Lesley University Writers' Conference

Conference Faculty

Fiction -- Laurie Foos

Driving and Seeing: The Relationship Between First and Final Drafts in Fiction

E.L. Doctorow likened the act of writing to "driving a car at night," and E.M. Forster famously captured the beginning of revision when he asked, "How do I know what I mean until I see what I've said?" This workshop will focus on the doublebind that all writers face: accessing the unconscious when generating new material, and the distance needed to hone material through repeated revision. We will discuss the process of writing as it relates to both first and final drafts (and perhaps ask whether any draft is ever "final") through close readings. In-class reading and writing exercises will also be implemented both for generating new material and creating the distance necessary for successful revision.

Laurie Foos is the author of five novels: Before Elvis There Was Nothing; Bingo Under the Crucifix; Twinship; Portrait of the Walrus by a Young Artist; and Ex Utero. Her novels have been published in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Greece, and Spain. She has been dubbed "the unholy love child of Kafka and Erica Jong." Her short fiction has appeared widely in literary magazines and in numerous anthologies including the forthcoming, Wreckage of Reason: XXperimental Women Writers Writing in the 21st Century. She has taught fiction at such conferences as Writers @ Work, and has been awarded fellowships at the MacDowell Colony and Virginia Center of Creative Arts. She currently teaches in Lesley's MFA in Creative Writing program and lives on Long Island with her husband and two children.

Fiction and Nonfiction -- Leah Hager Cohen

The Same Soup

All storytellers, whether practicing fiction or nonfiction, create our stories, in the sense of choosing where to begin and where to leave off, what to include and what to omit, and the specific language we use. Crucial distinctions between the genres must be respected, but each can benefit from borrowing certain methods of the other. The novelist or short story writer who learns to be a dogged researcher, the essayist or reporter who learns to employ novelistic narrative techniques, these writers enhance both the power of their prose and the possibilities for how storytelling may be approached. All art comes from the same soup of inspiration; in this workshop we will investigate the divergent as well as the common ways we can craft fiction and nonfiction out of the pot.

Leah Hager Cohen is the author of four nonfiction books: Train Go Sorry: Inside a Deaf World; Glass, Paper, Beans: Revelations on the Nature and Value of Ordinary Things; The Stuff of Dreams: Behind the Scenes of an American Community Theater; and Without Apology: Girls, Women, and the Desire to Fight. She has also published three novels: Heat Lightning; Heart, You Bully, You Punk; and House Lights. Among the honors her books have received are The New York Times Notable Book (four times); American Library Association Ten Best Books of the Year; Toronto Globe and Mail Ten Best Books of the Year; and Booksense 76 Pick. She also writes the weblog, Love as a Found Object, and is a faculty mentor in Lesley's MFA in Creative Writing program.

Nonfiction -- Katherine Russell Rich

Shall We Do an Autopsy Then?: On the Uses and Creation of Voice in Narrative Nonfiction

Compare these opening paragraphs from two essays:

"Your patient is dead; the family is gathered. And there is one last thing you must ask about: the autopsy. How should you go about it? 'Shall we do an autopsy, then?' Or: 'Unless you have strong objections, we will need to do an autopsy, ma'am.'"

and

"Here's a memory. In 1996, I received from my mother, a Valentine's package containing a romantic greeting card, two four-ounce Mr. Goodbars, a red filigree heart on a loop of thread, and a copy of my father's autopsy report." In the space of a paragraph, both writers have introduced themselves. Voice is perhaps the single most important aspect in a work of narrative nonfi ction. In this workshop, we'll look at how voice establishes the narrator, where it derives from, and the ways that writers hone it.

Katherine Russell Rich has worked as an assigning editor at a number of magazines, including GQ and Allure. As a writer, her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vogue, O Magazine, and on NPR. Her first book, The Red Devil: To Hell with Cancer—and Back, won a number of awards. Her second, due out from Houghton Mifflin in spring 2009, is Unspeakable: Life in Another Language. It's an account of a year she spent learning to speak Hindi in India.

Poetry -- Steven Cramer

Toward Completion: A Poetry Workshop

This poetry workshop will be reflective and proactive, analytical and intuitive. As in all useful workshops, we will strive to serve each other as the best audience for work-in-progress, making suggestions that help move the poem toward completion. We will also participate in on-the-spot writing, through a series of "experiments" designed to encourage treating language as a means of making discoveries. In this way, "old" work becomes new work, and brand-new work becomes work to work on.

Steven Cramer is the author of four poetry collections: The Eye that Desires to Look Upward, The World Book, Dialogue for the Left and Right Hand, and Goodbye to the Orchard, which was named a 2005 Honor Book by the Massachusetts Center for the Book, and won the Sheila Motton Award from the New England Poetry Club. His poems and criticism have appeared in numerous literary journals, including The Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, The New Republic, The Paris Review, Partisan Review and Poetry, as well as in The Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary American Poets and The POETRY Anthology, 1912 - 2002. Recipient of fellowships from the Massachusetts Artists Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, he has taught literature and writing at numerous universities, and currently directs the low-residency Creative Writing MFA program at Lesley University.

Children's book writing -- David Elliott

An Un-sentimental Journey

Eudora Welty wrote that "if you haven't surprised yourself, you haven't written." Surely, this is as true when writing for a younger audience as it is when writing for a more general readership. As we work to hone our craft, we will strive to identify and excise the two most common elements that work against surprise in work for the young: sentimentality and didacticism. We will also ask why writing for children is important, what distinguishes it, if anything, from writing for adults, and what issues are relevant in today's market. All the while, we will allow Octavia Butler's encouraging maxim to be our guiding principle: "Habit is more important than inspiration." Appropriate for writers of all genres: picture books, easy readers, middle grade and young adult novels.

David Elliott is the award-winning author of The New York Times best-selling picture book, And Here's to You!; the middle grade novel, The Transmogrification of Roscoe Wizzle; the Evangeline Mudd series; and many other books for young people. His most recent novel, Jeremy Cabbage and the Living Museum of Human Oddballs and Quadruped Delights (Spring '08, Knopf), has been optioned by Fox 2000, a division of 20TH Century Fox. David is a faculty mentor in Lesley's MFA in Creative Writing program.

Guest Faculty

Sue Miller is the best-selling author of eight novels, including: Lost in the Forest; While I Was Gone; and The Good Mother; a collection of short stories, Inventing the Abbotts; and a memoir, The Story of My Father. She has won a Guggenheim Fellowship, a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, and the Carl Sandburg Prize from the Chicago Public Library. She has been nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award, and for The Orange Prize. Her most recent novel, The Senator's Wife, was published in January, 2008.

"The narrative pacing is masterly, building tension even in the most psychologically subtle passages ...The scenes are emotionally textured ...But most impressive is the complex portrait of the protagonist...While I Was Gone celebrates what is impulsive in human nature." New York Times.

Regarding her latest novel, The Senator's Wife: "Complex and beautifully drawn... with her keen eye and precise prose, Ms. Miller expertly conveys the passage of time and the evolution of emotions, giving readers the sense of lives fully lived." The Wall Street Journal.

Frank Bidart is the author of five collections of poetry, including Desire, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. His honors include the Wallace Stevens Award, the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Foundation Writer's Award, the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award given by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Shelley Award of the Poetry Society of America, and in 1981, The Paris Review's first Bernard F. Conners Prize for The War of Vaslav Nijinsky. In 2007, he received the Bollingen Prize in American Poetry. He was elected to the Academy of American Poets' Board of Chancellors in 2003. Bidart's first collection of lyric poems will be available from Farrar, Straus and Giroux in April, 2008.

"A National Book Award finalist, Bidart's latest volume of poetry explores self-creation and showcases his fastidious sense of poetic craft as well as his faith in primal energies." New York Times, July 9, 2006

"Some literature shows us life as we know it. Bidart transforms life."
The Quarterly Conversion, Issue 2, Winter 2006

Lois Lowry, award-winning author of numerous books for young readers, including Number the Stars (1990 Newbery Medal); Messenger; The Silent Boy; Gathering Blue; The Giver (1994 Newbery Medal); Looking Back: A Book of Memories; the Anastasia Krupkik series; and, most recently, Gossamer. In 2007 she won the Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime contribution to young adult books by the American Library Association.

"Lowry's gifts as a writer — her precise and evocative prose, her vivid characters, her ability to ratchet up suspense — are displayed at full strength in this enormously entertaining and finally very moving novel". New York Times, May 14, 2006.

"...she's a monumental figure to many readers in the 11-15 age range". Boston Globe, April 14, 2008