Saturday Oct. 12th, 10 am to 4 pm
$95 members/$110 others Berkeley
“‘Show, don’t tell’ has become a writing-workshop cliché,” says Sally Dawidoff, “but it’s both meaningful and useful.
“In this workshop, we’ll explore showing vs. telling, using as our point of departure the advice about writing that Anton Chekhov is said to have given his brother: ‘Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.’”
Through writing exercises, reading, and discussion, students will explore ways to write compellingly and evocatively.
Says Sally: “If you’ve ever gotten restless, reading a novel or poem or sitting in a theater, because you felt you were being lectured at by the author, then you’ll be interested to see what can be gained by showing your reader ‘the glint of light on broken glass’: immediacy, credibility, vividness, sensuousness, mystery, surprise, depth, pleasure . . . everything.”
Writers of poetry, fiction, or drama (all levels) are welcome.
Sally Dawidoff’s poems have appeared in Best New Poets, BOMB, Boston Review, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, and many other publications. She earned an MFA from Columbia University School of the Arts and has won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and artists’ residency programs including Headlands Center for the Arts, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and The Writers Room/La Casa del Escritor. Pets I’ve Known, a song cycle she co-wrote with composer Jason Atkinson, was recorded by soprano Eileen Clark and guitarist Oren Fader. Sally has taught poetry workshops and classes at The Graduate Center of The City University of New York, U.S. Military Academy (West Point), and elsewhere. She is a member of the Urban Range poetry collective: www.theurbanrange.com