Master Class: (Re)Writing Your Story
With special guest Elizabeth Rosner, author of The Speed of Light and Blue Nude
Thursday, October 7
Composing and revising personal stories can serve as powerful tools for self-reflection and transformation. This workshop is an invitation to use the writing process as a means for unraveling and reinventing the stories of your life, both on and off the page. Invoking the spirit of play and inquiry, we can uncover what has already been written inside ourselves, and also what has been hidden or disguised.
Together we will commit to expanding our repertoire of words, images, memories and dreams. When you open to the sound of your own voice, when you allow yourself to be heard, the possibilities for healing and renewal are unbounded. By listening to the language of your inner song, you might rediscover a lost part of yourself, or a self you have been longing to encounter.
The evening will focus on exercises designed to facilitate the stages of unearthing and digging deeper, with guidance through the revision process as both a literal and metaphorical journey for the self.
Writer’s Roadmap
Beginners as well as experienced writers of all levels are welcome. Whether you are interested in poetry, essay, fiction or drama, our open-ended practice will allow the form to be discovered along the way.
About the Instructor: Elizabeth Rosner grew up in Schenectady, New York as a daughter of Jewish holocaust survivors. Her father, who was born in Hamburg, Germany, was sent to Buchenwald concentration camp, while her mother survived the war by hiding in the Polish countryside. Ms. Rosner’s writing reflects her efforts to come to terms with the impact of her parents’ experiences on her own life, the indelible imprints of their history on her language, her identity, and her imagination.
She is a graduate of Stanford University, the MFA Program at U.C. Irvine, and the University of Queensland in Australia. She has traveled extensively throughout the world, including long-term stays in the Philippines, Israel, Australia, Sweden, and Mexico.
Rosner’s prize-winning fiction and poetry have been published in numerous literary journals such as Poetry, Poetry East, Another Chicago Magazine, The Cream City Review, and Southern Poetry Review. Her poetry chapbook GRAVITY, one of the Select Poets Series published by Small Poetry Press, is currently in its fourteenth printing. Her novel THE SPEED OF LIGHT (Ballantine, 2001) has been translated into nine languages, and has been optioned by actress Gillian Anderson, who plans to make the film her directorial debut. The paperback edition of THE SPEED OF LIGHT came out in April 2003 and has remained a popular pick among book groups nationwide. Her second novel BLUE NUDE (Ballantine, 2006) was selected as a Book Sense Notable Pick upon its release, was immediately listed on the San Francisco Chronicle bestseller list and named as one of the Chronicle’s best books of 2006. The paperback edition of BLUE NUDE will be newly reissued in paperback this fall (Gallery Books of Simon and Schuster, September 2010).
Date/Time: Thursday, October 7; 6:30pm to 9pmPrice: Non-Member: $45; Member: $40