Focus on Form Covers 3 Genres, Available with Full Week or A La Carte Options

Novelist, short story writer, essayist and grant writer Rebecca Morean will lead the afternoon only Focus on Form session (July 11-16) at this summer's Antioch Writers' Workshop. The Focus on Form session, which does not require a manuscript, is designed to help participants start new pieces in three genres.

Guest lecturers in poetry, fiction and nonfiction will supplement the guidance and mentoring provided by Morean. The small seminar setting is ideal for writers who don't have a manuscript ready or can't commit to the Full Week workshop option. Full Week and Saturday Seminar participants may also attend the session. For a detailed schedule of the afternoon only Focus on Form session, visit
antiochwritersworkshop.com.

Rebecca Morean is an assistant professor of English at Sinclair Community College and the director for the college's annual creative writing contest. She offers the following three quick tips to writers:
1. Do it--don't talk about doing it or how you can't do it.
2. Give yourself permission to abandon chronology--just write that scene you really want to write.
3. Take out "that" whenever you can, even if it means rewriting the sentence.

Rebecca Morean is the author of In the Dead of Winter (St. Martin's Press) along with numerous stories and articles. Morean also serves as a board member for the Antioch Writers' Workshop. Most recently, Morean's personal essay, "The wedding bouquet I can't throw away," which she originally submitted through "Open Salon" at Salon.com was an editor's pick and cross-posted in the Life section of Salon.com. Rebecca Morean's complete bio is available at
antiochwritersworkshop.com

Writing Tips from AWW 2011 Faculty -- Joyce Dyer

As part of our blog series, Antioch Writers' Workshop 2011 Faculty share their tips for writing. You can read complete bios of AWW 2011 Faculty at antiochwritersworkshop.com. Check back regularly for more helpful writing tips.

Joyce Dyer - Afternoon Memoir and Personal Essay Seminar

John S. Kenyon Professor of English and director of the Lindsay-Crane Center for Writing and Literature at Hiram College in Hiram, Ohio.

Selected Publications: Gum-Dipped: A Daughter Remembers Rubber Town (2003), and Goosetown: Reconstructing an Akron Neighborhood (2010).

Selected Awards: 1998 Appalachian Book of the Year Award and the 2009 David B. Saunders Award in Creative Nonfiction winner.

Quick Tips:

1. Show and tell, if you're an aspiring memoirist.

2. Read every spare minute you have.

3. Study your manuscript to see what it wants, not what you want for it.

AWW Alumni / Faculty News -- April Eberhardt

April Eberhardt - 2010 Visiting Agent

April Eberhardt, one of AWW 2010's visiting agents, has now opened her own agency, April Eberhardt Literary. April Eberhardt Literary specializes in high-quality women's fiction and selected Young Adult works. The agency helps authors navigate the new models of non-traditional publishing. Visit her website at aprileberhardt.com.

The Antioch Writers' Workshop is proud of the work done by its alumni and faculty. Check our blog regularly for updates on the big things AWW alumni and faculty are doing.

Antioch Writers' Workshop Goes Social

The Antioch Writers' Workshop is now on Twitter and Facebook! To keep up-to-date with all of the exciting events and information, Like us on Facebook or follow @AntiochWritersW on Twitter.

Writing Tips from AWW 2011 Faculty -- Katrina Kittle

As part of our blog series, Antioch Writers' Workshop 2011 Faculty share their tips for writing. You can read complete bios of AWW 2011 Faculty at antiochwritersworkshop.com. Check back regularly for more helpful writing tips.

Katrina Kittle - Afternoon Young Writers Seminar
Taught high school Advanced Placement British Literature for five years at Centerville High School, and 6th and 7th grade English at the Miami Valley School in Dayton.


Selected Publications: Traveling Light and Two Truths and a Lie, The Kindness of Strangers, (2006) The Blessings of the Animals (2010), Reasons To Be Happy (2011).


Selected Awards: Grants from the Ohio Arts Council and from the Montgomery County Arts and Cultural District, BookSense pick for February, Fiction Book winner for the 2006 Great Lakes Book Awards, Indie Next pick, and Midwest Connections pick.

Quick Tips:
1. Write the book! You can make it better later, but first you have to make it exist!
2. Care about craft. Read every book about writing, take every class about writing, attend every conference about writing that you can find. Try to apply everything you learn to the work in progress (see #1).
3. Do the work. There is no secret or magic to getting published. Much of it simply takes tedious research and patience.

Writing Tips from AWW 2011 Faculty -- Matthew Goodman

As part of our blog series, Antioch Writers' Workshop 2011 Faculty share their tips for writing. You can read complete bios of AWW 2011 Faculty at antiochwritersworkshop.com. Check back regularly for more helpful writing tips.

Matthew Goodman - Morning Creative Nonfiction

Has taught creative writing and literature at Vermont College, Emerson College, and Tufts University.

Selected Publications: The Sun and the Moon: The Remarkable True Account of Hoaxers, Showmen, Dueling Journalists, and Lunar Man-Bats in Nineteenth-Century New York (Basic Books, 2008), Ahead of Time: The Story of Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland's History-Making Race Around the World (forthcoming, Random House)

Selected Awards: 2008 Best Book of the Year by The Economist magazine, selected as an Original Voices book by Borders bookstores nationwide, received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and the Blue Mountain Center.

Quick Tips:

1. Figure out the time of day when you do your best writing. Then do whatever you can to be writing every day at that time.

2. Don't consider a page finished until you have read it out loud.

3. The best way to get published is to become the best writer you can possibly be.

AWW Alumni / Faculty News -- Janet Irvin

Janet Irvin - 2010 Goddess Award Recipient
Janet Irvin won the 2010 Goddess award for her short story, "Pawns," published in the May 2011 Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. The Goddess Award is given to the first Antioch Writers' Workshop participant from a summer session, male or female, who earns publication for a piece that was begun, revised, or critiqued during the week of the workshop. Find details and about the Goddess Award, as well as The "We Really Should Read More Poetry" Award on the AWW Scholarship page at antiochwritersworkshop.com. The scholarship deadline for AWW 2011 is Friday, April 15.

The Antioch Writers' Workshop is proud of the work done by its alumni and faculty. Check the blog regularly for updates on the big things AWW alumni and faculty are doing.

Writing Tips from AWW 2011 Faculty -- Jamey Dunham

As part of our blog series, Antioch Writers' Workshop 2011 Faculty share their tips for writing. You can read complete bios of AWW 2011 Faculty at antiochwritersworkshop.com. Check back regularly for more  writing tips. 

Jamey Dunham - Afternoon Poetry Seminar

Associate Professor of English at Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio.

Selected Publications: The Best American Poetry 2005 (Scribner, 2005), The Bible of Lost Pets (Salt Modern Poets, 2009)

Selected Awards: Inaugural winner of the Crashaw Prize.

Quick Tips:

1. If you feel you need publication to validate yourself as a writer, you will probably never find the validation you're looking for. Still, anyone can and will be published if they keep at it. It's simple, keep writing and never give up on yourself. If you write good work, it will find a home eventually.

2. Remember that contests, like publishing, are different animals from writing. Writing is art and what truly matters. Success in contests and publishing relies upon others and their own subjective decisions. Do not confuse success with talent.

3. Find your own voice first and foremost; however, if you are unwilling or unable to do so, steal your voice from the very best you can find. There is no excuse for plagiarizing mediocrity, swing for the fences!


UPDATE:  Meet Jamey Dunham this weekend at the Second Sunday Free Writers’ Workshop on Sunday, April 10, 2:00-3:30 p.m. at Books & Co at The Greene. The free workshop brought to you by Antioch Writers’ Workshop and Books & Co will address “Poetry Writing Techniques for Poets, Fiction Writers and All Kinds of Writers!” Read more about the Second Sunday Free Writers' Workshop here.

Writing Tips from AWW 2011 Faculty -- Jim Daniels

Even if it's as simple as "just keep writing," writers look for advice from successful writers to challenge their process, to inspire, and in some cases even to comfort. Check back regularly as the Antioch Writers' Workshop 2011 faculty offer a few quick tips to help writers keep writing and keep writing well. Complete bios of the AWW 2011 faculty are available at antiochwritersworkshop.com

Jim Daniels - Morning Poetry

The Thomas Stockman Baker Professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University.

Selected Publications: Thirteen collections of poetry, including, most recently, From Milltown to Malltown, and Having a Little Talk with Capital P Poetry (2011).

Selected Awards: The Brittingham Prize, the Tillie Olsen Prize, the Blue Lynx Prize, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and two from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

Quick Tips:

1. Read everything you can by the writers you admire.

2. Try to develop a writing routine so that the time doesn't just disappear.

3. Find a community of writers to share your work with-people who are going to be careful, honest readers who will aid in the revision process.