Register for this workshop

Paulette Bates Alden

BIOGRAPHY

Paulette Bates Alden is the author of "Feeding the Eagles," a collection of autobiographical short stories, and "Crossing the Moon," a memoir that recounts her own initial ambivalence about motherhood, embarking on a course of infertility treatment, and coming to terms with not having a child. The book also touches a wide array of other issues: aging parents; being raised Southern and female in the fifties; trade-offs between a life of work and one devoted to nurture; coping with grief and loss. She is currently working on a "memoir in stories" about, among other things, taking care of her mother who has dementia. Her work has appeared in "The New York Times Magazine," "Ploughshares," "Mississippi Review," "The Antioch Review," and elsewhere.

Paulette was born and raised in Greenville, South Carolina, graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1969, and was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, where she received her Masters in Creative Writing and taught for three years as a Jones Lecturer in Creative Writing. The recipient of numerous awards, including a Loft-Mcknight Award, a Bush Foundation Fellowship, and a Minnesota State Arts Board grant, she has taught extensively, including graduate level courses in memoir reading and writing at the University of Minnesota, where she received a distinguished teaching award, at Carleton College and at St. Olaf College. She had taught many summer workshops in memoir and the short story at the Split Rock Arts Program in Duluth, Minnesota, including a "Writing and Loss" workshop this past summer. This spring she conduced a "Memoir and Healing" workshop at the National Poetry Therapy Conference in Charleston. She lives in Minneapolis and teaches fiction and memoir writing privately.

What students say about Paulette Bates Alden:

"Paulette is an excellent instructor - well-organized, welcoming, extremely competent, humorous, gentle, manages her classroom exquisitely. She generously opened her personal library to us. She's very encouraging - both by praising our efforts and taking us seriously enough to challenge us to perform more complete work. Not only was it important to her that we receive the assistance we needed for this class, but that we see ourselves as writers in that we put our immediate work into a larger context."

"Best writing workshop/course I ever attended and believe me, I've seen a few!"

"Excellent knowledge of subject area; excellent control of group; great empathy for difficult disclosures; honest feedback - astute; excellent helpful hand-outs; I feel like I'm getting help from a master writer."

"Paulette is a wonderful teacher - patient, informative, clear, articulate and helpful. She does a nice job of balancing didactic information, stimulating discussion and giving constructive feedback. She creates an atmosphere where others feel their thoughts and opinions are heard and respected."

"Paulette has been a wonderful resource and offered valuable insight and criticism which has served to deepen and significantly improve my writing. She has a gift for helping a writer identify what it is they truly want to say in a work, and helping them recognize when they are (or are not) giving voice to that message."

Register for this workshop

with Lou Willett Stanek

BIOGRAPHY

Born right outside Chicago in a place called Illinois, Lou Willett Stanek began her writer's career at age 13 writing Lou's Teen Talk, a weekly column for The Vandalia Leader. She claims she could have been sued for plagiarizing her own life in her first novel, Megan's Beat, about a teenager who writes a gossip column for the local newspaper.

Stanek now teaches in the Writing Program at The New School, offers Memoir and Fiction Workshops in New York and Bailey Island, Maine. She has taught literature and creative writing at The University of Chicago, where she earned her Ph.D., at Marymount Manhattan College in New York, Mt. Vernon College in Washington DC, and on The Holland American Cruise Line. Along the way she has had an eclectic assortment of other jobs as horse trainer, United Air Lines Stewardess, Saks 5th Ave. model, corporate executive for Philip Morris and contributor to a number of magazines and newspapers.

She now lives in Manhattan and Bailey Island, Maine.

PUBLICATIONS

Story Starters (Avon Books 1998)
Writing Your Life (Avon Books 1996)
So You Want to Write A Novel (Avon Books 1994)
Thinking Like A Writer (Random House 1994)
Whole Language (H. W. Wilson 1992)
Katy Did (Avon Books 1992)
Gleanings (Harper & Row 1985)
Megan Beat (Dial 1983)

THIS WORKSHOP IS COMPLETELY BOOKED

Madeleine Blais

BIOGRAPHY

Madeleine Blais is a professor in the journalism department at the University of Massachusetts where she specializes in a course entitled "Diaries, Memoirs and Journals." She has written for many newspapers including The Boston Globe, the Washington Post and The New York Times and while she was a staff writer at the Miami Herald, she was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in feature writing. She is the author of a collection of essays, "THE HEART IS AN INSTRUMENT: PORTRAITS IN JOURNALISM" and 'IN THESE GIRLS, HOPE IS A MUSCLE", which was a finalist in the category of nonfiction for the National Book Critics Circle award.

Ms. Blais will serve as a moderator for this year's seminar.

Register for this workshop

with Beverly Lowry

BIOGRAPHY

Beverly Lowry was born in Memphis, Tennessee, where her father worked as a bouncer and a banjo player on the roof of the Peabody Hotel. Her birth was paid for in nickels from a pinball machine, and she was named for a debutante whose picture her mother saw in the Sunday Memphis Commercial Appeal.

She grew up in the Mississippi Delta, in Greenville, where the legacy of William Alexander Percy and the presence of Hodding Carter, Jr., required that all white children receive a solid literary education and be encouraged to become writers. After attending Ole Miss for two years, she attended Memphis State University, graduated, married and then moved to New York City where she had one son and pursued an acting career. When acting foundered, she went back to the profession pressed on her by high school teachers, writing.

She is the author of six novels, including Daddy's Girl, Breaking Gentle and The Track of Real Desires. In recent years she has published mostly non-fiction: personal essays, feature journalism, book reviews, travel articles, interviews, and one book, Crossed Over, a Murder, a Memoir, about her friendship with the recently executed Karla Faye Tucker. Her magazine work has appeared in such magazines as The RollingStone, Redbook, Granta and The New Yorker. She is currently at work on another non-fiction book, about race, hair, daughters, the South and Madam C.J. Walker.

She lived in Houston for a number of years, where she wrote, had her second son, taught at the University of Houston and Rice University and served as the president of the Texas Institute of Letters. She has also lived in San Marcos and Austin, Texas, Los Angeles, Missoula, Montana, and Washington, D.C., where she now lives. She has taught at the University of Montana, George Washington University and the University of Alabama. For her work, she has received NEA and Guggenheim fellowships, three Texas Institute of Letters awards, and the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters award. She is the director of the new non-fiction program at George Mason University, where she also teaches.

THIS WORKSHOP IS COMPLETELY BOOKED

with Jane O'Reilly

BIOGRAPHY

Jane O'Reilly now lives in Vermont, where she leads an idyllic life gardening, walking the dogs, teaching a course in memoir writing, publishing the town newspaper, being a Justice of the Peace, etc.

She was raised in St. Louis, Missouri, graduated from Radcliffe College, and spent thirty years in New York City. She has a son, a daughter, two granddaughters, two dogs, and plans to be a mezzo soprano in her next life. At various times and stages, she has been a contributing editor of New York Magazine, one of the founders of Ms. Magazine, a contributor to TIME, a columnist for Vogue, a syndicated newspaper columnist, a travel writer, and a regular reviewer for the Sunday New York Times book review section. She has published two books: "The Girl I left behind: The Housewife's Moment of Truth and Other Feminist Ravings" and "No Turning Back: Two Nun's Battle with the Vatican Over Women's Right to Choose", written with Barbara Ferraro and Patricia Hussey. She is at work on "Clothing the Ghost" a book on writing, for Algonquin Press. She is also an Honorary Board Member of the Key West Literary Seminar and has been a panelist on Journalism and Travel Writing.

She is surprised to discover how much fun it is to teach writing. Her students think so too. Here are some recommendations.

"I find her to compare with Noel Perrin and Richard Eberhart, favorably, as a teacher. All of us wrote better than we thought we could, made great leaps after editing, and Jane was full of joy, support, expertise. We laughed a lot."
     Michael Merritt, Arlington, Vt.

"I really needed a boost, and your kindness and energy gave that to me. Of course members of the group were inspirational, too. I wanted you to know how much the weekend meant to me. Thanks again."
     Ann Wuerslin, Sandgate, Vermont

"The workshop was full of inspiration and encouragement."
     Susan Osgood, Brattleboro, Vt.

"Please sign me up for the next one. You really changed my life. For the better, of course."
     Stella Greene, Peru, Vermont.

Register for this workshop

BIOGRAPHY

Timothy Seldes has spent most of his professional life in book publishing; beginning with 17 years at Doubleday where he was the Managing Editor of the Trade Department. He also worked at Harcourt Brace, the New American Library and Macmillan.

Outside of book publishing, he was Assistant Publisher of The New York Post and the Public Information Officer of The Welfare Island Development Corp. He was Chairman of the Board of Poets & Writers for many years.

Since 1972, he has been the President of Russell & Volkening, Inc., a literary agent which represents such authors as Annie Dillard, Marian Wright Edelman, Nadine Gordimer, Jim Lehrer, George Plimpton, Howell Raines, Dan Schorr, Ntozake Shange, Anne Tyler and Eudora Welty.

He is married to the author Susan R. Shreve (who was with the Seminar last year for The American Novel, as a moderator and workshop leader) and divides his time between Washington, D.C. and New York City.