Join us this February for a series of FREE generative writing workshops led by local LA-based authors. The series explores the connections between LA's built environment and how different cultures and communities interface with public space.
Free and open to the public - register here to reserve your spot.
Curated by Desiree Zamorano, and co-hosted by the Institute for the Study of Los Angeles and Oxy Arts.
Wednesday, February 12 - Colette Sartor
6:30-8:30 pm
Designed for writers of all levels and genres, this workshop will help participants generate new writing in a relaxed, collaborative environment. Colette will talk about basic writing craft principles, focusing on how to create richly imagined characters and challenge them with conflicts that threaten their hidden, most deeply held desires. Participants will write in response to writing prompts designed to propel characters into action, then share their work aloud and receive feedback from the class.
Colette Sartor’s debut short story collection, Once Removed (UGA Press), won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. She is executive director of the CineStory Foundation, a mentoring organization for emerging TV writers and screenwriters, and teaches at the UCLA Extension Writers Program as well as privately. Her writing has appeared in Carve Magazine, Slice Magazine, the Chicago Tribune, Kenyon Review Online, Colorado Review, among others.
Wednesday, February 26 - Dana Johnson
6:30-8:30 pm
Dialogue is a tool with many purposes. It can characterize, propel the plot of a story, and show how characters and identities shift in different settings. In this workshop, Dana will lead participants through exercises that explore the ways in which dialogue can help frame a story. Open to writers of all levels and genres.
Dana Johnson is the author of the short story collection In the Not Quite Dark. She is also the author of Break Any Woman Down, winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, and the novel Elsewhere, California. Both books were nominees for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. Her work has appeared in Zyzzyva, The Paris Review, Callaloo, The Iowa Review and Huizache, among others. Johnson is a professor of English at the University of Southern California.
Wednesday, February 26 - Steph Cha
6:30-8:30 pm
Steph Cha will lead a workshop on using crime fiction to explore place, community, and society. Participants will explore the ramifications of crime on the ground level, and talk about how violence reveals everything around it––the power structures, permissions, resentments, prejudices, and injustices that lead people to hurt each other. Open to writers of all levels and genres.
Steph Cha is the author of Your House Will Pay and the Juniper Song crime trilogy. She’s an editor and critic whose work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. A native of the San Fernando Valley, she lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two basset hounds.
Questions? Email ffleming@oxy.edu or call 323 341 4195
The ISLA Writing Workshop Series is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation & Roberta Ahmanson.
