Marc Acito

August 17: Laughing Matters: How to Be Funny Even if You're Not.

No matter what genre you work in , humor is an essential (and welcome) tool in the writer's toolkit. Acito's workshop focuses on nine "somewhat arbitrary" techniques he and other humor writers use to get readers to snort milk out their noses.

August 18: Writing a Page Turner

The Internet. TiVo. Video games. With so many forms of entertainment clamoring for our attention, it's tough for a book to cut through the noise. As the author of a novel so compulsively readable even The London Financial Times called it "difficult to put down," Marc Acito shows how to keep readers up all night.

August 19: Making Your Manuscript Sing

Acito will demonstrate how novelists and screenwriters can use the structure of the Broadway musical to create unforgettable characters and find the key emotional moments in their stories. Prepare to be entertained and uplifted.

Marc Acito's comic debut novel, How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship and Musical Theater won the Oregon Book Award's Ken Kesey Award for the Novel and made the American Library Association's Top Ten Teen Book List. It was also selected as an Editor's Choice by The New York Times, has been optioned for film by Columbia Pictures and is translated into four languages the author does not speak. A sequel, Attack of the Theater People, is due out April 15th, the same day the Titanic sank. For four years Acito shocked and amused readers with his syndicated humor column, The Gospel According to Marc, which ran nationwide in nineteen alternative newspapers. Hailed as "the gay Dave Barry," Acito serves as an irregular contributor to The New York Times and National Public Radio's All Things Considered.

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Marvin Bell

August 21-22, 24-25: Mars Being Red Being Read

This class is always at heart an excuse for conversation about whatever interests the group. The text is Marvin Bell's current book of poetry, Mars Being Red. Please bring it to class. The author will use it to discuss the poetry writing process including, but not limited to, the always controversial subject of political events embedded in poetry. Mr. Bell may add war poems by others, and some new poems of his own, to extend the discussion. If desired by the group, there will be two or three overnight writing assignments.

August 23

Marvin Bell will speak at the Workshop's second annual graduation. Graduation is held at the Greenbank Community Hall. Graduation begins at 3:00 pm, followed by a buffet and a reading by the graduates from their manuscripts at 5:00 pm.

Poet Marvin Bell's 19th book, Mars Being Red, much of it wartime, appeared in 2007 and, as we went to press, had been named a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Awards. Mr. Bell has collaborated with composers, musicians and dancers and often performs with bassist Glen Moore of the jazz group Oregon. He has visited numerous colleges as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, he teaches in a prison, and he designed and led a five-year annual Urban Teachers' Workshop for America Scores. He is the creator of an original poetic form known as the "Dead Man Poem." He and his wife, Dorothy, live in Iowa City, Iowa, and Port Townsend, Washington. He was for forty years a key member of the faculty of the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

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John Calderazzo

August 20: Just Because It's Nonfiction Doesn't Mean It Has to Be Long

Who says that compelling and rich nonfiction has to be the length of a slowly-unfolding essay, or even a BOB, a Back of the Book magazine think piece? Like flash fiction or a poem, nonfiction sometimes displays its best self by zinging along at warp speed, or by leaping to the heart of the matter in a fraction of normal essay length. But how does it do this, and with what effect? And how do you get started? We'll look at some great examples of nonfiction short shorts, including prose poems, and then we'll try a few different writing approaches ourselves.

August 21: Getting Off the Google Track

Yes, shut that laptop! There's more to gathering the information you need for your writing, in any genre, than just staring at your computer screen and trying to google up some facts. As good and fast as internet search engines may be, they have their limits---and so does your body, which may be screaming at you to step away from the computer screen. Here are some great tips on other ways to do research, gain inspiration for your work, or maybe veer off in a whole new direction.

August 22: Using the Techniques of Fiction To Write Nonfiction

I was driving in the country with a neighbor-friend and her seven-year-old son, Jake, when he spotted some aluminum cans by the side of the road that he wanted to recycle. So I pulled over, and his mom walked back a ways to retrieve them. The second she got out of the car, Jake leaned forward from the back seat and said, "Tell me a story." The desire to hear a good tale well told is universal, and this goes every bit as much for nonfiction as for fiction. I wrote short stories and got an MFA in fiction writing before I started freelancing fulltime for magazines and industries, and then later writing books, and I'd like to share some story-telling techniques to use in essays and literary journalism, including some ethical ways to make things up.

John Calderazzo is the author of Writing From Scratch: Freelancing; 101 Questions About Volcanoes; and Rising Fire: Volcanoes and Our Inner Lives (Lyons Press, 2004). He writes about the nature of the personal essay, natural history, Asia, Buddhism, and the interrelationships of science and culture. His work has been cited in Best American Stories and Best American Essays and has appeared in Coastal Living, Georgia Review, Audubon, Orion, Witness and many other magazines. His nonfiction students have gone on to editing or staff writer positions at NY Times Magazine, Times Science Section, Popular Science, Discover, Archeology, Utne Reader, among others. One former student, Jim Sheeler, won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for newspaper feature writing. At Colorado State University, where John teaches creative writing, he also co-founded and co-directs an innovative teaching climate change across the university curriculum program.

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Larry Cheek

August 19: Glowing verbs and nouns from other worlds

Verbs and nouns are the muscles and bones of prose; everything else is just connective tissue and earrings. We must take more care with our verbs and nouns than all other words. I will show how to deploy bright, sparkling, active verbs instead of plodders - while demonstrating the dangers of going too far - and how to transplant nouns from one context to another for vivid descriptions.

August 20: The essay: window onto a mind at work

Alan Lightman writes: “The ideal essay is ... an exploration, a questioning, an introspection. I want to see a mind at work imagining, spinning, struggling to understand. If the essayist has all the answers, then he isn’t struggling to grasp, and I won’t either.” This lecture will explore the essay as a mechanism for figuring something out, bringing readers along through the process.

Lawrence W. Cheek (Larry) has published 15 nonfiction books on travel, nature, North American prehistory, architecture, and a memoir about building a sailboat. He is currently architecture critic for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and has written on architecture and environment for many other newspapers and magazines, including Preservation, Interior Design, Sunset, and Arizona Highways. He teaches in the University of Arizona Writers Program and the Whidbey Island Writers Association MFA Creative Writing program.

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Kate Gale

August 17: Poetry... Creating a life as a published literary citizen

You are a poet with a few poems out there floating around, maybe a few publications. What you want: A poet with a number of published poems, a book published, a poetry life that is happening. That's what we're talking about: Making your life as poet happen. It's a step by step process. We will discuss how to move yourself into a place where you you and your poetry have found a home.

August 18: Your Editor is Not Your Mother!

Coaching? Midwifery? Child Rearing? Therapy? What is the relationship between editor and writer? This conversation will be about what happens in the editorial relationship, what the writer can expect, what the editorial steps are from first draft to the polished draft you give to an editor and what happens after that.

Dr. Kate Gale is Managing Editor of Red Hen Press, Editor of the Los Angeles Review and President of the American Composers Forum, LA. She was the 2005-2006 President of PEN USA. She is author of five books of poetry (her most recent, Mating Season, Tupelo Press), a novel Lake of Fire and Rio de Sangre, a libretto for an opera, with composer Don Davis. Her current projects include a co-written libretto, Paradises Lost with Ursula K. LeGuin and composer Stephen Taylor and a libretto adapted from Kindred by Octavia Butler with composer Billy Childs. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and children.

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Andrea Hurst

August 21: A Day in the Life of Book Publishing, Part I: How Books Get Sold

Literary Agent and published author Andrea Hurst takes you on a tour through the inside passage of the book business. In this hands-on workshop you will participate in a behind-the-scenes acquisition meeting. Using the tools of the trade, you will decide which books get the deal and why.

August 22: A Day in the Life of Book Publishing, Part II: From Contract to Published Book

Now that your book is signed what happens next? From the contract through the editorial and marketing process, Andrea will help you navigate the waters as a published author.

Andrea Hurst is the author of two books including the newly released Lazy Dog's Guide to Enlightenment published by New World Library. Her first published book, Everybody's Natural Foods Cookbook, helped launch her 25 year career in the publishing industry. She is the president of Andrea Hurst Literary Management, and has worked as a professional ghostwriter and developmental editor for many authors in the areas of self-help and spirituality, including best-selling author Dr. Bernie Siegel.

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Kirby Larson

August 24: Narrative Non-fiction for Young Readers: Blending Fact and Story

Using story arc in narrative nonfiction.

August 25: Surviving a Writing Slump

Tricks to beat the slump (or writer's block, as some call it).

Kirby Larson went from history-phobe to history fanatic thanks to a snippet of a story about her great-grandmother homesteading in eastern Montana. That bit of family lore inspired her to write HATTIE BIG SKY, a young adult historical novel, which is a 2007 Newbery Honor Award and Montana Book Award winner, as well as a Junior Library Guild selection, a Borders Original Voices title, a Barnes & Noble Teen Discover title, a School Library Journal Best Book and a Book Links Lasting Connections, in addition to being nominated for several state reading/Children's Choice awards. A non-fiction picture book, TWO BOBBIES: A TRUE TALE OF HURRICANE KATRINA, FRIENDSHIP AND SURVIVAL (Walker), co-authored with Mary Nethery and illustrated by Jean Cassels, is due out in August 2008. She is recently retired from the faculty of the Whidbey Writers Workshop MFA program and is a frequent presenter at writing conferences.

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Kathleen Rowell

August 17-18: Theories of Screenwriting

A new screenwriting guru rises almost weekly in Los Angeles. This two-part class will cover the basics of the best of them, starting with Syd Field and including John Truby, Robert McKee, Blake Snyder, Linda Seger, Rob Tobin as well as some of the software programs (Dramatica, Power Structure, Collaborator, etc.).

August 19: How Not To Write A Screenplay

Before anyone with the power to say yes will cast a glance at your screenplay, it will pass through the hands of countless underpaid readers who wish they were writers themselves. Your goal is to make them love your script enough to recommend it, which is far riskier (and less frequent) than saying no. This course will cover the pet peeves - the basic do's and don'ts of screenwriting - from the point of view of the reader in addition to the importance of the first five pages and ways to avoid revealing yourself as an amateur.

Kathleen Rowell has written two theatrical films (The Outsiders and Hear No Evil) and over a dozen movies for television for NBC, Lifetime, and USA. She wrote the pilot and co-produced Malibu Shores, a primetime NBC series. She currently serves on the Credits Committee for the WGA West. Her MFA is from the Professional Writing Program at USC.

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The Long and the Short of It

August 24 and 25: The Long and the Short of It

"The Long and the Short of It" is a conversation between Terry Brooks and Bruce Holland Rogers about the commercial and artistic differences between writing long narratives and short ones. Are the temperaments of novelists distinct from those of short story writers? Is it a good idea to learn to write novels by starting with stories? Why might a writer choose to emphasize writing at one length over the other? What habits of the novelist make it hard to write a short story, and vice versa? And why to novelists tend to eat so much better than short story writers?

Terry Brooks is the author of nearly 30 novels of epic fantasy, many of which have had long stays on the New York Times bestseller list. He writes long. Most of his books are not only novels, but thick installments in trilogies or series. He has also written less than a handful of short stories.

Bruce Holland Rogers is the author of over 250 short stories, several of which have won national or international awards. He writes short. Most of his works are not only short, but often extremely short narratives of only a few hundred words. He has also written a handful of novels.

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Magical Realism Panel

August 20: Magical Realism Panel

Kathleen Alcala, Bruce Holland Rogers, Wayne Ude 4:30-5:30
Three sometime practitioners of Magical Realism in fiction will discuss and no doubt fail to define the genre.

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