Master Classes

For adult writers of all ages, Telling Room Master Classes are taught by accomplished writers and artists who, as experts in their fields, will part the curtain for a night or a series of nights to demonstrate how they approach the craft of writing and storytelling. As the community of writers, artists, teachers, readers, and creative folks that helps support The Telling Room grows, we've developed these classes to engage that community directly. Whether you are an aspiring writer, someone who is enamored with the work of one of our Master Class instructors, or a professional writer, artist, or teacher looking for new insights into your work, these classes should leave you feeling inspired and invigorated.

Winter/Spring 2010 Schedule:

Exploding Text! A Creative Literacy Workshop for Teachers
The Telling Room and the Southern Maine Writing Project will host a day-long workshop on for teachers interested in exploring a creative approach to literacy development. The workshop will focus on the Performance Cycle, an innovative framework for integrating the arts and literacy development across the curriculum, developed by the ArtsLiteracy Project at Brown University (www.artslit.org). Participants will learn by doing as they actively engage in a process of meaning-making that uses performance and visual art to deepen their understanding of a core text written by young writers working with The Telling Room.

This workshop is open to teachers of all grade levels and content areas and requires no previous experience in the arts. Together we will develop an authentic learning community where it's safe to take risks, have fun, and share creative work. Teachers will leave with new perspectives on teaching and new ideas about how to engage students in learning through the arts. All participants will earn contact hours that can go toward CEUs. This master class will carry a $75 fee, $50 for volunteers, as it is an all-day event.
Saturday, February 6th, 8:30 - 3:30pm

John Holdridge will lead the workshop. John is an independent education consultant and the former resident teaching artist of the ArtsLiteracy Project. Now living in Maine, he facilitates professional development sessions for educators, has worked on several projects at The Telling Room, and teaches EPC 520 Creative Literacy: Building Literacy through the Arts through the Professional Development Center at the University of Southern Maine.

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Secrets of the Acquisition Meeting Revealed
So an editor says she likes your manuscript? You’re in, right? Not exactly. Once an editor decides she likes your work, she takes it through the all-important acquisitions meeting. This two-and-a-half hour workshop will reveal who attends that meeting, what they are looking for, and how they judge the manuscripts that pass before them each month. A former editor with Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers and HarperCollins Children’s Books will reveal what happens behind the publishing scene. The workshop will focus mainly on books for younger readers, but is applicable to adult publishing as well. Participants should bring a 1-2 page book proposal.
Tuesday, March 2nd, 6:30–9pm

Sarah L. Thomson has published more than twenty-five books for young readers. Her books include an adventure about two friends who rescue a dragon’s egg, a picture book biography of Abraham Lincoln, and a young readers’ version of the bestselling title Three Cups of Tea. The Washington Post said that the plot of Sarah’s book, The Manny, is “worthy of Jane Austen,” and Booklist called her Arthurian novel The Dragon’s Son “a spellbinding tale of love, intrigue, and betrayal.” Sarah worked for nine years as a children’s book editor for HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster before leaving New York to devote herself full time to her own writing. She now lives in Portland, Maine, with two cats that help her write by lying on the piece of paper she needs most.

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New Date!
Story to Script: How to Write a Comic and Get It Published
Ever wonder how a comic or graphic novel goes from the idea stage to the finished product on the shelf? Have an idea for a comic but aren't sure what to do with it? This class will introduce the basics of comic scripting and offer insights into how you can get your comic out into the world.
Thursday, March 11th, 6–9 pm

Alex Irvine is the award-winning author of five original novels including Buyout and The Narrows, two collections of stories, comic books including Hellstorm and Son of Satan, and several works of tie-in and media-related fiction and nonfiction including Batman: Inferno. He lives in Maine, where he teachers American literature and creative writing at the University of Maine in Orono.

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Writing on the Road: From Your Back Yard to Timbuktu*
This is a creative nonfiction workshop that mines the traveling life. What gets distilled or magnified in your writing life when you leave home? Is it people or sounds or smells? The journeying in class will be all about the details: the people you meet, the visceral connections you make between one fixed place and another, the trunk of memories you uncover. In the workshop we will write each session following a set of fun, innovative prompts that engage our five senses. We will work every session toward a finished piece of writing to make ready for publication.
Thursdays, April 1st – May 13th, 6:30–8:30 pm
*Note: The fee for this multiple-session class is $275, or $190 for active TR volunteers.

Susan Conley is a writer and teacher and co-founder of The Telling Room. Her work has appeared in numerous magazines including The Paris Review, The Harvard Review, Ploughshares and The North American Review. In the past she taught at Emerson College and then later at Harvard's Teachers as Scholars Program. She has received two MacDowell Colony fellowships for her work as well as a Bread Loaf fellowship and a Massachusetts Cultural Council fellowship. Her memoir of snapshots in Beijing, entitled, The Foremost Good Fortune, is forthcoming from Knopf in early 2011, and a novel will follow afterwards. Her article, "The China Flu Blues," was published in The New York Times Magazine this November.

To register, or for more information, please call us at 207.774.6064 or send us an email, telling us which Masters Class interests you. Master Classes carry a $50 fee, $35 for our regular volunteers, except thosemarked with an *. Unless otherwise noted, classes are held at our Writing Center at 225 Commercial Street, Suite 201, Portland. Click here for complete directions. Thanks!

Master Classes

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