Introducing Weekend Workshops with Master Teachers!
Master Teachers are writers with rich publication and teaching histories, the kind of writers who teach in the best MFA programs and writers conferences across the country, teachers who write craft texts or edit prominent magazines. Peter Ho Davies, Brenda Miller, C. Michael Curtis, Kevin McIlvoy, Nancy Zafris, Peter Orner, and Lynn Freed have all participated in the series.
Workshops take place over a weekend, include both Saturday and Sunday, roughly from 10-4 PM with a 90 minute break for lunch. Workshops will be capped at twelve students, and focus on craft, narrative choices, and discussion of student manuscripts, distributed and read in advance. The weekend will usually include an event that’s open to the public, either a reading or craft lecture.
Upcoming Workshops
September 28th & 29th, 2013
Robert Boswell’s latest novel, Tumbledown (Graywolf Press), debuts August 6, 2013. His collection of stories The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards was a finalist for the 2010 PEN USA Literary Award in fiction. He is the author of seven novels (including Century’s Son, Mystery Ride, and Crooked Hearts), three story collections, a play, a cyberpunk novel, and two books of nonfiction. He has received National Endowment for the Arts 
Fellowships, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Iowa School of Letters Award for Fiction, the PEN West Award for Fiction, the John Gassner Prize for Playwriting, and the Evil Companions Award. His stories have appeared in the New Yorker, Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Stories, Pushcart Prize Stories, Esquire, Colorado Review, and many other magazines. Boswell teaches creative writing at the University of Houston, where he and his wife Antonya Nelson share the Cullen Endowed Chair in Creative Writing, and in the Warren Wilson MFA Program.
Workshop will be capped at 12 students. Tuition is $400, and must be paid in full to confirm a spot. To apply, fill out the contact form below.
Testimonials
Renee Thompson, author of The Plume Hunter & The Bridge at Valentine
I took Valerie Fioravanti’s Master Teachers Workshop with C. Michael Curtis, fiction editor for The Atlantic, knowing from having attended workshops at Squaw Valley, Tomales Bay, and Tin House, that if I came away with only one pearl of wisdom, I’d consider the workshop a sweet success. So went my experience with C. Michael Curtis. Mr. Curtis was a stickler for eliminating all references to “it” in our manuscripts, encouraging us to strive for the specific. It was a great lesson, and I’ve worked hard to take his advice. It must have paid off, because the story I workshopped that weekend, “The Limits of Certainty,” was recently named a finalist in the March 2012 Glimmer Train Fiction Open.
Krista Minard, Sacramento Magazine
A seasoned journalist but a newbie to fiction writing, I took Valerie Fioravanti’s Master Teacher Workshop with Kevin McIlvoy. With his leadership, our workshop group focused on the “gifts” in each short story or novel excerpt, and discussed ways to enhance those gifts. It was a gentle, effective technique that kept everyone thinking positively while enabling each writer to see where a story was working and where revision would help. The workshop, full of energy, was tremendously valuable and inspiring, yet equally so was the one-on-one session with Mc, who showed such respect and careful attention to my manuscript—and me—that I’ve signed up to workshop with him again.
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