September 7th, 2010
"I really do not know that anything has ever been more exciting than diagramming sentences."
— Gertrude Stein
Welcome to the latest installment of the Grub Street Rag, a newsletter of the Boston literary scene sent out every Monday from the Petits-Fours Dumbwaiter 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.
So you’ve heard about the high caliber of the workshops at Grub Street, but adding the cost of a class to your monthly budget feels like recession-era lunacy. Or you’re a workshop regular who’s itching to try out a new genre. Or you’ve been in workshop hibernation so long it’s time for spring to return to your writerly winter. Or maybe you’re the writer who just penned the preceding cliché about hibernation, and you know full well your writing could use a tweak by one of Grub Street’s many kind, yet constructively-critical, instructors.
The Run for Grub Scholarship was founded by Grub Street member Catherine Elcik who ran a marathon in July to raise money to cover the cost of workshops for four students. If you’d like to be considered for one of these four awards, tell us your story about how you’d benefit from taking a free Grub Street class. But whether your application makes us laugh or cry, keep your letter to one, single-spaced page, and email it to runforgrub@grubstreet.org.
Deadline is October 15. founded by Grub Street
A few years ago, screenwriter and actress Marianne Leone Cooper took Alexis
Rizzuto's non-fiction workshops at Grub Street. She had started a
memoir about her son, Jesse, and was encouraged by her instructor, classmates and visiting agent Colleen Mohyde to finish it and seek publication. We are so proud to announce that today, September 7th, 2010, is the official publication date of Knowing Jesse: A Mother's Story of Grief, Grace and Everyday Bliss (Simon & Schuster) and that Grub Street will be co-hosting Marianne's debut reading at Porter Square Books THIS Monday, September 13th at 7pm. Alexis Rizzuto, now an editor at Beacon Press, will introduce Marianne, and afterward we will gather for drinks and snacks at a local restaurant. Don't miss this chance to celebrate a true Grubbie succcess story and pick up a copy of Marianne's beautiful book.
It's back in all its chocolatey, literary glory: A Taste of Grub! The event takes place on Friday, November 5th at the State Room overlooking the stunning Boston city skyline. Join us for a night of hors d'oeuvres, wine, and literary tastings! We're excited to be hosting our fifth annual Literary Silent Auction and our Third Annual Postcard Auction, featuring original artwork and writings from prominent authors, including Chuck Palahniuk, Susan Orlean, Arthur Golden, Lorrie Moore, Andrea Barrett, Robert Pinsky, Lois Lowry and many more to be announced soon. The postcards will be online and available for bidding starting October 1st. Tickets are available for purchase by clicking here: http://www.grubstreet.org/index.php?id=165.
It's September, which means the beginning of fall and a Vogue-fall-issue sized DoC. First up, longtime Grubbie David Meerman Scott just published his sixth book, this time with co-author Brian Halligan. Called Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead: What Every Business Can Learn from the Most Iconic Band in History, the book is already getting great press. New Grub instructor Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich is one of six winners of the prestigious 2010 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer's Award, and plans to use the $25,000 prize to "delay full-time work and finish the first draft" of her memoir Any One Of Us. Fellow instructor Sue Williams, who will be teaching Six Weeks, Six Stories and Novel In Progress I this term, had a story of her own published in Smokelong Quarterly. It's called "Bedtime in Thorpe Village, Leicestershire, England" and you can check it out on their site. Grubbie Larry C. Kerpelman has published a micro-article in the August 29th edition of The Boston Globe Magazine "Tales from the City" section. The article, on pg. 9, is titled "Car and Driver," but Larry says he much prefers the title he submitted with the article, "Another Fan Heard From." Grubbie Linda Mazurek had her third article published in The Boston Globe's "Short Orders" on the last Wednesday of July--and we all know how hard it is to break into the Globe. Founder of The Drum Literary Magazine and friend of Grub Henriette Power has a short story called "Uruguay" coming out in the November issue of Camera Obscura. Grubbie and student Margaret Holmes had a story called “Minnesota” accepted by The Talon of UNC Wilmington, an online magazine found at http://talonmag.com. Friend of Grub Julia Glass's brand new novel, The Widower's Tale, goes on sale today, and we can't wait to read it since we thoroughly enjoyed her other two. Grubbie Stephanie Thurrott's first published short story, "It Comes to This," ran in the August issue of The Shine Journal. Diana Renn's young adult novel, The Frame Game, has sold to Viking Children's Books. Michael Frederick Geisser's short essay, "Another Day," received an Honorable Mention in the New Millennium Writings competition. Sarah Smith, former Grub teacher of mystery writing, has a story, "The Boys Go Fishing," in the anthology Death's Excellent Vacation, edited by Charlaine Harris and Toni Kelner (Ace Books, August 2010). Kevin Daley's novel, South Pacific Surivor: In Samoa, is now available at Barnes and Noble, Fishpond, Amazon and other venues. And last but never least, Grubbie Dell Smith has a story out in Fiction issue 56. It's a chapter of a novel he workshopped in Jenna Blum's novel class. Huge congratulations to all of you, whose success serves as a kick in the butt to Grub Street staffers who've slacked off on their writing all summer (says Whitney, speaking for herself).
Do you have writing news and want to be featured in the DoC? The first Monday of every month, we feature Grub Street members who have sent their good news to whitney@grubstreet.org. To be included, please send Whitney an email with information about your publication, award or fellowship. Limit your announcement to 60 words or less. Extra credit if the announcement is written in the third person, which is good practice for your writing anyway.
Cheers,
Whitney, Sonya, Chris, Chip, and Eve
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.
LUNCHTIME WRITING WORKSHOP: Thursday, September 9th, 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. For 45 minutes, you’ll meet fellow writers and get your creative juices flowing with some cool writing exercises. Best of all, you’ll leave lunch with some new ideas to ponder for the rest of your day, and beyond. No need to reserve a spot; just come to 160 Boylston Street, 4th Floor. Taught by Amanda Keil.
FREE, Grub Street HQ, 160 Boylston Street, Boston, MA.
WEEKEND WORKSHOP: Saturday, September 11th, 9:00am-4:00pm, The Terrible Familiar: Writing Literary Darkness Tastefully and Effectively
Instructor: Adrian Van Young
The one-day version of the popular weekend seminar! Writing a dark domestic drama but can’t quite make the conflict pop? Penning a tale of the supernatural that wants to be taken seriously? Inhabiting a villain or scoundrel who refuses to be plausible? This weekend workshop is geared towards writing from the dark side without the melodrama or the fatal constriction of genre. By looking at the dark successes of some of our best writers, and through lively in-class exercises in everything from non-linear narrative structure to writing first-person unreliability, you will become a seasoned hand in writing violence, both physical and emotional, creating nuanced, relatable villains, mastering the finer points of dark and uncanny description, and making the dark hopes and desires of your characters seethe upon the page, among other strange things not dreamt of in our philosophy.
$115/$95 members, Grub Street HQ, 160 Boylston Street, Boston, MA.
WEEKEND WORKSHOP: Saturday, September 11th, 9:00am-4:00pm, Crash Course in Guerrilla Book Promotion
Instructor: Ethan Gilsdorf
If you're about to publish a book, you've probably got questions about how to best publicize and sell it -- as well as wondering what to expect. In this expanded version of his popular seminar, Ethan Gilsdorf reports on the lessons learned from his 50+ city budget book tour and six month guerrilla effort to promote his book Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms. Whether you have a big or small publisher, or chose self-publishing, there are both traditional and non-traditional methods to identify and reach your target audience and build an audience in various potential book-buying communities. We'll discuss setting up a promotional budget; creating a book tour (and not just at bookstores but other venues) and brainstorming special contests, promotions and giveaways unique to your book; establishing yourself as an expert and tying in your book to current events; using traditional media like print, TV and radio; and jumping on social media to develop a fan base and create buzz. We'll also over what your publisher should do and what you can do, and the problems that self-publishing creates. Come with questions.
$115/$95 members, Grub Street HQ, 160 Boylston Street, Boston, MA.
WEEKEND WORKSHOP: Saturday, September 11th, 9:00am-4:00pm, Plotting the Novel
Instructor: Michelle Hoover
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.
*Sorry, this class is sold out. Please email chip@grubstreet.org to be put on a waiting list.*$115/$95 members, Grub Street HQ, 160 Boylston Street, Boston, MA.
WEEKEND WORKSHOP: Sunday, September 12th, 9:00am-4:00pm, The Time of Your Life
Instructor: Hillary Rettig
One of the keys to success in writing is using your time properly. That can be tough when you have a job, family, home or other major commitments – and when occupational hazards like procrastination and writer’s block rear their ugly heads. The good news is that all of these issues can be addressed once you’ve figured out the root causes of your time “issues” and applied some practical strategies to address them. (Hint: it’s not that you’re lazy or uncommitted—so stop blaming yourself! Another hint: it is not so difficult to create and stick to a time “budget” and schedule that will help you achieve your goals.) Author Hillary Rettig (The Lifelong Activist) will help you achieve these goals with two three-hour seminars offered on the same day: “Time Management” first, then a lunch break, then “Stop Procrastinating!” The best news of all is that once a writer actually starts solving his or her procrastination problems or blocks and starts managing his/her time better, change can happen amazingly fast!
$115/$95 members, Grub Street HQ, 160 Boylston Street, Boston, MA.
WEEKEND WORKSHOP: Sunday, September 12th, 9:00am-4:00pm, Jumpstart Your Writing
Instructor: Grace Talusan
This one-day weekend version of one of our most popular courses has a very clear mission: spend the day writing. Through a series of fun directed writing exercises, we will explore the terrain of fiction and some non-fiction: mining for material, constructing characters and settings, shaping vivid dialogue, understanding point of view, and finding your voice. We will discuss the process of writing and the strengths and weaknesses of the work we produce in class. We will read and discuss published stories in regards to craft, then write exercises inspired by the stories. A supportive and generative experience for both new and practicing writers. Limited to 15 students.
$115/$95 members, Grub Street HQ, 160 Boylston Street, Boston, MA.
WEEKEND WORKSHOP: Sunday, September 12th, 9:00am-4:00pm, How to Plan, Write, and Develop a Book
Instructor: Mary Carroll Moore
Whether you're a nonfiction author, memoirist, or novelist, and whether you have a book almost finished or merely a concept for one, this workshop will help you get to know your book--what it is about, how to structure it, how to finish it!
*SOLD OUT* $115/$95 members, Grub Street HQ, 160 Boylston Street, Boston, MA.
SEMINAR: Monday, September 20th, 7:00-10:00pm, Think Small, Think Smart: How to Publish Beyond the Big Houses
For many reasons, new and established writers are moving their publications to smaller presses or are even self-publishing. Join two industry professionals for an intensive discussion on alternatives to larger presses. Tara, an editor and author, will instruct on how to make yourself appealing to small presses, how to approach them, how to handle contract issues, how to market/promote, how to handle your book tour in line with your book distribution, and offer tips on making a reading successful. Glenna, who is a book designer and typesetter, will review the pros and cons of self-publishing and then explain how to proceed from the manuscript to the printed and bound book. This will include instruction on how to obtain a copyright and an ISBN, and the important steps of finding and working with a printer and the various other vendors you will need to self-publish. Both instructors will reveal tips and important information that you won’t learn anywhere else. For writers who have a manuscript to sell/publish or for writers with recent or upcoming publications. Co-taught with Glenna Collet. Limited to 18 students.
Instructor: Tara L. Masih
$65/$50 members, Grub Street HQ, 160 Boylston Street, Boston, MA.
SEMINAR: Monday, September 20th, 7:00-10:00pm, Writing Suspense: You Know It When You Feel It
In this 3-hour workshop we’ll talk about what makes suspense work. We’ll dissect the arc of suspense within a scene and within a novel. We’ll go through the variety of tools a writer can use to create suspense and to modulate it. Finally, we’ll discuss how to manage suspense in a book-length work.
Instructor: Hallie Ephron
*Sorry, this class is sold out. Please email chip@grubstreet.org to be put on a waiting list.* $65/$50 members, Grub Street HQ, 160 Boylston Street, Boston, MA.
SEMINAR: Monday, September 20th, 7:00-10:00pm, From Blog Post to Personal Essay
The personal blog is an incredibly popular and effective way for a writer to find his or her voice—but how do you move beyond blog posts to rich, complex, publishable personal essays? With the current cultural focus on personal writing, the essay, too, is “hot” right now—but where do ideas that go beyond navel-gazing come from? In the blog you write (or the blog you’ve imagined) you already have a record of the ideas you find most interesting. The next step is to develop them into fully realized literary explorations, and in this one-night seminar we’ll discuss how to do just that. Appropriate for the blogger and the aspiring essayist alike, the seminar will cover the narrative techniques established essayists like Didion, Lopate, and Dillard use to, in the words of Aldous Huxley, “look at the world through the keyhole of anecdote and description." We’ll discuss strategies for identifying those potential keyholes and how to use different structural models to produce writing with the simultaneous acuity and complexity that characterizes great personal essays. A reading packet will be distributed, containing both how-to craft articles and examples of the form both classic and modern.
Instructor: Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich
$65/$50 members, Grub Street HQ, 160 Boylston Street, Boston, MA.
SEMINAR: Monday, September 20th, 7:00-10:00pm, Writing As Performance
A writer must constantly make choices, commit to them, and fully explore their possibilities. Yet it's so easy to judge our choices before we even see how they might work out. What if you could create a story in real time, if your characters took your ideas and developed them on their own? In this on-your-feet, fun-filled workshop we will practice the fundamentals of story using theater games and related writing exercises to generate ideas on the spot, create storylines, and build characters. Improv not only promotes the quick-thinking confidence that all writers need, but can help writers who edit too aggressively from the beginning, have trouble starting or finishing a story, or are dealing with writer's block. While some of the best humor can come from improv, this workshop will benefit anyone seeking to bring more spontaneity and joy to their craft.
Instructor: Amanda Keil
$65/$50 members, Grub Street HQ, 160 Boylston Street, Boston, MA.
Be sure to check out our website for a comprehensive view of upcoming events.
Grub Street wants to promote YOU! Please send events for consideration to whitney@grubstreet.org. Bonus points and undying gratitude for submitting your event info in the same format as the events below. 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 cannot 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: Monday, September 13th, 7pm, Marianne Leone reads from Knowing Jesse: A Mother's Story of Grief, Grace, and Everyday Bliss
"This book will break your heart. This book will make you angry. It will make you laugh and cry and cheer. But mostly, this book will lift you up." (Ann Hood, author of The Knitting Circle) Marianne Leone is an actress who appeared in The Sopranos, a screenwriter, and an essayist published in The Boston Globe. She lives in
Massachusetts with her husband and two rescue dogs. This event is co-sponsored
by Grub Street. Join us afterward for refreshments at a location to be announced at the reading!
FREE, Porter Square Books.
--READING: Wednesday, September 22nd, 7pm, Julia Glass reads from The Widower's Tale
"Elaborately plotted and luxuriously paced, Glass’s inquisitive, compassionate, funny, and suspenseful saga addresses significant and thorny social issues with emotional veracity, artistic nuance, and a profound perception of the grand interconnectivity of life."(Booklist, starred review) Julia Glass is the author of Three Junes, winner of the 2002 National Book Award for Fiction; The Whole World Over; and I See You Everywhere, winner of the 2009 Binghamton University John Gardner Book Award. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Her short fiction has won several prizes, and her personal essays have been widely anthologized. She lives in Massachusetts with her family.
FREE, Porter Square Books.
Welcome to the end of the e-mail, where like how Stegosauruses had brains in their butts, we offer you the chance to win a prize. Name the novel that ends: “And then the storm of shit begins.” Email your answer and your postal address to whitney@grubstreet.org. First correct respondent wins a J.P. Licks gift card.
Last week's answer: Five of Shakespeare's heroines disguised themselves as men: Rosalind in As You Like It; Julia in Two Gentlemen of Verona; Portia in The Merchant of Venice; Viola in Twelfth Night; Imogen in Cymbeline. Winner: ____.