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Workshop Descriptions & Instructors


Faith Adiele
Mary Allen
Kate Aspengren
Thomas Fox Averill
Nancy Barry
Timothy Bascom
Linda Bendorf
Venise Berry
Bruce Bond

Michael Dennis Browne
Susan Taylor Chehak
John Dalton
Thomas K. Dean
Amber Dermont
Kelly Dwyer
Hope Edelman
Josh Emmons
Katie Ford
Patricia Foster
Laura Fraser
Cecile Goding
Douglas Goetsch
Kevin González
John Griesemer
Sands Hall
Christine Hemp
Jim Heynen
Rick Hillis
Charles Holdefer
Richard Jackson
Cheryl Fusco Johnson
Wayne Johnson
Bret Anthony Johnston
Daniel Khalastchi
Zachary Lazar
Carolyn Lieberg
BK Loren
Fritz Mc Donald
James McKean
Gordon Mennenga
Katherine Min
Sharelle Byars Moranville
Michael Morse
Barbara Robinette Moss
Marc Nieson
Shannon Olson
Lon Otto
Juliet Patterson
Anjali Sachdeva
Sarah Saffian
Sam Samuels
Leslie Schwartz
Sandra Scofield
Mary Kay Shanley
Carol Spindel
Karen Subach
Mary Vermillion
Ashley Warlick
Jan Weissmiller
Bart Yates

Hope Edelman

Writing About The Unbelievable: The Weird, The Wacky, And The Wonderful
One-Week Workshop
July 13–18

Creative Creative Nonfiction: Experiments In Form
One-Week Workshop
July 20–25

Biography

 

 

 

 

Writing About The Unbelievable: The Weird, The Wacky, And The Wonderful
One-Week Workshop
July 13–18

What happens when an ordinary person tries to write about an extraordinary experience? All too often, readers don’t believe it’s nonfiction, leaving an author to vehemently insist, “but it really happened!” As this workshop will reveal, the best defense against skeptics isn’t just the truth. It’s also colorful, crackling, and utterly convincing prose. In this class, we’ll take participants’ stranger-than-fiction stories of spirituality, coincidence, and transcendence and shape them into plausible tales for the page. We’ll talk about why detail and description are so essential, and discuss the all-important balance between narration and exposition. As we transform our own experiences into memoirs and personal essays, we’ll also read examples from published practitioners such as Carlos Casteneda, Rosa Arvigo, and Elizabeth Gilbert. Because this workshop assumes a certain level of prior knowledge, it is best suited for participants with some writing or workshop experience. 

Creative Creative Nonfiction: Experiments In Form
One-Week Workshop
July 20–25

Anyone can tell a story straight through from A to Z. It’s often more interesting for readers, however—and more fun for writers—when it’s told from Z to A. Or when it reads like a series of puzzle pieces, or an instruction manual, or a list.

This class is for nonfiction writers of all levels who want to stretch their creativity and have fun with prose. Daily writing exercises will encourage students to think about structure and content in entirely new ways. We’ll look at writings by Annie Dillard, George Orwell, Chelsea Cain, Hillary Carlip, and others to explore various methods of structural subversion and discuss the effects they have on us as readers. We’ll also talk about when, how, and why to depart from linear structure, and about the danger of experimentation for experimentation’s sake. Some class time will also be devoted to a discussion of markets for these types of essays, but most of our time will be spent writing and reading our own work. By the end of the week, you will have one short piece completed and several others in progress.

Biography
Hope Edelman (M.A.W., The University of Iowa) is the author of four nonfiction books, including the bestsellers Motherless Daughters and Motherless Mothers. Her articles and essays have appeared in numerous publications, including The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, Child, Self, Parade,and Real Simple and in anthologies such as The Bitch in the House, Toddler, and Blindsided By a Diaper. She is currently under contract for a memoir about taking her three-year-old daughter to a Mayan shaman in Belize to get rid of her evil imaginary friend. This is her ninth year teaching with the Festival.


 

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Sponsored by the Division of Continuing Education
Iowa Summer Writing Festival
C215 Seashore Hall
The University of Iowa
Iowa City, IA 52242

Phone 319-335-4160
FAX 319-335-4743
iswfestival@uiowa.edu

Last updated on January 10, 2008