New Instructor Leslie Parry joins W.W.L.A.

Writing Workshops Los Angeles is proud to introduce a second instructor to its roster: the wonderful and talented Leslie Parry, who will be teaching the 8-week Short Fiction Workshop in early 2010 (details forthcoming).

Ms. Parry holds a BFA from New York University and an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was a Truman Capote Fellow in Fiction.  She has taught writing at the University of Iowa, the Iowa Arts Summer Program, Vroman’s Bookstore’s Education Program, and was a featured speaker at the Midwest Literary Festival.  Her fiction has appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review.  She is currently at work on a novel.

Leslie Parry

Here’s what Leslie has to say about the short fiction workshop, and her role as instructor:

In class, we will aim to both liberate and discipline our creative minds.  We’ll work to discover and have faith in our unique visions of the world while concurrently addressing the fundamentals of form and technique.  The myth of the fickle muse will be abandoned, and in her place we’ll foster curiosity, bravery, and diligence.  No style or school of thought is favored above the other; the goal is to cultivate and inspire every writer’s individual voice.  Through weekly exercises and rigorous workshops, students will be challenged to be the best writers they can be, no matter where they are on their path.

Stay tuned for course schedule and enrollment details. Email writingworkshopsla@gmail.com to join the mailing list.

I won!

I am elated to announce that I won the 2009 James Duval Phelan award!  This is a prize offered to a writer born in California, and it’s given by the Intersection for the Arts, and sponsored by the San Francisco Foundation.  I will be reading in San Francisco on Monday, November 16th, along with Youmna Chlala and Page McBee, winners of the Joseph Henry Jackson Award and the Mary Tanenbaum Award, respectively.

Check out the announcement here.  And look at this(!):

The official award citation for Edan Lepucki’s 2009 James Duval Phelan Award winning fiction manuscript “Days of Insignificance and Evil” states: “But wait. I want to tell you another story, one that happened a few years before this. It must be related.” So says Rosalyn, the fourteen year old narrator in Edan Lepucki’s Days of Insignificance and Evil. In this remarkable and revelatory new novel we find Rosalyn carried along by events beyond her control—parents who abandon her to an older sister’s care, a new home life full of fracture, secret liaisons, and mysterious clues to a violent historical event; the all-female 1904 Los Angeles Iron Foundry Rebellion. As readers we’re carried along by a narrative voice in total control. Lepucki gives us a character that comes across as true and familiar as someone we know very well. Someone willing to share their secrets with us. Like the narrator we are quickly on the hunt to find out more about that past event.  Members of the rebellion surprise us by interrupting Rosalyn’s narrative and bringing their flesh and blood voices to the mix. Via that weave of past and present Lepucki makes disparate worlds and time periods cohere in ways the reader never anticipates. Here’s a writer who has the extraordinary ability to make both worlds—and all worlds—true simultaneously. And as we turn each page we know there’s always another story waiting, another twist and turn, a dog leg into the past, a time bomb in the present. Go ahead, we want to say. Tell us another one. Serendipity or coincidence, chance or fate. It must all be related. - 2009 Panel of Judges: Persis M. Karim, Toni Mirosevich, & giovanni singleton.

Notes from the Writing Desk

Fall 2009 courses have already begun, and the next session will start in January of 2010.  If you’d like to sign up for the mailing list, please email me at writingworkshopsla@gmail.com.

In the meantime, happy writing!  Here is a picture of my muse (and dog), Omar Little:

Introduction to Fiction Writing at UCLA!

This fall I’ll be teaching Introduction to Fiction Writing at UCLA Extension.  The ten-week class begins Tuesday, October 6th and  it will be held at their downtown location.  (To all you eastsiders out there, you’re welcome).

The folks at the Writers’ Program were nice enough to put up this little interview with me on their website.  Here’s a bit:

Q:  In your fall course Introduction to Fiction writers learn the fundamentals of fiction and even begin sharing their work with others.  This “workshop” experience can be a bit scary for first time writers.  What’s your advice for students who have never allowed anyone to read their work before?

A: The workshop experience can be daunting, but it’s also enormously exhilarating to have people reading and commenting on your work. If you’re new to the workshop format, I would say that it’s okay to feel a little nervous about sharing your writing with others; that nervousness simply signifies how important your writing is to you.  In my classes, I try to establish a comfortable and compassionate environment where we can discuss material seriously and constructively.  I ask students to find the “dream” of a workshop manuscript–what it wants to be, rather than what it might be currently, as a draft.   There’s a real sense of the group helping each other to become better writers.  We’re all in it together.  I think, too, that people are often surprised by how much fun a writing workshop can be–it’s a wonderful intellectual conversation and exchange of ideas.

Check it out.  And sign up for the class!

Summer Class Added!

Check it out, writers.  If you’re interested, email me at writingworkshopsla@gmail.com

5-Week Summer 2009 Short Fiction Workshop

Thursdays, 7:30 to 9:30 pm

July 30, 2009 to September 3, 2009  (no class on August 6th)

This course is designed for the experienced writer who already has material to share in a workshop format. For our first class meeting, we will do some writing exercises, discuss published short fiction, and get to know each other as writers and readers.  Two weeks later, we will reunite to further discuss craft, and prepare for our student workshops, which will begin the following Thursday and continue until the end of the session.  Student manuscripts will be critiqued in an intense yet respectful environment meant to challenge and inspire every member of class.  Each student will have the opportunity to workshop one short story manuscript.  The class will take place in the instructor’s Los Feliz home.

This course is similar to my regular short fiction workshops except that it’s on an accelerated schedule.  This means we will begin our workshops after two meetings, rather than four, and there will be fewer students so that we have only three weeks of workshops, rather than four.

Enrollment limit: 6 students

Class Fee:  $230 for new students; $200 for returning students  (A great opportunity to take a W.W.L.A. course at a lower rate!)

“So you want to be a writer?”: Podcast Interview

Long time Writing Workshops Los Angeles student Caroline Donahue has done a podcast interview with me about writing and teaching writing.  Caroline is the mastermind behind Remabulous Coaching, a business designed to help people follow their creaive dreams.  If you’ve ever been in a class with Caroline, you know she’s smart, funny, compassionate, and dedicated to writing and leading a life of joy and making art.  (I also know she has helped a client finish and publish a book!)

To listen to the podcast go here.

This podcast also serves as a sort of introduction to a teleseminar on Tuesday, 4/14 at noon (Pacific time), where I will be the guest.  The teleseminar is the preview of a teleseminar series Caroline will be leading, called The Road Not Taken.  On Tuesday we will be speaking about the writing life, how to get started on a writing project, and so on.  Basically, you get on a conference call, listen to Caroline and I talk about these issues, and then you are free to ask questions and interact–all over the phone.

To join us on this free preview call for the Reclaiming the Road Not Taken teleseminar series, RSVP to teleseminar@remabulous.com.

New Class Added!

Short Fiction Workshop, spring/summer 2009

Thursdays, 7:30 to 9:30 pm, May 21, 2009 to July 16, 2009 (no class 7/2)

$360 for new students; $320 for returning students (payment plans available!)

Enrollment limit: 8 students

For the first four weeks of this eight-week course, we will do in-class writing exercises and discuss published short fiction from a craft perspective.  We will cover such topics as characterization, point of view, structure, voice, and scene, and there will be short take-home writing assignments.  For the final four weeks of the course, we will workshop student work in a serious environment meant to challenge and inspire every member of the class. Each student will have the opportunity to workshop one short story manuscript.

If you’re interested, email writingworkshopsla@gmail.com

This Saturday and Next: Writing!

I’m teaching a two-day writing seminar in beginning fiction writing techniques.  The seminar will take place at Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena, California, on two consecutive Saturdays, March 14th and March 21st.  Vroman’s Ed, the bookstore’s education program, is wonderful.  The conference room where I teach is a spacious and welcoming environment to write in; there are black-and-white photos of old California on the walls, which I always find intriguing and inspiring.   The students are smart and down-to-earth, and, of course, bookish.  And, there’s a big, fabulous bookstore right next door!

Here’s the course description of the seminar:

In this seminar we will explore the major tenets of fiction writing, including characterization, narrative voice, prose style, point of view, scene and summary, dialogue, and structure. We will look to published fiction for guidance, and dive into various short writing exercises that promise to be challenging, fun, and eye opening.  No prior fiction writing experience is required for this course, although more experienced writers will also find the course useful.  Students will leave the seminar with the beginnings of several promising projects, as well as the skills to follow through with them.

I’ve taught this seminar once before, and the insights and work of the students amazed me.  There were so many promising stories begun over those two days.  I’m confident this seminar will be as successful, if not more so.

This seminar costs $250 plus tax.  It will begin both days at 10 am and go until 3 (with an hour break for lunch).

If  you’re interested, please call Vroman’s Bookstore at 626 449 5320 to sign up!

Good.

A passage from the inimitable Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf:

So she sat.  She got up, blundered off among the little tables, rocking slightly from side to side, and somebody came after her with her petticoat, and she lost her way, and was hemmed in by trunks specially prepared for taking to India; next among the accouchement sets, and baby linen; through all the commodities of the world, perishable and permanent, hams, drugs, flowers, stationery, variously smelling, now sweet, now sour she lurched; saw herself thus lurching with her hat askew, very red in the face, full length in a looking-glass; and at last came out into the street.

I love the alliteration of “perishable and permanent” followed by two single-syllable words, “hams, drugs,” which contrast, in their specificity, so nicely with the broad statement of  “all the commodities in the world.”  I also love the complicated syntax, how we get “she lurched” at the end of the long breathless sentence, rather than at the beginning.  I bet those rule-loving teachers who prohibit their students from writing scenes in which a character eyes himself in the mirror are biting their tongues right about now…

I’m a sucker for a list like this.   And what a way to move a character through space!

Let’s try for this kind of greatness, okay?  Okay.

The Formless Thing Which Gives Things Form

Lynda Barry’s new book, What It Is, a sort of memoir/collage/graphic meditation/artist’s workbook, is blowing my mind!  In it she asks, “What is an image?” and “What are thoughts?” and, “When did you first notice you were bad at something? And then what happened?” All of these questions are accompanied by Lynda Barry’s strange and wonderful drawings and collages.  It’s a mesmerizing and inspiring book.

I used one of her exercises in the novel class last night, after our workshop.  I won’t give away too much, because I want you to buy the book, but here’s how it starts:

1. Number your page 1 through 10.

2. Start with the image “other people’s mothers” and list the first 10 mothers you can think of.

3. Choose a mother from the list.  Picture her in a place you have seen her before.

Sounds enchanting, no?  I love how Barry urges us to get inside of imagery, to move around in it, and see an image fully.  It’s great help to the fiction writer.