Participants are asked to bring, along with their own pens and paper, at least TWO photographs, preferably personal photos that show a group of people together at some occasion. If in doubt, bring more than two. If you prefer to work entirely at the level of fiction rather than memory, then you can bring anonymous magazine or newspaper photos.
You will be led through various stages of imaginative development during the morning (August 11) which will include using these photos. The afternoon will be given over to creating a piece of work – fiction/story, personal essay or poem – based on the morning’s exercise, and the day will conclude with participants reading aloud their finished work, allowing for critical comment and group discussion.
Those who would like some guidance in the fine art of “self-criticism” – learning to address your writing as if you were your own editor – will come to the half-day program on August 12, bringing no more than two pages of writing – from the previous day OR an earlier work for which you want critical reaction. You may bring either fiction or memoir, typed double-spaced, enough copies for the group. We will work together to read each other’s work with the unifying goal of improving the text. Our focus will be entirely on the writing, not the writer, and we will work together as a “Group Mind”. We will have a wonderful time, helping each other become better writers, enjoying the fact that WRITING IS RE-WRITING.
PLEASE NOTE: The second day of the workshop has a limit of 10 seats, so don't wait to sign up!
Isabel Huggan is the author of prize-winning fiction and memoir: THE ELIZABETH STORIES, YOU NEVER KNOW, and BELONGING: HOME AWAY FROM HOME. She has been teaching creative writing for more than forty years, including twenty years with the Humber School for Writers. Although she lives in France, where she has a Writer’s Retreat in her old stone barn (Le Mas Blanc), she comes to Canada every summer, and often works with writers by correspondence (mail & email). This is her third summer visiting the PEIWG.