Each summer since 1997, the Meredith College Department of English has sponsored a writing workshop for women who are writing, who want to write, and who want to try writing.
The workshop offers instruction, critique of manuscripts, and—not the least of its advantages—new friends who share a common interest. Dozens of women have benefited from these workshops and from other writer events sponsored by Meredith during the academic year.
During this one-week workshop, outstanding instructors guide students in poetry, fiction, or creative non-fiction.
Summer 2011 Course Descriptions
* Fiction with Zelda Lockhart
* Creative Nonfiction with Nancy Peacock
* Journaling with Carol Henderson
* Poetry with Ruth Moose
Fiction with Zelda Lockhart
In this workshop, Zelda Lockhart will vet your manuscript and present it to you with notes that will help guide you through the experience of completing a whole work of fiction. Lockhart will share her expertise in crafting a story well told, and offer a series of exercises designed to eliminate writer's block. Other writing tools will give depth to character development and plot development, and enhance the language of your story. Participants will also learn invaluable skills on becoming a constructive peer reader. Each participant must submit 10 pages of a manuscript (a whole short story or 10 pages of a novel-in-progress) via email by June 4 to zelda@zeldalockhart.com
ZELDA LOCKHART is author of award winning novels Fifth Born and Cold Running Creek. Ms. Lockhart held the honor of the 2010 Piedmont Laureate for Literature in North Carolina, and June 2010 witnessed the release her third novel, Fifth Born II: The Hundredth Turtle. Her other works of fiction, poetry and essays can be found in a variety of anthologies, journals and magazines. Ms. Lockhart lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina and continues to lecture and facilitate a variety of workshops that empower adults and children to self-define through writing. She welcomes visits to her website: www.zeldalockhart.com.
Creative Nonfiction with Nancy Peacock
This workshop is a journey into women's personal essays, including your own. Through writing exercises designed to help you mine your material, through encouraging and specific feedback on your works-in-progress, and through the discussion of published essays we will tap into the vein of women's creative nonfiction. In addition we will learn, like all writers have had to do, how to establish a writing practice from where you are in your life rather than waiting for that perfect day without stress or obligations. Participants are encouraged to bring the opening five pages of a personal essay for class discussion.
NANCY PEACOCK is the author of A Broom of One’s Own: Words on Writing, Housecleaning, and Life, published by Harper Perennial. Part writing guide and part memoir, A Broom of One’s Own is a collection of personal essays recounting her transformation from self-employed house cleaner to writer and teacher. She is also the author of two novels, Life Without Water, chosen as a New York Times Editor's Choice, and Home Across the Road. Peacock is currently working on a novel, while running writing workshops for women in her studio in Orange County. She invites you to visit her website at www.nancypeacockbooks.com
Mining for Gold: Journaling into a Deeper Life with Carol Henderson
Keeping a journal is perhaps the most productive of all methods for reconsidering the world, preserving our experiences, exploring our deepest selves, and developing our writing skills. On the pages of a journal we can let our inner voices reign, delve deeply into creative projects, and find ways to tell our own life stories. In this workshop we'll learn how to unlock the full power of this multi-purpose tool. We’ll explore memory, point of view, dreams, life chapters, character portraits, poetry, dialogues with aspects of ourselves, and more. We’ll acquire new techniques to enliven our writing and help us find fresh ways to view our lives and creative selves. The emphasis is on process-not product—that means we'll write a lot. Experience first-hand how journals can help us come to terms with our pasts, discover joy in the present, and transform our futures.
CAROL HENDERSON is a writer, editor, and teacher who leads four ongoing writing groups and works one-on-one as a writing coach and editor. She also teaches around the US, in Europe, and in the Middle East. Carol writes for newspapers and magazines and has edited several memoirs and essay collections, most recently Qatari Voices (Bloomsbury) and Wide Open Spaces: Call Stories (Circle Books). She is the author of Losing Malcolm: A Mother’s Journey Through Grief, (Univ. Press of Mississippi), selected by USA Today as one of five must-read summer memoirs in 2001, and a forthcoming book about the healing power of writing. Learn more about Carol: www.carolhenderson.com
Poetry with Ruth Moose
Poetry reaches into places you didn't know you could go. From the ever present ordinary to the superlicious cyberspaces, we'll bungeeleap toward the moon, then perhaps peer down to the grave crawling dark. Oh, the places we'll go. Come write with me.
RUTH MOOSE has been on the Creative Writing faculty at UNC-CH since l996. She is author of two published collections of short stories, The Wreath Ribbon Quilt and Dreaming Color with individual stories in Atlantic, New Delta Review, Southern Review and other places including publications in Holland, South Africa, England and Denmark. Moose has published six collections of poetry, most recently The Librarian and Tea and Other Assorted Poems. She's received a MacDowell Fellowship and in 2009, a prestigious Chapman Fellowship for Teaching. She lives in Pittsboro.
Fee: $300
If you have questions, concerns, or suggestions, please contact workshop coordinator Ashley Hogan at hogana@meredith.edu
Contact Information:
For inquiries: hogana@meredith.edu
For submissions: hogana@meredith.edu
Website: http://www.meredith.edu
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