FULL/WAITLIST ONLY
Instructor: Cynthia Anderson
Date & Time: Saturday, February 15 | 10:30 AM to 3:30 PM
Location: USM’s Glickman Library, Portland
Level: Open
Maximum Attendees: 12
Fee: Member: $60 | Nonmember: $115
Registration Closes: February 10
In good fiction and nonfiction, narrative presence is key. It orients the reader, modulates pace, and adds meaning.
In this workshop, participants will learn how to integrate showing and telling to build a framework that sustains forward motion while also providing all-important synthesis. They will examine works that deepen as they go, with strategically placed ‘telling’ and digression.
To learn how to balance readability vs. resistance and action vs. abstraction, the class will consider work by authors including Katherine Boo, Flannery O’Connor, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Andre Dubus. Participants will also generate a short piece employing the ideas and techniques they’ve gleaned from the session.
Cynthia Anderson’s recently released nonfiction book Home Now: How 6000 Refugees Transformed an American Town is described by Publishers Weekly as “vivid and finely tuned.” Her short story collection River Talk was named to Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2014. Other work has appeared in Boston Magazine, HuffPost, Miami Herald, The Iowa Review, Flash Fiction Forward, and elsewhere. Anderson lives with her family in Maine and Massachusetts and teaches writing at Boston University. VISIT cbanderson.net