Writing Workshops

The Hardest Part: Writing Beginnings and Endings with Joe Wilkins (Sold Out)

$125

2 Sessions

Out of stock

Monday & Tuesday 5:00 pm EDT - 7:15 pm EDT November 22 to November 23, 2021

Online via Zoom

This writing workshop has reached its capacity.

Beginnings and endings—in novels, short stories, essays, and memoirs—are hard. An arresting beginning is the writer’s one chance to capture a reader, and a just-right ending sends a reader back into the world forever changed. In this generative lesson, participants will read a number of examples from both fiction and nonfiction, and ultimately highlight four strategies for crafting good beginnings and endings. Attendees are asked to have a story or essay in progress handy for in-class revision work.

All Levels
Capacity: 20

Led by

Joe Wilkins

Joe Wilkins

Joe Wilkins is the author of a novel, Fall Back Down When I Die, praised as “remarkable and unforgettable” in a starred review at Booklist. A finalist for the First Novel Prize from The Center for Fiction and the Pacific Northwest Book Award, Fall Back Down When I Die won the 2020 High Plains Book Award. Wilkins is also the author of a memoir, The Mountain and the Fathers, winner of a 2014 GLCA New Writers Award—an honor that has previously recognized early work by the likes of Richard Ford, Louise Erdrich, and Alice Munro—and four collections of poetry, including Thieve and When We Were Birds, winner of the 2017 Oregon Book Award in Poetry. Wilkins lives with his family in Oregon.

By Joe Wilkins

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Fall Back Down When I Die

By Joe Wilkins

Published by Back Bay Books

PURCHASE

Wendell Newman, a young ranch hand in Montana, has recently lost his mother, leaving him an orphan. His bank account holds less than a hundred dollars, and he owes back taxes on what remains of the land his parents owned, as well as money for the surgeries that failed to save his mother’s life.

An unexpected deliverance arrives in the form of seven-year-old Rowdy Burns, the mute and traumatized son of Wendell’s incarcerated cousin. When Rowdy is put under his care, what begins as an ordeal for Wendell turns into a powerful bond, as he comes to love the boy more than he ever thought possible. That bond will be stretched to the breaking point during the first legal wolf hunt in Montana in more than thirty years, when a murder ignites a desperate chase.

Caught on the wrong side of a disaffected fringe group, Wendell is determined both to protect Rowdy and to avoid the same violent fate that claimed his own father. A gripping story set in a fractured and misunderstood community, Fall Back Down When I Die is a haunting and unforgettable tale of sacrificial 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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