Writer's Village: A Creative Writing Intensive

Sunday, July 7-Saturday, July 27, 2013

Tuition: $2,450
Housing & Meal Plan: $1,875

ONLY A FEW SPOTS LEFT!

Register online

Open to students entering the 10th, 11th or 12th grade in the fall of 2013.

This summer, immerse yourself in the craft of creative writing. Led by members and guests of Sarah Lawrence’s celebrated writing faculty, you will participate in a fiction workshop and a poetry workshop. Participate in readings, craft talks and free writing periods that are designed to supplement your learning.

Students are asked to submit a five-page manuscript and is used for placement only and is not used as a consideration for enrollment. Students are accepted on a first-come, first-served basis.

Poetry Workshop
Well-suited for both the seasoned writer and the beginner. Through fun though rigorous workshops, we will closely examine published poems to deepen our appreciation of tradition and craft. We will do stimulating in-class generative exercises and line-by-line discussions of student work, with an eye toward revision. Learn to consider the different ways a character may be created and inhabited via syntax, diction, emotional crescendos and deflations, associative leaps, metaphors, and tonal shifts.

Through the writing exercises and also during revision, students will be pushed to explore associative imagery in their own poetry and discover for themselves the various ways that similes and metaphors can be employed to create a more three-dimensional experience for the reader.

Fiction Workshop
Work intensively on creating lively and compelling fiction. We’ll do daily writing exercises geared toward specific literary craft topics such as point of view, tone, character, and handling time. We’ll also have writing sessions to access our imaginations and become more aware of our sensory and spatial experiences. Each student will have at least one story workshop, in which we’ll focus on critique that is constructive and creative.

There will be some assigned reading of works by writers such as Anton Chekhov, Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino, Denis Johnson, Aimee Bender, and Junot Diaz.  Field trips for on-site writing adventures are planned as well.

Readings
Enjoy private readings by acclaimed writers each Wednesday. Two writers, one poet and one prose writer will read and answer questions.

Craft Talks
Given by the workshop instructors, these craft talks will cover broad topics of craft; discussions of prominent writers and will help to illustrate the foundations of writing.

Free Writing Times
What every writer needs and is the most hard to get. Each Tuesday and Thursday, students have this time scheduled in to provide a quiet time in which to work on your own writing projects.

Schedule (Mondays through Fridays)

Please note: On Thursday, July 11 and Thursday, July 18 there will be two all day field trips off-campus. Details to follow.

The Faculty

Olivia Birdsall: Award-winning author of Notes on a Near-Life Experience.  She has been teaching creative writing and composition at New York University for nearly ten years, and conducts writing workshops in New York city public schools as a teaching artist with Teachers & Writers Collaborative.  Olivia's short fiction has appeared in Painted Bride Quarterly. She is currently working on a second novel for young adults and a book of personal essays.

Joanna Fuhrman: Joanna is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Pageant (Alice James Books 2009) and Moraine (Hanging Loose Press 2006.) Her poems have appeared in many journals, including The Believer, Volt, New American Writing, Conduit, and Quarterly West and featured in anthologies published by NYU, Carnegie Mellon, HarperCollins, and Soft Skull. In 2011, her poem “Stagflation” won a Pushcart Prize.  She is a poetry editor for the journal Ping Pong and has been associated with the Poetry Project at Saint Mark’s Church for many years, working there as a reading coordinator and workshop leader. Currently, she teaches poetry writing at Rutgers University and in New York City public schools through Teachers & Writers Collaborative and CEPP. She has also taught poetry writing at Montclair State University, The University of Washington, the Cooper Union extension program and for Poets House. Her essays on teaching appear regularly in Teachers & Writers magazine.

Thomas Israel Hopkins lives with his wife and son in Kingston, New York. His short stories have been published in Fence, Cincinnati Review, Indiana Review, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, Quick Fiction, and One Story, among other places. He has also written criticism for Bookforum and the Los Angeles Times, memoir for Tablet, and literary journalism for Poets & Writers; and he's held residencies at the Albee Foundation and the Ucross Foundation. His Web site is tomhop.com.

Jeff McDaniel: BA, Sarah Lawrence College. MFA, George Mason University. Poet. Author of three books of poetry: Alibi School, The Forgiveness Parade, and, most recently, The Splinter Factory; poems published in many anthologies, including Best American Poetry, New (American) Poets, American Poetry: The Next Generation, New Younger American Poets, The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry; poems translated into Spanish, Swedish, and Portuguese; recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Washington, DC, Commission for the Arts. SLC, 2001-