CELEBRATE AEGEAN ARTS CIRCLE CREATIVE WRITING WORKSHOPS 

TEN YEAR ANNIVERSARY WITH   

Pulitzer Prize Winner ROBERT OLEN BUTLER

 JOIN AN ECLECTIC GROUP OF WRITERS  IN ANDROS,  GREECE TO WRITE, READ, RELAX

JULY 6^TH –JULY 13^TH 2012

 Small intensive writing workshop- writing sample required - for aspiring and published writers

For more information and trip details write to: info@aegeanartscircle.com

(Arrive in Athens/Andros on July 5^th –depart Andros for Athens on July 14^th )

 Visit Robert Olen Butler’s website:   www.robertolenbutler.com

Accepted Participants MUST read and be prepared to discuss the following book:

"From Where You Dream" (See the following link to Amazon.com)

http://www.amazon.com/Where-You-Dream-Process-Writing/dp/0802142575/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1326409352&sr=8-1

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Aegean Arts Circle Creative Writing Workshop: Creating Fictional Art

Robert Olen Butler

The workshop will focus on the fundamentals of the creative process for any fiction writers, beginning or advanced, who aspire to create enduring literature.  The fundamentals will have a deep relevance to other art forms, as well, including poetry and creative nonfiction.  We will address such issues as what is art; what is distinctive about the way the artist addresses the world, the inner self, and the objects to be created; and what are the essential characteristics of fiction as an art form.  I have found that the most elusive of these essentials are best explored—especially in short, intensive workshops—by my proposing an aesthetic theory of the short short story, both as a distinct art form and as a paradigm for the crucial beginning pages of any effective work of fiction, no matter how short or how long.  For the duration of the workshop, the students will write exclusively in the short short form.  Each student will read my book of lectures on the creative process, From Where You Dream, before coming to Greece.  The first workshop session will be devoted to discussion of that book’s aesthetic principles and those principles’ craft and technique implications.  For each of the remaining sessions,  the students will write a new short short story, which will be read and examined closely in class.  As time permits, I will administer writing exercises I’ve devised to spur the students’ daily creative output.  The goal is to lead the students into the depths of their artistic unconscious and illuminate the intrinsic nature of narrative.

Butler Interview Link: http://fictionwritersreview.com/interviews/fuck-sentimentality-an-interview-with-robert-olen-butler

"To love and to express it is to be vulnerable. To create works of art is to be vulnerable, and it’s hard for people to let themselves be vulnerable. Especially in this world, where the internet lets us democratically savage one another, it’s even scarier, but the courage to be an artist means also the courage to love and to express it."

So says Robert Olen Butler in this candid interview with Emily Alford.

Follow the Aegean Arts Circle Group on Face Book 

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Participants from AAC 2011 Workshop