HONING YOUR CRAFT: WRITING THAT SIZZLES
and ANNUAL BUSINESS MEETING
Saturday, January 19, 2019
Trader Duke's Hotel, 1117 Williston Road, S. Burlington, VT 05403
Member price: $46
Non-Member price: $56
Please note that registration will close at end-of-day Sunday, January 6, 2019
SCHEDULE
8:30 - 9:30 - Registration & Morning Refreshments
9:30 - 10:30 - Julia Shipley - But Why? Understanding What's At Stake In Your Work
10:30 - 10:45 - Break
10:45 - 11:45 - Sean Prentiss - Bengal Tiger Moments: Perception of Time on the Page
11:45 - 12:45 - Lunch
12:45 - 1:45 - Business Meeting
1:45 - 2:00 - Break
2:00 - 2:40 - Workshop - Julia Shipley
2:40 - 2:50 - Break
2:50 - 3:30 - Workshop - Sean Prentiss
AND...
We're having a book sale courtesy of The Brick House Book Shop!
The Brick House Book Shop in Morrisville will be closing its doors at the end of the year after 40 years in business. Owner Alexandra Heller has graciously donated some books for us to sell at our meeting. All proceeds benefiting the League. So bring some cash or your checkbook!
The Brick House still has hundreds of books that are looking for good homes, including antiquarian books and some first editions… a true treasure trove for avid readers and writers!
All books will be at a 50% discount.
Available works include but aren’t limited to: poetry, literary fiction, mystery, biographies, children’s book classics, history and natural history, architecture, theater, mythology, anthropology, philosophy, special boxed editions, leather bound books, and not to forget sheet music.
Please make an appointment with Alexandra if you want to visit the bookstore since it is not always open: Brick House Book Shop, 802-888-4300, 632 Morristown Corners Rd, Morrisville, VT 05661.
PRESENTERS
JULIA SHIPLEY - BUT WHY? UNDERSTANDING WHAT'S AT STAKE IN YOUR WORK *
* with apologies to parents of two-year olds and VPR's eponymous podcast
DESCRIPTION:
Any impactful writing — no matter if it’s a poem, essay, or story — has something smoldering at its core, has its secret reason for being. The more that any writer knows about that tension, that risk, that hurt, that joy -- that sizzling purpose at the work’s core, the more powerful that piece of writing stands to become. In this talk the speaker will explore the means and ways, the chutes and ladders into asking, But Why? and then she’ll discuss how to harness the answer to make one’s writing more vital. She’ll share examples her own bumbling journey as well as showcasing stories from other writers who asked, heeded and succeeded from asking: But Why?
BIOGRAPHY:
Julia Shipley is a nonfiction writer, journalist and poet based in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom. Her work has been featured in Yankee Magazine, Seven Days: Vermont's Independent Weekly, Orion Magazine and Nieman Storyboard.
She's the author of a debut collection of poetry, The Academy of Hay, as well as a mostly prose book, Adam's Mark, named a Best Book About New England by the Boston Globe in 2014.
Her poems and essays have appeared in the 32 Poems, Collagist, Fourth Genre, Gettysburg Review, Green Mountains Review, Harvard Review online, the Rumpus, Verse Daily and elsewhere.
In 2018 she became the first female calendar columnist for the Old Farmer’s Almanac in their 200+ year history and served as a Visiting Writer at Vermont College's MFA program in Writing and Publishing. Presently she is the mentor-editor for Mud Season Review.
SEAN PRENTISS - BENGAL TIGER MOMENTS: PERCEPTION OF TIME ON THE PAGE
DESCRIPTION:
Building off of But Why?, Bengal Tiger Moments examines how writers can determine how much detail to pack into their writing by exploring how humans perceive and misperceive time. We will look at this (mis)perception of time to examine whether our writing deals with those smoldering cores that Shipley talks about, and then we will dive into the five speeds of scene and the three incident frequencies to have our words on the page match how time might move in the real world, to help our smoldering cores burst into scenes of flames.
BIOGRAPHY:
Sean Prentiss is the award-winning author of Finding Abbey: A Search for Edward Abbey and His Hidden Desert Grave , a memoir about Edward Abbey and the search for home. Finding Abbey won the 2015 National Outdoor Book Award for History/Biography, the Utah Book Award for Nonfiction, and the New Mexico-Arizona Book Award for Biography. It was also a Vermont Book Award and Colorado Book Award finalist.
Prentiss is the series editor for the Bloomsbury Publishing Writers Guide Series. This textbook line focuses on creative writing. Two books, Environmental and Nature Writing: A Craft Guide and Anthology and Advanced Creative Nonfiction (forthcoming 2020) are written by Prentiss.
Prentiss is also the co-editor of The Far Edges of the Fourth Genre: Explorations in Creative Nonfiction, a creative nonfiction craft anthology, and the co-editor of the forthcoming book, The Science of Story: The Brain Behind Creative Nonfiction (forthcoming 2019, Bloomsbury).
He is also the author of the poetry manuscript, Crosscut: A Trail Building Memoir in Poems (2020, University of New Mexico).
He and his family live on a small lake in northern Vermont, and he serves as an associate professor at Norwich University and is a faculty member in the M.F.A. Writing and Publishing program at Vermont College of Fine Arts.
WORKSHOPS
JULIA SHIPLEY - BUT WHY? (TAKING A TEST DRIVE)
DESCRIPTION:
Our answer to But Why? is what differentiates us. We’ll study examples and then participants will have a chance to apply these ideas to their own work. Bring two things: 1) a favorite work ( a poem, a story, a book) by a writer you admire and 2) a piece of your creative writing [or a detailed synopsis] that you think might benefit from your probing concern.
SEAN PRENTISS - BENGAL TIGER MOMENTS (PETTING THE TIGER)
DESCRIPTION:
After taking a test drive with But Why?, participants will then expand or contract scenes based on if a scene is a part of the smoldering core discussed in But Why? Then, using your creative writing, we will practice the five speeds of scene and the three incident.