the sun,” and they are “diamonds shining…, smoke rising…,” and “…pillows sleeping…” because “Clouds show your dreams!”



My new Fusion Art and Creative Writing Workshop for 8-11 Year Olds is a workshop that I’ve been wanting to offer for a while because the entire series of workshops relies on art and art related activities to provide the experiences that students will write about. As an artist in education with the Maryland State Arts Council, I have generally only been able to incorporate one of the workshops listed in this class description into a poetry residency. Time constraints as well as the logistical demands involved in setting these workshops up make it difficult to do much more than that. Students, however, love them.




One student told me that he didn’t want to stop painting with water (in Buddha Board fashion) because he said that all of the different things he was seeing in his brush strokes were giving him so many ideas to write about. “ Black clouds, water turning black and fading” while “rain comes down…” and “swords swish” are just a few of the images from his poem. Another student wanted to create not just one Mandela, but two, because she enjoyed being hypnotized by the art form, especially when she spun it around on her pencil point. Her poem revealed “people sleeping in a circle, standing on each other’s shoulders” and “…singing like a heart.” These students and others responded to these two workshops with some wonderfully creative writing.




Their stories and poems were so good, as a matter of fact, I couldn’t help but think that an opportunity for students to engage in these activities, as well as others like them, in a series of workshops would result in “pure gravy.” Specifically, the Fusion Art and Creative Writing Workshop would “jump start” young writers’ imaginations and provide them with a variety of techniques and tools to help them learn how to invoke as well as sustain the creative process in order to write original and exciting new stories and poems.

Winter Workshops and More

Regular readers of this blog will notice some changes in layout. With winter workshops and events just around the corner, it felt like the right time to give this blog a new look and feel.

Over the course of the next several months we plan on adding regular features to the blog, and those will be rolled out beginning today. What I'd like to do is request all Writer's Center instructors interested in posting on this blog to e-mail me at ksemmel@writer.org. Basically, you can use this blog to discuss your workshops, your writing, etc.--I'm open to the possibilities!

I'd like to dedicate Wednesdays to WC instructors. There are more than 100 of you, so that could potentially mean 100 weeks of postings. It's something I've long meant to do. I welcome the idea of making this a dynamic, multi-voiced blog.

For non-instructors reading this blog, the winter workshops will be posted online tomorrow. This should be done by mid-afternoon or so. Check out what we have to offer and contact us if you have any questions. The print version of our brochure-- which is now merged with the Writer's Carousel-- is on schedule and should be in your hands early in November.

Until next time,

Kyle

Guest Blogger Charlie Jensen: Writing Communities

As our fall workshops are just about to launch, I've been remembering some of my first experiences in situating myself among other writers.

When I was in high school, my English teacher, who really served as my first writing mentor, took me on a field trip with some other students to a writing festival at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, a small satellite of the larger UW system near where I grew up. The campus that day was full of energy and students of all ages. As attendees of the festival, we attended a large assembly about the importance of writing and then each registrant was placed in a critique workshop--my first of this kind but certainly not the last--with an established resident or visiting writer.

Our poems had all been thoughtfully read, and other members of our critique groups were also invited to provide criticism. My poem that first year was typical of what you'd expect from a 14-year-old boy: an extended meditation on relationships and sports, wherein the rules of baseball stood in for the conceit of sexual tension.

While my instructor delicately handled both my adolescent hubris and borderline offensive content with grace and aplomb, it wasn't long before a girl in the audience spoke up to ridicule me and my work. "This is disgusting!" she shouted, a small group of her friends egging her on. "How can you write about sex this way?"

The three girls attending the event from my school were sitting in the workshop with me. They were the kind of kids you didn't mess with--the kinds of girls who knew what various car enginge parts were and what they did, who snuck out to smoke at lunch, whose faces had that teenage scowl--but they liked me. And when the drama started, they fired right back. "Leave him alone!"

The objectioning girl stood up, and then we saw that she was several months pregnant. Her argument made a little more sense then. But things didn't die down and the lobbed jabs from either side grew in intensity and irritation until finally, our workshop leader shut the discussion down and moved on to another piece. But even as we left the room, the girl and her friends shot me looks of death.

I suppose an early introduction to criticism like this steeled me for the years of workshops to come.... And rest assured, they're very rarely this eventful!

Hope to see you at the Center next week.

Guest Blogger: Abdul Ali on Taking a Workshop

For the past three weeks I’ve been taking a poetry workshop. Overall, I find workshops to be helpful. Helpful in the way that aspirin relieves a headache. Whenever my brain freezes and no poetry comes out I get the urge to sign-up for a class, adding a few tools to my writer’s toolbox each time. I really enjoy the whole experience of a workshop. It’s like auditioning for American Idol, being naked, pretending nothing phases you; after all, you want to be a professional, right? So, the whole time I wear my poker face and listen to the comments that my classmates make. The whole time I’m waiting for the verdict: does the poem do its job or not?

I am most excited about the rigor of the workshop. How my instructor doesn’t let me slide by on being clever, or those lazy lines that we poets sometimes crunch out. On my first day, my instructor identified a poet that was close to our developing aesthetic and charged us with finding a copy of their book before next class—whether the book was in print or not. It was hell on earth (but I loved it!) I’m learning (even while I’m typing this) the best thing that a workshop can give a writer is a fire: a thirst that will continue beyond the last day of the workshop.

Are you still thirsty from a recent workshop?