Master Classes: Fall Conference 2007

Saturday, November 17, 2:30-4:30 pm

Master Classes offer intermediate and advanced writers a chance to delve more deeply into a particular genre. The Master Classes are a half hour longer than other Session III classes and limited to 15 students.

Admissions

Participants are admitted on the strength of a writing sample submitted in advance of the conference. While publication credits are not required, you should submit a brief cover letter summarizing your writing background and highlighting publication credits if applicable.

Include a payment of $25 (nonrefundable processing fee).

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: October 24 (postmarked).

When you register for Master Class, please choose a Session III class as a back-up in case you are not admitted to the Master Class.

Submission Guidelines for Each Genre

• Fiction. Submit a cover letter and no more than 10 double-spaced pages of fiction, 12-point type (short story or novel excerpt). Mail 2 hard copies to NCWN Fiction Master Class, PO Box 954, Carrboro, NC 27510.
• Nonfiction. Submit a cover letter and no more than 10 double-spaced pages of nonfiction, 12-point type (essay or excerpt). Mail 2 hard copies to NCWN Nonfiction Master Class, PO Box 954, Carrboro, NC 27510.
• Poetry. Submit a cover letter and no more than 5 single-spaced pages of poetry, 12-point type. Mail 2 hard copies to NCWN Poetry Master Class, PO Box 954, Carrboro, NC 27510.

Two weeks before the conference, you will be notified about your enrollment status.

Available Classes

CREATIVE NONFICTION MASTER CLASS - Real People vs. People on the Page, with Randall Kenan
We will be discussing the bedeviling but exciting problem every nonfiction writer must face when translating actual people into the written word. We will talk about techniques (characterization, language, physicality), limitations, and the ethics of representation. The goal of the class will be to help give the nonfiction writer tools and ways of thinking about writing about people in vivid, honest and accurate ways.

FICTION MASTER CLASS - Place in Fiction: Its Problems and Possibilities, with Ron Rash
This class will center on place in fiction. We will discuss landscape as character, the use of dialect, and the differences between local color writing and regional writing. Examples of such writers as Bernard MacLaverty, Alice Walker, and Cormac McCarthy will be used in our discussion.

POETRY MASTER CLASS - Re-Forming the Line: Rhythm, Sound and Spacing in Free Verse, with Tony Abbott
This class will look at ways we can "reform" our lines of free verse to make them less like prose. We will look for ways of getting greater rhythm, sound, and music into the lines without necessarily using rhyme and meter. After a discussion of these techniques we will, as individual class members, take one of the poems submitted for the class and "reform" the lines, using the possibilities discussed in the first part of the session.