Five Sundays, Oct. 10th-Nov. 7th, 2-4:30 p.m.   Berkeley
$185 members/$215 non-members

Special Package Deal: Take this SF class together with the SF “Starting Your Novel” class, and receive both classes (5 weeks plus 5 weeks, back to back) for the price of one 9-week class. Note: This discount applies only if you choose the “Intro to Fiction/Starting Your Novel ‘Combo’ option” when you register. If you take Intro to Fiction and then decide to take Starting Your Novel, the discount doesn’t apply.

We writers too often need others to tell us that our writing is good,” says instructor Junse Kim. “And this is where it all goes horribly wrong. We become impatient for praise, obsessed with completing a story before learning the basic skills we need to write it. It’s the equivalent of, say, an aspiring carpenter who has committed to building a beautiful house, yet doesn’t know how to hammer in a nail or saw a piece of wood.”

Read the rest of this entry »

9 Wednesdays, Oct. 13-Dec. 15 (9 weeks, skip 11/24), 7-9:30 p.m.
$335 members/$365 non-members Berkeley

This class will help you plunge into the personal themes that make your real life stories uniquely yours.  For the first four weeks, instructor Alison Luterman will lead carefully crafted writing exercises designed to elicit the undertones and overtones that give events resonance and elevate anecdotes into the realm of art. The latter weeks will be dedicated to refining and then workshopping the pieces you have begun, bringing them to the next level of craft.

Read the rest of this entry »