Summer 2008

Master Class	Writing Your Memoir
4 Week Class	The Blood-Sport of Writing a Column
Special MFA Session	On-Stage Interview with Anne Fadiman
Reading by SNHU MFA Visiting Writer	Anne Fadiman
	Sign up for summer workshops now!
	Download a PDF of the registration brochure here.

Master Class: Writing Your Memoir
Edith Milton

A central problem with discussing your own life is how to attract an audience. In this advanced workshop we will discuss the importance of developing a compelling voice, and investigate how best to maintain a single persona while at the same time pacing the narrative and giving it a necessary rhythm—when to aerate an intense passage with levity, intersperse narrative with contemplation and move nimbly between the serious and the humorous.

The morning will be spent in a general discussion about the techniques and problems of memoir writing and about particular concerns and questions you have regarding your current work. In the afternoon, we will read aloud and discuss a short section of the work you have submitted.  
 
Prospective participants, please send up to ten pages of work in progress and a paragraph or two about your specific concerns and interests with your registration. Please use standard manuscript format, double-spaced text, margins of at least 1 inch and text size of at least 11 points.

Application Deadline: June 20, 2008
Notification Date: July 2, 2008
Class Date: July 12, 2008
Time: 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Location: Southern New Hampshire University, Manchester, NH
Cost: $150 NHWP members; $165 nonmembers
Class Limit: 12
Recommended Level: Advanced

Edith Milton’s fiction includes a novel, Corridors, and short stories, several of which were  “notables” in Best American Short Stories, which also anthologized “Coming Over” in 1982 and “Entrechat” in 1988. She has written literary articles and reviews for the Yale Review, the New Republic, the New York Times Sunday Book Review, New York Magazine, and many other periodicals. Tikkun, Witness, Ploughshares and various journals and quarterlies have published her personal essays. Her memoir, Tiger in the Attic: Memories of the Kindertransport and Growing up English received the 2007 NH Literary Award for an Outstanding Work of Nonfiction.

 

Four-week Class: The Blood-Sport of Writing a Column -- ALREADY IN PROGESS
John Clayton

Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Red Smith from the New York Times once said that writing a column was easy. “All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.”
    
Things have changed.
    
Instead of typewriters, we use PCs and laptops, but the part about the vein is still true. If column-writing is in your blood, there are tricks of the trade that will make your writing good to the last drop.
    
Columns are personality-driven pieces, and whether you want to weigh in on politics or sports, food or wine, humor or history, this class will help you in your quest to engage, amuse and inform your readers.
    
Certainly, there will be talk about choosing subjects, narrowing focus, leads and endings, plus research tips, but most importantly, you’ll learn the one thing that every columnist discovers—inspiration is a fickle friend—and ways to overcome that reality.

Date: Tuesdays June 10 through July 1
Time: 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
Location: Southern New Hampshire University in Manchester, NH
Cost: $175 NHWP members; $200 nonmembers
Class Limit: 35 
Recommended Level: All

John Clayton spent more than 20 years as a feature columnist for the New Hampshire Union Leader, where he was honored three times by the New England Associated Press with "Best Local Column" honors. He also received an Emmy award for his work with New Hampshire Public Television, where he served as host of "New Hampshire Crossroads."  In addition to penning six books about New Hampshire, John has also been hailed as the Granite State's "Leading Culture Maven" by New Hampshire Magazine.

On-Stage Interview
Anne Fadiman

NHWP members are invited to join SNHU MFA creative writing students and faculty in this special MFA session, an onstage interview with award-winning author Anne Fadiman. Gain inspiration as you learn insights of writing craft and process from a master writer.

Date: Monday, July 28, 2008
Time: 4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Location: Robert Frost Hall, Southern New Hampshire University, Manchester, NH
Cost: Free to NHWP members; enrollment limited; registration required

Reading by SNHU MFA Visiting Writer
Anne Fadiman

This public reading and lecture will be followed by a reception and book signing. Come and join the fun. Bring your friends.  

Date: Sunday, July 27, 2008
Time: 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
Location: Robert Frost Hall, Southern New Hampshire University, Manchester, NH
Cost: Free to public; no registration required

Fadiman, an essayist, novelist, and editor, has written several books, including The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, which won a National Book Critics Circle Award, and a collection of essays titled Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader. Her work has appeared in Harper’s, the New Yorker, and the New York Times, among many other publications. She was the editor of the 2003 edition of Best American Essays and Rereadings: Seventeen Writers Revisit Books They Love. Her latest essay collection, At Large and at Small: Familiar Essays, was released in 2007.