Master Classes

**Registration is closed**

Master Classes offer intermediate and advanced writers a chance to delve more deeply into a particular genre. Each Master Class will take place over the course of Sessions I, II, and III, and will be limited to the first twelve qualified registrants.

While publication credits are not required, Master Class participants should be experienced writers, dedicated to their craft. Applications will be reviewed, and qualified registrants admitted, on a rolling basis, until the Master Class fills or we reach the deadline of Friday, November 5—whichever comes first.

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

Please submit your current CV, along with the required manuscript (see each Master Class’s course description, below, for its manuscript requirements), to masterclass@ncwriters.org, on the same day that you register for the Fall Conference.

Application to a Master Class requires a non-refundable $30 processing fee, in addition to the Fall Conference registration fee. If registering for the conference online or by phone, you can pay this processing fee with a VISA, MasterCard, or Discover. If registering by mail, you must include a separate check for $30.

MASTER CLASS REGISTRATIONS (INCLUDING REQUIRED MANUSCRIPTS) MUST BE RECEIVED THE SAME DAY YOU REGISTER FOR THE CONFERENCE.

Creative Nonfiction Master Class: Writing the Artful Memoir with Marianne Gingher

It’s a wild ride, life. Messy and unruly. Yet for all its rambunctiousness, you’re trying to lasso it to the page. The more you write, the more complicated telling true stories seems. Some days you doubt your skill at writing a narrative that others might find compelling. How much truth is too much and how much is too little? How might you generate some sense of dramatic urgency or suspense? How do you make a quiet life seem interesting? Do you find yourself prone to digressions? Is your project suddenly feeling too unwieldy? The workshop will focus on crafting personal narrative and memoir with special emphasis on selectivity, streamlining, and editing. Participants will also be introduced to “flash” non-fiction as an editing tool for longer form narratives. Suggested readings: The Writing Life by Annie Dillard; “Winter in the Abruzzi,” by Natalia Ginsburg from her essay collection The Little Virtues; The Boys of My Youth, by Joanne Beard; and two excellent online magazines: Creative Nonfiction and Brevity.

Please submit up to 1,500 sequential words from a single work, along with your current CV in a separate attachment, on the same day that you register for the conference. Submissions should be saved in an MS Word document, using double-spaced 12-point Times New Roman font, with numbered pages, and sent as an attachment to masterclass@ncwriters.org. The Word document’s file name should include your own last name, and the title of the work and your name should appear on the submission itself. If accepted into the Master Class, your submitted work will be shared with other Master Class registrants.

Each registrant should be ready to handle the intensive instruction and atmosphere of the Master Class.

Fiction Master Class: Get Out Your Jungle Red Fingernails or How to Write Your Way Off the Plateau of Mediocrity with Mesha Maren**Closed**

In this seminar we will explore constraint-based writing techniques that will help us to surprise our own selves with our writing, avenues towards that white-hot flame of risk that resides at the center of all great writing. We will look at prompts and constraints that writers such as Amy Hempel, Mary Robison, Gordon Lish and Robert Stone have used to enliven their writing as well as a few original constraints that I myself have developed and we will talk about methods to help ourselves shake it up and use our hard-earned writing skills in brand new ways.

Writers who have participated in workshops for any extended length of time come to know, in an almost subliminal way, what other workshop participants are going to say about our work. We know the basics, of course, and could chant in our sleep: show don’t tell, use active language, Freytag’s triangle, sentences must work on more than one level! We also come to know the specifics of our teachers and peers: Professor X will question my use of poetic language or Professor Y will tell me I’m not starting the story in the right place. And we begin to realize what will be praised for. Professor Z loved my descriptions of pine trees, we think, so I’ll put some beautiful pine trees in my next story and hope that Professor A praises me too. And in this way we can, if we are not careful, become very comfortable with crafting our precious little pieces. We coast along the plateau of mediocrity, painstakingly writing our short stories just like Professor X taught us to. We are following Freytag’s model (or very carefully not following it), we are emulating the masters, we are following the advice of Professors X, Y and Z and we are hoping fervently that our piece will be praised at the workshop table. But are we writing the most blindingly brilliant and shatteringly original literature that we could possibly imagine? No, probably not. We are afraid of falling because we know how falling feels and finally now we are kind of not falling down all the time, but that is exactly when we must learn to get our own jungle red fingernails, stop being afraid and push ourselves to write wilder and deeper.

Please submit up to 1,500 sequential words from a single work, along with your current CV in a separate attachment, on the same day that you register for the conference. Submissions should be saved in an MS Word document, using double-spaced 12-point Times New Roman font, with numbered pages, and sent as an attachment to masterclass@ncwriters.org. The Word document’s file name should include your own last name, and the title of the work and your name should appear on the submission itself. If accepted into the Master Class, your submitted work will be shared with other Master Class registrants.

Each registrant should be ready to handle the intensive instruction and atmosphere of the Master Class.

Poetry Master Class: Entering “The Cave of One’s Self” with Tyree Daye

The poet Vievee Francis introduced the concept of entering “the cave of one’s self” during my grad school years at North Carolina State University. Vievee encouraged me to explore my narrative, to investigate my symbols, and to break them open and to look inside of them. My narrative is that I’m black, Southern, raised by a single mother. Knowing my narrative helps me understand why tobacco fields and dirt roads show up in my poems. By identifying and exploring my symbols, I can begin to telescope inside them, making the language I use to speak about them fresh, and discover why these symbols were given to me. I believe our images come from God and are our egoless souls trying to make us see our connection to the world. In our workshop, I will ask students to enter “the cave of one’s self” through several writing exercises.

Please submit three poems, totaling no more than five pages, on the same day that you register for the conference, along with your current CV in a separate attachment. Poems should be saved in a single MS Word document, using single-spaced, 12-point, Times New Roman font, and sent as an attachment to masterclass@ncwriters.org. The Word document’s file name should include your own last name, and your name and the title of each poem should appear on the submission. If accepted into the Master Class, your submitted work will be shared with other Master Class registrants.

Each registrant should be ready to handle the intensive instruction and atmosphere of the Master Class.