SEMINARS AND PANELS 2010

Monday, July 12 2010

2 p.m. THE AGENT GAME

Panel with Sarah Burnes, Amy Williams, and Renee Zuckerbrot, moderated by Rob Spillman

Finding an agent to represent your work can be a time-consuming and hair-raising endeavor. Ideally, the relationship between agent and author is both professional and personal, providing a writer with much-needed support and encouragement. In this seminar, New York agents talk about what writers should know before seeking representation and offer unique insight into their profession.

3 p.m. ENGINEERING IMPOSSIBLE ARCHITECTURES, WITH KAREN RUSSELL

The Kansas to Oz ratio: structuring an imaginary world
Fiction writers get to create new worlds out of the pure oil of the imagination. "Alternative" authors, those genre-benders who draw from fables and myths and science fiction, can transport us to wonderlands and alien planets, as well as to the darkest labyrinths of their characters' interiors. But this generative pleasure comes with some serious responsibilities for the writer. According to Flannery O'Connor: "The person writing a fantasy has to be even more strictly attentive to the concrete detail than someone writing in a naturalistic vein: because the greater the strain on the credulity, the more convincing the properties in it have to be." We will be taking a look at how authors transform an incredible landscape into a vibrant, grounded, real place on the page. We will also do a short creative writing exercise centered around the NYPL digital galleries. With exemplary texts by such architects of the unreal as Italo Calvino, Kelly Link, Jorge Luis Borges, and Steven Millhauser.

Tuesday, July 13 2010

2 p.m. ON HUMOR, WITH LARRY DOYLE

At wit's end

What's funny, and what's not, and how might one put that into words? Larry Doyle has no idea but he has done it often enough-as a writer on The Simpsons, in his frequent appearances in the New Yorker, in his Thurber award-winning novel, "I Love You, Beth Cooper" and in his upcoming "Go, Mutants!"-so he will talk for a set period of time on this topic.

3 p.m. BEGINNINGS

A panel with Ann Hood, Joy Williams, J.C. Hallman, moderated by Michelle Wildgen

Wittgenstein once wrote, “It is so difficult to find the beginning. Or, better: it is difficult to begin at the beginning. And not try to go further back.” This is true of writers at all levels of development. One thing that’s commonly said of an unfinished story is that it “didn’t even really start until page 5” or something like that. We’ll discuss how to tell a good beginning from a false start, and examine classic great beginnings to discover what a story demands at its outset.

Wednesday, July 14 2010

2 p.m. EVERYTHING THEY TOLD YOU IN MFA SCHOOL IS WRONG, WITH STEVE ALMOND

Except the part about the debt.

Do I really mean this? Of course I don't. I'm just being "provocative." But I do believe that writing programs do a pretty woeful job of talking about the psychological and emotional issues that writers face every day at the keyboard. So consider this your crash course. We'll cover all the biggies: writer's block, the inevitability of guilt, the ascent of self-loathing, the development of a bullshit detector, the myth of the found voice, and where—if all else fails—to sell your plasma. There will be plenty of time for questions and the throwing of rotten fruit.

3 p.m. STRATEGIC CONFESSIONS, WITH MARY SZYBIST

Poetry, of course, is not simply concerned with emotional expression.  A poem can be, and often is, an argument.  We will consider one of poetry's most common rhetorical tools: the concession.  To concede something in a poem is a move toward vulnerability, and it is a risk that can have enormous pay-off.  We will examine ways in which poets use concessions to reach, persuade, and move their readers.

Thursday, July 15 2010

2 p.m. THE SHORT-STORY WRITING PROCESS: A TEN-STEP PROGRAM, WITH ANTONYA NELSON

Time yet for a hundred indecisions

The process of writing is the process of revision. This class will provide a methodology for revision, steps by which a writer might move through a short story from initial impulse to polished draft, with stops along the way to consider form, texture, conscious and unconscious decisions, point of view, props and objects, setting and atmosphere, and other layering techniques specific to the particular material at hand.

3 p.m. ON MORALITY AND COMPLEXITY IN FICTION NOWADAYS, WITH ANTHONY DOERR

Don't Leave the Frickin' Path

In this lecture we’ll look at some early fairy tales and wonder what has happened to the idea of examining right and wrong through storytelling. Can art still serve as a vehicle for a moral instruction? Can serious poets and writers continue to play (to any degree) the role of sermonizing storyteller, instructing our readers, saving them from mistakes they might make in their own lives? Or have things changed irrevocably since the days of the Brothers Grimm?

Friday, July 16 2010

2 p.m. COMPLEX MOMENTS IN FICTION, WITH ROBERT BOSWELL

Mining for how meaning means

Now and again a story or novel features a moment that startles and amazes us, a moment that we never forget. There is no formula for the creation of such a moment, but this lecture will look at several such moments and see what there is to learn about their formation.

3 p.m. ON THE MOVEMENT OF LINE BREAKS AND STANZAS, WITH D. A. POWELL

Saturday, July 17 2010

2 p.m. STRUCTURES OF THE NOVEL, WITH WHITNEY OTTO

Blue-prints for building imaginary castles

Having a story but being unsure about how to structure the story is rather like having all the perfect household furnishings and no house. This seminar is designed to offer suggestions for how to tell your story.  We will talk about various novel structures, as well as point of view, and the importance of not allowing any structure to overshadow what you are trying to say.

3 p.m. ENDINGS

A panel with Elissa Schappell, David Leavitt, and Charles D'Ambrosio, moderated by Cheston Knapp

Good stories and novels contain what John Gardner called "profluence," or the forward motion, literal and emotional, "best satisfied by a sequence of causally related events," that is, a plot. Characters are pressed; they act; tension builds in the reader until it's almost unbearable. But this movement must finally come to a halt. But how? How does a good story end?

All seminars and panels, unless otherwise noted, will be held in Vollum Lecture Hall on Reed College Campus. Door charge to seminars is $15.

READINGS

Sunday, July 11th 2010

8 p.m. Reading and signing with Nick Flynn, Elissa Schappell, Robert Boswell

Monday, July 12th 2010

8 p.m. Reading and signing with Anthony Doerr, Brenda Shaughnessy, Charles D'Ambrosio

Tuesday, July 13th 2010

8 p.m. Reading and signing with J.C. Hallman, Ann Hood, Larry Doyle

Wednesday, July 14th 2010

8 p.m. Reading and signing with Karen Russell, Dorianne Laux, David Leavitt

Thursday, July 15th 2010

8:00 p.m. Reading and signing with Tom Grimes, Whitney Otto, David Shields

Friday, July 16th 2010

8 p.m. Reading and signing with Jon Raymond, Matthew Dickman, Antonya Nelson

Saturday, July 17th 2010

8 p.m. Reading and signing with Steve Almond, D.A. Powell, Joy Williams

All readings to be held in Cerf Amphitheater on Reed College Campus
Door charge to readings is $5.

For more information or to purchase tickets, please call Cheston at 503-219-0622 or email workshop@tinhouse.com