We Change and So Should Our Characters: Fiction with Jacinda Townsend
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WINSTON-SALEM, NC—According to the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus, nothing in life is permanent, nor can it be, because the very nature of existence is change. Or, as Bob Dylan sang, "He not busy being born is busy dying."
Life is full of changes, and the same should be true in our fiction. Change sparks action which sparks conflict which sparks reader interest. Easy, right?
On Wednesday, December 9, at 7:00 pm EST, author Jacinda Townsend will lead the online class "Finding Your Voice" (fiction).
Registration is open.
The cost for the class is $35 for NCWN members, $45 for non-members. Space is limited.
D.H. Lawrence once wrote, "Tragedy is like strong acid—it dissolves away all but the very gold of truth." Having traveled through the COVID-19 pandemic, we have all had the kind of intense collective experience that has changed our sense of time, our sense of the past, our sense of the future, our sense of ourselves. Accordingly, in this class, we will focus on the theme of "alteration," marrying theme to narrative as we explore, in our work, the ways in which characters reshape their senses of selves and their senses of other characters. We will talk a bit about Kevin Brockmeier's novel The Brief History of the Dead and Chris Cleave's novel Little Bee; though you need not have read the novels beforehand, you may find it helpful to have done so. We will do a bit of writing in our time together: you need not write work about the pandemic itself, though you are welcome to digest and/or heal this experience through your fiction. We will also focus a bit on creative process, with an opening discussion on the practices that most help us cook.
Jacinda Townsend is the author of Saint Monkey (Norton, 2014), which is set in 1950s Eastern Kentucky and won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize and the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for historical fiction. Saint Monkey was also the 2015 Honor Book of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association.
"Finding Your Voice" is part of the North Carolina Writers' Network's 2020-2021 series of online classes.
"The Network has offered online programming since 2016," said NCWN communications director Charles Fiore. "We're proud to already have the educational framework in place that allows us to continue to serve the writers of North Carolina, and beyond, during this time of social distancing."
The online class "Finding Your Voice" is available to anyone with an internet connection, or who even owns just a telephone. Instructions for accessing the online class on Wednesday, December 9, will be sent to registrants no less than twenty-four hours prior to the start of class. The class will be archived and made available to registrants for repeated viewings.
Register here.
The nonprofit North Carolina Writers’ Network is the state’s oldest and largest literary arts services organization devoted to writers at all stages of development. For additional information, visit www.ncwriters.org.
New Submission Period for the 2020 Doris Betts Fiction Prize Open Now
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Greenville, NC—The 2020 Doris Betts Fiction Prize is now open for submissions. After a brief, planned hiatus, the North Carolina Writers’ Network and North Carolina Literary Review have moved this Network-sponsored competition to the fall.
The deadline is October 31.
The competition is for previously unpublished short stories up to 6,000 words and is open to any writer who is a legal resident of North Carolina or a member of the North Carolina Writers’ Network. North Carolina Literary Review subscribers with North Carolina connections (lives or has lived in NC) are also eligible, even if they live out of state.
Find the full submission guidelines, and submit, here.
The winner receives $250 and publication in the North Carolina Literary Review. Thanks to a donation from a Network board member, there is also prize money now available for any other stories accepted for publication in NCLR through this competition.
This year’s final judge is Josephine Humphreys, author of the North Carolina-set Nowhere Else on Earth, an historical novel inspired by Henry Berry Lowrie and his wife Rhoda Strong Lowrie.
Humphreys was born and raised in Charleston, SC. Nowhere Else on Earth received the Southern Book Award for Fiction. Her other novels include Dreams of Sleep, winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award for Best First Novel; Rich in Love, which was adapted into a feature film, and Fireman’s Fair, which takes place in the aftermath of Hurricane Hugo. A recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship and the Lyndhurst Prize, she served as the final judge of the 2012 Thomas Wolfe Prize. She is a graduate of Duke and Yale University and taught at Charleston Southern University.
Katey Schultz of Cleo won the 2019 Doris Betts Fiction Prize for her story “Something Coming,” published in NCLR 2020, released in June.
For over twenty years, East Carolina University and the North Carolina Literary & Historical Association have published the North Carolina Literary Review, a journal devoted to showcasing the Tar Heel State’s literary excellence. Described by one critic as “everything you ever wanted out of a literary publication but never dared to demand,” NCLR has won numerous awards and citations.
Doris Betts was the author of three short-story collections and six novels. She won three Sir Walter Raleigh awards, the Southern Book Award, the North Carolina Award for Literature, the John Dos Passos Prize, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Medal for the short story, among others. Beloved by her students, she was named the University of North Carolina Alumni Distinguished Professor of English in 1980. She was a 2004 inductee of the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame.
The nonprofit North Carolina Writers’ Network is the state’s oldest and largest literary arts services organization devoted to writers at all stages of development. For additional information, visit www.ncwriters.org.