Writer-to-Writer:
A Mentorship for Emerging Writers
Apply Now!
Download the Spring 2008 Writer-to-Writer Mentorship Application
Application Deadline: Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Discovering the Unlived Life: Writing Into the Mystery of Your Characters with Anya Achtenberg (fiction/memoir)
The work of character development is central to discovering the real story, rather than imposing a story onto our characters. Full development of character in story work is not separate from the real work we do in the world, that of continually crossing borders—internal as well as external—with openness and knowledge, compassion and respect. For our characters to unfold their truths in their full dignity or brokenness, their astonishing beauty or cruelty, we must work to understand their deepest yearnings in a way that often goes beyond their own ability to articulate them.
In this mentorship, each participant will agree to “live with” one or two characters for the duration of the mentorship, although new characters may emerge, and new dimensions open of other, perhaps less central, characters. We will work to deepen our ability to bring the power of authentic beings into our writing, and extend our range to include characters we may dislike or fear, characters that puzzle or fascinate us, as well as those with whom we identify. We will challenge ourselves to go beyond our preconceived notions, our projections of our own points of view, our societal and cultural biases, our fear and lack of knowledge, into understanding the lives of others in our global community, in our own neighborhood or family.
We will go beyond the back story, beyond what a character has lived up to the moment that we meet them. An unlived life is hidden within the life each character must live to get by. You will explore your character’s internal terrain, a land of yearning bordered by frustration, overwork, social pressures, forgetting, distractions, and violences, large and small, yet charged by the deep human desire for expression and connection, for fulfillment of the individual and social self in creativity and community. We will look at these evocative and emotional issues in our discussions and in the illuminating work of diverse writers. We’ll work in far-reaching but focused writing explorations to cross boundaries that not only free our writing, but deepen our understanding of, and respect for, the worlds and characters we write about.
ANYA ACHTENBERG’s recently completed novel, Floor Plan of Paradise, was excerpted in Harvard Review; her novella The Stories of Devil-Girl has been released on CD; and her second book of poetry, The Stone of Language, is a finalist in 5 competitions. Her fiction has received awards from Zoetrope: All-Story, New Letters, Asheville Fiction Writers Workshop, Raymond Carver Story Contest, and others. Achtenberg has been a teacher at New York University; School of Visual Arts; Springfield College; Hamline University; University of Minnesota’s Split Rock Arts Program; University of New Mexico’s Honors Program and Taos conference; The International Women’s Writing Guild; Center for Contemporary Arts; Word Harvest; National Hispanic Cultural Center; Leaven Center; and The Loft. Her private clients are completing books, publishing, and winning prizes. She’s back in Minnesota after 2 decades. For more information, see www.anyaachtenberg.com.
Bookmaking: Writing to Save Your Life with Sherry Quan Lee (poetry)
What does the map of your life look like? Are there stop signs, detours, back roads, freeways, and tunnels? Do you travel one particular road over and over again? Are you writing that one story over and over again? Does your collection of stories need closure? Is closure possible?
Memoir can be the stories remembered and made sense of as you chart the map of your life. Memoir can be the connection, the collection of those stories. Memoir can be your stories written in poetic form. Memoir can be poetry enhanced with pictures, and other visual materials.
In this mentorship, we will explore the healing power of poetry as memoir. Initially, we will examine the stories that navigate your life in order to discover the theme of your memoir. Your theme will be your writing prompt to gather more material. We will discuss poems belonging in your book, but emphasis will be on overall theme, organization, format, and production. This mentorship is for poets (who may sometimes write prose) interested in completing a chapbook or manuscript draft.
SHERRY QUAN LEE, author of Chinese Blackbird, approaches writing as a community resource and as culturally based art of an ordinary everyday practical aesthetic. Quan Lee is the Program Associate for the Split Rock Arts Program summer workshops and the Online Mentoring for Writers Program at the University of Minnesota where she also earned her MFA in Creative Writing. Recently retired from teaching Creative Writing at Metropolitan State University, she now hopes to complete her second book, How to Write A Suicide Note: Serial Essays that Saved A Woman’s Life. She was a former curator of the monthly Women of Color Readings at Patrick’s Cabaret sponsored by Intermedia Arts. Fall, at Intermedia, she taught Stories that Save Lives: an interdisciplinary workshop for women of color. Her blog is Women of Color: writing. And her Web site is http://www.tc.umn.edu/~leexx065/.