Workshops in Provence
Join writers Kent Stetson, Marianne Ackerman and Marina Lewycka for the 2008 edition of the Writers’ Workshop in Provence. Drama, Fiction and Memoirs are on the menu.
Journalist and creative Marianne Ackerman will conduct a six-day seminar structured for the lay writer tackling a memoir. A small group of participants will benefit from individual and group sessions on the basics of writing: how to shape your own story into effective prose, where to begin, where to go. A novelist, playwright and critic, Ms. Ackerman has a wide range of experience in writing and publishing. Her style is editorial: except close attention to your project in progress beginning before you arrive in France. A product-oriented workshop led by a writer with a strong bias for accomplishment.
Award-winning playwright and screenwriter Kent Stetson will conduct a drama workshop on the character-generated plot. Open to playwrights, screen and prose writers seeking the key to dramatic construction in story-telling. Themes include the classic basics as outlined in Aristotle’s Poetics; exploration of character; plot construction; creating great dialogue. “Whatever the stimulus, certain truths remain: characters make plot; plot expands story; story illuminates character. The hold grail of all dramatic writing is the dramatic metaphor.”
Internationally celebrated novelist Marina Lewycka from Sheffield, England will join the La Roque team this year as writer-in-residence. Author of the runaway best-selling novel A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, Mrs. Lewycka has been writing since she learned to read. She had amassed a stack of rejection slips for her fiction before a UK agent sold her comic novel to Penguin Books four years ago. Her comic tale of what happens when two grown sisters find out their aged father is in love with a blonde bombshell has since gone on to be published in 29 languages. A film is in the works, starring Kate Blanchette. Mrs. Lewycka will join us in La Roque from June 17th. She will read from her work, including her acclaimed new novel, Caravan, and talk about many aspects of her work.