Stories on Stage; Summer Classes

This warm summer Friday, come out to Stories on Stage at the Sacramento Poetry Center!
Featuring:
Zoe Keithley and Naomi Williams
Read by Cynthia Speakman and Bonnie Antonini
Friday, June 25 at 7:30 PM
1719 25th Street at Crossroads for the Arts
Guest Host: Dorine Jennette

Naomi Williams was born in Japan and spoke no English until she was 6 years old. A recent graduate of the MA program in Creative Writing at UC Davis, Naomi's short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in The Southern Review, A Public Space, American Short Fiction, and One Story. She's received a Pushcart Prize and Honorable Mention in Best American Short Stories 2009. For the last five years, she's been working on a collection of linked short stories about the La Pérouse expedition, an 18th-century French voyage of exploration. She lives in Davis with her husband and two sons.

Zoe Keithey is the 2006 TallGrass winner in prose. Her stories have appeared in the North American Review, American Fiction, F3 and 7 and Dogwood. Her fiction won an Illinois Arts Council fellowship in prose and finalist awards from Zoetrope, American Fiction, and Hyphen. Her first novel, A Life For A Life and short story collection, Fourteen Faces of Love, are circulating. She leads monthly writing workshops and quarterly public prose readings in Sacramento, teaches privately, and edits.

Cynthia Mitchell Speakman has been performing on Sacramento stages since 1994 when she joined Ed Claudio's Actor's Workshop. She performs with Story Voices [http://storyvoices.com/], four spoken word artists that perform for benefits across the country, inspiring people to take on their lives with passion. Her 17 year old son keeps her thinking young and she thanks him for being an inspiration to her. She will read Naomi Williams' "Sunday School."

Bonnie Antonini returned to acting five years ago after taking a long hiatus to raise her children. She hit the ground running and has been in 20 stage plays, numerous commercials, TV shows, and industrials. She also is a poet and has had three of her poems published in the Sacramento News and Review. She will read Zoe Keithley's "A Little Foreign Travel."

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Looking to do more writing this summer, but having trouble getting started? Or getting finished? Or getting the middle just right? Consider taking a class at UC Davis Extension. There is still room in several summer courses! You can even take a course with Naomi Williams, featured at this Friday's Stories on Stage. For full details and to enroll, head to www.extension.ucdavis.edu/writing.


Research and Interviewing Techniques for Nonfiction Writers
When conducting research for a new article or nonfiction story, where do you begin gathering information? How do you track down the best sources to interview? Learn the answers to these questions and more in this eight-week course designed to get you primed for publishing. Discover how to conduct research and interviews using techniques you will practice in class and then use in the field. Explore the many forms and specializations of nonfiction writing and learn how to tailor your work for each market.

Instructor: Doug Herndon, M.A., is an award-winning writer and editor based in Sacramento. After working for Sacramento magazine, Sacramento News & Review and The Sacramento Bee, he became a college newspaper adviser and began teaching journalism, English and communications classes for the Los Rios Community College District and The Art Institute of California.

When: July 1-Aug. 19: Thurs., 6-8:30 p.m.



The Art of Expressive Writing

Discover how your inner voice gains strength through writing. Using the Amherst Writers and Artists method of journal writing, you'll produce first drafts of expressive creative writing across genres, as well as create writing that heals. Practice writing to suggested prompts provided by the facilitator and, if you wish, read your newly minted words to the group. Listeners are allowed only to respond to what they remember, what stays with them, and what is strong about the writing. Develop a habit of generating new writing work on a weekly basis, and read published and peer-written work as models.

Develop and use a critical vocabulary, and learn to give and receive supportive critical feedback. Practice writing in diverse ways to explore different ideas and feelings. Learn strategies for writing with a more authentic personal voice. This is a writing group-not a therapy group-but the act of writing in this method offers healing to those who participate. No previous writing experience is necessary.

Instructor: John Crandall has a bachelor's degree in psychology and a master's degree in counseling psychology. His experience as a counselor and director of a domestic violence treatment program led him to recognize the importance of writing as a way of healing. He has worked with and studied under Pat Schneider, founder of Amherst Writers and Artists. Author of Poet Healed, his articles and essays have appeared in numerous magazines.

When: July 7-Aug. 25: Wed., 6-9:15 p.m.



Summer Intensive: Dialogue and Point of View

Strong dialogue and point of view are vital elements in successful creative writing. Learn how to make characters "talk" in your writing. Discover how to avoid the pitfalls of overused adverbs, characters who speak in clichés or lack emotion, and long paragraphs of dialogue-as-exposition. Use published examples to examine and then practice the forms effective dialogue can take. Also, explore point of view and how to use it as the lens through which readers see the action in your story. Use hands-on writing exercises to identify the benefits and drawbacks of first person, third person and omniscient narrators. Learn techniques to create effective, believable voices for your point-of-view characters. Understand what works (and what doesn't) in your own writing. This course is ideal for fiction and nonfiction writers, but the point of view portion is beneficial for poets as well.

Instructor: Naomi Williams, M.A., is a Pushcart Prize winner whose short fiction has appeared in The Southern Review, American Short Fiction, The Gettysburg Review, ZYZZYVA and the 2008 Robert Olen Butler Prize anthology. She received her M.A. in Creative Writing from UC Davis.

When: July 10-11 & 17-18: Sat.-Sun., 12-5 p.m.