WRITERS' LEAGUE OF TEXAS
formerly the Austin Writers' League
Classes, Workshops, & Retreats
2004 Schedule Classes, Workshops, and Retreats
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| July 17 | ANYWHERE FROM HERE: SCENE STRUCTURE with Sandra Scofield |
| July 31 | GETTING YOUR FIRST NOVEL PUBLISHED with Marcia Preston |
| Aug 7 | TO MARKET, TO MARKET: PUBLISHING POETRY with Scott Wiggerman |
| Aug 21 | MOONLIGHTING: MAKING A LIVING AS A WRITER with Mike Cox |
| Sep 3 - 5 | RETREAT with true crime author Diane Fanning in Jefferson, Texas |
| Oct 2 | LOST AND FOUND: RECOVERING ELEGIES with Wendy Barker |
| Retreats Across Texas | |
| RETREAT with true crime author Diane Fanning in Jefferson, Texas | |
| Friday-Sunday, September 3
- 5 Class limit: 12 |
|
| “Trouble’s Brewin’:
Using Characters, plot and setting to build suspense in any story” Retreat will be held at McKay House (http://www.mckayhouse.com) See this star instructor's page. Print out registration form or call 512-499-8914 to register. |
|
| $199 members | $244 nonmembers |
| TWO-DAY WORKSHOP: ANYWHERE FROM HERE: SCENE STRUCTURE with Sandra Scofield | |
| Saturday, July 17, 10 a.m.
-- 4 p.m. and Sunday, July 18, 10 a.m. -- 1 p.m. Class limit: 20 |
|
| This is a nuts-and-bolts workshop focused on constructing the scene as the basic unit of fiction. You will practice easy formulas that demonstrate important principles about the way scenes work; examine numerous models from published writers; write exercises based on those models, and take away more to do on your own; learn how the scene is incorporated in sustained stories. Come ready to do a lot of quick-paced writing. Exercises are perfect for beginners, but are also adaptable for the more experienced writer and for writers of creative nonfiction. See this Star Instructor's Page. Print out registration form or call 512-499-8914 to register. |
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| $135 members | $180 nonmembers |
| ONE-DAY WORKSHOP: GETTING YOUR FIRST NOVEL PUBLISHED with Marcia Preston | |
| Saturday, July 31, 9 a.m. -
3 p.m Class limit: 25 |
|
| Tips and motivation for aspiring novelists. Session one includes information on common problems of first novels, understanding market niches, The Agent Wars, persevering beyond all common sense---and why it's all worth it. Session two goes deeper, centering on novel structure, with a discussion of how to use a story arc and plot points to plan your novel, improve pacing, weave subplots, and bring the plot to a satisfying conclusion. Includes a discussion of the Hero's Journey. Students should bring a sample query letter and a one-page summary of their novel. There will be interactive exercises on writing a two-sentence pitch and a query letter. Song of the Bones, the second title in Marcia Preston’s mystery series, won the 2004 Mary Higgins Clark Award and the Oklahoma Book Award in fiction. The first book in the series, Perhaps She’ll Die, was nominated for the Mary Higgins Clark Award, and for Macavity and Barry awards in the Best First Mystery division. Marcia’s first mainstream novel is set for release in January 2005 and titled The Butterfly House. Preston is also editor and publisher of ByLine, a trade magazine for writers (http://www.bylinemag.com). Print out registration form or call 512-499-8914 to register. |
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| $90 members | $135 nonmembers |
| ONE-DAY WORKSHOP: TO MARKET, TO MARKET: PUBLISHING POETRY with Scott Wiggerman | |
| Saturday, August 7, 9 a.m.
- 1 p.m. Class limit: 15 |
|
| Now that you've written and accumulated poems, what do you do with them? Why not try publishing? This course will walk you step by step through the best ways to get your poems to market, whether print or online. Emphasis will be on choosing the right markets, on writing good cover letters, and on keeping track of your submissions. We will cover the hows and whys of publishing; how to prepare poems for submission; how to write a cover letter; how to find and choose appropriate markets, both print and online; how to tell the difference between legitimate and questionable markets; how to find and choose poetry contests and calls for anthologies; how and why to track submissions and publications; how to put together a manuscript; and which options to consider for publishing a book. Scott Wiggerman, the author of Vegetables and Other Relationships, is the 2003 winner of the D.H. Lawrence Scholarship in Poetry sponsored by the Taos Summer Writers Conference. He has published in numerous journals, most recently this year in modern words, Pebble Lake Review, Homestead Review, Windhover, and New Texas; and the 2004 anthologies This New Breed: Gents, Barbarians, and Bad Boys 2 and di-verse-city. Print out registration form or call 512-499-8914 to register. |
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| $45 members | $90 nonmembers |
| ONE-DAY
WORKSHOP: MOONLIGHTING: MAKING A LIVING AS A WRITER with MIKE COX |
|
| Saturday, August 21, 2004,
from 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. Class limit: 25 |
|
| Mike Cox got his first freelance check ($35) for a magazine article when he was in the ninth grade. He's been getting checks ever since. Never enough, but he says he'd probably be a lot poorer than he is if he hadn't been moonlighting all these years. He'll share some of what he's learned as a writer over the last 40 years, including the importance of having a broad definition for the term "freelance writer." Cox, an elected member of the Texas Institute of Letters, is the author of 11 Texas-related, non-fiction books with two others currently under contract, including a one-volume history of the Texas Rangers from Spanish times to date. A former award-winning journalist for the Austin American-Statesman and other Texas newspapers, Cox spent more than 15 years as spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety, handling media interviews at the scene of some of the biggest news events in recent Texas history. Print out registration form or call 512-499-8914 to register. |
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| $90 members | $135 nonmembers |
| LOST AND FOUND: RECOVERING ELEGIES with Wendy Barker | |
| Saturday, October 2, 2004, 11 a.m. - 5 p.m. and Sunday, October 3, 2004, 11 a.m. - 2 p.m. | |
| Some of the finest poems in the English language have been elegies: immediately, we think of Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night," Milton's "Lycidas," and Whitman's "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd." How can writing poems help us grieve in a culture that often tries to deny death? Can writing poems about what is absent allow us to become more fully present, more fully alive? During this two-day workshop, we will focus on images we associate with someone or something we have lost. To achieve our goal of finishing at least two new poems, we will engage in several activities and exercises. Helpful (although not required) reading would include Sandra M. Gilbert's Inventions of Farewell (Norton, 2001) and Rabindranath Tagore's Final Poems (transl. Wendy Barker and Saranindranath Tagore, Braziller, 2001). Wendy Barker's most recent book is Poems' Progress (Absey & Co., 2002); her translations of Rabindranath Tagore (with Saranindranath Tagore, Braziller, 2001) received the Sourette-Diehl Fraser Award from the Texas Institute of Letters, and her third collection of poetry, Way of Whiteness (Wings Press, 2000, 2nd ed. 2004), won the Violet Crown Book Award. Recipient of NEA and Rockefeller fellowships, Barker has published over 250 poems and translations in such journals as Poetry, The American Scholar, Kenyon Review, Stand, Ontario Review, North American Review, and Nimrod; her work has been translated into Hindi, Japanese, and Bulgarian. She is a professor of English at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Print out registration form or call 512-499-8914 to register. |
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| $135 members | $180 nonmembers |
Writers' League of Texas classes and workshops are open to the public.
If you have a disability that requires access accommodations and you wish
to attend one of our workshops or classes, please contact the WLT office
at least 48 hours prior to the program date.
Writers' League of Texas workshops and classes are partially funded by the City of Austin, the Texas Commission on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
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