07/26/10

ELISSA RAFFA:  SEPT/OCT. CREATIVE WRITING WORKSHOP Aegean Arts Circle Workshop Leader 

 Change, Develop, Transform: Improvisation for Prose Writers Prose writers make hundreds of choices each day: between scene and summary; observation and invention; image and sound; this word and that.

Each one has his or her habits-choices that come most naturally and those that come with great struggle.  In this workshop we will apply group and individual exercises to deepening the techniques each writer is best at and strengthening the ones he or she might tend to avoid.  In particular we will explore how improvisational voice, movement, and written approaches borrowed from play writers and other theater artists can make prose come alive on the page.  The workshop atmosphere will be respectful, experiential, and thought-provoking.  My goal is to help strengthen and clarify each individual's writing voice and structural/stylistic choices.  The workshop  is designed for writers of fiction and creative nonfiction at all levels and all stages of project development-from those just mulling over an idea to those preparing a final draft. 

BIO FOR ELISSA RAFFA:

Elissa Raffa holds an MFA in Creative and Professional Writing from the University of Minnesota, and has taught writing and theater arts to Young people and adults for many years.  Her short stories, essays, and poems have appeared in several anthologies and literary magazines in the U.S., and her writing for the theater produced on several U.S. stages including the Walker Art Center.  Her first novel, Freeing Vera, was published by the Permanent Press of Sag Harbor, New York in 2005.  As a work-in-progress, Freeing Vera won fellowships from the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Astraea Foundation, the University of Minnesota, Hedgebrook, and the Puffin Foundation.  Ms. Raffa is also a high school chemistry teacher and Dean of Academic Programming at Minnesota Online High School.  She lives most of each year in Greece and the remainder in the Twin Cities.  She is currently working on Speech Acts, a new novel.