$395
6 Sessions
Out of stock
Once a week Wednesdays, 6:00 pm EDT - 8:00 pm EDT July 28 to September 1, 2021
Online via Zoom
This workshop has reached its capacity. Please click here to join the waitlist.
How do we gather the raw material for our work? How can we use the details of our lives—the day-to-day sights, sounds, and scenes that we witness—as the starting point for meaningful writing? And what special purpose might this serve during a time of great change and upheaval?
The Remembered Life is a six-week generative writing workshop in which we will hone the practice of keeping a writer’s notebook—a practice aimed toward refining our skills of observation and collecting material that can eventually be developed into polished work, be it nonfiction, fiction, or otherwise. Throughout the course, students will receive prompts and challenges meant to encourage the use of their writer’s diary as a kind of “sketchbook”: a way of capturing the flux of life and refining their own distinct way of seeing, depicting, exploring, and describing.
We will read and discuss excerpts from other writers’ diaries, journals, and notebooks, some of which stand as works of literary and historical interest in their own right, by Franz Kafka, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Sei Shonagon, Theodore Roethke, Charlotte Forten Grimké, Clarice Lispector, Walt Whitman, Carolina Maria de Jesus, Kathe Kollwitz, Tatsumi Hijikata, Virginia Woolf, and others. We will examine short works of fiction and nonfiction that grew out of a similar process—works that took flight through note-keeping and the fundamental practice of noticing the world—or that make use of the diary or notes form in some fashion.
While we will prioritize experimenting with various methods and processes to generate new material over a critique-oriented workshop model, there will also be room for us, as a group of writers cultivating our practice together, to have discussions and make decisions about how we want to make use of our time. This course is open to writers at any stage of study/process/development/etc. as well as to curious people without a “creative writing” background who are nevertheless interested in exploring the creative process through writing.
All Levels
Capacity: 12
This workshop will take place online via Zoom.
Led by
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Evan James
Evan James
Evan James is the author of I’ve Been Wrong Before: Essays and Cheer Up, Mr. Widdicombe: A Novel. He lives in New York.
By Evan James
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Cheer Up, Mr. Widdicombe
By Evan James
Published by Washington Square Press
The inimitable—some might say incorrigible—Frank Widdicombe is suffering from a deep depression. Or so his wife, Carol, believes. But Carol is convinced that their new island home—Willowbrook Manor on the Puget Sound—is just the thing to cheer him up. And so begins a whirlwind summer as their house becomes the epicenter of multiple social dramas involving the family, their friends, and a host of new acquaintances.
The Widdicombes’ son, Christopher, is mourning a heartbreak after a year abroad in Italy. Their personal assistant, Michelle, begins a romance with preppy screenwriter Bradford, who also happens to be Frank’s tennis partner. Meanwhile, a local named Marvelous Matthews is hired to create a garden at the manor—and is elated to find Gracie Sloane, bewitching self-help author, in residence as well. When this alternately bumbling and clever cast of characters comes together, they turn “as frothy and bitter as a pot of freshly brewed dark-roast coffee, the kind that’s always available on the Widdicombe’s sideboard. And the dialogue, oh how it singes and sears” (Washington Post).
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.