April 20th, 2010

Grub Street News

Welcome to the latest installment of the Grub Street Rag, a newsletter of the Boston literary scene sent out every Monday by the people at Grub Street's world headquarters who can never, no matter how hard they try, remember to bring their reusable shopping bags to the grocery store. As always, if you are receiving this e-mail in horror, please advance to the bottom of the page to unsubscribe yourself.

Muse and the Marketplace: Choose your own adventure (but do it soon)

Folks: this is it. Registration for the Muse and the Marketplace ends Tuesday, April 27th at noon. There is still room, so sign up to be one of the 500+ writers who will be in attendance. Looking for a specific experience at the conference? This year, we've implemented "conference tracks" to help guide you through all the many options. For example, if you're interested in writing for a young adult audience, check out the Sunday-only "Kid Track" and spend the whole day learning about your specific area of interest. There are also tracks for writers interested in memoir, commercial writing, plot, character and more. Questions? Check out the website or call us at 617.695.0075 to learn more.

Cathy Elcik Runs to Raise Funds for Grub

Two not-to-be-missed events coming up

Even though we're living and breathing Muse and the Marketplace over here at Grub Street HQ, we wanted to make sure that you knew about two other great events taking place this weekend and next. First, California poet Brendan Constantine will be visiting Boston for just one day, and leading a workshop at Grub called "Industrial Poetry." Details about the class are below, and it looks like a fantastic way to reinvigorate your desire to write. Next Thursday, Grub Street members can join Grub Street Book Prize winner Vestal McIntyre for dinner and a craft class on dialogue. Vestal is visiting us from London and his book, Lake Overturn, is wonderful, so we highly recommend this seminar. (If you're not a Grub member yet, you can always sign up for membership and add your name to the list for the class at the same time).

Cheers,
Whitney, Sonya, Chris, Chip and Alexis

Grub Events

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.

*NEW SPRING CLASS ADDITION* Mondays, starting May 10th,7-10pm, Six Weeks, 6 Stories
Instructor: Stace Budzko
Tired of workshopping the same stories? Can't come up with new plots and characters? All writers go through this, but here’s a way to shake up your writing world. In this always-sold-out workshop, you will write both brand-new complete stories ranging from 300 to 1500 words or brand-new beginnings of longer stories. Each week, you'll be given a different exercise to explore an interesting and tighter way to write plot, character, setting, and language; you will get quick on-the-spot feedback on what you write from both the instructor and fellow students. Classes may also include some discussion of published short shorts and/or elements of craft. The goal is to leave the class with new beginnings, a few complete short-shorts, and at least one revised piece to submit for publication. Recommended for students who’ve taken Fiction I or an equivalent.
$305/$280 members, 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.
**2 SPOTS LEFT** $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.
**SOLD OUT** $65/$50 members, Grub Street HQ, 160 Boylston Street, Boston, MA.

TEEN WRITING: Saturday, April 24th, 10 - noon and 1pm - 3pm, YAWP (Young Adult Writers Program)
Do you like to write poems, lyrics, stories, novels or screenplays? Join Grub Street’s Young Adult Writers Program (YAWP), a FREE creative writing workshop for Boston-area high schoolers. We offer two sessions of classes each YAWP Saturday: one from 10 AM to noon, followed by an hour for socializing, an open-mic reading, and lunch (we'll provide snacks, but you are encouraged to bring your own lunch), and another session of classes from 1 PM to 3 PM, followed by another open-mic reading. Each session includes the same classes, and you can participate in both so long as you take different classes. For example, you could take a poetry class in the morning session and a fiction class in the afternoon. All students MUST sign up in advance by e-mailing info@grubstreet.org or calling 617.695.0075. Tell us which class you'd like to join: Fiction, Poetry, or Science Fiction & Fantasy.
FREE, Grub Street HQ, 160 Boylston Street, Boston, MA.

ONE-DAY WEEKEND COURSE: Sunday, April 25th, 9:00 AM - 4:00 PM, Industrial Poetry
Instructor: Brendan Constantine
Poet Brendan Constantine, visiting Grub Street from L.A. for one day only, presents a super-condensed version of his popular Industrial Poetry workshop. Developed for people struggling with writer's block and prohibitive schedules, this stimulating 'laboratory' examines what compels us to write in the first place and reinvigorates that desire. For more info on Brendan Constantine, author of Letters to Guns (Red Hen Press, 2009) and 2002 nominee for the poet laureate of California, see www.brendanconstantine.com.
$115/$95 members, Grub Street HQ, 160 Boylston Street, Boston, MA.

GRUB STREET SOUTH AT BUTTONWOOD BOOKS: Tuesday April 27th, 7 - 8PM, Poetry Revision: Revising for Clarity, Enhanced Meaning, and Sensitivity
Instructor: Joyce Wilson
Come join us for a poetry workshop with an emphasis on revision - revising for clarity, enhanced meaning, and sensitivity. We'll discuss strategies for revising poems that begin with an awkward event or painful memory, and how to transform these initial scribblings into finished poems that stand on their own. Scituate resident Joyce Wilson has been an active participant in the poetry communities in Boston, Cambridge and on the South Shore. For over a decade, she has edited The Poetry Porch, a magazine on the Internet. Her poems have appeared in many journals, among them Agni and the Harvard Review. She recently published her first book of poems, The Etymology of Spruce. Reservations are requested and can be made by calling Buttonwood at 1-781-383-2665.
FREE, Buttonwood Books, Shaw's Plaza Rt. 3A, Cohasset, MA 02025.

MEMBERS' SEMINAR: Thursday, April 29, 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM, Craft Class with Vestal McIntyre
Join Vestal McIntyre, winner of the 2010 Grub Street National Book Prize in Fiction for his novel, Lake Overturn, published in 2009 by Harper, for a craft class entitled "Know What I'm Saying? Exploring the Possibilities of Dialogue." This is an expanded version of the class McIntyre will be leading at the Muse and the Marketplace conference. A light dinner will be provided. McIntyre is the also the author of You Are Not the One: Stories (Carroll & Graf, 2004) and will be visiting Boston from London. Description of the seminar: Writing dialogue is a little like spinning plates. We must advance the plot, introduce information, and illuminate characters through conversation. Meanwhile, we must ask ourselves with every line, “Would this character actually say that?” Luckily, we are given plenty of tools to let us listen in and step back—to witness not only one character says, but what the others hear. Edith Wharton’s short story “Xingu” is a battle royal of dialogue. We will examine her techniques of exploring the gaps between what is said by the speaker, heard by the listener, and understood by the reader. After a short exercise, we will compare Wharton’s techniques with those of a few other writers, and our own. “Xingu” can be read for free online at www.classicreader.com. To sign up, members must call the office or email chip@grubstreet.org.
FREE FOR GRUB MEMBERS, Grub Street HQ, 160 Boylston Street, Boston

Be sure to check out our events calendar for a comprehensive view of upcoming events.

Special Thanks to Our Muse Panelists and Sponsors

This week, a spotlight on two of our marketplace panels: “Brave New World: Writers In the Digital Age." The first one, on Saturday, features agent Julie Barer, Sanj Kharbanda (VP Digital Market Strategy, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) and author Allison Winn Scotch, and is moderated by Grub Street's Eve Bridburg. The Sunday session features Nicholas Negroponte (MIT Media Lab), Jeff Mayersohn (owner, Harvard Bookstore) and author Nick Montfort, and is presented by the Boston Book Festival.

SATURDAY Marketplace Seminar: “Brave New World: Writers In the Digital Age”
Recent innovations in technology and communication have made the written word more portable, accessible, and popular than ever. It is an exciting but challenging time for writers: loud, fast-changing, and filled with both exciting opportunities and dangerous pitfalls. While writers have never enjoyed this much control, power and ownership over their work, we have also never been trained or prepared to handle the accompanying responsibilities. As traditional publishing models dissolve and reformulate, we are at a point of radical restructuring in how written work gets out in the world. This panel of authors and industry professionals discusses the implications of this changing landscape on writers.

SUNDAY Marketplace Seminar: “Brave New World: Writers In the Digital Age”
Recent innovations in technology and communication have made the written word more portable, accessible, and popular than ever. It is an exciting but challenging time for writers: loud, fast-changing, and filled with both exciting opportunities and dangerous pitfalls. As traditional publishing models dissolve and reformulate, we are at a point of radical restructuring in how written work gets out in the world. This panel of authors and industry professionals discusses the implications of this changing landscape on writers.

The Bread Loaf Writers' Conference is one of America's most valuable literary institutions. For the past 85 years, the workshops, lectures, and classes, held in the shadow of the Green Mountains, have introduced generations of participants to rigorous practical and theoretical approaches to the craft of writing, and given America itself proven models of literary instruction. Bread Loaf is not a retreat—not a place to work in solitude. Instead it provides a stimulating community of diverse voices in which we test our own assumptions regarding literature and seek advice about our progress as writers.

Spreading the Love

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: Wednesday, April 21st, 8:05pm, Literary Death Match
The 10th stop of Opium100's Monster Fundraising Tour wouldn't make sense without a stop in Cambridge, and to celebrate, they're packing the night with enough talent to titillate New England's collective consciousness. A trio of all-star judges is led by Gretel's Reva Williams, comedian Rob Crean and author extraordinaire Pagan Kennedy (Confessions of a Memory Eater). Plus, a foursome of readers led by Grubbie Edmond Caldwell (of the Contra James Woods blog), oft-McSwy's contributor and Beacon Press reader-rep (and Grubbie) Jay Wexler, idiosyncratic scribe (and Grubbie!) Karyn Polewaczyk, and Quick Fiction reader-representative Christen Enos!
$8 at the door; $5 with a valid student ID, Enormous Room, 569 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge.

--PLAY: Thursday, April 22nd, 7pm, The Habit of Art
NT Live brings the best of the British stage to cinemas worldwide.  The Coolidge Corner Theatre is the exclusive Boston venue for this series of plays -- captured live in high-definition -- from London's prestigious National Theatre.  On April 22nd, the Coolidge will present a live broadcast of The Habit of Art, a new play by Alan Bennett (The History Boys) directed by Nicholas Hytner.  The Habit of Art has drawn sell-out crowds and is the hottest ticket on the London stage right now. In Bennett’s new play, composer Benjamin Britten (Alex Jennings), tackling a subject uncomfortably close to home with his new opera, Death in Venice, seeks advice from his former collaborator and friend, the poet W.H. Auden (Tony Award-winning actor Richard Griffiths). During this imagined meeting, their first in 25 years, they are observed and interrupted by, among others, their future biographer and a young man from the local bus station.  The play is as much about the theatre as it is about poetry or music.  It looks at the unsettling desires of two difficult men, and at the ethics of biography. It reflects on growing old, on creativity and inspiration, and on persisting when all passion’s spent: ultimately, on the habit of art."
 Tickets ($20 regular admission/$17 Coolidge Members) are available online at www.coolidge.org  or at the Coolidge Corner Theatre box office, 290 Harvard Street, Brookline.

--READING: Sunday, April 25th, 2PM, Michael White and Debra Spark
Michael White, author of BEAUTIFUL ASSASSIN, and Debra Spark, author of GOOD FOR THE JEWS read as part of Newtonville's Books & Brews series. www.newtonvillebooks.com.
FREE, Newtonville Books, 296 Walnut St., Newton

--Professional Development: Sunday, April 25 & Sunday, May 16, 12:00 to 3:30,Write It Like It Is
Powerful transformation is possible through writing about our experiences—joys, sorrows, obsessions, fears, wishes, regrets. Writing without censoring or judging deepens our self-awareness and fuels creative energy. Write It Like It Is offers a supportive, fun atmosphere for writers to do freewriting in response to specific prompts. Experience the exhilaration of tapping in to your authentic voice and uncovering the themes and stories of your life. Sharing is optional but encouraged. It’s not a therapy group, though it may be therapeutic. It’s not a writing class, though you will learn new, practical tools for self-expression and techniques for developing your writing practice. Themes are adjusted according to the group’s personal and professional goals. $60/workshop; $110 for both. May be taken individually or together. Also, Monday evening and Friday afternoon groups forming now! Grubbie Debbie Sosin, LICSW, facilitator, has 27 years’ experience as a writer and psychotherapist. She has facilitated dozens of groups and seminars. Her essays have appeared in the Boston Globe Magazine and on Salon.com, and she has published on the psychology of diary writing. Debbie credits Steve Almond’s "Obsessive Writing" class at Grub Street with inspiring her to develop Write It Like It Is, which has taught at the Arlington Center and Cambridge Center for Adult Education. For more about upcoming workshops and ongoing groups, or individual consultations, go to www.deborahsosin.com.

--READING: Wednesday, May 5th, 6:30- 7:30 PM, Voices of The Somerville Home Reading
Come listen to residents of The Somerville Home read from their memoirs and fiction. Hosted by Somerville writer and Grub instructor, Cam Terwilliger, the evening will feature a series of short readings inspired by the Somerville Arts Council sponsored weekly writing program, Voices of the Somerville Home. Free refreshments will be available. 
FREE, Somerville Home, Residential Care Facility, 117 Summer Street Somerville, Massachusetts 02143

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