NCWN holds 2016 Squire Summer Writing Residency in Charlotte, June 23-26

PRESS RELEASE FROM NCWN:

Registration is now open for the North Carolina Writers’ Network 2016 Squire Summer Writing Residency, June 23-26, at Queens University of Charlotte.

The Squire Summer Writing Residency offers an intensive course in a chosen genre (fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry), with ten hour-and-a-half sessions over the four days of the program. Registrants work in-depth on their own manuscript samples, as well as their colleagues’, while also studying the principles of the genre with their instructor. Other features include faculty readings, panel discussions, and open mic sessions for residents.

Pulitzer-Prize nominated poet Morri Creech will lead the Poetry workshop. Sarah Creech, author of the novel Season of the Dragonflies—a SIBA OKRA pick for the summer of 2014—will lead the Fiction Workshop. The Charles A. Dana Professor of English at Davidson College, Cynthia Lewis, will lead the Creative Nonfiction workshop.

For the poetry tract, the focus will be on form, which, rather than proving to be a constraint, for many poets helps to generate content, provide a sense of discovery, and liberate the poetic imagination. In this workshop, registrants will analyze poets who compose in a variety of forms, reading published formal poets, and writing original poems using formal techniques—as well as workshopping poems by students in the class. Participants will focus primarily on blank verse, sonnets, villanelles, and triolets. Students will workshop at least one of their submitted poems in class, in addition to generating new material.

In Sarah Creech’s fiction workshop, attendees will begin with the advice given by Elena Ferrante’s protagonist in the brilliant “Neapolitan Novels.” The protagonist, who is also named Elena, tells the reader that great writing has three key components: sincerity, naturalness, and mystery.

Students will let this advice guide their discussions as they focus on the most important techniques of fiction (character, conflict, yearning, setting, structure, and language). They will read aloud from professional short stories, and they will write together and share creative exercises that highlight the techniques of fiction they’ve discussed during workshop. They will also workshop short fiction submissions.

In the Creative Nonfiction workshop, led by Cynthia Lewis, conferencegoers will focus on a variety of narrative forms and approaches for use in creative nonfiction. What are the challenges of a sustained narrative and how can they be met? What are some of the ways in which briefer stories—anecdotes or summaries—can enliven and give immediacy to nonfiction? What considerations attend the construction of plot? As a starting point and a bit of common ground, Cynthia will ask everyone in the workshop to do some minimal reading from Keep It Real, by Lee Gutkind and others.

For more information, including full faculty bios and registration details, click here.

The non-profit North Carolina Writers’ Network is the state’s oldest and largest literary arts services organization devoted to writers at all stages of development. For additional information, and to register, visit www.ncwriters.org.