How to Get a Spot in a QWF Workshop
Eight-week workshops: $170 per course ($150 for QWF members)
Quebec City workshop $150
Wakefield workshop and Saturday sessions: $75 each
Arts Journalism workshops $200 (some scholarships available)
Call or email the office to see if there's still space available, and register. Pay for the workshop by cheque, cash or via PayPal.
Pmt by cheque to:
Quebec Writers' Federation
1200 Atwater, Suite 3
Montreal
H3Z 1X4
or by cash at the QWF office (by appointment).
For more information:
(514) 933-0878
info@qwf.org
www.qwf.org
If you're paying with PayPal:
You must contact the office first to get registered. Log on to www.paypal.com and click "Send Money." Recipient's email address is admin@qwf.org In the "Note" box, provide your full name, email address, daytime phone number and the name of the workshop you're registering for.
Note that there is a small service charge for the convenience of paying with a credit card.
Quebec Writers' Federation Workshops
Spring Session 2008
Develop your writing with the mentorship of an acclaimed professional writer and feedback from your peers.
Workshops take place at the QWF office, Suite 3, Atwater Library unless otherwise indicated.
SHORT STORY: THE WRITING PROCESS
Eight Wednesdays, 8:00 to 10:00 p.m. (March 5–April 23)
1200 Atwater Avenue, Suite 3
Workshop leader: Mikhail Iossel
- “Do not do what someone else could do as well as you.
- Do not say, do not write what someone could say,
- could write as well as you. Care for nothing in
- yourself but what you feel exists nowhere else –
- and out of yourself create, impatiently or patiently,
- the most irreplaceable of beings.”
- - Andre Gide
The central objective of this seminar is to help you strengthen your grasp on the craft of fiction. We will try to figure out, and put to proper use, the various approaches to writing to the full extent of one’s potential. You are all at the stage where you have written, and re-written, stories before, and I will treat you – as you will no doubt treat each other – as respected peers. The primary course material for this class will be your own work. Each class we will workshop one or two of your stories – and analyze some of the stories I’ll be handing out on a regular basis – seeking to expand our critiques and place them in a broader context of modern literary process.
The process of writing – a sustained effort at artistic self-exploration in accordance with one’s personal aesthetic criteria – is largely an intuitive one. Continuously holding oneself true to the full rigors of one’s own judgment is no easy task. It is a lifelong endeavour. Anton Chekhov remarked once that while it almost always is readily apparent why a poorly written and ill-conceived story is 'bad' - a 'good' story is never anything less than a mystery unto itself. In this class, we will attempt to resolve, or at least pointedly address, this mystery – and do so in a manner straightforward enough for you to draw direct practical benefit from our discussions. We’ll be looking closely at the various elements of a literary text through the magnifying lens of strong 'writerly' intent. To that end, one day I will ask you, for instance, to bring excerpts, brief passages from some of your favorite pieces of writing – texts whose descriptive sentences or rendering of dialogue have struck you as worthy of notice – and be prepared to say a few words about them. The concrete and functional purpose of such an exercise is one of learning by proxy, through virtual apprenticeship – with the ultimate goal of helping you 'match yourself' with the writing voice, the literary style most inimical to your own creative predilections. Imitation, for writers of varying levels of accomplishment, is more than flattery – it is a powerful way to master the craft. “Numerous writers – Somerset Maugham and Joan Didion come to mind – recall copying long passages verbatim from favorite writers, learning with every line,” remarks the fiction writer Stephen Koch in The Modern Library’s Writer’s Workshop. And consider the following statement by Gabriel Garcia Marquez in a Paris Review interview: “At the University of Bogota, I started making new friends and acquaintances, who introduced me to contemporary writers. One night a friend lent me a book of short stories by Franz Kafka. I went back to the pension where I was staying and began to read The Metamorphosis. The first line almost knocked me off the bed. I was so surprised. The first line reads: 'As Gregor Samsa awoke that night from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a giant insect…" When I read the line I thought to myself that I didn’t know anyone was allowed to write things like that. If I had known, I would have started writing a long time ago. So I immediately started writing.' Indeed, by emulating others we learn, and earn the right, to imitate ourselves – or, in the words of one of the most inventive contemporary US writers, Padgett Powell, “All you need to do to write well is repeat yourself well.”
Mikhail Iossel was born in Leningrad, USSR, where he worked as an electromagnetic engineer and belonged to a circle of underground ('samizdat') writers – and emigrated to the United States in 1986. After receiving an MA degree in Creative Writing from the University of New Hampshire, he was awarded a Wallace Stegner fellowship in fiction at Stanford University and subsequently taught creative writing, both on the undergraduate and graduate levels, at the University of Minnesota, New York University, the New School, St. Lawrence University, and Union College. Currently an associate professor of English at Concordia University, Mr. Iossel has had numerous publications in “samizdat” magazines in the former Soviet Union and is the author of Every Hunter Wants to Know, a collection of stories (W.W. Norton) and co-editor (with Jeff Parker) of Amerika: Russian Writers View the United States (Dalkey Archive, 2004), a book of essays. His stories have been published in literary magazines in the US and abroad, translated into foreign languages, anthologized in Best American Short Stories and elsewhere. The recipient of the NEA (1993) and the Guggenheim Foundation fellowships (1999), among other literary distinctions, he is the founder (in 1998) and executive director of the Summer Literary Seminars, Inc. program, www.sumlitsem.org one of the world's largest international literary conferences (St. Petersburg, Russia; Nairobi-Lamu, Kenya).
REGISTRATION INFORMATION
Eight-week workshops: $170 per course ($150 for QWF members) • Quebec City workshop: $150 • Wakefield workshop and Saturday sessions: $75 each • Arts Journalism workshops $200 (some scholarships available) • Call to register and for cancellation policy • Payment by cheque to Quebec Writers' Federation, 1200 Atwater, Suite 3, Montreal H3Z 1X4, by PayPal (additional fee-please check with office) or by cash at the QWF office (by appointment).
TO REGISTER, CALL (514) 933-0878
QWF gratefully acknowledges the assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts.
