PERSONAL ESSAY FULL
Course No. 2012-101
Mondays, 6 to 9 pm
Held at Inprint House, 1520 West Main, 77006
Beginning January 23, and running ten weeks
Cost: $295
Instructor: Addie Tsai
Reality is not what it is, says Wallace Stevens. It consists of the many realities which it can be made into. Louis Malle says of memory that it is not frozen, it’s very much alive, it moves, it changes. We each have our own narratives, our own mythologies we explore when writing nonfiction. How do we carve out a space for the imaginative power of memory and the reflective truth of what we discover about those experiences? In this class we will read each other’s nonfiction and discuss different ways to contain personal experience through language, form, and metaphor. We’ll study personal essays, lyric essays and excerpts from contemporary memoirs to discover new ways to shape our memories and experiences.
ADDIE TSAI'S poems have been published in NOON: A Journal of the Short Poem; American Letters & Commentary; Forklift; Ohio; Yellow as Turmeric, Fragrant as Cloves: A Contemporary Anthology of Asian American Women's Poetry; Collective Brightness: LGBTIQ Poets on Faith, Religion and Spirituality; and she has nonfiction forthcoming in Post Road Magazine and make/shift. An MFA graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, she currently teaches Literature and Composition at Houston Community College, where she runs a nationally-known reading series.
TEACHERS AS WRITERS FICTION Registration Form
Course No. 2012-102
Underwritten by The Kinder Foundation
Tuesdays, 4 pm to 5:45 pm
Held at Inprint House, 1520 West Main, 77006
Beginning January 24, and running 12 weeks
Cost: Tuition-free to Houston area K-12 teachers; $40 registration fee and proof of school employment requested
Instructor: Danielle Dubois Dimond
Perhaps the trickiest, most frustrating thing about writing is that it is, above all, a practice. Although we will explore the usual concerns in this fiction workshop―structure, character building, flow, point of view, setting up and moving through a scene―we will also spend a great deal of time talking about the establishment or improvement of your everyday writing routine. Writing daily―or, let's be realistic, at least regularly―is the single best thing you can do for the quality and the quantity of your work. To that end, you'll keep a writing journal for the duration of this class that will help you collect material and build your stories. We will discuss one long story per workshop member, as well as several shorter pieces.
DANIELLE DUBOIS DIMOND graduated from the University of Houston Creative Writing Program in 2011 with an MFA in fiction. She also has a bachelor's degree in literature from Rice, where she acted as the 2007-08 fiction editor for R2: The Rice Review. She is currently the buyer at Houston's legendary Brazos Bookstore.
POETRY FULL
Course No. 2012-103
Tuesdays, 6 to 9 pm
Held at Inprint House, 1520 West Main, 77006
Beginning January 17, and running ten weeks
Cost: $295
Instructor: Ryler Dustin
John Keats said that poetry should “strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.” But for our poems to achieve this, we require inspiration, practice, and support from fellow writers. Workshop participants will draw upon a diverse array of poems and activities to generate inspiration; we will practice sticking to a writing schedule, bringing in new work to share; and, most importantly, we will improve each other’s poems through attentive, supportive feedback. In addition, essays and discussions will deepen our understanding of imagery, music, metaphor, lineation, and more.
RYLER DUSTIN is a winner of the Inprint Paul Verlaine Poetry Prize, a recent Ruth Lilly Prize finalist, and has competed on the final stage of the Individual World Poetry Slam. An MFA graduate from the University of Houston Creative Writing Program, he has edited Gulf Coast : A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts and teaches for Inprint at Project Row Houses. His work appears in The Portland Review and other journals, and in his book, Heavy Lead Birdsong, from the popular press Write Bloody.
PERSONAL ESSAY FULL
Course No. 2012-104
Wednesdays, 6 to 9 pm
Held at Inprint House, 1520 West Main, 77006
Beginning January 18, and running ten weeks
Cost: $295
Instructor: Ian Stansel
The personal essay is the simultaneously scientific and artistic exploration of the self. Unlike memoir and autobiography, the personal essay uses the events of one’s life as a means, rather than an end. It stretches memory’s arms wide to find what else is within reach. The writer might take a single moment from her life (a haunting memory, an instant caught in a photograph) and delve into notions of family, childhood, love, birth, death, illness, nature, etc. She might explore all the abilities and limitations of memory itself. She might take her memories and use them to help understand present circumstances. In this course we’ll look at the many varied facets of the personal essay. We’ll explore the differences and similarities between the personal essay and memoir and autobiography. We will read published work on myriad topics to help us understand modes and techniques of nonfiction storytelling; we will read one another’s work and comment on it; we will engage in writing exercises; and we will use classroom time for lively discussions of our work and strategies for revision.
IAN STANSEL is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and is currently finishing a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Houston, where he also serves as the editor of Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts. His work has appeared in Ploughshares, the Antioch Review, Five Chapters, Ecotone, Sycamore Review, Barrelhouse, and elsewhere.
FICTION FULL
Course No. 2012-105
Thursdays, 10 am to1 pm
Held at Inprint House, 1520 West Main, 770066
Beginning January 19, and running ten weeks
Cost: $295
Instructor: Miah Arnold
In this fiction workshop we will bask in the glories of story. We will experiment and push past the comfortable and banal into the daring and the particular. The prompts in this class will be varied and fun. Our task will be figuring out how to push at our own boundaries – which is at its essence the problem of telling old stories in new ways, and is the work of all writers. We'll read and discuss short fiction and poetry from current journals for inspiration. Along the way we will name and examine the unique strengths of your prose, while offering guidance that will help further texturize your work into full, developed pieces.
MIAH ARNOLD is a fiction writer from rural Utah educated at Carleton College and the University of Houston, where she earned a PhD in Creative Writing. Her stories appear in a number of literary magazines, including Nanofiction, Confrontation, Painted Bride Quarterly, South Dakota Review, and Michigan Quarterly Review. She won an Inprint Barthelme Prize for nonfiction in 2006, the Inprint Diana P. Hobby Prize for her fiction in 2008, and a Houston Arts Alliance Grant in 2010. She is currently sending out her novel, Sweet Land of Bigamy, and beginning a second.
FICTION FULL
Course No. 2012-106
Thursdays, 6 to 9 pm
Held at Inprint House, 1520 West Main, 77006
Beginning January 19, and running ten weeks
Cost: $295
Instructor: Will Donnelly
This will be a workshop about the choice we make as fiction writers to attend closely to our surroundings and to chronicle fearlessly the world around us. We'll work to develop ourselves as writers of habit and to view the process of writing as an act of unconditional love, something we do even when we are not ready. We will learn to trust our instincts, to be beginners always, and to listen to our hearts above all else. We will explore the technical elements of fiction writing craft – language, character, plot, point of view, structure, voice, and others – but only as they facilitate our capacity for self-expression. During the first few weeks, we’ll examine how other writers have employed these tools, and then we’ll discuss our own work, offering constructive feedback on drafts-in-progress and short writing exercises. Finally, each student will have the opportunity to workshop one completed story. Our textbook will be Charles Baxter's Burning Down the House.
WILL DONNELLY is a PhD candidate in the University of Houston Creative Writing Program where he is a writing instructor. He holds an MFA in fiction writing from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he was a Teaching & Writing Fellow. His fiction has appeared in Hobart, Smokelong Quarterly, Quick Fiction, and elsewhere, and he is the Online Editor of Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts.
TEACHERS AS WRITERS MANUSCRIPT FULL
Course No. 2012-107
Underwritten by The Kinder Foundation
Saturdays, 10 am to 1 pm
Held at Inprint House, 1520 West Main, 77006
Beginning January 28, and running ten weeks
Cost: Tuition-free to Houston area K-12 teachers; $40 registration fee and proof of school employment requested
Instructor: Lacy Johnson
Writing a book is the ultimate literary challenge—a commitment, above all else, to the story you must tell. Regardless of the genre—poetry, fiction, nonfiction, or something else entirely—nearly every kind of book-length manuscript adheres to certain rules of craft. Although the focus of this multigenre workshop will be our own work-in-progress, writers will learn specific techniques for conceptualizing, planning, structuring, revising and sustaining consistently good writing from start to finish, no matter how large or ambitious the project.
LACY M. JOHNSON is the author of Trespasses: A Memoir, forthcoming from University of Iowa Press in March 2012. Before earning a PhD from the University of Houston Creative Writing Program, she worked as a cashier at WalMart, sold steaks door-to-door, and puppeteered with a traveling children’s museum. She has taught writing for over a decade. Her creative and critical work has appeared or is forthcoming in Sentence, TriQuarterly Online, Nimrod, Memoir (and), Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts, and elsewhere.
FICTION FULL
Course No. 2012-108
Wednesdays
6 to 9 pm, beginning January 18
Running eight weeks
Held at Writers in the Schools, 1523 West Main, Houston 77006
Cost: $275
Instructor: Leah Lax
What makes fiction seem real? How does the writer create a vicarious experience, hook readers in and keep them engaged? One secret to the craft is to read as a writer, a different experience of reading altogether. In this workshop format, you will hear from fellow students as readers of your own work. We will also do close reading of both classic and contemporary short stories. We will use in-class writing to open the imagination. Recommended text: Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft by Janet Burroway.
LEAH LAX has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Houston. Among her 2011 publications is her lead essay in the anthology Keep Your Wives Away From Them, recent recipient of a Golden Crown Literary Award.