Prose Workshop: Write Your Novel
Online | Jan. 14 to Feb. 11 | Ages 18+
Whether you’re thinking of beginning a novel or are several drafts along, this workshop is for you. We’ll start with the most basic elements—the title, first line, and the main character—as well as the emotional core of your book. Guided writing will give you immediate practice developing a plot, managing point of view, and crafting believable dialogue. We’ll offer generative feedback as well as methods you can use when you’re on your own. Learn ways to pace and organize yourself, choose telling details, and tell a ripping good story. Make progress in a week and leave with plans for the next word, sentence, and chapter! Generative. (Ages 18+)
Class Times
Mary Kay Zuravleff’s fourth novel, American Ending, will be released in June 2023. Her novel Man Alive! was named a 2013 Notable Book by the Washington Post, which called it “a family novel for smart people.” The New York Times deemed her second, The Bowl Is Already Broken, “a tart, affectionate satire of the museum world’s bickering and scheming.” And her first, The Frequency of Souls, won the American Academy’s Rosenthal Award and the James Jones First Novel Award. She has taught at graduate writing programs at American, George Mason, and Johns Hopkins Universities, as well as the Interlochen Creative Writing Retreat, and has received numerous DC Artist Fellowships. She is also the founder of NoveltyDC, which coaches novelists at every stage of their careers. More information is at AmericanEnding.net.
Laura Scalzo is the author of two novels, The Speed of Light in Air, Water, and Glass, praised as “lyrical and insightful,” and the upcoming American Arcadia, “a gorgeous riff of a New York City novel.” She is a graduate of Syracuse University, a college essay mentor, has co-lead writing workshops for The Things They Carry Project, served as a panelist for the Washington Writers Conference, and has judged the Bethesda Magazine Short Story Contest. She sincerely enjoys helping writers of all ages find their way on the page as well as navigate some of the minefields and pitfalls of the publishing world. You can find out more about her at laurascalzo.com.
