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.