Novel Approaches: The Fiction Writers Speaking at Terroir 2018
If fiction is your craft, you’ll find a lot to learn and take away from this year’s Terroir Creative Writing Festival. We have a number of talks and workshops aimed at writers of all levels of their careers. Wherever you turn, you’ll find novel inspiration. Here are a few talks by writers working in the novel form.
Debby Dodds is the author of the novel Amish Guys Don’t Call (June 2017). She has stories in many anthologies and magazines and won Portland’s Wizard World 2017 Fiction Contest. As an actress, she performed at Disneyland and Disney World, worked with Jerry Seinfeld, and screamed loudly in low-budget horror films.
WORKSHOP: Bringing the Funny to Your Writing
We’ll look at a variety of examples of funny writers with varying styles, from different genres. In-class exercises, including some from my background in Improv Comedy, will be taught. I’ll share strategies to magnify humor. Get ready to laugh, chortle, and sniggle and to make others giggle, cackle and guffaw!
Gina Ochsner is the author of two short story collections, The Necessary Grace to Fall (selected for the Flannery O’Connor Award) and People I Wanted to Be. Both collections received the Oregon Book Award. Gina also has two novels: The Russian Dreambook of Color and Flight and The Hidden Letters of Velta B. She teaches at Corban University in Salem.
WORKSHOP: Drawing From a Deep Well: Tapping into the Source of Your Stories, Essays, and Poems
Writing is an act of faith. But what can a writer do when the words don’t arrive? We will talk about where ideas come from, how to “jump-start” writing when ideas seem absent, and how to develop ideas. Don’t be surprised if you leave this session with several story, essay, or poem starts in hand.
Matthew Robinson, author of the novel The Horse Latitudes (an Oregon Book Award finalist), holds an MFA from Portland State University, is co-editor of the online literary journal The Gravity of the Thing, and is an Oregon Literary Fellowship recipient. He lives, writes, and teaches in Portland.
WORKSHOP: Resisting Defaults: Ways of Unsettling a Narrative
When we write, we naturally fall into familiar patterns of storytelling. The resulting work can become predictable and lacking in tension. In this workshop, we will discover new paths as we study non-linear narratives, practice defamiliarizing all-too-common story elements, and experiment with the physical forms within which we construct our narratives.
Terroir Creative Writing Festival 