Go There: Fierce Writing from Exactly Where You Are

When	Dec 01, 2017 06:00 PM to Dec 03, 2017 03:30 PM
Where	TBD Des Moines
Contact Name	Andrea Wilson
Contact Phone	319-499-7959
Attendees	Cost: $265 ($235 early bird pricing through September 1st)
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ABOUT THE WORKSHOP

If you want a great procrastination tool, insist to yourself that you’ll write when you find the perfect place to write about. Well, guess what? You’ve got plenty to work with in the places you’ve already been.

In this class, we’ll learn how to capture in writing the places and the people we know intimately in order to create the specificity that all readers desire. We’ll reexamine familiar places for new inspiration, look for the totems they offer us to work with, and inhabit the characters of these settings by writing from their points of view. For outside inspiration, we’ll read authors who have mastered the art of place. It’s time to see the extraordinary in the ordinary and start writing with purpose and urgency, right here and right now.

This workshop is designed for all levels, fiction or nonfiction. Whether you’re working on a story about that summer you spent in Poughkeepsie or just wanting to explore in writing the place you love down by the Raccoon River, we’ve got a seat for you. Before the class, spend a little time in or thinking about an ordinary place you return to in your mind again and again (your childhood home, your college dorm, the backseat of that one guy’s Fiero, a field during detasseling season). This place should be vivid to you—good or bad—and ripe for harvesting color, texture, objects, flavor, and scent. Feel free to snap some pics on your smartphone to bring to class to give you even more material to work with.

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR

Jennifer Wilson has been writing for 20 years for magazines like Esquire, National Geographic Traveler, Better Homes & Gardens, Budget Travel, Bon Appetit, Parents, Midwest Living, Iowa Outdoors, the Chicago Tribune, the St. Paul Pioneer-Press, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, (the dearly departed)Gourmet, and many others. She’s published two books: Running Away to Home (St. Martin’s Press), a memoir about returning with her young family to live in the Croatian mountain village of her ancestors (Best Nonfiction Award 2012 from the American Society of Journalists and Authors, Emerging Iowa Author Award 2012), and Water, a hyperlocal environmental novel published in partnership with RAYGUN. She is currently a national magazine editor at Meredith Corporation and earning her MFA at Bennington College in Vermont.

When: Friday, December 1st, 6:00pm-7:30pm

Saturday, December 2nd, 9:30am-3:30pm (Lunch break at noon)

Sunday, December 3rd, 9:30am-3:30pm (Lunch break at noon)

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Filed under: Literary Event