WriterHouse

Tuesday, May 28, 2013, 7:00 PM

Writers who participated in the spring class session will read brief selections of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Enjoy refreshments and socializing with other writers during intermission and after the event. Open houses are a great way to meet other writers and find out about WriterHouse.

Thursday, May 23, 2013
7:00 pm

Family stories often rattle around in our minds for years or even decades before we are ready to bring them to life in our writing. Virginia Pye, author of River of Dust (Unbridled Books, 2013) talks with Clifford Garstang, author of What the Zhang Boys Know (Press 53, 2012), about how to determine which stories are worth exploring and using family facts as inspiration for new and surprising creations. Free and open to the public. Books available for purchase and signing.

Friday, April 26, 2013, 7:00pm

Tennessee poet and teacher Lisa Dordal will read from and discuss her chapbook,  Commemoration (Finishing Line Press, 2012), which explores issues of psychological confinement arising from damaging and restrictive societal expectations for women, focusing on the specific experience of a closeted lesbian trying to fit her life into the prescribed script of heterosexuality and on the deep points of interconnection between the speaker's life and that of her mother. Free and open to the public.

Lisa will also be teaching a seminar the following day, Saturday, April 27, 2013: Exercising the Poetic Mind.

Thursday, March 21, 2013 4:00pm

Barbara Slate (author of You Can Do a Graphic Novel and Getting Married and Other Mistakes) discusses the process of pairing words and drawings for a graphic novel. A program of the Virginia Festival of the Book.

Missed the event? Listen to the podcast below.

Support WriterHouse members who are panelists or moderators at the 2013 Virginia Festival of the Book:

How to Write a Graphic Novel, with Barbara Slate (Sponsored by WriterHouse)
Thurs. March 21st, 2013 - 4:00 PM
at WriterHouse
Rachel Unkefer (moderator)

Unlikely Heroes in Young Adult Books
Sat. March 23rd, 2013 - 2:00 PM
Gigi Amateau, Meg Medina, Kathryn Erskine (moderator)

Our Future: One Planet, Tangled in Technology, with Liberty and Justice for Whom?
Thu. March 21st, 2013 - 7:00 PM
Rosalyn W. Berne

Publishing Day: Creating a Great Writing Group (Co-Sponsored by WriterHouse)
Sat. March 23rd, 2013 - 10:00 AM
Claire Cameron, A M Carley, Bethany Joy Carlson (moderator), Carolyn O'Neal

Virginia Openings: Calligraphy Exhibit by Terry Coffey
Terry M. Coffey

Space: History of the New Frontier
Thu. March 21st, 2013 - 2:00 PM
Dan Doernberg (moderator)

Publishing Day: Digital Publishing for Your Book
Sat. March 23rd, 2013 - 12:00 PM
Dan Doernberg (moderator)

Mania: The Story of the Outraged and Outrageous Lives that Launched a Cultural Revolution
Sat. March 23rd, 2013 - 2:00 PM
Dan Doernberg (moderator)

Publishing Day: How to Make Writing Pay
Sat. March 23rd, 2013 - 10:00 AM
Don Fry, Rachel Unkefer (moderator)

The Big Read presents The Ties that Bind: Family in Fiction
Wed. March 20th, 2013 - 6:00 PM
Clifford Garstang

Fiction: The Art and Craft of Short Stories
Thu. March 21st, 2013 - 2:00 PM
Clifford Garstang, Mitzi Ware (moderator)

Fiction: Forbidden Attraction
Fri. March 22nd, 2013 - 10:00 AM
Clifford Garstang (moderator)

Getting It Together: The Process and Power of Anthologies
Wed. March 20th, 2013 - 6:00 PM
Sarah Collins Honenberger (moderator)

Local Authors, Local Stories
Wed. March 20th, 2013 - 2:00 PM
Gerry Kruger

The Codex Is Not the Only Book: the iPad, the Poet, and the Artist
Sun. March 24th, 2013 - 1:00 PM
Katherine McNamara, Mary-Sherman Willis

Books, Writing, and Other New Strategies to Make Our Schools Safer
Sun. March 24th, 2013 - 3:00 PM
Meg Medina

The Global Economy: Innovations and Transformations
Fri. March 22nd, 2013 - 4:00 PM
Jeanne Nicholson Siler (moderator)

Literary Biographies
Sat. March 23rd, 2013 - 4:00 PM
Virginia Pye (moderator)

Fiction: Parallel Stories
Fri. March 22nd, 2013 - 12:00 PM
Mitzi Ware (moderator)

Sunday, February 10, 2013, 7:00pm

Poet Mary-Sherman Willis and her publisher, Katherine McNamara of Artist's Proof Editions, talked about her recent book of poetry entitled Caveboy, which has been published on iBooks and also in a limited print edition. They discussed incorporating multimedia into the manuscript and how the publishing process encompasses much more than the traditional codex (bound books with pages as we know them). It was free and open to the public.

Missed the event? Listen to the podcast below.

Friday, January 25, 2013, 7:00pm

Steven Cramer discussed his fifth collection of poems, Clangings (Sarabande Books), with fellow poet John Casteen.

In a wild and original departure from his previous work, Cramer imagines the "clangings" of schizophrenic and manic speech into a poetic narrative that exults in both aural richness and words’ power to evoke an interior landscape whose strangeness is intimate, unsteady, and stirring.

David Ferry (National Book Award-winner for 2012) calls Clangings "inventive all the way, hilarious a lot of the time, and scared, scary, distanced and objective, and very moving. Clangings is a wild ride." The editors of Memorious's blog calls Clangings "one of our favorite books of 2012," and the book is a recommended 2012 poetry collection at Split This Rock and New Pages.

This event was free and open to the public.

Thursday, November 29, 2012, 7:00pm

Clifford Garstang, author of What the Zhang Boys Know, discussed the literary form of the novel in stories.  

Missed the event? Listen to the podcast: 

Thursday, November 1, 2012, 7:00pm

Join the Launch Party at WriterHouse and prepare to write a novel in a month!

NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is an annual month-long novel writing project that brings together professional and amateur writers from all over the world.  At WriterHouse's NaNoWriMo you can track your progress, get pep talks and support, and meet fellow your fellow Wrimos ... er, writers.  Enjoy pizza, soda, and buckets of coffee as we set sail into the adventurous Nanoland!  WriterHouse has plenty of desks and outlets as well as wi-fi for updating your wordcount.  Good luck!

Read more: NaNoWriMo Launch Party!

Thursday, October 11, 2012, 7:00pm

In the process of writing her middle grade novel Come August, Come Freedom, author Gigi Amateau spent time researching primary documents in several archives. A document, a journal or a blacksmith account book became a time machine, transporting her to 1800, and the true life of a twenty-four-year-old slave named Gabriel, plotting a rebellion. Gigi talked with Brendan Wolfe, Managing Editor of Encyclopedia Virginia, about historical research for the purposes of fiction.

Missed the event? Listen to the podcast:

Tuesday, March 19, 2013, 7:00 PM

Writers who participated in the winter class session read brief selections of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. They enjoyed refreshments and socializing with other writers during intermission and after the event. Open houses are a great way to meet other writers and find out about WriterHouse.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012 7:00pm

Poet Traci Brimhall read and discussed her recently published book, Our Lady of the Ruins, which follows a chorus of wanderers haunted by empire, God, and personal trauma through a mid-apocalyptic world. Brimhall shared poems from the book and had a conversation with poet Kendra Hamilton about collective persona, creative inquiry, and the relationship between form and fear.

Missed the event? Listen to the podcast below.

Thursday, September 13, 2012

WriterHouse and Piedmont Council for the Arts teamed up to present a panel discussion at CitySpace. Visual artists Craig Pleasants and Sharon Shapiro, writers Avery Chenoweth and Wendy Gavin Porter, Sheila Pleasants of the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and moderator Rachel Unkefer discussed the ins and outs of artist colonies and residencies.

Missed the panel? Listen to the podcast below:

Photo courtesy of Virginia Center for Creative Arts

Thursday, September 6, 2012, 7:00pm

"I talk funny. How  can I become a writer when I speak Hawaiian Pidgin and read by flashlight in the outhouse?" In her new memoir, Kapoho - Memoir of a Modern Pompeii, Frances Kakugawa digs through tons of lava to unearth childhood memories. Missed the event? Listen to the podcast below.

Sunday, July 15, 2012, 3:00pm

Poets and WriterHouse instructors Roselyn Elliott (Animals Usher Us to Grace) and Kristen Staby Rembold (Leaf and Tendril) read and discussed their recently published chapbooks, both of which draw on images from nature to explore a spectrum of experiences and emotions. Elliott and Rembold shared excerpts from their work and then discuss the creative process of making smaller books of poetry that revolve around a theme.

Tuesday, August 28, 2012, 7:00pm

Most writers only know one way to write, the way they were taught. Don Fry discussed with Walker Thornton his process for  helping writers create their own writing process by strengthening their strengths and changing or avoiding their weaknesses.

Missed the event? Listen to the podcast below:

Thursday, August 16, 2012, 7:00pm

In contrast to the age old advice, "write what you know," WriterHouse board member and instructor Kristen-Paige Madonia's novel Fingerprints of You explores a cast of characters and set of circumstances unlike her own. By choosing to write a novel centered around a pregnant teenager in search of her father, a man she has never met, Madonia was was forced to write outside of her own personal experiences and draw from research and imagination. She discussed with WriterHouse instructor Jay Varner the inspirational seeds of the novel, the tools she used to create her fictional world, and the challenges and benefits of going against the grain.

Missed the event? Listen to the podcast below:

Monday, August 13, 2012 at 7:00pm

Twelve readers who took writing classes during the summer shared brief selections of their work at the Summer Session Reading. Readers were Elizabeth Derby (creative nonfiction), Stephanie Morris (fiction), Amber Padilla (creative nonfiction), Sigrid Mirabella (poetry), Lindsey Dorrier (creative nonfiction), Gary Hoffman (creative nonfiction), Ron Harris (fiction), Jacqui Lazo (creative nonfiction), Fred Maus (creative nonfiction), Lucia King (poetry), Rachel Quinby (creative nonfiction) and Saffron Hall (fiction).

Listen to the audio from the event by clicking on the "Play" arrow below (Elizabeth Derby and Saffron Hall were not recorded):