2024 After Lunch Walk-In Seminars

After Lunch Walk-in Seminars – Front Room of the Lodge – 1 pm to about 2 pm.

Monday: You Fill Up My Senses - Jeff Campbell

In this craft-focused seminar, we’ll playfully give ourselves over to our senses—moving, tasting, smelling, touching, listening, looking—and explore the vividness, immediacy, and poetry of sensory language. 

Jeff Campbell is teaching “Creative Nonfiction: Not Playing by the Rules” at Fall Writerfest this year.

 

Tuesday: Love at First Line - Hollis Seamon

After the first paragraph—or maybe only the first line—of your novel, short story, memoir, creative nonfiction, or poem, are your readers well and truly hooked?  Engaged? Enchanted? Excited about forming a long-term reader/writer relationship?  Or are they already moving on to more alluring prospects?  Readers, including editors and agents, often report that they give no more than a few seconds to a piece of writing before deciding to reject it or to commit and read on, to see what possibilities it holds.  So how do you inspire instant attraction to your work? In this seminar, we’ll take a look at brilliant opening lines and discuss strategies for creating them. Bring a piece of your writing, ready to brighten its beginning.

Hollis Seamon, the author of two novels and two short story collections, is Professor Emerita at the College of Saint Rose in Albany and taught for the MFA in Creative Writing Program of Fairfield University.  She’s a Fiction Fellow of the New York Foundation for the Arts and lives in Kinderhook NY.

Wednesday: What is This Thing Called Poetry? - Ellie O’Leary

Do you attend writing programs, but shy away from the poetry offerings? Do you think those are for other people? I did. We’ll discuss what makes something a poem. Is it the way it appears on the page? What are the necessary elements? Metaphor, rhythm, line breaks? What is the difference between free verse and formal verse? We’ll discuss how writing poetry can enhance your other writing.

Ellie O'Leary, co-facilitator of Fall Writerfest, is the Poet Laureate Emerita of Amesbury, Massachusetts and the Education Director of the Gloucester Writers Center. She has published Breathe Here (poetry, 2020) and Up Home Again (memoir, 2023) both with North Country Press.

Thursday:  Jumpin’ Jack Flash! It’s a gas, gas, gas! - Suzanne Strempek Shea

The flash form is a whole lot of fun and you’re invited to jump on in! This combo of lecture and
mini-generative experience will be a primer on flash fiction, flash creative nonfiction, flash
scriptwriting and flash prose poetry. How do you write compelling lyrical prose or a complete narrative within a few hundred words, or even far less than that? That, and more, will be covered in this brief lecture on a short but big form.

Suzanne Strempek Shea is teaching “Do I Know You?” at Fall Writerfest this year.

The New Workshops Are Here! The New Workshops Are Here!

Here are links to each of the four workshops for 2024. There will be lots more information to follow - including the schedule, the after-lunch walk-in seminars, evening readings, and other logistics. If you have any questions or to select your workshop. let us know at FallWriterfest@gmail.com. 

Fall Writerfest: Creating Metaphors for Writing or Personal Growth

Fall Writerfest: Do I Know You?

Fall Writerfest: Creative Nonfiction: Not Playing by the Rules

Fall Writerfest: No More Excuses: All Works in Progress

Creating Metaphors for Writing or Personal Growth

"Every word is a fossil metaphor." In this all-genre workshop, we'll unpack that assertion by exploring the diverse Big Tent of metaphor, metonymy, and private symbolism. We'll focus on the nuts & bolts of crafting language for both personal growth and creative writing projects.

In-class generative writing will be prioritized, launched by prompts, worksheets, and exemplars from several minority groups. How do you spin off a fresh metaphor from a cliché? How do you extend a metaphor throughout a poem, chapter, or essay? What about revision? Can writers ethically take advantage of the vast but potentially risky resources of AI? Bring any genre of your own writing at any stage of completion. Separate one-on-one conferences will be offered.

Therese L. Broderick, MFA, has thrived as a work-a-day poet for close to twenty-five years, serving her local writing community in many roles. Her poems have won awards and have appeared in a variety of print, digital, and hand-stitched publications. Currently she volunteers as a telephone receptionist for the Hudson Valley Writers Guild and as a poetry tutor for a refugee from Burma/Myanmar. Her favorite metaphor for poetry is, "language in orbit" (Seamus Heaney).

Do I Know You?

What do you know about the people who appear in your work? Whether real or fictional, they need to be clearly presented to earn that precious real estate you’re giving them on the page. This workshop will help you establish and boost characteristics including voice, mindset and emotions in those who appear in your work (in any genre) to make the resulting piece as rich as possible. Expect exercises, writing time and handouts. Feel free to bring along a character in progress who might yet need further fleshing out.

Suzanne Strempek Shea has published novels, memoirs, and other nonfiction including 140 Years of Providential Care: The Sisters of Providence of Holyoke, Massachusetts, which weaves the order’s history with interviews, written with her husband, Tommy Shea, and with author/historian Michele P. Barker; and This is Paradise: An Irish Mother’s Grief, an African Village’s Plight and the Medical Clinic That Brought Fresh Hope to Both, the story of Irishwoman Mags Riordan, founder of the Billy Riordan Memorial Clinic in the African nation of Malawi. Suzanne taught at USM’s Stonecoast MFA program and was writer-in-residence and director of the creative writing program at Bay Path University.  

Creative Nonfiction: Not Playing by the Rules

How do you craft short nonfiction for maximum impact? By breaking rules, subverting expectations, and experimenting with narrative. Using in-class writing prompts, we’ll explore voice, structure, point of view, humor, and other entertaining tricks that can spice up any writing. Participants are asked to bring a short story about a real travel misadventure (700 words max.) in which a single moment prompts genuine revelation or change.    

Jeff Campbell is a freelance book editor, author, and writing teacher. As an editor for over 30 years, he helps authors tell their stories and shape their manuscripts in a wide variety of genres. For a dozen years, he was a Lonely Planet travel writer. Most recently, he’s written three YA science books. His latest, Glowing Bunnies!?: Why We’re Making Hybrids, Chimeras & Clones (Lerner Books, 2022), was named a “Best Book for Teens 2023” by the New York Public Library and was an SCBWI Golden Kite Award finalist.

No More Excuses: All Works in Progress

This workshop has SOLD OUT with a waiting list. 

Most of us work for years on a project. Some finish. Others end up banishing it into the metaphorical drawer. This workshop is designed to get your project closer to finished. Whether it’s fiction, non-fiction, or memoir, we will work together to move your book toward the finish line. We’ll talk about character development (real or imagined), story structure, outlining, and setting up reasonable mileposts. This will be a “no more excuses” bootcamp. Let’s get your book moving!

Clif Travers is a writer and visual artist living in Portland, Maine where he’s an editor of Portland Magazine. His writing has been featured in numerous journals and his collection of linked stories, The Stones of Riverton, was published by Down East Books in 2023. Clif received his MFA in creative writing from Stonecoast at the University of Southern Maine. He also teaches writing at the Gloucester Writers Center, Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance, and Maine Media.

Registration is now open.

 Registration for Fall Writerfest 2024 is now open. $425 inclusive with the option to add on an unstructured weekend. Workshops will be announced by the first week in March.  Register here. Schedule | Pyramid Life Center

Fall Writerfest 2024

We are planning the workshops and seminars now. The full information will be available in the spring in plenty of time for the fall program. Meanwhile registration for the 2024 season is expected to open in January 2024 at the Pyramid Life Center website. The $425 fee includes room and board as well as workshops, seminars, readings, etc.