Mark Your Calendar: Fiction Writing for Lawyers — Saturdays, January 17-February 21, 2009

(www.inkthinkerblog.com) — The Writer’s Center and American Independent Writers present a three-part collaboration designed to provide attorneys with training in the art of fiction writing. Many recent best-selling novels were written by lawyers and there are reports that some attorneys have a draft novel sitting in their desk or on their hard drive.

The program consists of:

• Phase One—Fiction Writing for Lawyers: Character, Voice and Dialogue
• Phase Two—Fiction Writing for Lawyers: Structural Elements of a Book
• Phase Three—Fiction Writing for Lawyers: Queries, Agents and Publishing

Each phase will be a six-week course of two-and-one-half hour classes on consecutive Saturdays from 1:00 p.m. until 3:30 p.m. The class is limited to eight persons and each phase must be taken in order, Phase One before Phase Two, etc. Class format will be manuscript critique and participation discussion. The venue is The Writer’s Center at 4508 Walsh Street, Bethesda, MD 20815. Phase One begins on Saturday, January 17, 2009 and ends on Saturday, February 21, 2009. Cost per person is $1,200 for each Phase, payable in full and in advance.

The instructor, Barbara Esstman, MFA, is a National Endowment for the Arts, VCCA and Virginia Commission for the Arts fellow and a Redbook fiction award winner, among other distinctions. Her two novels, The Other Anna and Night Ride Home, were published by Harcourt Brace and HarperCollins and are in numerous foreign editions. Both books were adapted for television by Hallmark Productions. She co-edited an anthology, A More Perfect Union, published by St. Martin’s Press, and has taught extensively in universities.

The Writer’s Center was founded in 1976 and has become one of the leading independent literary centers in the United States. Its goal is to promote the art of writing and to build a community of writers, workshop leaders, publishers, and audiences for contemporary writing. With a distinguished staff of over 100 instructors—a list that includes Stanley Plumly, Robert Bausch, and Nani Power—we offer over 300 workshops each year in a variety of genres. Many of our members have gone on to publish critically acclaimed books, including Alex MacLennan (The Zookeeper), Leslie Pietrzyk (A Year and a Day), and James Mathews (Last Known Position, a Katherine Anne Porter Prize winner).

American Independent Writers (AIW), formerly Washington Independent Writers, was established in 1975 by a group of metro D.C. writers to promote the mutual interests of the writing community. AIW offers programming to interest the whole spectrum of writers and editors. There are five full-day Seminars each year, 12 Workshops, 12 less formal Pubspeaks, plus sundry social events all year long. AIW’s best-known activity is the annual Washington Writers Conference. It offers a full day of breakout sessions on a variety of topics, networking opportunities, prearranged personal meetings with literary agents from around the country, and prominent literary speakers. The Conference has hosted such luminaries as Kojo Nnamdi, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Stephen Hunter, Washington Post Book World editor Marie Arana, world famous journalist Bob Woodward, novelist Erica Jong, founder of C-Span and Booknotes Brian Lamb, editor in chief at Publishers Weekly Sara Nelson, and former chair of Time Warner Books Larry Kirshbaum.

To register, please call the AIW office at 202 775 5150 or send an e-mail to rsvp@aiwriters.org.

Contents Copyright © 2008 Kristen King

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