Upcoming Salons
Click on the title and you’ll be taken to much more detail, like cutting into a pie. Please note that Salons include pie. Workshops include writing, and sometimes pie, but not always.
2017 & 2018 Dates for Manuscript Workshop with David Ulin
While we call it a 200-page manuscript workshop, this means UP TO 200 pages, with a minimum of 100. We’ll even take fewer if you show you’ve got perseverance. Few other workshops invite authors to submit so many pages-this is a great opportunity to have an astute set of eyes see the larger framework of your book and thus provide more comprehensive feedback. Have you been struggling with seeing the vision for your book come to life on the page? Working on a novel or memoir and desperately need a few readers and some critical feedback? At the...
read moreHow to Give a Reading without Boring Your Audience to Tears
The current literary culture increasingly demands that writers also function as performers, that they engage with readers in a wide variety of ways. How many times have you been to a reading and found it wanting? The story may be terrific, but if the author’s delivery doesn’t rise to the occasion, the audience can’t appreciate it. The upshot? Writers need to learn how to deliver their work in public, to be comfortable when they share their words. Creative people, especially writers, are often asked to share their work publicly. Rae Dubow,...
read moreDinah Lenney & The Things in Her Life
Every time I read her work, I fall a little more in love with Dinah. I admire the way she seems to paint an essay softly with a set of brushes ranging from fine to broad sable. Then every time I meet her in person, I fall a little more in love again for other reasons like how she’s genuine and true as a human being–just like her writing. I first met Dinah when she was on my LA Times Book Festival panel ready to talk about her memoir, Bigger Than Life: A Murder and Memoir. A brilliant story of Dinah’s self-reckoning when her father, a...
read moreDreams Come True with Sarah Shun-lien Bynum
“Original” and “unique” are words used often to describe Sarah Bynum’s writing, but so too are “lovable” and “charming.” Antonya Nelson said Ms. Hempel Chronicles is a “coming of age” story where we realize one never really comes of age. Madeleine is Sleeping is a collage of dreams and dreaming, love and longing, and solitude and death. Madeleine was a finalist for the National Book Award and Ms. Hempel was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. But she doesn’t just...
read moreHope Edelman’s Motherless Daughters Anniversary
What does Hope Edelman do to celebrate an anniversary? She’s hikes the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. Well, that’s not exactly why she went, but this is a big year for Hope. You are probably already familiar with her books that have been international bestsellers for two decades. Her Motherless Daughters series has been a huge help to many women who have lost their mothers at a young age, or really at any age. Hope has also written a gorgeous memoir The Possibility of Everything about her search for a cure to her family’s escalating...
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