Thursday April 21, 2005 - Archive

ARTS & LEISURE

Workshops on Andros foster writers’ skills Connie May Fowler Got a novel, short story or memoir that needs some help to get it into publishable form? Why not take it along to a writer’s workshop on the quiet Cycladic island of Andros this summer? Amalia Melis, who is working on a novel, started the Aegean Arts Circle workshops in 2003 from a need to nurture her own work in a calm supportive environment, and they’ve been a success. This summer’s instructors are Connie May Fowler and Nick Papandreou. Fowler’s most recent work, “The Problem with Murmur Lee” (Doubleday, 2005), has been chosen as Redbook’s premier book club selection. She has published a memoir, “When Katie Wakes,” and four critically acclaimed novels, including “Remembering Blue,” which was awarded the Chautauqua South Literary Award, and “Before Women had Wings,” recipient of the 1996 Southern Book Critics Circle Award and the Francis Buck Award from the League of American Pen Women. Fowler’s screenplay of “Before Women had Wings for Oprah Winfrey” became an Emmy-winning film starring Winfrey and Ellen Barkin. Her work has been translated into 15 languages. Fowler is the Irving Bacheller Professor of Creative Writing at Rollins College. Nick Papandreou’s “A Crowded Heart” (Picador, Penguin), short-listed for the Los Angeles First Fiction Award in 1999, was a best seller in Greece. His most recent book is “Andreas Papandreou: Life in the First Person and the Art of Political Narrative.” He won the Greek Science Fiction Award for the year 2000 and has published short stories and essays in American, Canadian and Greek literary journals. Range of genres Papandreou will lead a six-day workshop followed by an optional four-day stay to work on your writing alone (June 27 - July 7). Fowler will work with writers for a full 10-day workshop (July 11-21). Both will help writers produce new material in their chosen genre: short story, novel, memoir and creative non-fiction. Writers with manuscripts in progress as well as writers who want to start new work will be considered for both workshops. The deadline for applications is June15. For more information: amalia@aegeanartscircle.com or info@aegeanarts circle.com.

Thursday June 24, 2004 - Archive

ARTS & LEISURE

Meeting place for writers on isle of Andros AAC director Amalia Melis. Amalia Melis, director of Aegean Arts Circle, told Kathimerini English Edition about her background and writing: “My parents are from Apikia, Andros — immigrants who lived in Astoria with one dream, to return to Andros (which they did). That notion was injected into my blood from a very young age. Every summer trip to Greece as a child filled me with incredibly strong memories, smells, images, family stories from the village — these experiences have shaped me into the hybrid person I am today, very Greek in some things and very American in others. I was born and raised in New York but my heart belongs to Greece, specifically to Andros. “My heart is happy here but it has not been easy for me as a writer who writes basically in English. Not being a person who gives up without a fight, I created Aegean Arts Circle writing workshops last summer. “I’d tried creating writers’ groups but nothing really panned out. I attended one writing workshop in Italy which knocked me out because Dorothy Allison was teaching it. It was the first time I exposed my writing to anyone. Because of her fiery commitment to strong literary writing and because of the helpful feedback I got from other writers, I rewrote, revised every word I brought to her and I published my first short story, ‘Immigrant Daughter,’ in the US Literary magazine Glimmer Train Stories — Spring 2002 issue. “Right now I am focusing on my novel. By creating Aegean Arts Circle, I have brought the writers to me since it is not easy for me to travel to workshops or conferences on writing. My daughter Anna is 8 and I am too attached to her to let go at the moment. I find it difficult to balance the mother/writer role. I would never be able to write or create Aegean Arts Circle if I did not have the safe harbor my husband Argyris provides. “I want Aegean Arts Circle to become a meeting ground for writers from all over the world, who will want to gather in Andros to write, exchange work, write new material and recharge their batteries on what I think is the greatest island in the Aegean, before they return to their other lives. “In this current writing workshop with Dorothy, I am a participant like the next writer.”

Thursday June 24, 2004 - Archive

ARTS & LEISURE Workshop nurtures creativity ‘I want to encourage forward motion in the writer’s creative life,’ says author Dorothy Allison Dorothy Allison is the author of ‘Bastard Out of Carolina’ (National Book Award Finalist), ‘Cavedweller’ (American Library Association Prize), ‘Two or Three Things I Know for Sure’ (New York Times Notable Book of the Year), and ‘Trash’ (Selection in the Best American Short Stories Collection for 2003). By Vivienne Nilan - Kathimerini English Edition Writing is by nature a solitary occupation, but writers benefit from feedback. When Athens-based, Greek-American writer Amalia Melis felt the need for precious writing time, the stimulation of working with fellow practitioners, and the support and encouragement of a leader, she founded the Aegean Arts Circle to run writers’ workshops on Andros (see left). The first of this year’s workshops has already begun, led by Dorothy Allison, an American author with the reputation of being an inspirational workshop leader. Allison told Kathimerini English Edition what participants can gain from workshops and about her own writing. What do writer’s workshops offer that writers may not get elsewhere? Writers by necessity work in isolation — the writing needs quiet, concentration, and emotional energy. Often, writers reach a point where they need to be able to hear how the work seems to others — to expand the sense of what is possible or to be able to more accurately judge what has been accomplished, and what remains to be done. Very frequently, particularly in the early stages of the writing life, writers need feedback on what they have done and are doing. Criticism that can be trusted is vital. You cannot get that from family or friends; they will just be impressed that you have 30 pages at all, not able to look closely at what you have done on those 30 pages and offer useful suggestions. Breaking logjams A good teacher is also a good editor, one who can critique the work and point the writer where she or he needs to go. A good workshop provides an opportunity and guidance for a writer to begin new work. A great workshop generates new work that follows on what the participant has most wanted to accomplish. My goal as a workshop leader is always to encourage the writer in the direction the writer most wants to move. I want to encourage forward motion in the writer’s creative life, to break up logjams or blockages, and trigger new associations or simply spark whole new stories. Do you have a standard procedure for workshops, or do you tailor them for participants? I have a series of designs for workshops, and I always tailor them to the participants. For this year’s Aegean Circle workshops, I particularly focused on writing the novel and designed a series of exercises to help the participants move forward with the manuscripts they brought with them. With a participant who is working on a biography, I introduced some techniques which address how biographies differ from novels, while trying to help to make the narrative itself more novelistic. For any book, the basic requirement remains how to make it a good read. As a reader, a writer, and a workshop leader, I can help to make that possible. Challenging assignments I also have a number of assignments and exercises that challenge and surprise the participants. Sometimes it helps to feel stimulated in new ways — for novelists to write short stories, for narrative writers to be asked to write a poem. One of my favorite and most successful challenges is to ask the participants to write a bad poem. I ask them to try to write the worst possible poem they can, to compete for worst poem. This often frees them up to write remarkably heartfelt and beautiful material. How does the process of teaching and running a workshop help you with your own writing? Teaching is a form of tithing; it can become a way to give back what has been given to you. It is that for me. I have had the luxury of having the attention of fine editors and gifted writers, all of whom generously helped me when I was most vulnerable and uncertain about my own work. I try to carry on that tradition, the tradition of what comes around, goes around. It is also true that in teaching or critiquing manuscripts, I learn more about my own writing. I see the parallels between my own stalled stories and the difficulties some of my students have in their work. I sometimes find that I set exercises for others that I need to complete for myself. Sharing criticism, I acknowledge my own handicaps and together we come to a shared sense of what is good writing, what is weak writing, what needs to be done and what needs to be avoided or overcome. In the best workshops, we become a community, share resources and spark each other’s imaginations. In this extraordinary place, among people from many different regions and countries, we reaffirm what is most life-affirming about writing and storytelling. It is the story that passes from one person to another, the story told or published, which has the capacity to change the world. Are you working on a book right now? Always. And yes, doing workshops is an interruption to my own writing, sometimes. Sometimes working with other writers is a stimulus to my writing. I am working on a novel, tentatively titled “She Who” which deals with a young woman who has survived a violent assault, her mother, who becomes an anti-violence activist, and the ex-nun who runs a retreat center to which the young woman flees when trying to avoid being drawn into her mother’s political activism. Joy in creation This morning I was up at first light watching the sun come up over the hills and the water brighten with reflected light. This is many thousands of miles from the northern California coast where my novel is set, that goat farm where hurt children from all over the world come to heal at their own pace. But in the pasture near where I stood was a long shaggy goat that reminded me of a scene I had not yet written, and I fell right back into my story. By the time the sun was high, I had six pages I think I will keep, and a rush of love for this landscape and energy for the work I need to do. I am grateful for every morning that begins like that, every time it happens again. Success in this circle will mean every participant will take away from Andros reflections of this beautiful landscape, this rich heritage, this energy and joy in creation. And they too will want to give it back, in beautiful books or in workshops with others. It goes on forever.