Registration Form
2008 Summer Courses
Also view the classes and instructors as a Word document.YOUTH WORKSHOP
SLAM Poetry Intensive with Ray McNiece
An in-depth, hands-on writing workshop for imagery and narrative, how to tell a story with word pictures. Students will be provided with a copy of The Bone Orchard Conga, Ray’s best-selling collection of poetry, and guided through blue-print exercises to discover what makes a poem, as well as what takes it to the next artistic level. This workshop will also demonstrate tricks of the trade in slam poetry.
Date: Wednesday, July 9
Time:7:00 – 9:00pm
Location:The Lit: 2570 Superior Avenue, Suite 203, Cleveland 44114; 216.694.0000
- $55 for Members
POETRY
Poetry Reading: George Bilgere, Rita Grabowski, and Abdulla Bey
FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
Co-Sponsored by Dobama Theatre and The Lit
Date:Monday, June 9
Time:7:00 – 8:00pm
Location:Heights Arts: 2163 Lee Road, Cleveland Heights 44118; 216.371.3457
The Abiding Image: Building Better Poems with George Bilgere
A workshop aimed at making good poems better with an eye to publication. Bring multiple copies of two or three poems that you’d like to work on in this workshop.
Date: Monday, July 21
Time: 7:00 – 9:00pm
Location: Cleveland Heights-University Heights Public Library 2345 Lee Road, Cleveland Heights, Ohio 44118; 216.932.3600
- $65 for Members
Poems of Place with Susan Grimm
Poems of Place: how to distinguish them from their second cousins—local color, setting, nature poetry, regionalism, and eco-poetics. In this class, we'll read examples, discuss techniques, and write and workshop exercises whether our lines perch like squirrels in our backyards or prowl the upper canopy of the Amazon.
Dates: Tuesdays, July 29 and August 5
Time: 6:30 – 8:30pm
Location: The Lit: 2570 Superior Avenue, Suite 203, Cleveland 44114; 216.694.0000
- $95 for Members
Writing Action Poetry: Keeping “Up” the Poem with Claire McMahon
We will look at Frank O’Hara and the influence of American abstract action art on the New York School poets. The workshop will include writing our own action poems.
Dates: Wednesdays, June 18 and 25
Time: 7:00 – 9:00pm
Location: The Lit: 2570 Superior Avenue, Suite 203, Cleveland 44114; 216.694.0000
- $95 for Members
Performance Poetry Intensive with Ray McNiece
An in-depth, hands-on writing workshop for imagery and narrative, how to tell a story with word pictures. Participants will be provided with a copy of The Bone Orchard Conga, Ray’s best-selling collection of poetry. While being guided through blue-print exercises, participants will discover what makes a poem, as well as what takes it to the next artistic level. This workshop will also demonstrate tricks of the trade in performance poetry.
Date: Thursday, June 19
Time: 7:00 – 9:00pm
Location: Visible Voice Books, 1023 Kenilworth, Cleveland 44114; 216.961.0084
- $55 for Members
FICTION
Robert Flanagan: Reading
FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
Selected Readings from Maggot (Warner Books, 1982), his best-selling novel about the U.S. Marine Corps boot camp at Paris Island and from his award winning collections of short stories, Naked to Naked Goes (Scribners, 1986), and Loving Power (Bottom Dog Press). Robert Flanagan’s short fiction has appeared in Black Ice, Chicago, Fiction, Ohio Review, Kansas Quarterly and has been anthologized in The Norton Book of American Short Stories and Best Ohio Fiction.
Date: Saturday, June 21
Time: 1:00 – 2:00pm
Location: The Lit: 2570 Superior Avenue, Suite 203, Cleveland 44114; 216.694.0000
Who’s Telling Your Story? with Robert Flanagan
The same events told by three different people become three different stories. Therefore, a writer makes a crucial choice when deciding who is doing the telling. An unidentified, omniscient voice? The main character? A minor character? A casual observer? Is the story told in first person, second person or third person? Learn how the choice of narrative voice drives your stories.
Date: Saturday, June 21
Time: 2:00 – 4:00pm
Location: The Lit: 2570 Superior Avenue, Suite 203, Cleveland 44114; 216.694.0000
- $65 for Members
The Varieties of Science Fiction with Charles Oberndorf
This class is aimed at writers and teachers who better want to understand what science fiction is and how it works as a genre. Many come to write science fiction after watching movies or television shows, and it's important to know how the genre is much richer than its media equivalent. We will look at the range of story types. We will look at reader expectations. We will discuss techniques unique to the field, such as eyeball kicks, and techniques to avoid, such as the expository lump. We will take a beginning look at world-building. To have some fiction in common, it's recommend that participants read The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Vol. 2, editing by Jonathan Strahan, especially the stories by Baxter, Chiang, Egan, Gregory, Stross, and Swanwick.
Dates: Mondays, August 4, 11, and 18
Time: 7:00 – 9:00pm
Location:MAC’S Backs Books on Coventry, 1820 Coventry Road, Cleveland Heights 44118; 216.321.BOOK
- $115 for Members
CRAFTSMANSHIP
The Writing Life: So, You Want to be a Writer with Claudia Taller
Through guided writing exercises and discussion, participants in this all day workshop will work through answers to why they want or need to write and what it means to be a writer. The group will explore what can be gleaned from other writers and how their own writing is affected by what they read. Practical tools essential to the writer, development of support systems, goal setting, and follow through will be discussed and explored through journaling. We'll look at the writer's soul and the importance of writing for self, finding a voice, making connections, and living in the moment. In the end, participants should feel excited about getting started, have a definite plan for where they want to go with their writing, and a support group for future endeavors. Most of all, the newly-invigorated writers will have given themselves permission to write, no excuses allowed. They will enter into a Writing Life.
Date: Saturday, July 26
Time: 10:00am – 3:00pm
Location:The Lit: 2570 Superior Avenue, Suite 203, Cleveland 44114; 216.694.0000
- $125 for Members
