Iowa Summer Writing Festival


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Workshop Descriptions & Instructors Marilyn Abildskov Mary Allen Kate Aspengren Thomas Fox Averill Nancy Barry Timothy Bascom Kyle Beachy Karen Bender Linda Bendorf Maudy Benz Venise Berry Bruce Bond David Bouchier Michael Dennis Browne Maggie Conroy Mary Cross Thomas K. Dean Amber Dermont Janet Desaulniers Kelly Dwyer Hope Edelman Josh Emmons Jill Esbaum Sarah Fay Hugh Ferrer Katie Ford Geoffrey Forsyth Cecile Goding Douglas Goetsch Sands Hall Christine Hemp Jim Heynen Rick Hillis Charles Holdefer Richard Jackson Rebecca Johns Cheryl Fusco Johnson Wayne Johnson Daniel Khalastchi Carolyn Lieberg BK Loren Peter Markus Fritz Mc Donald James McKean Gordon Mennenga Sharelle Byars Moranville Michael Morse Marc Nieson Shannon Olson Diana Ossana Lon Otto Juliet Patterson Kiki Petrosino Mark Jude Poirier Leslie Carol Roberts Anjali Sachdeva Sarah Saffian Sam Samuels Sandra Scofield Mary Kay Shanley Robert Anthony Siegel Carol Spindel Karen Subach Mary Swander Mary Vermillion Kris Vervaecke Ashley Warlick Michelle Wildgen Bart Yates	Gordon Mennenga Writing the Weekend Short Story Weekend Workshop June 13–14 Writing Fiction for Literary Magazines One-Week Workshop June 21–26 Beginning the Novel One-Week Workshop July 5–10 Writing Wild: Exercises in Fictional Voice Weekend Workshop July 11–12 Biography Writing the Weekend Short Story Weekend Workshop June 13–14 McSweeney’s, one of my favorite literary magazines, contains an amazing collection of stories in issue #12: twenty-nine short stories written by various authors in 20 minutes. This should be comforting for those writers who spend their weekends making fiction while watching the clock. Our goal will be to write successful fiction in a two-day intensive workshop dedicated to an established pattern: write, workshop, revise, workshop, finish. Participants will bring three or four story ideas and, after some preliminary literary calisthenics, write a complete story that surprises and satisfies. The recipe is simple: write, eat, sleep. We’ll be starting from scratch, from that impulse to tell a vivid story that convinces and entertains. I expect most of our efforts will result in stories of less than five pages but who knows what some writers are capable of when they are writing well and have time chasing them? My job will be to coach, suggest, remind, edit, explain and praise. Fiction writers of all levels are welcome. Writing Fiction for Literary Magazines One-Week Workshop June 21–26 You’ve just finished a short story. It’s the best story you’ve ever written and you want to publish it. Where should you send it? Tin House, Glimmer Train, Blue Mesa Review, Ploughshares, The Georgia Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Zoetrope—the list of fine literary magazines goes on and on. Many fiction writers scout the literary magazines trying to answer one question: what do the editors want in a short story? The simple answer is “a well-written story.” But let’s face it, some magazine editors favor “blue collar” stories that are well-written, while other editors prefer stories built on “landscape and metaphor” or “cityscapes” or experimental stories or long psychological stories. You’ve consulted Writer’s Market and various web sites. The guessing game goes on. This workshop is for you. We will begin with an analysis of each workshop member’s short story. We’ll assume that each story is a finished draft, but there will be time for revision. Then we will analyze a number of literary magazines. Our goal will be to match the story with a literary magazine without writing for a specific magazine. We’ll finish by reviewing our collective wisdom and putting a story in the mail. Beginning the Novel One-Week Workshop July 5–10 Think of your favorite contemporary novel: The Lovely Bones, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Peace Like a River, The Bean Trees, The Time Traveler’s Wife, The God of Small Things. Think of how that novel might have started: a dream, a memory, an image, a crisis, a letter, an obsession, a scrap of gossip. No doubt the novelist did a lot of pacing or smoking or eating or praying or crying or laughing or planning or cutting and pasting. But the words got on the page; they added up to a narrative that made sense and carried the reader into a new world. The novelist started out, got lost, found a way out, doubled back, asked for directions, moved on—and somehow arrived at THE END. This workshop will concentrate on the first words, sentences and pages of a novel. We will discuss a number of first pages from successful novels. Each workshop participant will be expected to bring the first chapter (15 pages is plenty) of a (however humble) novel-in-progress. We’ll revise and discover. Our discussion will focus on the beginnings of things: character, voice, language, setting and plot, when and where to revise, how and what to plan, how to get inside of the story and live the life of the novel. This workshop offers a substantial beginning, one foot in the water. Writing Wild: Exercises in Fictional Voice Weekend Workshop July 11–12 What do Dan Chaon, Lorrie Moore, Junot Diaz, Raymond Carver, ZZ Packer and Elizabeth Crane have in common? The answer is voice, that certain wild energy readers crave. You can read the first page of a story by any of these writers and know without a doubt who wrote it. The idea of voice is a mysterious combination of writer and character. Voice is the sound of the storyteller; it’s what is in the air and on the page, a combination of speech rhythms, diction, attitude and perception. Barry Hannah said that “of all the qualities, voice is the most unteachable and the closest to magic, a sort of natural music in the head.” This workshop will focus on a number of short exercises written over the weekend to better define voice and encourage writers to locate the unexplored “natural music” of their own voice. We’ll let you know what we hear and suggest ways to shape your voice. If you’ve read your fiction aloud, you have some idea of how you sound, of how your characters sound, and of how maintaining that voice can hold a story together. We’ll invent voices and let them loose: ragged voices, calm voices, charming voices, distant voices, nurse voices, cowboy voices, burglar voices, bold voices, smart voices, foolish voices—and your voice. What an amazing motley chorus we’ll make! Biography Gordon Mennenga (M.F.A., The University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop) grew up in Reinbeck, Iowa and has taught creative writing and literature at DePauw University, Oregon State University and Coe College. He has given readings and workshops in Tennessee, Oregon, Indiana and Iowa. His fiction has appeared in The North American Review, Northwest Magazine, SEEMS, Folio and other magazines. Gordon has written for Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion and NPR’s Good Evening. He was a 1995 recipient of the Chicago Tribune’sNelson Algren Award for Short Fiction. A film, Everyday, based on a monologue Gordon wrote for A Prairie Home Companion, is currently in release.

	Site Map \| Welcome \| Workshops by Session Date \| Workshops by Instructor Workshops by Genre \| Registration & Housing Information \| Registration Form 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 19, 2009