April 12th, 2010
"We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget."
— Joan Didion
Welcome to the latest installment of the Grub Street Rag, a newsletter of the Boston literary scene sent out every Monday from the surprise pigeon cote at Grub Street's world headquarters. As always, if you are receiving this e-mail in horror, please advance to the bottom of the page to unsubscribe yourself.
It's true, very few people use the word "tidy" to describe the Grub Street world headquarters (we blame our lack of closets and not our sub-par tidying skills). But this week, visitors to our space may find it even messier than usual. Don't worry, though, it's mess with a purpose: we are doing some renovations and everything should be shipshape soon. Be on the lookout for new lighting, hand dryers in the bathroom, new rugs and sparkling clean floors!
Cheers,
Whitney, Sonya, Chris, Chip and Alexis
In addition to our ongoing workshops, Grub Street offers numerous writing-related events around town. See our website for a long-term view of all we do. Ready to sign up? Call us at 617.695.0075 and we'll get you on the list.
WEEKEND WORKSHOP: April 17th - April 18th, 9-4pm each day, Writing For Radio
Instructor: Jennifer Mattson
One of our most popular weekend workshops is back! Description: Public radio is a writer's dream come true. From commentaries to personal essays, memoir to satire, it's a perfect place to pitch your wackiest ideas. But writing for broadcast is nothing like print. It's a beast all its own. Whether it's the distinct voice of This American Life or the fast-paced daily news of All Things Considered, NPR is one of the most exciting places for today's storytellers to air their work. Problem is most people don't know enough about broadcast to navigate their way through the NPR system, no less a radio script. In the first day of this intensive two-day seminar, you will learn the basics of how to write for the ear, the critical differences between print and broadcast, how to read your copy on air, and how to pitch your stories. On the second day, participants will begin writing a radio script so that by weekend's end each student will have some version, finished or not, of their ideal radio piece. There will be an opportunity for you to receive feedback as well as share your thoughts with others. Taught by an instructor who is a former producer for NPR's nationally syndicated program "The Connection” and a six-year producer for CNN.
$220/$195 members, Grub Street HQ, 160 Boylston Street, Boston, MA.
WEEKEND WORKSHOP: April 17th - April 18th, 9-4pm each day, Writing the Hard Truths
Instructor: Kathleen Willis Morton
Exploring ways to approach difficult topics in memoir and narrative non-fiction, artfully and with compassion, we’ll write about the things most people don’t want to talk about: death, traumatic events, and taboo subjects in ways that will be digestible to the reader although the subject matter is a hard dose to swallow. We will not be writing with intent on psychotherapeutic results, though this is often the byproduct when difficult experiences and situations are the subject matter we plumb for story. Craft comes first; crisis is merely the setting for our narratives.
$220/$195 members, Grub Street HQ, 160 Boylston Street, Boston, MA.
ONE-DAY WEEKEND WORKSHOP: Saturday, April 17th, 9-4pm, Recipes and Remembrances: Personal Essays About Food
Instructor: Clara Silverstein
Registration Deadline: April 13th
Food can be the starting point for compelling personal essays, from a remembrance of a beloved grandparent to a humorous account of a cooking disaster. Writers including Ruth Reichl, Patricia Volk, and R.W. Apple have made this kind of essay an established part of the literary landscape. The challenge is to use a favorite recipe or a memorable meal in an essay that also relays a larger truth about the human condition. In this class, we will read published essays, brainstorm about topics, and do in-class writing exercises designed to help you convey your experiences with food in a way that will resonate with readers.
$115/$95 members, Grub Street HQ, 160 Boylston Street, Boston, MA.
LUNCHTIME WRITING WORKSHOP: Tuesday, April 20th, 12:30 PM - 1:15 PM, Brown Bag Lunch Series
Do you work downtown and want to fit some writing into your day? Or do you have a schedule that gives you free afternoons instead of evenings? Bring your lunch and come on over to Grub Street for a Brown Bag Writing Workshop – a series recently profiled in the Boston Globe. For 45 minutes, you’ll meet fellow writers and get your creative juices flowing with some cool writing exercises. Led by the Javed Jahangir. Best of all, you’ll leave lunch with some new ideas to ponder for the rest of your day, and beyond. To reserve a spot, email sonya@grubstreet.org or call 617.695.0075.
FREE, Grub Street HQ, 160 Boylston Street, Boston, MA
SEMINAR: Thursday, April 22nd, 7-10pm, Modes of Narrative Unreliability in Fiction
Instructor: Adrian Van Young
A few scenarios, Dear Reader, that may or may not have come to pass.
Your narrator, H—, suddenly kills his best friend, having carried on for years with said friend’s wife, and now must not only explain his crime, but explain, at that, why he had no other option. Or maybe H—, having killed his friend, has no memory of committing the crime in the first place, and must piece together from the wife’s testimony the sordid events that led him to it. Or perhaps H— has not killed his friend at all, yet still feels compelled to confess the “crime” to said friend’s surviving widow for reasons even he is unsure of himself. So deepens the rabbit-hole of first, third and even second-person narrative unreliability, perfected by Nabokov, meta-fictionalized by McEwan, diagnosed by Lydia Davis, and expanded by you. This one-night seminar will languish in the details of voice, interiority and the way in which a story is told in order to render what is going on behind and beneath the sentences as much or even more important than the sentences themselves.
$65/$50 members, Grub Street HQ, 160 Boylston Street, Boston, MA.
SEMINAR: Thursday, April 22nd, 7-10pm, How To Be Fearless in Revision
Instructor: Jane Erin Moore
You’ve got a draft, you’ve received some feedback -- you've got more work to do. Revision is essential to finishing a piece of writing, but it's often left unexplained. This seminar will confront some of the challenges of the revision process: How do you apply what you hear in workshop to your writing? How can you face your work and see what needs improvement? And then how do you proceed? We'll discuss each challenge and look at examples showing the bravery that revision requires. Then we'll go through a set of extreme, fearless exercises to energize your own revision process. Bring 3 copies of a story, novel excerpt, or essay that you’ve been working on (these will be for your eyes only), maximum 25 pages.
$65/$50 members, Grub Street HQ, 160 Boylston Street, Boston, MA.
SEMINAR: Thursday, April 22nd, 7-10pm, Your First Page: Friend or Foe?
Instructor: Sorche Fairbank
It’s common knowledge that rejection rates in this industry are up around 98 percent, and you have likely felt this bitter sting on more than one occasion, but do you really know why? Do you suspect that even when agents request your material, they sometimes don’t read after the first page? You may be right.
Join an eye-opening session with agent Sorche Elizabeth Fairbank and dig into the murky world of rejection, and the impact, good or bad, of your first page Learn what some standard rejection phrasing means (agent-speak), why decisions are too-often made on the first page, find out if you are guilty of one or more of the top twenty reasons for rejection, know when to listen to advice and when to chalk things up to subjective difference, and through an intense critiquing session, learn how best to turn your “no”s into “yes”s or at least “maybe”s.
Send by email (to chip@grubstreet.org) a one-page synopsis or query letter, and your first page, no later than 12PM on Monday, April 19th. For class, please also bring three other random pages out of the first 25, and be prepared to have your work critiqued with other members of the class. Also, feel free to bring in a sampling of some rejection phrasing that has had you perplexed or particularly frustrated. All students will receive handouts and a critique of their first page. Limited to 15 students.
$65/$50 members, Grub Street HQ, 160 Boylston Street, Boston, MA.
SEMINAR: Thursday, April 22nd, 7-10pm, Plotting the Novel
Instructor: Michelle Hoover
Have you started your novel but feel a sense of indecision encroaching your progress? Have you written hundreds of pages and now need to pull the bloody mass together into a workable book? Do you have a sense of dread that the pages you’ve left behind you are “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”? Starting with Aristotle and working through three contemporary authors’ ideas about plotting, this course will offer several plot forms to help you rethink your novel’s structure and the vital connection between character and plot. The goal is that, by the end of the evening, you will have a new outline for your book that gives your creation grounding but also leaves you open for further exploration and discovery.
$65/$50 members, Grub Street HQ, 160 Boylston Street, Boston, MA.
Be sure to check out our events calendar for a comprehensive view of upcoming events.
Each week until the Muse and the Marketplace conference on May 1st and 2nd, we'll be spotlighting one of the authors, editors or agents who will be leading a workshop, as well as one of our fabulous sponsors. This week, a look at Allison Winn Scotch, who will be leading a workshop called “Writing High-Concept Fiction” on Saturday afternoon at the Muse.
Allison Winn Scotch is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Time of My Life and The Department of Lost and Found. Her next novel, The One That I Want, will be published on June 1, 2010. She is also a magazine writer whose work has appeared in numerous publications, including Parents, Glamour, Redbook, and Shape. She lives in New York with her husband and two children.
Thoughtforms Corporation specializes in building high-end custom homes and unique institutional buildings in eastern Massachusetts. Now in their fourth decade, they have built their reputation and business by working together with architects and clients to create successful projects. They offer technical expertise, superior craftsmanship, and an ability to collaborate seamlessly with architects and clients on demanding construction projects ranging from $500,000 to $10 million. Read more about them at their website, http://www.thoughtforms-corp.com/.
Grub Street wants to promote YOU! Please send events for consideration to whitney@grubstreet.org. Our apologies in advance if we cannot fit you in. Please note that we do the best we can to evaluate requests, and do privilege requests from members, but can not be held responsible for the quality of these events and programs or the legitimacy of contests. We expect that readers will do their own due diligence before sending their work or their money to any individual or organization.
--READING: Thursday, April 15th, 7PM, Pearl Abraham, author of American Taliban: A Novel
An avid, near-six-foot-tall surfer, John Jude Parish cuts a striking figure on the beaches of the Outer Banks in North Carolina. His hero is the great explorer Richard Burton, his personal prophet is Bob Dylan, and his world is wide open—to new ideas, philosophies, and religions. Through online forums and chat rooms, John meets a young woman from Brooklyn who spurs his interest in Islam and Arab literature. Deferring Brown University for a year, he moves to the idyllic New York borough to study Arabic. Critically acclaimed novelist Pearl Abraham uses her gifts of psychological acuity and uncommon empathy to depict a typical upper-middle-class family snared by the forces of history, politics, and faith. In American Taliban, she imagines this young surfer/skater on a distinctly American spiritual journey that begins with Transcendentalism and countercultural impulses, enters into world mysticism, and finds its destination in Islam. Provocative, unsettling, and written in a brilliantly inventive, refreshingly original voice, American Taliban is poised to become one of the most talked-about novels of the year.
--SLAM CONTEST: April 20th, 6pm- 8:30pm, The Big MOUTHOFF Story Slam
Come to a virtual marathon of storytelling! massmouth presents a program of stories that highlight the human experience in all its darkness and light. Seasoned professionals and fledgling storytellers strut their stuff, share their experiences and reveal their insights in this epic competition of 21 finalists. Any one of them can win the grand prize – it all comes down to the winning story.
FREE, Boston Public Library, Rabb Auditorium, 700 Boylston Street, Boston, MA 02116
--READING: Tuesday, April 20th, 7pm, Sheila Kohler and Perrin Ireland
Becoming Jane Eyre is Sheila Kohler's tenth book. Others include Bluebird or The Invention of Happiness, A Perfect Place, and The Children of Pithiviers. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, O Magazine and included in the Best American Short Stories. She has twice won an O’Henry Prize, as well as an Open Fiction Award, a Willa Cather Prize, and a Smart Family Foundation Prize. Her novel Cracks was nominated for an Impac Award, and has been made into a feature film to be distributed by IFC. She has been published in 8 countries. Perrin Ireland is the author of the novels Chatter, and Ana Imagined. Her work has been published in AGNI magazine, The Boston Globe, Post Road magazine, and Fanzine. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
FREE,
Porter Square Books, 25 White St., Cambridge, Massachusetts 02140-1413
Welcome to the end of the e-mail, where, like a disappointing milkshake, we offer you the chance to win a prize. What beloved children's book author was born on this day in 1916? Winner receives ice cream from J.P. Licks.
Last week's answer: In Carlos Ruiz Zafon's Shadow of the Wind, Julian Carax's father Antoni filled a room with crucifixes when Julian's mother refused to divulge the identify of the father of her baby, and Antoni decided it must be the devil. He hung crucifixes everywhere to purge the sin from her, and from his home. Winner: Mike Attisha.
