Workshop Descriptions & Instructors

Cecile Goding

On the Job: Stories about Work
One-Week Workshop June 10-15

Exercises for Memoir
Weekend Workshop June 16-17

The 5-Minute Essay
Weekend Workshop July 21-22

Biography

On the Job: Stories about Work
One-Week Workshop June 10-15

Calling all nurses, tree surgeons, temps, door-to-door salesmen, sergeants, farmers, kindergarten teachers, bus drivers, parsons, parents, ballerinas, waiters, and housekeepers. Whether you work in fiction or memoir, this week will give you the time and tools to focus on those places in which you’ve spent half or more of your waking life. In a recent Poets & Writers article (Nov. 2011), Benjamin Percy reminds us of our jobs—their rich settings, unique voices, and quirky characters just itching to be crafted into stories. To prepare for this class, you might read the anthology Blue Collar, White Collar, No Collar, edited by Richard Ford, Larry Brown’s On Fire, or Dr. Carol Scott-Conner’s A Few Small Moments for starters. Then, we’ll move on to explore our own workspaces, scene by scene.

While a portion of each day will be devoted to discussion and close reading, most of our workshop will revolve around your own writing. So plan to bring work in progress if you have it (up to 12 double-spaced pages), and to share fresh material shaped throughout the week.

Exercises for Memoir
Weekend Workshop June 16-17

One of the challenges of writing memoir stems from the fact that the main character is yourself. Most of us have learned the standard tools of characterization, how to make fictional characters into real flesh-and-blood people. Yet the “I” of memoir, at least in early drafts, stays ethereal and disembodied, like the voiceover of a documentary. During this weekend retreat, we will do exercise after exercise, many of them drawn from David Huddle’s classic The Writing Habit, to breathe life into that first-person narrator, the one who gets to tell the story, as only he or she can.

Note: While most of our time will focus on generating new material and sharing it immediately, there will be a short formal workshop Sunday afternoon. Feel free to bring previous work.

The 5-Minute Essay
Weekend Workshop July 21-22

Long before the first issue of Brevity popped up on our screens, people were writing very short essays. Today, there have never been more places for this succinct form, from blogs to such on-line columns as “Modern Love,” to entire anthologies. Most brief essays we can read in 5 minutes or less, but they may have taken the writer 5 days, or 5 months, to close the lid. Or to open it wider. During this weekend retreat, we will explore how a powerful image and a strong voice gather in prose to leave an unforgettable impression. We’ll whittle and chisel, halve and quarter, then build again to discover what 100 or 1,000 words can do. And we’ll look for ways to transport them to readers near and far.

Note: While most of our time will focus on generating new material and sharing it immediately, there will be a short formal workshop Sunday afternoon. Feel free to bring previous work.

Biography

Cecile Goding (M.F.A., The University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop; M.F.A., The University of Iowa Program in Nonfiction Writing) has worked for libraries, steel mills, Arabian princes, computer companies, polyester plants, universities, neighborhood centers, and all-you-can-stuff-in restaurants. Her stories, essays and poems crop up here and there, most recently in Creative Writing: Four Genres in Brief, Born Magazine, Fourth River, The Georgia Review,and The Iowa Review.

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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 February 24, 2012