Writer Workshops

Our writer workshops are very popular with all levels of writers—from beginners to career professionals. In order to secure your seat for one of these FREE classes, call CALL 888-716-5082.

Literary Adaptation
Aug 4
9:30 am
Visitor's Center

Adaptation is a Hollywood standard, with over half the films, from Casablanca to Wonder Woman, adapted from something, and its own Oscar winning category for best screenplay. We’ll look at the screenwriter's perspective and decisions that must be made from source material, to include watching a short film adapted from a song. CALL 888-716-5082 TO RESERVE YOUR SPOT!

Gena Ellis (LITERARY ADAPTATION) is an award-winning screenwriter, producer and author at www.browndotproductions.com. She adapted Alexander Dumas' novel THE BLACK TULIP into ROSA AND THE BLACK TULIP and it recently won Best Script at the London International Filmmakers Festival and a Live Read in Toronto. Her book, ANGELA'S DECISION: A JOURNEY OF ADAPTATION, contains her own short story set in WV and adapted script for her award-winning film, ANGELA'S DECISION, made in Australia. She further adapted that into a TV pilot JACOBS’ LADDER. She’s also adapted her BBC-awarded radio play into a TV pilot and feature, OUT OF SIGHT. Gena has been a background actor on TV shows Chicago Fire, Nashville, Shameless and films. She co-produced Crick in the Holler set in WV and written and directed by her daughter, Ursula Ellis, and is writing a TV pilot and novel set in WV. She’s spends part of her time in her native Summersville Lake, WV area and in St. Louis and Richmond, VA.

Marketing Short Fiction: The Science of Publishing
Aug 4
11:00 am
Visitor's Center

The age of the computer and the Internet has led to an explosion of outlets for short fiction.  Literally several thousand journals, both in print and on line, offer respectable venues for publication.  How should an aspiring author choose among them?  And what are the secrets to success in the publication game?  In this session, an author who has garnered more than two hundred acceptance letters and 20,000 rejection slips in the course of his efforts to publish short fiction offers his "tricks of the trade" on such subjects as market selection and submission, contests, cover letters, "best of" anthologies, red flags, how to build a portfolio that will appeal to agents, and how to market a collection.  The purpose of this session is to demystify the submission and selection process, ultimately leading to a more impressive acceptance to submission ratio.  While writing is an art, publishing short fiction is as much a science as a creative endeavor--one that the determined and informed student can master.  After devoting so much time, energy and emotion to creating short fiction, why should an author leave publication to chance? CALL 888-716-5082 TO RESERVE YOUR SPOT!

Jacob M. Appel (MARKETING SHORT FICTION) won the 2012 Dundee International Book Award  for his first novel The Man Who Wouldn’t Stand Up.  His short story collection, Scouting for the Reaper, won the 2012 Hudson Prize and was published by Black Lawrence Press in 2014.  His most recent books include a novel, The Biology of Luck (Elephant Rock, 2013), an essay collection, Phoning Home (University of South Carolina Press, 2014) and a short story collection, Einstein’s Beach House (Pressgang/Butler University, 2014).  Jacob’s short fiction has appeared in more than two hundred literary journals.  His prose has won the Boston Review Short Fiction Competition, the William Faulkner-William Wisdom Award for the Short Story, the Dana Award, the Arts & Letters Prize for Fiction, the North American Review’s Kurt Vonnegut Prize, the Missouri Review’s Editor’s Prize, the Sycamore Review’s Wabash Prize, the Briar Cliff Review’s Short Fiction Prize, the Salem College Center for Women Writers’ Reynolds Price Short Fiction Award, the H. E. Francis Prize, the New Millennium Writings Fiction Award on four occasions, an Elizabeth George Fellowship and a Sherwood Anderson Foundation Writers Grant.   His stories have been short-listed for the O. Henry Award (2001), Best American Short Stories (2007, 2008, 2013), Best American Nonrequired Reading (2007, 2008), and the Pushcart Prize anthology (2005, 2006, 2011, 2014).  Jacob’s stage plays have been performed at New York’s Theatre Row, Manhattan Repertory Theatre, Adrienne Theatre (Philadelphia), Detroit Repertory Theatre, Heller Theater (Tulsa), Curtain Players (Columbus), Epilogue Players (Indianapolis), Open State Theatre (Pittsburgh), Intentional Theatre (New London), Little Theatre of Alexandria and elsewhere.