CLASSES!

Date: Tuesday, September 15, 6-7:30 pm. 

Cost: $30 Charlotte Lit members, $35 non-members. More Info / Register

Kim Wright

With Kim Wright. Linus Pauling said it well: “The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.” Successful writers will tell you they often make multiple false starts before settling on a concept that can really go the distance––but exactly where do those original ideas come from? In this class novelist Kim Wright will teach you how to separate the concepts that are mere glimmers from those that hold narrative gold. We’ll talk about stealing ideas from real life, snatching inspiration seemingly from mid-air, and how a combination of reality and fantasy often leads to the best stories.

Date: Thursday, September 24, 6-7:30 pm.

Cost: $30 Charlotte Lit members, $35 non-members. More Info / Register

Tarik Kiley

With Tarik Kiley. Rap music, once considered to be a fad, is now over 40 years old. Through the years, rappers have contributed to the form and shape of the music. This class will introduce participants to the classic form of a rap song. We’ll learn how to count in 4/4 time, explore 16-bar verse and 8-bar hook formats, and cover end rhyme, internal rhyme and the concept of rhyming couplets. We’ll also look closely at the idea of cadence. Our goal is to learn from what has already been established in rap music, while also learning to develop a personal style of artistic expression.

Date: Thursday, October 1, 6-7:30 pm.

Cost: $30 Charlotte Lit members, $35 non-members. More Info / Register

George Hovis

With George Hovis.  In this class, we will explore ways to represent the world we know in the fullness of its reality, both the “real” and the surreal. We will discuss examples of magical realism, in which inner lives manifest as strange external phenomena.  Through discussion and exercise, we will see how inner lives are formed from composites of individual and community modes of seeing.  By pairing conflicts based in human relationships with fantastical plot elements, this class will provide writers with new ways of generating stories.

Date: Tuesday, October 6, 6-7:30 pm

Cost: $30 Charlotte Lit members, $35 non-members. More Info / Register

Elizabeth West

With Elizabeth West. Letters written to family members and friends during the 1918-19 Spanish Influenza pandemic provide historians with a large archive of that time period. Since so much of today’s communication happens virtually, however, historians fear that we will leave behind few written records of our individual experience. As writers living during this unusual and difficult time, we have an important role to play in history. We need to tell our stories for future generations.

In this class, we’ll talk about the role observational journalism plays in the historical record. Then we’ll explore the works of Joan Didion, Nora Ephron, and other creative nonfiction authors, allowing them to serve as guides in a practice of journaling through these difficult and uncertain times. We’ll talk about how to create journals that might one day morph into publishable works of creative nonfiction, from short essays to full-length memoirs. All writers are welcome, whether you’ve journaled your entire life or want to try it for the first time!

Dates: 4 Wednesdays, October 7, 14, 21, & 28, 9:30-11 am

Cost: $100 Charlotte Lit members, $140 non-members. More Info / Register

Surabhi Kaushik

Jyotsna Srikant

With Charlotte Lit volunteer Surabhi Kaushik & Jyotsna Srikant. An invitation to explore the essence of emotions through creative movement and spontaneous writing. Rasā is a Sanskrit word that translates to juice, taste, or essence. Rasā in the traditional Indian dance and drama forms denotes the aesthetic flavor that evokes a feeling or an emotion in the audience. These diverse emotions are what we experience in our daily lives. The impact they have shapes our personality and makes us who we are. In this four-part series, you will traverse four powerful emotions – Love (Shringāra), Fear, (Bhayānaka), Peace (Shāntha), and Compassion (Karunā) – through movement and writing. Tune into yourself, indulge in a treat for your senses, and embark on a journey towards self- exploration and self-awareness through new avenues.

Dates: Two Thursdays, October 8 & 15, 6-7:30 pm

Cost: $60 Charlotte Lit members, $70 non-members. More Info / Register

Julie Funderburk

With Julie Funderburk. Explore the world of verse by learning to read poems with the eyes (and ears, nose, heart, and lungs) of a poet. Readers will come away understanding what they missed in high school and college lit classes. Fiction and nonfiction writers will gain a deeper appreciation of the form and some inspiration for ways to integrate poetic devices into their prose. And, poets will find their poetic vision sharpened and their founts replenished. For poets (all levels) and serious readers who want to develop a love for reading verse.

Date: Tuesday, October 13, 6-7:30 pm

Cost: $60 Charlotte Lit members, $70 non-members. More Info / Register

John Amen

With John Amen. We often turn to reviews with a bottom-line attitude: thumbs-up or thumbs-down. In this workshop, we’ll consider that the purpose of a review is more to stimulate curiosity and inspire engagement in a reader, observer, or listener than it is to offer a verdict. We’ll examine templates we can use to fertilely offer critical commentary, including thematic, comparative, and historical approaches. The techniques with which we experiment will have broad applicability, relevant to various types of reviewing, including literary, film, music, and art.

Dates: 4 Tuesdays, October 20, 27, November 3, 10, 6-7:30 pm

Cost: $100 Charlotte Lit members, $140 non-members. More Info / Register

Melinda Ferguson Sherman

With Melinda Ferguson Sherman. In this four-session class you’ll learn strategies for uncovering and writing short family stories that you can pass on to future generations. During the first class, we’ll talk about how passing on family history through stories strengthens our children’s resilience. Then, we’ll explore ways of organizing and researching our family “archives” for material. Each week, you’ll write at least one family story based on memory, memorabilia, photographs, history, and hearsay. By the end of the workshop, you’ll have a minimum of four short, polished pieces to share. You’ll also have a structure in place to motivate you to continue collecting, constructing, and writing about family history after the class ends. Everyone (including beginners) interested in preserving their past in story is welcome.

Date: Thursday, October 22, 6-7:30 pm

Cost: $30 Charlotte Lit members, $35 non-members. More Info / Register

David Radavich

With David Radavich. Contrary to what many think, lyric poetry contains surprising dramatic elements (just as drama, at its most intense, becomes poetic).  Even Shakespeare’s sonnets enact rivalries and love triangles. How do we enhance these elements to make poems exert a greater emotional impact? In this virtual workshop, poet and playwright David Radavich will lead us in considering the oft-ignored theatrical elements in poetry and examine a range of poems that demonstrate both the loud and the quiet conflicts inherent in this most retiring of genres.

Date: Thursday, October 29, 6-7:30 pm

Cost: $30 Charlotte Lit members, $35 non-members. More Info / Register

Charles Israel, Jr.

With Charles Israel, Jr. Remember the place? Maybe it’s the background in a selfie you took on vacation or a room in the house you grew up in or even some place that resides only in your imagination. Whatever it is, this place resonates with you. It is, in its own way, inviting you to use it in your own writing. In our workshop, you’ll learn how to emphasize place in your poems, fiction, and creative nonfiction. You’ll discover how to use setting in ways that can drive—or reflect—character and plot and imagery. You’ll explore some fresh avenues for crafting various settings as powerful components in your own writing. Then, with the help of writing prompts, photographs, and drawings, you’ll compose a setting or two. Also, we’ll discuss passages by known writers that emphasize setting and employ it in novel ways.

Date: Thursday, November 5, 6-7:30 pm

Cost: $30 Charlotte Lit members, $35 non-members. More Info / Register

Landis Wade

With Landis Wade. In this 90-minute class, author/podcaster Landis Wade will discuss a process authors can use for making audio versions of their books using the ACX platform. ACX is part of Audible, a subsidiary of Amazon that serves as an online marketplace where authors, literary agents, publishers, and other rights-holders can connect with narrators capable of producing a finished audiobook. Class topics include the process of finding a narrator, legal considerations, exclusivity versus non-exclusivity, the process of completing the audiobook, distribution options and the cost of producing an audiobook. Landis also will share how he used the process to turn his trilogy into audiobooks and how he elected to distribute them.