In this workshop we’ll try to get that novel, story cycle, memoir, or essay collection out of your head and onto the page. We’ll talk about different kinds of beginnings, and over the course of the workshop we’ll generate our own opening chapter, plus an outline for a longer project. If you’ve been thinking about a novel or memoir, here’s a chance to lay out a premise, a location, a series of events, or a central character/self with a particular set of obsessions. If you’ve written or thought about some short stories or essays, here’s an opportunity to find linkages: common locations, characters, themes. Come ready to start that longer project and bring along favorite novels, memoirs, story cycles, or essay collections to share with the group.
Going Long: Prose Workshop
Dates: 6 Mondays, 9/26-11/7 (no class 10/31)
Time: 7-9 pm
Instructor: Porter Shreve
Ages: Adult
Genre: Prose (Fiction and Nonfiction)
Price: $395
Porter Shreve is the author of four novels. The Obituary Writer was a New York Times Notable Book. Drives Like a Dream and When the White House Was Ours were Chicago Tribune Books of the Year. And his latest, The End of the Book, published in 2014, was a San Francisco Chronicle Book of the Year. The Washington Post called The End of the Book "excellent... entertaining, insightful fiction." Porter has coedited six anthologies and published fiction, nonfiction, Op-Eds and book reviews in many magazines and newspapers, and he writes a column on e-books for the San Francisco Chronicle. He has been interviewed on NPR's Morning Edition and the Diane Rehm Show, among other programs, and has taught at a number of universities, including the University of Michigan, the University of Oregon, Purdue, St. Mary’s, and the University of San Francisco.
More about Porter: http://www.portershreve.com