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Workshop
Description |
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Date:
May 2–9, 2009
Arrive Saturday, May 2, at 3 PM
Depart Saturday, May 9, after brunch
Designed
for:
- serious, committed,
emerging writers with a complete—or nearly complete—draft
of a middle-grade or young-adult novel,
- MFA graduates,
- published writers at work
on a new project,
- writers who have been working
alone and are in need of feedback and guidance, and
- unpublished writers who are
close to submitting work to agents or publishers.
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What sets the historical novel apart from its close cousin, the contemporary novel? Like any novelist, the writer of historical fiction is concerned with character, plot, setting, voice, dialogue, action, and emotion. But those who set a novel in the past must augment their writer’s toolbox in order to transport their readers to another time and place.
Whether the novel takes place in the recent past or hundreds of years ago, the writer of historical fiction is part research detective, part social anthropologist, part sociologist. She may need to develop skills as an interviewer; she will certainly need to track down the primary sources that bring the past to life. Like someone panning for gold, the historical novelist sifts through piles of information in order to find the gold nuggets that allow her story to shine. If she is lucky, a combination of dogged research, coupled with serendipity, may lead to discoveries about the past that will advance her plot, deepen her characters, and surprise her readers.
This workshop will discuss issues specific to the genre, including:
• writing convincing dialogue;
• finding a narrative voice suitable to the period;
• recreating a world that has disappeared;
• the use of historical detail to advance the story; and
• the use of social issues and historical events as both background and foreground.
OUR APPROACH
Focused attention in an intimate setting makes this mentorship program one that guarantees significant progress. The Whole Novel Workshop offers writers the rare opportunity to have the entire draft of a novel read and critiqued prior to the workshop, followed by a week of intense, one-on-one mentoring.
Our novel mentorship program includes
• focused one-on-one response to your entire novel in
progress from an accomplished author and teacher,
• group critiques,
• seminars on technique and craft, and
• ample time to write and revise in a private, rustic
cabin.
The Whole Novel Workshop: Historical Fiction offers the one-on-one attention found in degree programs, but without additional academic requirements, lengthy time commitments, or prohibitive financial investments. Our aim is to focus on a specific work in progress, moving a novel to the next level in preparation for submission to agents or publishers.
Applications
will be accepted February 1–February 20, 2009.
You will be notified of acceptance status by March 9, 2009.
WorkshopTuition of $2,665 includes cozy, individual cabins; all meals (provided by a top-notch chef); airport pickup service, if needed; and an intimate teaching setting in the living room of the Founders of Highlights for Children!
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Workshop
Leaders |
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Liza Ketchum
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Liza Ketchum
Liza writes novels for middle-grade and young-adult readers. Many of her books are historical, including Orphan Journey Home, The Gold Rush, West Against the Wind, and Venturesome Creatures: Eight Women of the West. Her latest historical novel, Where the Great Hawk Flies, won the Julia Ward Howe/Boston Author’s Club Young Readers’ Award for 2006, and the Massachusetts Book Award for Children’s Literature, also for 2006. Liza’s middle-grade novels include The Ghost of Lost Island, Dancing on the Table, and Allergic to My Family. Liza is a faculty member in the MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults program at Hamline University. She has also taught writing at the Center for the Study of Children’s Literature at Simmons College and at Emerson College.
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Ellen Levine |
Ellen Levine
Ellen Levine has written twenty books for young people, including Catch a Tiger by the Toe, a novel that takes place during the McCarthy period; Freedom’s Children, a nonfiction book about the civil rights movement; Journal of Jedediah Barstow, an Oregon Trail adventure; and A Fence Away from Freedom, about the Japanese-American internment. Darkness Over Denmark, the story of the Danish Resistance and the rescue of the Jews during World War II, won the Trudi Birger Prize (Jerusalem International Book Fair), Golden Kite Award, ALA Best Books for Young Adults, Jane Addams Honor Book, and was a National Jewish Book Award finalist. Ellen’s picture book, Henry’s Freedom Box, based on a true story of the Underground Railroad, was a 2008 Caldecott Honor book. Many of her books, both fiction and nonfiction, deal with issues of social justice and equality.
Ellen is a lapsed lawyer, has worked in television and film, is a woodcarver, and has been on the faculty at Vermont College's MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults.
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Teaching Assistant |
Hollis Shore |
Hollis Shore
Hollis has a BA from the University of Vermont and an MFA in writing from Vermont College, where she was a recipient of the Jane Resh Thomas Award for her critical thesis, “What is Left Unsaid: Building Meaning Through Elision.” Hollis is also a winner of a PEN New England Discovery Award for her novel The Curve of the World. She writes in central Massachusetts, where she lives with her husband, David, their daughter, Dakotah, and their dog, Sir Luke of Bedlamb.
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