May 23rd, 2011

 
Grub Street News

Welcome to the latest installment of the Grub Street Rag, a newsletter of the Boston literary scene brought to you every Monday from Boston's last cooperage, inconveniently located at Grub Street World Headquarters. As always, if you are receiving this e-mail in horror, please advance to the bottom of the page to unsubscribe yourself.

$7,000 To Go! Sponsor a Teen Writer

Each summer, Grub Street holds the Young Adult Writers Program Summer Fellowship, a rigorous practicum for teens who are truly passionate about writing. These kids come to Grub Street bursting with enthusiasm for stories and poetry. They write for hours each day while they're here, and when it's time to go, they don't want to leave. Every year, we find ourselves blown away by their excitement, their boundless dedication and their talent.

In years past, writers and readers like you have supported the program and made it possible. This year, we're increasing the program from two weeks to three, and we need your support more than ever. So far, we've raised $17,000, and we are actively fundraising to make sure we can hold this fantastic summer session again. In order to run the YAWP Summer Teen Fellowship this year, we must raise an additional $7,000 by July 1st.

For $300, you can sponsor a teen writer, and can give them an enriching experience like you have found at Grub Street: time to focus on their craft, to commune with other writers, and to take themselves seriously as emerging artists. $100 pays for one student's writing supplies and healthy lunches, $50 covers a student's field trip fees, and any amount helps. Support a teen writer today and make their literary dreams come true!

Donate to the YAWP Summer Fellowship Program now.

A Jam-Packed June, or, 30 days, 22 Seminars

Looking for something to do this June? If the past few weeks are any indication, it will probably be raining, so it may be the perfect month to stay indoors and focus on your writing. And luckily for you, we have twenty-two seminars lined up over the course of the month! Want to learn about the weird world of writing for phones? Be the next Truman Capote and write some true crime? Figure out what you can get away with writing about your mother-in-law? We've got a class for you. Check out part of the list below, read the full list online, and then get registered. The online registration process is very easy, but if you have questions or need help selecting a course, please call 617.695.0075 and any of our staff will be happy to assist you.

Grub Street is Hiring

That's right, Grub is growing. This summer, there are two new positions opening up in our office: Volunteer Coordinator and Administrative Coordinator. The deadline to apply is May 31st, so act fast! Check out all the details and requirements on our website: http://www.grubstreet.org/index.php?id=1050

Our Daily Best

• What to do when an editor wants to make changes to your work
• Joys and pitfalls of writing in your second language
• Interview with literary agent Mitchell Waters
• Writing exercise: Bad News
• The writer's waiting game
  

Cheers,
Whitney, Sonya, Chris, Chip, and Eve

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.

WEEKEND WORKSHOP: Saturday, June 11th, 10:00am-5:00pm, The Time of Your Life
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!
Instructor: Hillary Rettig
Sorry, this class is sold out. Please click here to be put on a waiting list.

WEEKEND WORKSHOP: Saturday-Sunday, June 11-12th, 10:00am-5:00pm, Line-by-Line
John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men is the perfect novel. Each line is a model of economy, crafted with precision. On the first day of this class, we'll explore how Steinbeck structured his work to ensure each scene, every last line, had a purpose, and how it all came together to support one of the most memorable endings in literature. The following day, we'll apply the lessons learned from Steinbeck to the students' own work. Students should come to class with the novel, having read it beforehand, and email up to ten pages of their work-in-progress to be shared with the class.
Instructor: Amy MacKinnon
$220.00/$195.00 members, Grub Street HQ. Register online now.

WEEKEND WORKSHOP: Saturday, June 11th, 10:00am-5:00pm, Characterization
The creation of compelling, vivid characters is the foundation of any successful work of fiction. Whether you’re an experienced author or just getting started, this one-day seminar on character-building techniques will help you move forward as a writer. Through a wide array of readings – from Raymond Carver to Junot Diaz, Virginia Woolf to Z.Z. Packer – we will examine the specific strategies authors use to bring their characters to life. But the primary focus of the seminar will be to practice these strategies in our own work. We will practice both “off the page” techniques used to achieve a nuanced understanding of our characters, as well as “on the page” techniques used to convey that complex humanity to our readers. By the end of the course, you will have a dramatically expanded toolbox for the creation of believable, engaging, and memorable characters in your fiction.
Instructor: Adam Stumacher
$115.00/$95.00 members, Grub Street HQ. Register online now.

WEEKEND WORKSHOP: Saturday, June 11th, 10:00am-5:00pm, Jumpstart Your Writing-- Creative Nonfiction Focus
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 creative non-fiction (no five-paragraph essays here!) and some poetry: mining for material, constructing characters and settings, shaping vivid dialogue, understanding point of view, exploring the many forms of non-fiction today, 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 some short published non-fiction pieces and poems in regards to craft, then write exercises inspired by the texts. A supportive and generative experience for both new and practicing writers.
Instructor: Jennifer De Leon
Sorry, this class is sold out. Please click here to be put on a waiting list. $115.00/$95.00 members, Grub Street HQ.

WEEKEND WORKSHOP: Sunday, June 12th, 10:00am-5:00pm, How to Plan, Write, and Develop a Book
Books often start with a simple yearning to explore new territory: fascinating topics, characters who won’t leave you alone, a good story. But manuscripts get unwieldy, fast. One out of ten writers never finish their manuscripts because most first-time book writers get lost without good structure and planning. Mary Carroll Moore, award-winning author of 13 books in three genres and a PEN/Faulkner nominee, will guide you through a simple and successful book-writing process that can take your book from idea to publication, a process using a three-act structure that eases organization and makes a manuscript vivid and engaging to readers. Find out why Aristotle believed that three acts formed a perfect structure for all stories, why humans lean toward beginning, middle, and end, and why we crave the emotional catharsis of that format in literature too. For all levels of writers working on nonfiction, memoir, or novels, at any stage from seed idea to draft. Learn why strong structuring is the key to selling a book in today's competitive publishing industry.
Instructor: Mary Carroll Moore
$115.00/$95.00 members, Grub Street HQ. Register online now.

LUNCHTIME WRITING: Wednesday, June 15th, 12:30-1:15pm, Brown Bag Lunch SeriesDo 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. Led by one of our award-winning instructors or ambassadors. Best of all, you’ll leave lunch with some new ideas to ponder for the rest of your day, and beyond. No need to RSVP-- just come!
Instructor: Jennifer Elmore
Level: For Everyone
FREE, Grub Street HQ. Register online now.

WEEKEND WORKSHOP: Saturday-Sunday, June 18-19th, 10:00am-5:00pm, The Murky MiddleWriting the middle of a novel can feel, for many writers, like being lost in the forest with neither a breadcrumb trail nor a compass. You know where you want to end up, but are not sure how to get there. If you’ve written at least 50 pages and feel lost in the murky middle of your novel, this class will help you forge a path toward the story’s climax. Through intensive in-class exercises and brainstorming as well as an overnight assignment, you will leave on Sunday afternoon with a new mid-novel scene, and a possible path out of the forest.
Please come to class with 12 copies of both the first paragraph of your novel and a plot outline of what you’ve written so far, broken down chapter by chapter. We will be working with these outlines in class.
Instructor: Lisa Borders
$220.00/$195.00, Grub Street HQ. Register online now.

WEEKEND WORKSHOP: Saturday, June 18th, 10:00am-5:00pm, Read, Publish: Polish and Place your Book Reviews
Itching to write but unsure where to start? Why not turn the last good book you've read into your first published piece of writing? Contrary to what you may have heard, book reviews are flourishing online and, yes, in print. In this day-long workshop John Cotter, Founding Editor of Open Letters Monthly, will talk participants through the good and bad -- the paying and the non-paying-but-prestigious -- in the world of book review publication, from the TLS to The Second Pass and The Quarterly Conversation. Part one of the class will be an overview of the reviewing world, part two will be an in-depth discussion about what editors to approach and how to approach them, and in part three each participant will polish one of their own reviews to publication-quality.
Instructor: John Cotter
$115/$95 members, Grub Street HQ. Register online now.

WEEKEND WORKSHOP: Saturday, June 18th, 10:00am-5:00pm, Our Lives in the Middle AgesThis is a workshop for writers of a certain (middle) age, according to their own definition. Based partly on James Atlas’ book My Life in the Middle Ages, and partly on the instructor’s own experience in facing ‘50’ and beyond, this session will explore how we can use the universal themes of aging—letting go, dealing with physical illness, the earning of hard-earned wisdom, and laughing at our own foibles—as the raw material for personal essays, memoir vignettes, radio commentaries, etc. In this day-long session, we will examine the work of writers such as Nora Ephron, David Sedaris and others, and then write on a series of prompts, which touch on themes of growing older and (hopefully) wiser. We will share ideas to strengthen and further develop these drafts. Finally, we’ll share ideas about getting our work ‘out there’ through publication in various media, including literary journals, newspapers, and on-line publications.
Instructor: Judah Leblang
$115/$95 members, Grub Street HQ. Register online now.

WEEKEND WORKSHOP: Sunday, June 19th, 10:00am-5:00pm, From Blog Post to Personal EssayThe 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
$115/$95 members, Grub Street HQ. Register online now.

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

Spreading the Love

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.

--BENEFIT READING: Monday, May 23rd, 7-9pm, A Very Special Four Stories
Don't miss this all-star event tonight, benfitting the children left orphaned from the recent earthquake and tsunami that devastated northeastern Japan, and featuring readings from: Andre Dubus III, author of the new memoir, Townie; Elyssa East, author of Dogtown: Death and Enchantment in a New England Ghost Town;
Elizabeth Searle, author of the novella and stories Celebrities in Disgrace; and Joan Wickersham, author of nonfiction book The Suicide Index. Emceedd by special guest Four Stories founder Tracy Slater, coming in from Japan for the event, the awesome Steve Brykman as auctioneer, the usual mingling, eating, and drinking, plus a literary auction and the Four Stories style of intellectual inquiry: Ask the best question, win a free drink!
25$ donation for entry (cash, checks, or credit cards accepted!); 100% of proceeds will go to Ashinaga.org, a nonprofit supporting Japanese orphans. Four Stories reciepts will be available. The Enormous Room, 567 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139.

--READING: Tuesday, May 24th, 7pm, Rooms Down the Hallway fiction series
Join Boston's hippest literati this Tuesday to enjoy yet another evening of local art and fiction at the hallway gallery in JP!  Hosted by Grubbie Dawn Dorland Perry and sponsored by the hallway's Brent Refsland.  Featuring in May the sizzling stories of SUZANNE RIVECCA and JIM GAVIN, two groovy young authors you probably didn't know were living in our midst.  Suzanne will read from her debut story collection, Death Is Not an Option, which was a 2011 finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award, The Story Prize, and the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award.  Jim will read from his forthcoming story collection, Middle Men, which features a piece that debuted last December in The New Yorker.  Chocolate, nips of wine, and hand-picked music are provided.  Any questions, email dawndorland@gmail.com
FREE,  the hallway gallery, 66a South Street, Jamaica Plain // thehallwayjp.com <http://thehallwayjp.com/>

--SCREENWRITING: Saturday, May 28th,9pm, Filmmaker's Shindig
Hosted by Chuck Slavin & Jenna Lunarno. Musical Guest - DJ Dan Hill. Opportunity to have your short pieces screened on the TVs during this classic party. If you are interested, please contact us at this email address info@filmmakersshindig.com. The shorts should be completed works of under 15 minutes and in DVD format. More info at http://www.filmmakersshindig.com/.

--PUBLISHING SEMINAR: Saturday, June 11th, 11-1pm, Meet the Agent
Learn about the professional approach of literary agent Janet Silver, Literary Director of the Zachary Shuster Harmsworth Agency. Janet brings more than three decades of experience as an editor and publishing executive to her work as a literary agent. Her full bio is listed at the National Writers Union website at www.nwuboston.org/events/agents.html <http://www.nwuboston.org/events/agents.html> . This respected agency represents a wide range of fiction and narrative non-fiction. The conversation, which includes both a presentation and a Q&A, is co-sponsored by the National Writers' Union and the Women's National Book Association.
FREE, Coolidge Corner branch library, 31 Pleasant St., Brookline.

--CONFERENCE: June 23-25th, Ocean State Summer Writing Conference
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS: Robert Stone is the National Book Award-winning author of seven novels, which include A Hall of Mirrors, Dog Soldiers, A Flag for Sunrise, Children of Light, Outerbridge Reach, Damascus Gate, and Bay of Souls. His story collection, Fun with Problems, was published last year. Jennifer Egan is a novelist, journalist, and short story writer. Recipient of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Award for A Visit from the Goon Squad, she is the also the author of The Keep, Look at Me, Emerald City and other Stories, and The Invisible Circus. Tomaz Salamun is considered Slovenia's greatest living poet. Author of 37 books, his work is translated into 19 languages. Blue Tower, his latest book, will be out in 2011. Conference highlights include: Workshops in fiction, creative non-fiction, and poetry, Master Classes, Craft Seminars, Sessions on "The Writing Life" and Publishing, One-on-one Consultation and Manuscript Evaluation, and Networking Opportunities. http://www.uri.edu/summerwriting/2011/index.html

--WORK OPPORTUNITY: SniqueAway.com
SniqueAway.com, a private sale travel site, is looking to add a contract mid/senior-level copywriter and a contract junior copywriter to its team. Both roles are for 40 hours per week, on-site work in Charlestown. The writing is fun, friendly and a little bit cheeky—which is exactly what we're looking for in our writers. (Oh: and talent. Gobs and gobs of talent.) Not a member of SniqueAway? Join at http://www.sniqueaway.com/invite/YourAccomplice  (It's free.)  Email Elizabeth Raymond at eraymond@smartertravelmedia.com to apply.