With
Pam Houston
When
October 27 - November 1, 2019
Category
Writers Lab
Package Price
2295.00
$2,295 (USD) includes tuition, breakfast Monday through Saturday, lunch Monday through Friday, final dinner on Friday, and location/materials fees if applicable to the class. Hotel accommodations are not included in the package price; see details above.
Writing always begins in the senses—in opening our eyes, ears, nostrils, taste buds, and skin follicles to the landscape around us. If we pay strict attention while we’re out in the physical world, it will give us everything we need to tell our stories.
This dynamic works especially well in an unfamiliar landscape. Walking the streets of a new destination, we wait to feel a glimmer, a vibration, a charge of resonance that says, “Hey, writer, look over here.” Later, we scan those collected glimmers to find a handful that will stick together and draw narratives from our own interior landscapes.
In magnificent San Miguel Allende during the build-up to Day of the Dead, we have the opportunity to enact this process together. We collect sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures and do writing exercises that turn those glimmers into vignettes, stories, and personal essays.
As these prose pieces begin to take shape, as they grow to include moments from our past, we demystify some of the essential components of prose writing (image, metaphor, point of view, structure, dialogue, character, and scene, among others) and fashion them into comprehensible tools.
Come armed with pen and paper or laptop, your vast memory banks, your active and engaged senses, and all the things you don’t even know you knew.
Additional Information
WHO SHOULD ATTEND:
This program is open to writers of all levels.
SPECIAL NOTES:
Enrollment for this San Miguel workshop is limited to 14 participants. Visit the San Miguel General Information on our website for details on accommodations, meals, transportation, and more.
View updated Payment, Refund, Withdrawal, and Transfer Policies for this 2019 International Program.
ACCOMMODATIONS:
Accommodations at Hotel Posada de la Aldea are $415 per person, double accommodations for 6 nights, Sunday through Friday, (for couples taking workshops and friends traveling together) or $830 per person, single accommodations for 6 nights, Sunday through Friday. Additional nights at the hotel can be arranged for participants; please discuss needs with the Administration Office in Santa Fe.
PACKAGE PRICE INFO:
$2,295 (USD) includes tuition, breakfast Monday through Saturday, lunch Monday through Friday, final dinner on Friday, and location/materials fees if applicable to the class. Hotel accommodations are not included in the package price; see details above.
Pam Houston is the author of the memoir, Deep Creek: Finding Hope In The High Country, as well as two novels, Contents May Have Shifted and Sight Hound, two collections of short stories, Cowboys Are My Weakness and Waltzing the Cat, and a collection of essays, A Little More About Me, all published by W.W. Norton. Her stories have been selected for volumes of The O. Henry Awards, The Pushcart Prize, Best American Travel Writing, and Best American Short Stories of the Century among other anthologies. She is the winner of the Western States Book Award, the WILLA Award for contemporary fiction, the Evil Companions Literary Award and several teaching awards. She teaches in the Low Rez MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts, is Professor of English at UC Davis, and co-founder and creative director of the literary nonprofit Writing By Writers. She lives at 9,000 feet above sea level near the headwaters of the Rio Grande. This is her third year teaching at The Workshops. Her website is www.pamhouston.wordpress.com.