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Health & Fitness

Poetry, Novel, and Memoir Writing Courses Offered at The Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College

The Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville has announced its Spring 2014 schedule for eleven-week courses. Ten classes will start during the week of February 10 and end during the later part of April. The final date for enrollment is February 4, 2014. 

During 2014, the Institute will also conduct five-week classes, weekend workshops, special programs and readings of interest to writers. 


One of the courses described below, about writing books for middle-grade children and young adults, has been sold out. A waiting list has been established for this course. 

The classes are kept small and are usually restricted to 14 or fewer students.

Topics for the eleven-week series of courses

1. Poetry and flash memoir workshop. Includes ways to jump-start and micro-prose. Taught by Elaine Sexton, curator and board member of the chapbook press Q Avenue. She is a poet, critic, and author of two collections of poetry, Sleuth and Causeway. Registration cost: $625.

2. Essentials critical for fiction writing success. Selves covered in this course: inventor, refiner, assessor. The instructor is Steven Schnur whose book The Shadow Children won the Sidney Taylor Award for Outstanding Juvenile Fiction. Books he has written include Days of Awe, Sanctuary, Father’s Day, The Koufax Dilemma, and The Tie Man’s Miracle: A Chanukah Tale (which aired as a PBS animated special). Cost: $625.

3. Saving your story. "What you have is probably fixable." Taught by Marek Fuchs who wrote the “County Lines” column for The New York Times for six years and is a daily contributor to TheStreet.com. He was the editor-in-chief of Fertilmind.net, a financial web site, when the site won two consecutive “Best of the Web” awards from Forbes Magazine. Cost: $625

4. Novel writing. This course is for anyone thinking about writing a novel or already in the midst of a draft. The work of the students receives a great deal of one-on-one attention from the instructors. The course is given by Patricia Dunn and Jimim Han. Dunn's debut novel, Rebels by Accident, was published in August 2012. Han is a contributor to NPR’s “Weekend America.” Cost: $625.

5. Writing about your own life (memoirs). Conducted by Marek Fuchs who wrote the “County Lines” column for The New York Times for six years and is a daily contributor to TheStreet.com. He was the editor-in-chief of Fertilmind.net, a financial web site, when the site won two consecutive “Best of the Web” awards fromForbes Magazine. Cost: $625.

6. Travel. "A travel memoir is a recollection the writer shares not only about her (his) travel experiences, but how the journey transformed her (him)." The instructor is Sarah Dohrmann, a Fulbright Fellow and co-winner of the Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize from the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University for a joint project on marginalized women in Morocco. Cost: $625

7. The personal essay. Instructor Peter Bricklebank's chapter on essay and memoir writing appears in The Portable MFA (Writers Digest Books) and his latest nonfiction appears in the inaugural issue of Two Bridges Review. He has received a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship in fiction and been a panelist for the BRIO awards for the Bronx Council of the Arts.  Cost: $625.

8. Flash fiction. Covers the writing of very short stories. Explores compression, limitation, repetition, rhythm, and other inspiring, idea-generating writing practices. Instructor Polly Bresnick is the author of two chapbooks, Old Gus Eats (Publishing Genius, July 2012) and Mirror Poems (O’Clock Press, December 2012). Cost: $625.

9. A variety of approaches to the memoir. Instructor Gerry Albarelli is the author of Teacha! Stories from a Yeshiva, a memoir about his experiences teaching ESL to Yiddish-speaking Hasidic boys. He is the co-author of two guides to oral history interviewing. Cost: $625.

10. Writing for children and young adults. This course is sold out and accepting applicants for placement on a waiting list. It will be taught by Wendy Townsend who taught workshops for children’s writing at Empire State College from 2002 to 2009. Her third novel, Blue Iguana, has been accepted for publication. Cost: $875. 

For more information and to inquire about registration, click hereor go to www.slc.edu/ce/writing-institute/courses/11.html

The Writing Institute, Sarah Lawrence College, 1 Mead Way, Bronxville, NY 10708, 914-395-2371, www.slc.edu

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