This one-session seminar will be held on Saturday, August 15 from 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM. A light lunch will be included.
Description:
Sharon Harrigan will lead a "writing marathon," a generative writing session based on Natalie Goldberg's famous craft book, Writing Down the Bones. Participants write in response to a series of prompts, then students read them aloud, but no one comments. The duration for each prompt increases as time goes on--starting with five minutes and ending with twenty minutes. It is a straightforward but dramatically different experience from writing prompts on your own or even writing to a single prompt in one sitting. The continuous flow state that writers achieve can be intense and liberating.
"What usually happens," Goldberg says, "is you stop thinking: you write, you read; you write; you become less and less self-conscious. Everyone is in the same boat, and because no comments are made, you feel freer and freer to write anything you want. …After a while your voice begins to feel disembodied: you are not sure if you said something or someone across the room said it. Not commenting on another person’s work builds up a healthy desire to speak. You can pour that energy into your next round of writing. Write, read, write, read. It is an excellent way to cut through the internal censor and to give yourself tremendous space to write whatever’s on your mind."
About the Instructor:
Sharon Harrigan is the author of the debut novel Half, which was published in summer 2020, and the memoir Playing with Dynamite, published in 2017. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Pacific University and has published more than 50 personal essays, short stories, and reviews in such venues as Virginia Quarterly Review, New York Times (Modern Love), and Narrative. A starred Booklist review called Half “suspenseful, lyrical, and consuming,” and Publishers’ Weekly called the novel “riveting and inventive.”
Sharon’s current and former students have published their work in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Huffington Post, The Rumpus, NPR, Gravel, The Guardian, Gettysburg Review, Bay Journal, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Living Lutheran Magazine, Mothers Always Write, Fluvanna Review, Charlottesville Family, and The Ethos Collection, among others.
