Lise Funderburg
Geoffrey Nutter
Jennifer K. Dick
Lan Samantha Chang
Nicola Keegan
Alecia McKenzie
Leland Cheuk
Paul Schmidtberger
Katharine Sands
Your full workshop package includes: Welcome reception, a five-day masterclass, individual teacher consultations, a literary walk, early evening panels, readings and closing reception.
Click here for full program schedule.
* This class is currently full. Sign up for the waitlist or consider the Short Fiction masterclass.
About the instructor: Lan Samantha Chang is the author of The Family Chao, a winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Award for Fiction. A twenty-fifth anniversary edition of her first collection, Hunger: A Novella and Stories was recently published by W.W. Norton & Company. She is also the author of All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost and Inheritance, which won the PEN Open Book Award. Her short stories have been published in Harper’s Magazine, The Atlantic, and The Best American Short Stories. Since 2006, she has directed the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. www.lansamanthachang.com
Course description: This workshop is designed for people who are somewhere in the often-surprising process of writing a novel. It’s my goal to create a constructive and supportive novel writing community in which we will explore key aspects of the form and process. How does a novel differ from real life? What are the parts of a novel and what obstacles does each pose to the writer? What are some of the greatest pleasures and frustrations of writing a novel, and how are they specifically related to the nature of the form? What are some useful methods to keep track of a novel-in-progress, and how can we come to terms with our own habits of productivity?
Preparation: Please send a chapter of up to 6000 words as well as a one-page synopsis by 1 May 2024 to admin.pww@wice-paris.org. Please include your masterclass workshop name with your materials.
Agent consultations: For an additional fee, you can register for one, or two, agent consultations. Available exclusively to participants who have enrolled in a masterclass. Space is limited. More information here on Oliver Munson, and more information here on Caroline Hardman.
Cancellation Policy:
In the event of unforeseen circumstances, PWW reserves the right to replace an instructor.
About the instructor: Don George is the author of How to Be a Travel Writer—the best-selling travel writing guide in the world—and the award-winning anthology The Way of Wanderlust: The Best Travel Writing of Don George. His most recent book is entitled Wanderlust in the Time of Coronavirus: Dispatches from a Year of Traveling Close to Home. He is the editor of ten literary anthologies, including A Moveable Feast, The Kindness of Strangers, and An Innocent Abroad and has been honored 17 times in the Society of American Travel Writers annual Travel Journalism competition.
Currently Don is Editor at Large for National Geographic Travel. He has also been Travel Editor at the San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle, Salon, and Lonely Planet. Don regularly teaches travel writing workshops and has taught at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and the San Jose State University MFA Program. He is also co-founder and chairman of the annual Book Passage Travel Writers & Photographers Conference. He also leads tours around the world for National Geographic and for Geographic Expeditions.
www.don-george.com
Course description:
During this course, you will conceive and write a personal travel essay of about 750-1500 words that explores and evokes a connection with some place you have visited and loved, or some exceptionally moving travel experience you have had (this can be in Paris, or anywhere that has captivated you), making it so vivid that readers also feel its spell.
In our first class I’ll share thoughts on travel writing and personal travel essays, and we will discuss our assigned readings. We’ll end with a neighborhood walk and delve into the process of understanding the essence of a place through the clues that it presents.
For our second class, you’ll conceive and describe the idea for your essay. We’ll identify any special challenges your essay/idea may provide and suggest ways to shape your piece for the best possible outcome. You can use whatever place or experience you’ve found inspiring.
For the third class, you’ll write the beginning and middle of your essay. In class, we'll discuss your piece. Does your essay get off to a compelling start? Does it flow coherently? Are your descriptions as powerful and effective as possible?
For the fourth class, you’ll finish your essay and we'll examine the whole piece. Have you made your points effectively? Does the end wrap up in a satisfying way?
For the last class, you’ll revise your entire essay. We’ll discuss your finished piece, then talk about possible publishing outlets.
Preparation: Workshop reading assignment:
Five essays that illustrate different aspects of the personal travel essay:
About the instructor: Diane has been commissioned to write films for Columbia, Disney, Miramax, Paramount, NBC and numerous independent producers. Her film, Frida, opened the Venice Film Festival and was nominated for six Academy Awards in 2003, winning two. Her script Hemingway in Paris sold recently to a Swiss/French producer and her script Ada—on the life of Ada Byron Lovelace – is currently under option by two Hollywood producers.
Her textbook on screenwriting, The Screenwriter’s Path: From Idea to Script to Sale, is used at universities worldwide. Diane is also a Professor Emerita in Visual & Media Arts, having taught at Emerson College in Boston/Los Angeles for 15 years. www.dianelake.com and https://www.screenwriterspath.com/
Course description: Whether you’re just thinking about writing a screenplay or are a veteran, meeting other screenwriters and talking about this art—and it is an art—can be so valuable. Our screenwriting workshop will focus on character, structure, plot, dialogue, and that elusive thing that makes one screenplay stand out over another. When we realize who we’re writing for—that reader at an agency or production company—we understand that we need to grab their attention quickly. Consequently, I hope participants leave at the end of the week having written a killer first 10 pages of a new screenplay. That’s 2 pages a day… doable, right? But hey, if you leave with a great first 3-4 pages, that’s a beginning—we’re after quality here, not quantity.
Our afternoon classes will be devoted to writing exercises, sharing your work with the other participants, and working on rewriting. You may work on a screenplay or teleplay—your choice.
Preparation: If you want me to comment on any past script you’ve done or are working on for our one-on-one sessions, please send the first 10 pages of it by 15 May 2024 to admin.pww@wice-paris.org. Please include your masterclass workshop name with your materials. And if you’re working on a TV script for a show currently on the air, please let me know the name of the show so we can make sure I’m familiar with it.
I encourage you to read my book, The Screenwriter's Path: From Idea to Script to Sale, before the class -- but it's not required. It’s available on Amazon, etc., and you might find it in your local library. Or if you are local, you can order it from Shakespeare and Company or Red Wheelbarrow. I’ll be providing handouts during the class that will catch you up on parts of the book if you don’t get a chance to look at it before our class.
* This class is currently full. Sign up for the waitlist or consider another class.
About the instructor: Jennifer Lauck is The New York Times and London Times Bestselling author of Blackbird, Still Waters, Show Me the Way, and Found, with work published in twenty-nine countries and twenty-one foreign languages. She was featured on The Oprah Show where Winfrey held up Blackbird and commanded her audience to “read this book.” Jennifer is also the author of several essays published in collections and magazines that include the Norton anthology Knitting Yarns, edited by Ann Hood and Buddha Dharma. After teaching at conferences and MFA programs, Jennifer founded The Blackbird Studio for Writers. Bringing a collaborative approach to her teaching, Jennifer hones in on each writer’s innate gift and works to amplify that gift via classic studies of literature and storytelling. Blackbird Studio Site: https://blackbirdstudiopdx.com/
Course description: This workshop will focus on creative non-fiction that brings forth insight and wisdom from lived experience. Emphasizing the fundamentals of scene, exposition, and progression, as well as sentence-level construction, we will define, provide examples, and help you apply “the three pillars” of creative nonfiction. The first pillar is the story's through-line, the second pillar is the back story (or flashback scenes) used for context, and the third pillar is the insertion of the writer via seamless commentary. This third pillar, which is often the most difficult emotionally as it requires tremendous insight, control, and perspective, is needed to tie the narrative together and provide readers with an alchemized experience.
Each class session will include a lecture with handouts, discussion time, workshopping (reading work aloud to the group and feedback), and assignments based on the teaching.
The goal will be for you to leave inspired and invigorated to create work in this complex, often overwhelming genre, and to have a clear vision of your work and goals.
Preparation: Books I’m asking you to get, read, and bring to class: Tell it Slant by Brenda Miller, 3rd Edition I Hate to Leave This Beautiful Place by Howard Norman
Please send the following by 1 May 2024 to admin.pww@wice-paris.org. Please include your masterclass workshop name with your materials.
About the instructor: Heather Hartley’s poetry collections include Adult Swim and Knock Knock, both published by Carnegie Mellon University Press. She was Paris Editor for Tin House magazine for over fifteen years. Her short fiction, poems, essays and interviews have appeared in or on PBS Newshour, The Guardian, The Literary Review and other venues. She teaches creative writing at the University of Kent’s (UK) Paris School of Arts and Culture and has also taught at the American University of Paris and the University of Texas El Paso MFA program. www.heatherhartleyink.com
Course description: Whether you’re new to poetry or have been writing poems for years, this class is designed to generate new material and share in an atmosphere of camaraderie and constructive feedback. The focus is on generating new poems through a series of guided writing exercises. With attention to craft, you will practice, develop, and fine tune your skills.
As an underpinning to our writing exercises, we will discuss key literary techniques in poetry including imagery, metaphor, simile, assonance, alliteration and repetition, and work on incorporating these elements in your own poems.
Each class will begin with sharing one of your most recent poems based on work from class or an assignment from outside of class. On the first day, we will begin with a writing exercise. Then we will plunge into specific examples of poems based on the theme(s) and techniques of the day.
We’ll study how other poets have undertaken particular forms and then we’ll have a writing prompt based on the work we have just discussed. Whether following the rules or following your own path on the page, we will share our own unique and particular poetic explorations and departures and digressions in class.
Preparation: Please prepare a selection of four to six poems totaling up to eight pages to be sent by 15 May 2024 to admin.pww@wice-paris.org. Please include your masterclass workshop name with your materials.
Please read Paris in Our View, Poems Selected by Shakespeare and Company Bookshop, edited by Krista Halverson and David Delannet, illustrations by Matteo Pericoli, available at https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/paris-in-our-view-poems-selected-by-shakespeare-and-company.
Other books we will look at (handouts provided) include excerpts from Charles Baudelaire’s Twenty Prose Poems translated by Michael Hamburger, City Lights Books; Lauren Elkin’s Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London, Chatto & Windus; and Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet translated by M.D. Herter Norton, published by Norton.
About the instructor: Kevin Brockmeier is the author of the novels The Illumination, The Brief History of the Dead, and The Truth About Celia; the story collections Things That Fall from the Sky and The View from the Seventh Layer; the children’s novels City of Names and Grooves: A Kind of Mystery; a memoir of his seventh-grade year called A Few Seconds of Radiant Filmstrip; and, most recently, a collection of flash fiction called The Ghost Variations: One Hundred Stories. His work has been translated into eighteen languages. He teaches frequently at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and he lives in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he was raised. www.kevinbrockmeier.com
Course description: Orson Scott Card said that "there are a thousand right ways to tell a story, and ten million wrong ones, and you’re a lot more likely to find one of the latter than the former your first time through the tale." Our goal for this course will be to read each other's work and to help each other, as writers, find one of the thousand right ways to tell your story. Whether you regard yourself as a genre fiction writer, a mainstream fiction writer, a realist, a fantasist, or somewhere in between, as long as you arrive with an interest in improving your work and making discoveries, our workshop will offer a welcome environment.
We will devote roughly an hour to discussing each student’s manuscript, drawing the writer’s attention to its virtues, flaws, lulls, delights, confusions, and enticements. We’ll also read a handful of published stories by masters of the craft, authors who approach their work with vision, craft, and a complex and absorbing sense of what it means to be alive, with the goal of examining their work for the creative lessons they might offer.
For writers of all levels.
Preparation: I’ll ask each of you to submit a manuscript between 10 and 25 pages long by 1 May 2024 to admin.pww@wice-paris.org. This can be either a short story, or a bundle of flash fiction. Please include your masterclass workshop name with your materials. Your classmates and I will read your work in advance of our week together, prepare a letter for you, and come to the table prepared to discuss it in detail.
Spend 15 minutes of uninterrupted time with a literary agent. You get to pitch your book, and the agent gets to ask clarifying questions. Agent consultations are available exclusively to participants who have enrolled in a masterclass. You will receive a code with your registration confirmation. Space is limited
Oliver Munson is a director at the London based A.M. Heath Literary Agents. His author list includes award winning writers of both fiction and non-fiction, with a particular emphasis on commercial fiction. Many on his list include bestselling authors of crime, suspense, and thrillers. He also enjoys high concept speculative fiction (not science fiction), and compelling underdog stories with unlikely heroes and heroines. On the non-fiction front, he enjoys sports writing and narrative non-fiction exploring contemporary social issues.
https://amheath.com/agents/oli-munson/
Preparation: Please send a synopsis and your first chapter by 15 May 2024 to admin.pww@wice-paris.org. Please include the agent’s name (Oliver Munson) with your materials.
Cancellation Policy: Sorry, no cancellation.
Caroline is an agent at Hardman & Swainson, which she co-founded with Joanna Swainson in 2012. Before starting her own agency, Caroline was an agent at the Christopher Little Literary Agency and The Marsh Agency. She represents a growing list of critically praised, up-and-coming and bestselling authors, including (in fiction) twice Richard & Judy book club pick Dinah Jefferies and (in non-fiction) Royal Society Science Book Prize Shortlisted Daniel M Davis.
https://www.hardmanswainson.com
Preparation: Please send a synopsis and your first chapter by 15 May 2024 to admin.pww@wice-paris.org. Please include the agent’s name (Caroline Hardman) with your materials.
Founded in 1987, WICE's Paris Writers Workshop is one of the oldest and most distinguished writers' workshops in Paris. Join us this year for
Novel Master Class: Turbocharge Your Creativity with Nicola Keegan
Novel Master Class: Beginning Your Novel with Lan Samantha Chang
Writing Craft Talk: Settings Across Cultures with Alecia McKenzie
Writing Craft Talk: Fiction Techniques in Creative Nonfiction with Lise Funderburg
Writing Craft Talk: Collage Technique in Poetry: Bridging Languages and Cultures with Jennifer K. Dick and Geoffrey Nutter
Panel Discussion: Navigating the Small Presses with Leland Cheuk, Paul Schmidtberger, David Lewis, and Katharine Sands
June 25, 2021 – June 28, 2021
Online Internationally
€350 Weekend Package
€20 Writing Craft Talks (open to the public)
Free Panel Discussion (open to the public)
(please note schedule is subject to change)
Friday June 25:
3:00 pm - Opening Reception
4:00-5:00 pm - Writing Craft Talk: Settings Across Cultures with Alecia McKenzie
5:15-6:15 pm - Writing Craft Talk: Collage Technique in Poetry: Bridging Languages and Cultures with Jennifer K. Dick and Geoffrey Nutter
Saturday, June 26:
9:00 am-1:00 pm - Novel Master Class: Turbocharge Your Creativity with Nicola Keegan
1:00-2:00 pm - Lunch break
2:00-3:00 pm - Writing Time/Free Time
4:00-6:00 pm - Novel Master Class: Beginning Your Novel with Lan Samantha Chang
Sunday, June 27:
Monday, June 28:
1:30 pm - Closing Brunch
3:00-5:00 pm - Panel Discussion: Navigating the Small Presses with Leland Cheuk, Paul Schmidtberger, David Lewis, and Katharine Sands
7:00 pm - Mixed Reading: students and instructors
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