2008 Mini Workshops
As a service to the writing community in northern New Mexico, the Taos Summer Writers’ Conference will offer a series of short workshops taught by special guests.
While Conference attendees are welcome to register and attend, we have designed these workshops for those who live nearby and lack either the time or the money--or both—to sign up for a regular weekend or weeklong workshop. Or perhaps you’d simply like to try something new.
Workshops are limited to twelve participants, accepted on a first-come, first-served basis. All three workshops will be held in the conference room at the Quality Inn in Taos, located at 1043 Paseo Del Pueblo Sur.
Download the registration form here (Word doc)
Preparing to Write a Life - David King Dunaway – Saturday July 12th, 2-5 PM
Have you ever wondered what it would take to write someone's life? At the meeting point of literature and history, biography is one of the forms of creative nonfiction that is most sought-after by publishers, and among the most remunerative. Telling lives also opens up academic opportunities, as UNM and other major universities offer instruction, and this kind of work can sometimes be used for theses and dissertations. Additional uses for life-writing are in script writing for radio, TV, and film. In this short but intense workshop, we'll explore how to prepare to write someone's life in detail. Among the skills we'll discuss are these:
1) Planning and organization--what kinds of sources you will need and how you can obtain them; 2) interviewing--how to arrange and conduct high-quality recorded interviews; 3) plotting--how to formulate a plot from a set of facts.
David King Dunaway
David Dunaway is the author of a half-dozen volumes of biography and history, including Huxley in Hollywood (Harper), Writing The Southwest (Plume, UNM Press), and How Can I Keep From Singing; The Ballad of Pete Seeger recently re-published by Villard/Random House. He teaches Biography /Autobiography at the University of New Mexico. Besides being a disc jockey for KUNM-FM on Saturday mornings, he produces biographical radio for NPR and Public Radio International.
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Giving Shape to Experience: Structuring the Creative NonFiction Essay - Daryl Farmer – Saturday July 19th 2-5 PM
"Stories are the connective tissue of the human race," writes journalist Katherine Lanpher. Relating the tales of our own experiences is how we make meaning of our lives and how we connect to the larger world around us. Whether writing about childhood memories, a recent travel excursion or people we know, the challenge for the writer is to find the best way to render these experiences through language and form. In this workshop we will take the experiences we write about in our journals and work on shaping them into dynamic nonfiction prose. We will discuss elements of craft including the importance of the opening paragraph, narrative design, developing voice, and strategies for revision.
Daryl Farmer
Daryl Farmer is the author of Bicycling Beyond the Divide, a road narrative about the West, which has just received a Summer 2008 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers’ Award. Farmer’s work has appeared in such journals as Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Laurel Review and Prairie Schooner. He has taught writing at the University of Nebraska and at Georgia Tech. Farmer attended the Taos Conference in 2000 and returned as a graduate intern in 2004.
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Evoking Place and People: Choosing the Perfect Detail - Susan Lang – Sunday July 13th 2-4:30 PM
“Evoking Place and People: Choosing the Perfect Detail.” We’ll first read and discuss a few excerpts from by well known authors whose language effectively creates tone, and/or evokes character and place. We will then do exercises in each of these areas. Participants are invited to bring short excerpts from their own work (1-3 pages) either because the section needs work, or because it has succeeded in evoking place, character or tone. Participants are also invited to email me a sample of their work (up to seven pages) at slang2@mindspring.com
Susan Lang
Susan Lang is the author of a trilogy published by University of Nevada Press about a woman homesteading in the southwestern wilderness during the years 1929 to 1941. The first novel in the trilogy, Small Rocks Rising, won the 2003 Willa Award. Her second novel, Juniper Blue, was released in 2006 and the third, Moon Lily, is forthcoming in 2008. Presently Faculty Emeritus at Yavapai College in Prescott, she founded and still directs the Southwest Writers Series. She was also director of the Hassayampa Institute for Creative Writing, which she founded in 1996.
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