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.  

What is Fall Writerfest?

Fall Writerfest is a writing program that meets annually at the Pyramid Life Center in the Adirondacks in upstate New York, from the Sunday after Labor Day to the following Friday morning. Our format includes morning workshops for which you pre-register and after lunch walk-in seminars for which you do not have to sign up in advance. We also have a centering/meditation session before breakfast and evening readings, both optional and offered on a walk-in basis. The $395 fee includes room and board as well as all of the above. 

If you decide to register, please pick one of the four morning workshop offerings - Fiction, Work-in-Progress, Poetry. or Nature Writing. You will hear from your instructor prior to arriving at Pyramid, probably about a month before. They might assign reading or a writing exercise to bring to Pyramid with you. You can read about each workshop at these links. 

Fall Writerfest: It’s All About the Telling 

Fall Writerfest: After the First Draft: Revising a Work in Progress

Fall Writerfest: Poets Writing After Other Poets

Fall Writerfest: Nature Writing: Telling the Lake, Story by Story

You can find the description of the after lunch walk-in seminars here. No need to decide in advance. You can attend any or all of them. 

We also have a third program for writers with a complete or near complete manuscript. This is the only aspect of the Fall Writerfest that would cost extra. If you would like a professional manuscript consultation with Jeff Campbell, Clif Travers, or Ellie O'Leary, that is available for an additional fee of $300. If you are nowhere near this stage in your writing, don't be concerned. Only a few people will do this. Additional information is here. 

You can register for Fall Writerfest and read more about the Pyramid Life Center on their website. The Fall Writerfest is facilitated by Nelle Stanton and Ellie O'Leary. Click on the name to send an email if you are looking for additional information. 

 

Manuscript Consultation

     We are offering a new program, developmental manuscript consultations, in conjunction with Fall Writerfest. This is a manuscript consultation suited for experienced writers with a work well underway, even finished, and ready for review and is in addition to being a registered participant at Fall Writerfest and whichever workshop you select. It’s important to note this is not a full line edit which could cost $1,000 or more.

    

Here are the parameters: 

·  Manuscripts must be received by the instructor by August 1.

·  Word count - up to 65,000 or at the discretion of the instructor

·  Writer will receive written commentary of 3-5 pages

·  One-on-one consultation, up to an hour, during Fall Writerfest

·  Clif Travers and Jeff Campbell are available for fiction or creative non fiction such as memoir

·  Ellie O'Leary is available for memoir or a poetry collection (up to 40 poems, no more than 45 pages)

·  Fee is $300, paid directly to the instructor up front with the manuscript.