This course will outline all of the available paths to publication for both fiction and nonfiction writers, offer the pros and cons of each, and give you actionable next steps for whichever path you choose.
In this workshop, Rebecca Entel will not only go over some basics of storytelling, but will offer practice in bringing fictional characters to life through point of view, detail, and dialogue.
Ghostwriters fill in the gap as they are professional writers that have dedicated time and skill to help a client write a book from idea to published form. In this workshop, John Peragine will lead you into the world of ghostwriting.
In “The Searchers,” author and publisher Robert James Russell will not only work through what it means to be a storyteller, but how to find the story worth telling—keeping ourselves and our readers engaged. As writers, it’s easy to forget that we are storytellers—take away social media and publication fanfare, and what we’re left with, at a most basic level, is our desire to tell a story we feel is important and necessary.
In this course, we will start by looking carefully at some selections by writers who succeed at bringing historical persons, places, and real-life situations to new life in their fictional or nonfictional worlds. Then we’ll write exercises aimed at freeing ourselves to imagine what it must have been like to be Great-Aunt Gladys, for example, growing up in rural Georgia in 1938. We’ll write ourselves into our characters as they encounter specific situations within the world we have re-created for them.
How can women find a frame that fits our unruly experiences of self and body? How do we milk the interruptions, the stolen moments common to our experience as writers? How can we begin to make and break our own rules? This class will be multi-genre, and generative, though time will be allotted to workshop pre-existing pieces.
In this half-day workshop, we’ll talk about the practice of poetry, read some sample poems, and do a bit of writing in the form of an exercise or two designed to generate first drafts. The workshop is open to all, regardless of experience with poetry.
In this class we’ll use fun, easy, foolproof writing exercises to turn our travel stories into writing that’s fresh, exciting, and surprising…And we’ll talk about how to use writing as a life tool that can turn every trip we go on, whether it’s exciting and wonderful or not so wonderful, into a transformative experience, for us and our readers, allowing us to make the most of our travels through life.
How do you get started as a freelance writer? Is it possible to turn freelancing into a full-time job? Nicole Dieker is in her seventh year of full-time freelancing, and she’ll teach you everything she knows about how freelancers make money: how to pitch (even when you don’t have clips); how to build a freelancer schedule that combines writing, pitching, networking, and administrative work; and how to grow your earnings over time.
These readings focus on the Bicultural Iowa Writers’ Fellows's final collection, WE THE INTERWOVEN. There will be a reading and a signing at the Des Moines Arts Festival, Sunday, July 24th, 2018. This is a free event, not including a copy of the book.
These readings focus on the Bicultural Iowa Writers’ Fellows's final collection, WE THE INTERWOVEN. There will be a reading and a signing at the Des Moines Arts Festival, Sunday, July 24th, 2018. This is a free event, not including a copy of the book.
To bring writers of all genres and forms together by exploring a sense of observation and become more comfortable with integrating research and personal narratives into your creative work.
Join us for a special community writing event at the Iowa Writers' House in partnership Honoring Your Wishes and Iowa City Hospice. Inspired by the themes of love, forgiveness, and gratitude, the Love Letters Project invites writers to gather together for a special afternoon of community writing.
The event is free and open to the community. Spaces are limited and seats are available on a first come first served basis.
In this workshop, award-winning fiction writer Calla Devlin will explore how to tackle that big idea and what it takes to finish a novel-length work, from outlining a first draft to putting the finishing touches on a manuscript ready for submission.
Portland-based indie press YesYes Books presents a reading by Khadijah Queen, Kayleb Rae Candrilli, and KMA Katherine Sullivan.
FREE and open to the public.
Literary magazines and independent publishers from across the country, and right here in Iowa City, will set up shop at The Mill in Iowa City for the 8th year in a row, representing some of the most exciting work in publishing today.
Learn how to take and give advice, how to write for your reader, and how becoming a good critic makes you a better editor of your own work.
A graphic memoir can be the ultimate way to “show rather than tell.” In this workshop, we’ll learn about graphic novels and focus on the unique ways images can help tell a story.
The solitude of the writer has great spiritual potential. In this course, you’ll explore ways to stay spiritually centered as a writer, regardless of your subject matter.
Maybe you have a brilliant idea for a non-fiction story or perhaps there is an essay, hidden like a jewel in your files, the only trouble is, you don’t know how to get published. This intensive three-hour course, is designed to take you from idea, to pitch, to publication.
This workshop will help you better understand how different types of journeys take shape on the page, giving you the foundations to master the art of plot.
To develop a story, sometimes you need to write to discover the world around the plot, the history of characters, the provenance of an object, in other words, sometimes you have to write a lot that won’t go directly on the page but will flavor everything that does.
In this class, we’ll learn how to capture in writing the places and the people we know intimately in order to create the specificity that all readers desire. We’ll reexamine familiar places for new inspiration, look for the totems they offer us to work with, and inhabit the characters of these settings by writing from their points of view. For outside inspiration, we’ll read authors who have mastered the art of place. It’s time to see the extraordinary in the ordinary and start writing with purpose and urgency, right here and right now.
In this course, Andrea leads us through a reflective journey into the self; guiding creative methods of self-authorization and purpose finding. The participants will learn ways to translate complex emotions associated with significant events in their lives into a written form of storytelling that is safe, supportive and appropriate for a broader public.
She discusses how individuals can anticipate narrative arcs that allow us to live as the characters we wish to become. Such public forms of writing are crucial as a way to bear witness both to the mercies and the travesties of the everyday world—it can help others learn the language necessary to give voice to their own experiences.
This class focuses on how traumatic and difficult events can also be interpreted as ruptures that open (rather than close) future possibilities. Looking at the power of wonder, the class will explore the work of the imagination to describe how such ruptures can make us more capable of being aware of the surrounding world and thus more able to pursue the lives we wish to lead.
This class focuses on what happens after we find the words that let us connect ourselves to our memories and to the larger world around us. We will move beyond a core memory or event toward a story that promotes an openness to futures that we would desire. In this way, we are able transition from a place of hurt toward a path of healing. Because such writing involves the grieving process it demonstrates the need for editing and the ability to shape our stories by expanding the context. Editing our stories is not simply excising events that we wish not to remember, but involves adding moments, scenes, and contexts that provide a character arc of an autonomous self. Even in stories where characters lack autonomy, the writer / editor is able to alter how events are told or experienced in ways that liberate characters to more choices in the future.
The Energy of Story helps you begin to understand how to access the unconscious stories that influence our conscious decisions. Learning to listen and express these stories from a personal place allows the release of shame around trauma and begins to move us to a place of response versus reaction. This gives us the power to author our own stories within the larger familial and cultural stories that surround us.
The Power of Science provides a way to redefine our stories from what seems to be a given trajectory influenced by forces beyond our control, to embracing the empowered state of being the author of our own lives. The class grounds writing as a tool for self-transformation in a scientific approach that demonstrates how the power of story can change our chemical makeup and repair emotional scarring on a cellular level. Gypsy will explore with you the science of emotion, how it manifests in our physical bodies, and discuss inherited traumas that are inscribed on our genetics and that influences our ability to live healthy lives; emotionally and physically.
Like their creators, our characters are capable of curiosity, and their eyes, focused on the right detail and filtered through the right lens, will unveil meaning in the same the way a camera does as it pans in on a subject in a film...
To develop a work, sometimes you need to write to discover the world around the story, the history of characters, the provenance of an object, in other words, sometimes you have to write a lot that won’t go directly on the page but will flavor everything that does. In this workshop, writers will dig deep into their work to discover and strengthen structure, explore the complexities and contradictions of their characters, and heighten imagery that can tie the whole piece together. We will look at what has spilled out on the page in the excitement of the first draft and begin the work of refining, deepening and mining the story within. This workshop is open to anyone writing a story, no matter what the form. Participants who come with in progress work (some pages of flushed out ideas) will gain the most benefit from the workshop. Beginning writers should feel comfortable bringing their work--we all start somewhere.
This workshop is sure to be an experience that develops you as a writer and helps you dive deep into the possibilities of your stories!
Whether you are working on a memoir or are a novelist eager to take your character development to a new level, this workshop will reveal new ways to write compelling and emotionally rich portraits of people that feel instantly recognizable in their honesty and complexity.
Drawing from the literary journalist’s toolkit, writers will master strategies to approach the familiar with new eyes and to access imagery and details that help us truly see another person on the page. By reading and discussing ways other writers have used the raw material of everyday life to craft compelling, emotionally resonant characters, you will walk away with clear ideas for bringing these techniques to your own writing process. And finally, through a series of writing exercises, you will have a chance to bring together all the strands of what you are learning into a single portrait in miniature, and you will receive supportive feedback that leaves you feeling inspired to continue on your own.
The Scarlet Room is our group for romance writers and readers where we provide opportunities for romance writers to share and write in a safe, supportive, and creative space. All are welcome at whatever stage of the writing journey you are in!
The Violet Realm (VR) is our IWH room dedicated to fantasy fiction and science fiction-- truly for all writers who are interested in creating magical worlds within their works.
The Rainbow Room will focus on LGBT literature and provide opportunities for LGBT writers to share and write in a safe, supportive, and creative space.
The Cedar Room is our Room for all-genre writing, located in Cedar Rapids!
The Violet Realm (VR) is our IWH room dedicated to fantasy fiction and science fiction-- truly for all writers who are interested in creating magical worlds within their works.
The Rainbow Room will focus on LGBT literature and provide opportunities for LGBT writers to share and write in a safe, supportive, and creative space.
The Scarlet Room is our group for romance writers and readers where we provide opportunities for romance writers to share and write in a safe, supportive, and creative space. All are welcome at whatever stage of the writing journey you are in!
The Violet Realm (VR) is our IWH room dedicated to fantasy fiction and science fiction-- truly for all writers who are interested in creating magical worlds within their works. The Violet Realm meets the second and fourth Tuesday of every month from 6-8pm at the Iowa Public Library in meeting Room B. If you've attended a Violet Realm write-in and would like to stay connected with other sci-fi/fantasy writers, request to join our Facebook group.
