Kathleen Alcala

Sun 6th: A Sea of Stories

The relationship between storytelling and the writing of fiction.

Mon 7th: Extreme Measures

Of this presentation, Alcala says, "This talk illustrates a form I have been working in on my essays – taking two seemingly disparate topics and finding their commonalities. This is about my father's final illness and the psychological state of the U.S. since 9/11."

Kathleen Alcala is the author of five books: three novels, one collection of short stories, and most recently a collection of essays, The Desert Remembers My Name: On Family and Writing. Her work has won the Western States Book Award, the Governor’s Writers Award, the Washington State Book Award, and the Northwest Booksellers Association Award.

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Anjali Banerjee

Sun 13th: Surviving Rejection
We've all received dreaded rejection letters. Should we wallpaper our bedrooms with them? Use them as toilet tissue? Make them into paper airplanes? Surviving rejection is part of the process. But how do we muster the courage to send another story into the marketplace? How do we continue to view ourselves as professional writers? How can we use rejection to energize us? Bring your worst - and best - rejection letters, and we'll talk about how to get over the hump and move forward.

Mon 14th: Working with an Editor
What is the editor's role in developing a story? How does he or she help you to polish your novel for publication? I'll share my writing process and revision letters from my New York editors to help you make your good book into a great book.

Anjali Banerjee was born in India, raised in Canada and California and received degrees from the University of California, Berkeley. She has written four novels for youngsters and two novels for adults. The Philadelphia Inquirer called her young adult novel, Maya Running (Wendy Lamb Books/Random House) "beautiful and complex" and "pleasingly accessible." The Seattle Times praised Anjali's novel for adults, Imaginary Men (Downtown Press/Pocket Books) as "a romantic comedy equal to Bend it Like Beckham." Anjali lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband, three cats and a rabbit named Friday. Visit her web site: http://www.anjalibanerjee.com.

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Bonny Becker

Sun 6th: Introduction to Classic Story Structure
Learn how you can use classic story structure - the framework that underlies almost all stories from Anna Karenina to The Cat in the Hat—to help figure out where you need to start your story, what needs to be covered in the beginning, how to move forward in the always-difficult middle, identify key plot points, find your theme and create a meaningful ending.

Mon 7th: Advanced Story Structure
Go deeper into the elements of classic story structure and use exercises to help you analyze your own book or stories in terms of story structure.

Bonny Becker is the author of ten children’s books including picture books and novels. Her books have been featured in the New York Times Book Review, read on National Public Radio and selected for the Junior Literary Guild and Children’s Book of the Month Club. She’s an instructor for the Institute of Children’s Literature and a freelance editor and writing consultant with an expertise in story structure.

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Carmen T. Bernier-Grand

Mon 14th: Universal Emotions
How can you identify a character's emotion from what he has said or done? How can a a writer make a reader secretly admit that he knows how that character feels because she has felt that way herself? Let's look at it the other way. If the character has a specific emotion, how does that emotion look in words? Carmen will consider only the character's universal emotions but also the universal truth of a story.

Carmen T. Bernier-Grand is the author of six books for children and young adults. Her books include a biography in poems and one in prose, an anthology of Puerto Rican folk-tales and a second book of four illustrated folk-tales, and a novel. Her CESAR: Yes, We Can! ¡Sí, Se Puede! won Pura Belpré Honors for her poems and David Diaz's illustrations. Her book FRIDA: ¡Viva la vida! Long Live Life! appeared in the summer of 2007. DIEGO: Bigger Than Life, illustrated by David Diaz, will be out in 2008.

Lyall Bush

Fri 11th: Writing and Community
Richard Hugo House was founded in 1997 with the idea that writers needed company. They needed a place to meet each other, find work, teach (and learn to teach), produce their own events, find audiences and mix with writers touring from other parts of the country. In this hour Lyall Bush, executive director of Richard Hugo House, talks about what a literary center can offer to working writers.

Sat 12th: Writing and the World of Letters
John Updike, Jonathan Raban and Joan Didion all know that a career in letters includes the art of reviewing, writing in and out of one's area of expertise and educating oneself in many different areas of writing from fiction to intellectual history to film to pop culture's magus's. Lengthy discursive reviews published in the Sunday Times Book Review, the New York Review of Books or The New Yorker make their own kind of deep reading pleasure . Writers who know how to write these kinds of texts can find their voices in the cultural conversation -- and even find that they can play a role in changing the conversation (as witness the kinds of essays about "the state of writing" that Harper's magazine publishes every few years). This kind of writing involves the writer learning about a subject deeply, whether that's biography, history or a fellow novelist's whole career. In this hour Lyall Bush, executive director of Richard Hugo House, talks about the writerly pleasures of reviewing and the role reviews play in a writer's development of a rounded career.

Lyall Bush is executive director of Richard Hugo House. He has taught literature at the college level for two decades, is a former director of the Bard College Clemente Course in the Humanities and has written and published on the Moderns as well as on film, photography and books. He is working on a collection of stories.

Gary Ferguson

Wed 9th: The Nonfiction Writer as Storyteller

Much like the fiction author, the literary nonfiction writer is first and foremost a storyteller. Here we'll explore a longstanding blueprint for storytelling known as dramatic device, using some intriguing examples from traditional legend and myth.

Thu 10th: The Sound of Your Voice

No matter the topic, literary nonfiction gains authenticity through the author's ability to establish a clear, consistent voice. Using a variety of exercises, we'll explore techniques for adding more of this "genuineness" to your writing.

Fri 11th: The Promise of the Wild

Most of the changes we think we see in society, said Robert Frost, were in fact merely old truths, coming in and out of favor. This presentation chronicles the inspiring, humorous, and often passionate history of how Americans used nature to forge some of our most cherished ideals.

Gary Ferguson has written for dozens of national publications - including Vanity Fair, the Los Angeles Times, and Outside Magazine - and is also the author of sixteen books on nature and science. His recent title Decade of the Wolf was chosen as the 2006 Montana Book of the Year. Hawks Rest: A Season in the Remote Heart of Yellowstone, was the first nonfiction work in history to win both the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award and the Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award for Nonfiction. Ferguson was the 2002 Seigle Scholar at Washington University, St. Louis, as well as the 2007 William Kittredge Distinguished Writer at the University of Montana.

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Tess Gallagher

Tues 8th: DISCOVERING OTHER ENDEAVORS OF A POETIC CONSCIOUSNESS.

Tess Gallagher will speak about one's attitude toward being a poet. Is it all ME ME ME? Or how might one take the gift of being a poet back to the community in unexpected forms, collaborations, mentorings? Gallagher will discuss her recent work mentoring Larry Matsuda on his book about the internment camp at Minidoka. She'll present how she arrived at her own diverse notion of being a poet which includes work in translation, editing, teaching, film, fiction and essay writing, agenting, work with painters. Important to her decisions arethose mentors she had: Theodore Roethke, Stanley Kunitz, Mark Strand and Raymond Carver: how each influenced and enlarged or constricted her reach. She'll conclude with remarks about the dangers of mentoring: specifically to the current discussion re. Raymond Carver's BEGINNERS and WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT LOVE.

Wed 9th: ORAL TO WRITTEN: a presentation of BARNACLE SOUP and Other Stories from the West of Ireland by Tess Gallagher and Josie Gray.

Gallagher and Gray will read and comment on some of the stories in this collection. Their discussion will revolve around the transfer of these oral stories onto the page over a period of twelve years. Some of the questions encountered: what to preserve and how to keep the story alive without the sound of the actual telling voice. What were the priorities, the special problems of dealing with Irish speech, character and community during the work. Things lost, things gained. The session has bearing on collaborative work and the special pleasures of doing something with another person that can add to the cultures and literatures of both contributors.

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Elizabeth George

Mon 7th: Character Leads to Voice (Part I)
Tues 8th: Character Leads to Voice (Part II)

"Voice is one of the most difficult areas of craft to master because it is so often discussed in isolation. When Voice combines with Character, however, the elements critical to establishing a compelling voice for a novel or for a scene become apparent."

Wed 9th: On Being a Professional Writer

"Passion and talent are part of the professional writer's life. But so are commitment, pertinacity, organization, and bull-headedness."

Elizabeth George is a New York Times best-selling author whose novels have also been filmed for PBS. Most of all, she's a risk-taker: in Write Now, her book about writing, George says that whenever she hears of a rule, she sits right down to break it. That certainly shows in her latest two, With No One As Witness, in which a major series character dies (a sure rule-break) and the follow-up, What Came Before He Shot Her, of which she says, "I wanted to back up in time and turn the prism of [the character's] death so that the reader could see the events that led up to it... . I also wanted to challenge the reader to care as much about Joel Campbell as ... about [the character] in whose killing Joel was a participant." This interest in character and risk taking has made her a literary writer who happens to work within the mystery tradition.

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John Jacobsen

Mon 14th: Story, Structure, and Myth (Parts I and II)

Aristotle said, "Plot is the most important of the six parts of tragedy. The characters serve to advance the action of the story, not vice versa. The ends we pursue in life, our happiness and our misery, all take the form of action." Learning to structure is the greatest challenge facing most writers. This two-part talk emphasizes traditional three-act structure and its mythic components, conscious and unconscious objects of desire, subplot development, scene execution principles, and the Journey of the Hero.

John Jacobsen's career has encompassed direction, writing and production of feature films, films for television, short films, commercials, television shows and documentaries. He has worked with such stars as Bill Pullman, Sandra Bullock, Eli Wallach, Marcia Gay Harden, Scott Bakula, Peter Boyle, among others. Around the Fire, which he directed, won top prize at the Giffoni Film Festival, and his short films also have received awards at the Aspen Film Festival and the Houston International Film Festival. Jacobsen has also directed more than 20 stage productions regionally and in New York, worked as an assistant on Broadway to legendary director Hal Prince and sold seven screenplays. He is the President of TheFilmSchool in Seattle, a school he co-founded with Tom Skerritt.

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Katharine Sands

Thu 10th: Riveting Writing is all about building

Take a look with new eyes at your work.

Ask yourself: what is my unique voice? What is my lens, the prism through which I am writing? ...it is a good time to start thinking about taking your writing into the marketplace. This is a new way to think about writing ...what is specific, unique, fresh and interesting about you, and about your work? Why? How do you want readers to respond to you? Are there regional hooks? Demographics to use? Where do you find ideas to showcase you, the author?

Fri 11th: What To Do When Your Muse Ain't Moving You

You love it when it’s working -- writing flowing

Words pour out. Words pour onto the thirsty paper.

What is lovelier than to watch word count climbing?

Your characters are, well, in character… Your pulse is quickening; Your plot is thickening...

But what about -- creative blocks? You hit a wall --thud. Literally...Your pen is bedeviled

You have ... no words. Literally no words Your expletives are deleting, your talent retreating...you cannot find the words… . The blank page yawns before you...now what? Here are recipes to unblock you,

Literary prune juice to get you up and running again.

Sat 12th: Querial Killers: How Not to Get an Agent Even If You Are A Brilliant Writer

In this hands-on workshop, you'll learn: about the easy-to-fix mistakes writers make when querying agents. What to do -- and what not to do -- when you set out to woo and win a literary agent.How to understand the literary agent's mind-set, and the reasons a talented writer gets turned down.

A literary agent with the Sarah Jane Freymann Literary Agency, Katharine Sands has worked with a varied list of authors who publish a diverse array of books. Highlights include XTC: SongStories; Make Up, Don't Break Up with Oprah guest Dr. Bonnie Eaker Weil; The Complete Book on International Adoption: A Step-by-Step Guide to Finding Your Child; Writers on Directors; Ford model Helen Lee's The Tao of Beauty; Elvis and You, to name a few. She is the agent provocateur of Making the Perfect Pitch: How to Catch a Literary Agent's Eye, a collection of pitching wisdom from leading literary agents. Actively building her client list, she likes books that have a clear benefit for readers' lives in categories of food, travel, lifestyle, home arts, beauty, wisdom, relationships, parenting, and fresh looks, which might be at issues, life challenges or popular culture. For compelling reads in faction, memoir and femoir, she likes to be transported to a world rarely or newly observed; for fiction, she wants to be compelled and propelled. www.sarahjanefreymann.com

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Wayne Ude

Sun 13th: Getting out of your own head

Exploring the legends and tales of another culture can help a writer take a fresh look at his/her own “truths that everyone knows.” Using Native American legends and tales, we'll illustrate an alternative set of beliefs about the universe and humans' place in that universe. Such an exercise can open up your own awareness of the unspoken beliefs which underlie your own writing.

Wayne Ude's books include Becoming Coyote, a novel; Buffalo and other stories; and Maybe I Will Do Something: Seven Tales of Coyote, for ages ten and up. His stories have appeared in North American Review and Ploughshares.

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David Wagoner

Thu 10th: The Landscapes of the Psyche

How where you were becomes what you are.

David Wagoner is the author of seventeen books of poems, most recently Good Morning and Good Night (U. of Illinois Press, 2005) which has been nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Pulitzer Prize. He's also written ten novels, one of which, The Escape Artist, was made into a movie by Francis Ford Coppola. Wagoner won the Lilly Prize in 1991 and has won six prizes from Poetry, which has published 171 of his poems, more than any other individual. He was a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets for 23 years and edited Poetry Northwest until its closure in 2002.

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Carolyne L. Wright

Sun 13th: Poetry in Translation / Translation in Poetry

Poetry in translation has become a major influence on the sensibilities of poets in the West. Likewise, the practice of translation--from most of the world’s major languages, and from many languages less well-known in the West--has become increasingly common among poets writing in English. As a translator from both Spanish and Bengali, two apparently very different languages that nevertheless share deep Indo-European roots, I will present a few translations from each language and talk about what works and what doesn't in transforming these into poetry in English. We will consider issues of translation as a source of creative inspiration as well as cross-cultural understanding, look at how translating can change our work and lives, and if there's time, even do a brief translation exercise.

Carolyne L. Wright has published eight books and chapbooks of poetry, three collections of poetry in translation from Spanish and Bengali, and a collection of essays. Her new collection is A Change of Maps (Lost Horse Press, 2006), finalist for the Idaho Prize and the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America. Her previous book, Seasons of Mangoes and Brainfire (Eastern Washington UP / Lynx House Books), which won the Blue Lynx Prize and an American Book Award, appeared in a second edition in 2005. Wright's investigative memoir in progress of her experiences in Chile on a Fulbright Study Grant during the presidency of Salvador Allende, The Road to Isla Negra, received the PEN/Jerard Fund and the Crossing Boundaries Awards. She spent four years on fellowships in Kolkata, India, and Dhaka, Bangladesh, translating the work of Bengali women poets and writers. Wright is Translation Editor for Artful Dodge, and on the Board of Directors of the AWP for 2004-2008.

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Susan Zwinger

Tue 8th: Illustrated Journals for the Curious Writer, Part I
Wed 9th: Illustrated Journals for the Curious Writer, Part II

Great writers, artists, and scientists have long kept notebooks; a journal is your mind's growth made visible. Descriptions, dialogue, sense of place, quotes, maps, musings, notes from NPR shows, quick illustrations of setting or person, calendars, brainstorms, family stuff, longterm project plans, Day Poems, recipes, b&moan sessions, and creative rough drafts all increase a writer's brilliance. Zwinger will teach you the tools for all!

Susan Zwinger's books of non-fiction include 2004's The Hanford Reach; The Last Wild Edge; Stalking the Ice Dragon; and Still Wild, Always Wild. Her essays and non-fiction regularly appear in magazines and journals around the country. She co-authored Women In Wilderness with her mother, Ann Haymond Zwinger.

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