$150
3 Sessions via Zoom
Out of stock
Friday-Sunday 7:00 pm EDT - 9:00 pm EDT October 23 to October 25, 2020
This workshop has reached its capacity. To join the waitlist, please email Thierry Kehou at [email protected].
Writing a novel can be a lonely business. Perhaps you’ve been working on yours for a long time and are waiting for things to finally click into place, perhaps you are in the early stages of writing and wondering how you will make it to the end of a draft, or wondering what those middle 100 pages are doing. In the process of writing a long project there is no shortage of ways to feel stuck. But there is also no shortage of ways to become unstuck.
In this course we will de-mystify crafting and revising a novel by looking at not only our own work on the page, but by looking within to identify and remove any emotional blocks you might have that are holding you back from achieving your goals. It is my belief that along with a sure understanding of craft (we will talk about how to make those all important first pages really sing, how to dynamically structure your novel, and examine things like point-of-view and voice) but we will also embark on the deep work of looking at our own core beliefs about ourselves as writers that may be unconsciously holding us back.
So often when I hear writers talk about their processes, fear is involved. Fear that they won’t be able to pull of the story they are trying to tell, fear they will be rejected, fear of success even. In this class we will look at practical and actionable ways we can begin to dismantle what no longer serves us and implement what does, both on the page, and in ourselves. I believe our art is a soul project and we are all worthy of leaning into the full expression of what we wish to create.
Capacity: 20 students
This workshop will take place online via Zoom. Participants will receive instructions for access prior to the first session.
Led by
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Chelsea Bieker
Chelsea Bieker
Chelsea Bieker is the author of the novel Godshot and the forthcoming story collection, Cowboys and Angels (2022). Her writing has been published by the Paris Review, Granta, the Cut, McSweeney’s, Lit Hub, Electric Literature, and others. She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writers’ Award and a MacDowell Colony fellowship. Originally from California’s Central Valley, she now lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and two children where she teaches writing.
- The Conditions of Deliverance (Cut)
- Fathers Sway above It All (Paris Review)
- The PEN Ten: An Interview with Chelsea Bieker (PEN America)
- Motherloss, That Thing You Cannot Escape (Lit Hub)
By Chelsea Bieker
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Godshot
By Chelsea Bieker
Published by Catapult
Drought has settled on the town of Peaches, California. The area of the Central Valley where fourteen-year-old Lacey May and her alcoholic mother live was once an agricultural paradise. Now it’s an environmental disaster, a place of cracked earth and barren raisin farms. In their desperation, residents have turned to a cult leader named Pastor Vern for guidance. He promises, through secret “assignments,” to bring the rain everybody is praying for.
Lacey has no reason to doubt the pastor. But then her life explodes in a single unimaginable act of abandonment: her mother, exiled from the community for her sins, leaves Lacey and runs off with a man she barely knows. Abandoned and distraught, Lacey May moves in with her widowed grandma, Cherry, who is more concerned with her taxidermy mouse collection than her own granddaughter. As Lacey May endures the increasingly appalling acts of men who want to write all the rules and begins to uncover the full extent of Pastor Vern’s shocking plan to bring fertility back to the land, she decides she must go on a quest to find her mother no matter what it takes. With her only guidance coming from the romance novels she reads and the unlikely companionship of the women who knew her mother, she must find her own way through unthinkable circumstances.
Possessed of an unstoppable plot and a brilliantly soulful voice, Godshot is a book of grit and humor and heart, a debut novel about female friendship and resilience, mother-loss and motherhood, and seeking salvation in unexpected places. It introduces a writer who gives Flannery O’Connor’s Gothic parables a Californian twist and who emerges with a miracle that is all her own.
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.