Writing Workshops

Sold Out — Online Workshop: Dialogue — Letting Your Characters Do More of the Work led by De'Shawn Charles Winslow

$400

Six Sessions

Out of stock

Once a week Wednesdays, 6:30 pm EDT - 8:30 pm EDT May 13 to June 17, 2020

This workshop is at capacity. To join the waitlist, email Thierry Kehou at [email protected].

This workshop will take place online via Zoom. Participants will receive instructions for access prior to the first class.

6:30-8:30pm ET / 3:30-5:30pm PT

How do we get more information to our readers without having our narrator go on and on for too long? Why not let our characters do more of the heavy lifting.

During this six-week workshop, we’ll read short stories by authors such as Eudora Welty and Alice Walker, authors who have employed some of the most characterizing and plot revealing dialogue ever written. We’ll do in-class writing exercises to help us scale back on exposition and let our characters’ conversations tell more of the story.

Every student will have the opportunity to receive feedback on at least one piece of their own work (up to 30 pages per submission), a one-on-one meeting with the instructor, and a great time discussing all the ways we can make the best use of our talkative, or not-so-talkative, characters.

Led by

De'Shawn Charles Winslow

De'Shawn Charles Winslow

De’Shawn Charles Winslow was born and raised in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, and in 2003 moved to Brooklyn, New York. He is a 2017 graduate of Iowa Writers’ Workshop and holds a BFA in creative writing and an MA in English literature from Brooklyn College. He has received scholarships from the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and is the recipient of the 2019 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. De’Shawn lives in New York.

By De'Shawn Charles Winslow

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In West Mills

By De'Shawn Charles Winslow

Published by Bloomsbury USA

PURCHASE

Let the people of West Mills say what they will about Azalea “Knot” Centre; they won’t keep her from what she loves best: cheap moonshine, nineteenth-century literature, and the company of men. And yet, when motherhood looms, Knot begins to learn that her freedom has come at a high price. Low on money, ostracized from her parents and cut off from her hometown, Knot turns to her neighbor, Otis Lee Loving, in search of some semblance of family and home.

Otis Lee is eager to help. A lifelong fixer, Otis Lee is determined to steer his friends and family away from decisions that will cause them heartache and ridicule. After his failed attempt to help his older sister, who lives a precarious life in the North, Otis Lee discovers a possible path to redemption in the chaos Knot brings to his doorstep. But while he’s busy trying to fix Knot’s life, Otis Lee finds himself powerless to repair the many troubles within his own family, as the long-buried secrets of his troubled past begin to come to light.

Spanning decades in a rural North Carolina town where a canal acts as the color line, In West Mills is a magnificent, big-hearted small-town story about family, friendship, storytelling, and the redemptive power of love.

About this series

Writing Workshops

We strive to make our classes the most inviting and rewarding available, offering an intimate environment to study with award-winning, world-class writers. Each class is specially designed by the instructor, so whether you’re a fledgling writer or an MFA graduate polishing your novel, you’ll find a perfect fit here.

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