Course Descriptions

About Looking: Poetry with Kathryn Kirkpatrick

In this seminar-workshop class, we will read several essays from John Berger’s illuminating book about how we see what we see. We’ll write poems inspired by Berger’s ideas, including those in his famous “Why Look at Animals?” as well as his essays about photography, painting, and sculpture. By exploring how we “look,” one of our aims will be to spark vivid description in poems. And since ekphrasis means “description” in Greek, we’ll engage in the imaginative act of reflecting on a painting, sculpture, or photograph in our poems as well as learning from other poets who have looked at art expansively in their work.

Registrants are encouraged, but not required, to purchase and read John Berger’s About Looking before the Squire Workshops begin.

Please submit three poems, along with your current CV in a separate attachment, on the same day you register for the Squire Summer Writing Workshops. 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. Your name and the title of each poem should appear on the submission. The sample you submit will be the work discussed in class, and accepted registrants will be asked to circulate their drafts to others in the class prior to the conference.

Each registrant should be ready to handle the intensive instruction and atmosphere of this workshop.

Roaring Off the Page—Writing First Chapters and First Pages: Fiction with Mark Powell

Novels and stories are remarkably different forms but both rely on strong openings that establish both stakes and expectations. In this workshop we will focus on crafting openings of both novels and stories, asking along the way: How do you hook a reader while not giving away too much? How do you quickly establish characters and atmosphere? And what are the key differences between the first pages of a short story versus the first pages of a novel? We will look at a number of published examples ranging from Raymond Carver to Emma Cline as well participant work.

Please submit the first 1,500 sequential words from a single work, along with your current CV in a separate attachment, on the same day you register for the Squire Summer Writing Workshops. Submissions should be saved in a single 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 title and your name should appear on the submission. The sample you submit will be the work discussed in class, and accepted registrants will be asked to circulate their drafts to others in the class prior to the conference.

Each registrant should be ready to handle the intensive instruction and atmosphere of this workshop.

Writing Place: Creative Nonfiction with Zackary Vernon

This workshop will explore how to write about places and spaces, while remaining mindful of the interconnections between the natural and cultural, the built and non-built, the human and animal. We will investigate how notions of home and belonging are created and maintained as well as how they can be disrupted by alterations to the cultural traditions and physical environments that surround us and inform our sense of place. During the workshop, we will read and write about the places that have made us who we are today. We will also consider our responsibilities to those places and how to preserve them both in reality and on the page.

Please submit up to 1500 sequential words from a single work, along with your current CV in a separate attachment, on the same day you register for the Squire Summer Writing Workshops. Submissions should be saved in a single 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 title and your name should appear on the submission. The sample you submit will be the work discussed in class, and accepted registrants will be asked to circulate their drafts to others in the class prior to the conference.

Each registrant should be ready to handle the intensive instruction and atmosphere of this workshop.