Iowa Summer Writing Festival


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Workshop Descriptions & Instructors Marilyn Abildskov Mary Allen Kate Aspengren Thomas Fox Averill Nancy K. Barry Timothy Bascom Ann Bauer Karen Bender Linda Bendorf Venise Berry Jonathan Blum Robin Bourjaily Michael Dennis Browne Sarah Busse Susan Taylor Chehak Maggie Conroy Thomas K. Dean Amber Dermont Kelly Dwyer Nick Dybek Hope Edelman Jill Esbaum Michelle Falkoff Hugh Ferrer Cecile Goding Douglas Goetsch Eric Goodman Sands Hall Christine Hemp Jim Heynen Charles Holdefer Jeremy Jackson Richard Jackson Rebecca Johns Cheryl Fusco Johnson Wayne Johnson Daniel Khalastchi Carolyn Lieberg BK Loren Sabrina Orah Mark Peter Markus Jacqueline Briggs Martin Malinda McCollum Fritz Mc Donald Madeline McDonnell James McKean Reginald McKnight June Melby Gordon Mennenga Sharelle Byars Moranville Michael Morse Beau O’Reilly Juliet Patterson Mark Jude Poirier Andrew Porter Kathryn Rhett Elizabeth Robinson Anjali Sachdeva Sarah Saffian Sam Samuels Lisa Schlesinger Sandra Scofield Mary Kay Shanley Robert Anthony Siegel Carol Spindel Karen Subach Nicholas Twemlow Anthony Varallo Mary Vermillion Kris Vervaecke Jeff Vintar Bart Yates	Andrew Porter Short Story Workshop One-Week Workshop July 8-13 Creating Complex Characters Weekend Workshop July 14-15 Biography Short Story Workshop One-Week Workshop July 8-13 From time to time, we all need a fresh set of eyes to look at our work. In this workshop, our main goal will be to look closely at the short stories each of you have written and to offer detailed, constructive suggestions that will help you enhance your story’s strengths and diminish its weaknesses. We’ll address such issues as character development, pacing, point of view, structure, dialogue, language and setting. We’ll also talk in a more general way about the underlying themes in your story, the deeper conflicts and subtext, and ultimately what your story is really about. I will occasionally talk about specific elements of craft and general strategies for approaching the short story form, but for the most part my attention will be focused on your work and on helping each of you to make your story the best story it can be. Please plan to send me one double-spaced story up to eighteen pages in length prior to our week. Creating Complex Characters Weekend Workshop July 14-15 How does one create a fully developed character? More importantly, how does one create the type of character a reader will connect with and care about and want to invest their time with? In this course, we will discuss strategies for creating vivid, complex characters, characters that will come to life on the page, with rich internal lives, and with all of the flaws and virtues and contradictions of the people we know. Part of our class time will be spent exploring these questions, but most of our time will focus on exercises designed to help you begin to create characters yourself, characters you might use in your own fiction. In addition, we will be discussing the intimate relationship between character and story, the way the two are inextricably linked, and the ways you can use character to discover story and story to discover character. Biography Andrew Porter is the author of the short story collection The Theory of Light and Matter, which won the 2007 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction and was recently republished in paperback by Vintage/Knopf. In addition, The Theory of Light and Matter received Foreword Magazine’s 2008 “Book of the Year” award, was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, and was selected by both The Kansas City Star and The San Antonio Express-News as one of the “Best Books of 2008.” A graduate of The University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Porter has received numerous fellowships and awards for his work, including the 2004 W.K. Rose Fellowship in the Creative Arts, a James Michener-Paul Engle Fellowship, The Drake Emerging Writer Award, and a Pushcart Prize. His fiction has appeared in One Story, The Threepenny Review, The Pushcart Prize Anthology and on NPR’s “Selected Shorts.” In fall 2012, his first novel, In Between Days, will be published by Knopf. Currently, Porter lives in San Antonio, where he is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Trinity University.

	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 24, 2012