We're excited to offer new classes and seminars, including Writing Children's Picture Books, Comedy Sketch Writing, and day and evening poetry and fiction and nonfiction workshops.. Check out the full schedule of 8-week classes and weekend seminars.
Scholarships: We have a limited amount of funding to help those who want to take a class or seminar but can't afford it. In order to apply, please download and fill out our Scholarship/Subsidy Form and send it to us with your class registration and partial payment. We ask that anyone who receives subsidies please remember us with a donation when you are able.
Betsy Ballenger
Looking to the Past
March, 6, 2015 5:30-7:30pm
WriterHouse is proud to present the works of Betsy Ballenger for the month of March. Betsy began creating this collection of work in 1969 and continued to produce pieces until 1976. Her collages show the past through the eyes of those living it. With pictures and words cut from newspapers and magazines from that period, Betsy gives a unique look into the world as it was three decades ago. Her work tells an interesting and comprehensive story about our history and provides a chance to see how much we've changed as a society, yet how much we've stayed the same.
The First Friday opening reception is FREE and open to the public. Refreshments are courtesy of DuCard Vineyards. The exhibit will remain on display though March 28, 2015.
Creative Writing Camp for Kids
Session I: Monday-Friday, July 13-July 17, 2015 | 1:00 - 5:00pm
Session II: Monday-Friday, July 20-July 24, 2015 | 1:00 -5:00pm
->Download Printable Flyer
Grades 3-5: Story Camp
Session 1 Instructor: TBA
Session 2 Instructor: Robin Albertson-Wren, St. Anne's Belfield School
Put your story ideas on paper, or discover new ideas with the help of other writers.
Grades 6-8: Writing Circle
Session 1 Instructor: Erin James, Henley Middle School
Session 2 Instructor: Jen Wilson, Field School
Spend the week playing with different plots and prompts, creating characters, and responding to fellow writers' work.
Grades 9-12 and 2015 High School Graduates: Writing Workshop
Session 1 Instructor: Charlotte S. Wood, Albemarle High School
Session 2 Instructor: Jordan Taylor, St. Anne's-Belfield School
Create new work and polish existing pieces (poetry, fiction, movie scripts, etc.) with supportive feedback from the group.
Read more: Write On!: Grades 3-12 Creative Writing Summer Program 2015
Instructor: Jane Friedman
Cost: $65 Members | $75 Non-Members
Sunday, March 22, 2015
1:00 PM-5:00 PM
Limited to 18 students. This seminar will be held in the expanded WriterHouse main event space.
Get an unbiased, in-depth look at the e-book publishing scene, when you should consider self-publishing, and if you do, how to be effective in your efforts, without damaging your credibility or investing more money than you should. Learn about the most popular services available to distribute your e-book (Amazon, Nook, Apple, Kobo, and more), plus what you can expect from these services, and how they turn a profit. Technical information on formatting e-books, uploading to major services, and dealing with digital files will also be covered. Please bring a laptop with you.
Read more: Seminar: The Basics of Independent E-Book Publishing
Instructor: Kyle Dargan
Cost: $60 Members | $65 Non-Members
Saturday, March 21, 2015
9:00 AM-1:00 PM
Limited to 12 students.
While passion, even rage, has its place in life and in poetry, it can often alienate a writer from readers as opposed to engaging their hearts and imaginations. At the same time, restraint merely for the sake of accommodating readers' sensibilities risks alienating the poem from the author and his or her experiences. This seminar will focus on moving away from anger or capitulation and moving towards empathy as one strategy for engaging the frustrating issues of our lives. We will examine a small group of example poems for their strategies, move on to discussing the drafts of poems that participants bring to the workshop, and, time permitting, finish with some writing exercises.
Instructor: Bella Stander
Cost: $90 Members | $100 Non-Members
Friday, March 20, 2015
9:00 AM-12:00 PM
Limited to 12 students.
Learn about setting realistic goals; making a marketing plan; pitching your book; dealing with publicists, booksellers, and media; bookstore events, and readings. Not suitable for self-published authors or those whose books are produced by subsidy publishers. Attendees must have a forthcoming or recently published book from a commercial trade publisher, a publishing contract, or a literary agent.
Instructor: Chloe Benjamin
Cost: $60 Members | $65 Non-Members
Friday, March 20, 2015
9:00 AM-1:00 PM
ONLY 1 SPOT LEFT!
During the publication process, literary agents act as middlemen, matching manuscripts with publishing houses—but how does an author find an agent? In this seminar, we'll explore each step of the process, from effectively targeting agents and writing query letters to crafting synopses and writing samples. This seminar is open to writers at all stages, both those with book projects and those who would simply like to learn more about the agenting process.
Friday, March 20, 2:00pm, Central Library on Market Street
Writing from inside the heads of fictional characters requires intuitive or professional understanding of human psychology. Authors Jacob Appel (The Biology of Luck), Chloe Benjamin (The Anatomy of Dreams), and Susan Coll (The Stager) will discuss the process of divining their characters’ psyches.
Please join us Sunday, April 19, at 2:00 pm for a Literary Salon with poet Lisa Russ Spaar.
To paraphrase the poet Anne Carson, our lives begin the moment desire (for food, love, shelter, sky, the divine) enters us, and how we manage that yearning—what we make of it, to what uses we put it—is largely the measure of who we are. In what unique ways do poems not only grow out of but create and sustain the experience of desire? "I know not which, Desire, or Grant -," wrote Emily Dickinson, "Be wholly beautiful -." Join us as poet Kyle Dargan interviews poet Lisa Russ Spaar about the ways in which poems can uniquely both desire and grant, reach for and fulfill human experiences of yearning. Free and open to the public.
Read more: Orexia: Desire and the Poem: A Literary Salon with Lisa Russ Spaar
It doesn't take a lot of words to create something powerful, nor does it take a large contribution to WriterHouse to help support our mission.
Thank You to our Sponsors for
Words and Wine 2013
The following businesses and individuals contributed prizes, food, or other in-kind or cash donations to help make the event a success:
