This is a free demonstration open to all who are interested in learning about Writers Studio classes. It takes place online on Wednesday, April 3rd at 6:30 PM Tucson time. Please email to pivory@writerstudio.com if interested and we’ll send a link to join the class.
NEW AND RETURNING STUDENTS WELCOME!
Hi writer friends! Some of you have taken my special six-week course for The Writers Studio, Online Writing About Childhood, or expressed an interest in it.
The class, which featured exercises based on the work of writers like Ray Bradbury, Sandra Cisneros, and Seamus Heaney has been so successful that I’ve created a followup course featuring all-new exercises.
The new class will feature exercises by V.S.Naipual, J.D. Salinger, Toni Morrison, and others.
This new class can be taken by those who’ve taken the first class, or by those who have never taken any Writers Studio class before. No prerequisite.
CLICK HERE to register. The class starts Saturday, July 22nd and will be conducted online, so you are welcome no matter where you are located.
Childhood from the perspective of an adult writer can seem like “another country,” a strange land where our powers, responsibilities and perceptions were vastly different. And yet it is the place we all come from. And while the lens through which we viewed the world as children may have seemed innocent and magical, our sensibilities were always vulnerable to the hard truths of encroaching adulthood.
— from course description
“Dynamic, Inspiring, invigorating, supportive. The Writers Studio seemed to me to have all the qualities one could possibly wish for in a writing school.”JAMES LASDUN, poetry and fiction professor at Princeton University, New York University and Columbia University
Greetings Tucson writer friends! As a teacher and assistant director for the Tucson branch of The Writers Studio, I’m excited that our roster of fall classes is posted and students are already beginning to sign up for our fall session.
Check out our web site for a full listing of Tucson classes. Discover new voices and craft techniques to bring your personal material to life. Sharpen your feedback skills. Learn to identify and build upon your strengths as a writer
SPECIAL DISCOUNT CODE: Use Coupon Code: shine to get $15 off one of our 8-week classes. (Discount must be taken at time of registration online or by phone (212) 255-7075 and may not be combined with any other offer. Expires 9/19/19.)
BEGINNER’S LEVEL WORKSHOPS
Wednesday Evenings with Lela Scott MacNeil
Starts October 16 at 6:30 PM
Saturday Mornings with Richard Leis
Starting October 5 at 10 AM
ADVANCED
Monday Evenings with Lela Scott MacNeil
Starting October 14 at 6:30 PM
MASTER CLASS
Tuesday Evenings with Reneé Bibby
Starting October 15 at 6:30 PM
If you’re too far away to take an in-person class, consider taking one online.
“The Writers Studio has grown into one of the best creative writing programs I know, at once serving excellence and inspiring the individual. The ambiance is warm and invigorating, making it joyful to be there.”
GRACE SCHULMAN, author of Days of Wonder: New and Selected Poems
The WRITERS STUDIO AT 30 anthology, which celebrates the 30th anniversary of the landmark school for creative writing and thinking founded and directed by Pulitzer Prize winning poet Philip Schultz, is now available for purchase at Amazon.com.
The 400-page volume is a compilation of fiction and poetry by current and former faculty and students, as well as The Writers Studio’s Advisory Board members Jennifer Egan, Robert Pinsky, Edward Hirsch, Carl Dennis, Matthew Klam, Rosanna Warren, and others.
A fiction piece I wrote which originally appeared in The Airgonaut, titled “Probably Last Meeting of the Bluebell Ridge II Homeowners Association,” is featured in the volume, along with work by other teachers from the Tucson branch of The Writers Studio including Reneé Bibby, Lela Scott MacNeil and Eleanor Kedney.
For years I’ve been interested in Menacing Hedge, which identifies as “a quarterly journal of poetry, fiction and artwork, which is committed to fostering access to emerging and experimental poetry and prose.” This month, I”m excited that Menacing Hedge is featuring my 11th published piece of fiction, a short story called “Miss Brompton Falls 1938.”
I’m not really sure if this story is a feminist fable, or an old-timey stew of sex and violence. Maybe you can let me know. Either way, it’s my third published piece that originated from my participation in the NYC Midnight online challenge, which requires you to concoct a story within a limited time frame based on a number of parameters that are arbitrarily assigned.
In this case, I was given drama for my genre, a beauty pageant for a setting, and a cash register as an object that had to be included. Sometimes it’s really difficult to incorporate all these elements, but in this case they came together in a fairly organic way.
The cash register suggested a general store, and that made for an odd but interesting setting for a beauty pageant. I hit on a Depression-era setting, which brought with it associations with economic desperation and the era’s fascination with outlaws. As I continued to revise the piece, the original parameters became less important, and the story took on a life of its own.
I had fun writing a period piece, trying to make sure the slang and the cultural and consumer references were as true as possible to this era. Mostly, though, I was concerned with the idea of portraying a woman whose inner state is in deep conflict with the situation she finds herself in, although circumstances make it impossible for anyone but the reader to understand why.
Click on the picture above to read it. You can also choose to listen to the audio file of me reading the story.
My thanks to Menacing Hedge, NYC Midnight and a number of loyal writing friends, including Alice Hatcher, Bryn McFarland and Renee Bibby’s Writers Studio Master Class, who provided invaluable feedback that helped me fully develop the story.
I’m pleased to announce I’ve been asked to assume a new role at the Tucson branch of Writers Studio. In addition to continuing to be a teacher on the intermediate level, I’ll be serving as assistant director and working closely with branch director Reneé Bibby.
Here’s some info about the program and its philosophy, from our web site at writerstudio.com:
Janelle Drumwright, who has done an amazing job as Tucson branch assistant director for years, is relocating to another city. I hope I can carry on in her spirit and continue to bring the Writer Studio discipline and devotion to craft to students looking to expand and improve their skills. I’ll also be involved in outreach to potential students and planning of special events.
I started as a student in the program, and its emphasis on craft and the importance of creating a distinctive persona narrator for every piece of writing has been extremely helpful to me. It jump-started me after a long period of non-writing and put me on the road to getting work published. I can definitely attest to the program’s effectiveness.
New classes will be starting in January. Writers of all experience levels are welcome. Online classes are available as well as our in-person classes here in Tucson. Feel free to send me any questions about the program at philivory@writerstudio.com.
I just completed teaching an 8-week summer session at Writers Studio Tucson. I had a great class with really talented students who worked extremely hard to develop their craft and produced some stunning material. Here we are meeting for a final pre-class bite at Brother John’s on Stone Avenue.
Writers Studio offers classes to help you develop your skills in writing fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction. From our web site:
The Writers Studio, founded in 1987 by Pulitzer Prize winning poet Philip Schultz, offers ongoing writing workshops — both on site and online — designed to help students discover and nurture their own voices. We welcome students at all stages, from those who have only dreamed of writing fiction or poetry to those with MFAs hungry for additional serious, ongoing instruction. Students provide the desire to write and the willingness to learn, and we provide the structure, the technical know-how, the professional feedback and the friendly community to enable them to reach their full potential.
Our fall session starts in late September. Visit our web site at Writers Studio and sign up for a class today! If you don’t live in a city that offers in-person classes, try one of our online sessions.
I have a new flash fiction piece online today at online journal Ghost Parachute. It grew from an exercise I did when I was as student in the Writers Studio Intermediate Class in 2014, taught by Janelle Drumwright. The exercise is based on a gorgeous poem “Ignis Fatuus,” by Yusef Komunyakaa.
Since I become a Writers Studio teacher myself, I have assigned the exercise a number of times, and it always yields interesting results.
My piece, to which I eventually assigned the name “Apparition on the Threshold,” is probably the closest to poetry of all the pieces I’ve written.
Imagistic and enigmatic, it doesn’t pause to explain itself, instead letting images flow from one to another, allowing the piece to unfold according to its own mysterious logic.
This is a testament to the Writers Studio method, as I would never have written this piece without being exposed to the Komunyakaa exercise.
(Before finding its home at Ghost Parachute, this piece underwent an arduous journey, which you can read about here.)
This is a story
about a story that was accepted three times but almost but not quite ended up nowhere.
My flash fiction piece, “Apparition on the Threshold,” was born out of an exercise in my Writers Studio Intermediate Class in 2014. (My thanks to Writers Studio teacher Janelle Drumwright for providing encouragement and guidance that helped me develop the exercise into a publishable piece.) It’s an imagistic piece born out of some memories and/or imaginings from my childhood.
I started submitting “Apparition on the Threshold” for publication in late 2015. On February 18, 2016, I was notified that my piece had been accepted by an online journal called Mystic Illuminations. (Strangely enough, it was the same day I learned that my day job of over 20 years was going away, perhaps an omen of rockier times ahead on all fronts.) Here’s what the nice people at Mystic Illuminations had to say:
We truly enjoyed your work and found that it fits beautifully within the scope of our journal. We would like to include “Apparition on the Threshold” in our next issue of Mystic Illuminations.
I acknowledged this with a thank you and sent polite notices to five other places to whom I had submitted the piece, informing them that I needed to withdraw it from consideration.
The folks at Mystic Illuminations were friendly and helpful, and set up an interview with me at The Writers Lens which was a lot of fun to do.
I waited patiently for word on when the next issue would appear. Mystic Illuminations was a beautifully designed, graphics heavy site. I imagined that was what accounted for the delay, which stretched from weeks into many months.
In June of 2016, I was informed that the next issue was definitely in the works, and I was invited to update the bio I had sent in months earlier.
In October, I was surprised to find that a new issue of Mystic Illuminations had gone online … but with my piece missing in action. I sent a “What’s the deal?” query and was told somewhat apologetically that Mystic Illuminations had published an all-poetry issue, and they had forgotten to tell me my fiction piece would be held for the next issue.
Another year ticked by. Other stories of mine were submitted to other places, many rejected, some accepted. In December 2017, I received an email from Mystic Illuminations, regretfully informing me that no other issues were liable to be published. I was encouraged to try my story elsewhere.
So my piece had been in limbo for nearly two years. I was determined not to let it die in obscurity. I send it out to some other places.
It didn’t take long. The Zodiac Review informed me of their acceptance of the piece on December 28, 2017. It was one of the kindest acceptance letters I’ve received:
It’s a superior, polished piece worthy of a loftier venue than ours. We know that because two of us, owners of some 100 years of experience in writing, speaking and communications, can’t find anything “wrong” with it. Or any opportunity to suggest an improvement or make a correction. We’d like to publish it in our next issue, out in April-M
ay.
Naturally, I was delighted. My piece had found a wonderful new home. What could go wrong? I notified a half dozen or so other journals that I had to withdraw the piece for consideration. Surely this would be the last time I would need to do that.
Here’s the point where this little chronicle might seem to defy belief. On January 31, 2018, I received this notice from my friends at The Zodiac Review:
Sorry to report that we have decided to discontinue publishing The Zodiac Review. Thanks for submitting. Best of luck to you in all things.
Reeling a bit and wondering if my piece was cursed, I … and really, what other option does one have? … rolled up my sleeves and tried again. I sent the piece out again into the world, tactfully approaching some of the journals I had previously withdrawn from, explaining my situation and hoping they might be charmed by my saga of the little piece with the big Voodoo whammy on it.
On March 23, two days after I had resubmitted it to them, I received word from esteemed journal Ghost Parachute (which I know of because it published work by a writer friend, Lilian Vercauteren) that “Apparition on the Threshold” had been accepted, for the third and let us hope final time.
It’s slated to go online on or around May 1st, with artwork created especially for my piece.
So has “Apparition on the Threshold” found its forever home? Stay tuned for May 1st, and we shall see. Whether the piece is actually worthy of such drama is another question, one I’ll leave to my readers to decide.
One final note. A website called Duotrope.com has proven to be invaluable for me. Duotrope provides a search function to help you find the most appropriate journals to send your fiction or poetry to. It also has a tracking feature to help you remember where and when you submitted your material … something that was essential in helping me navigate the journey of “Apparition on the Threshold.” The site requires a reasonable annual fee but is worth it.
My thanks to my friends at A
rizona Mystery Writers for inviting me on April 14 to deliver a reprise of the “Craft of Dark Fiction” lecture I gave for Writers Studio last December. My friend Bill Adams is a longtime member and accomplished writer who initially approached me about repeating this lecture for his group. My thanks to him and also to the group’s workshop chair Kay Lesh who made the arrangements with me. Thanks also to another good friend and outstanding writer, Alice Hatcher, for helping with the audiovisual aspect of my lecture.
The lunch was tasty, the meeting was fun and the group was attentive and appreciative. I was speaking about horror fiction, which often intersects with mystery, although the two genres can also seem like two very different worlds.
Just for fun, I created and handed out the flyer below, a personal list but one that name checks examples of short writing in the dark fiction field that have impressed and influenced me. Check it out.
Write Yourself Sane 