NYS Writers Institute Announces Spring 2010 Community Writing Workshops

• by New York State Writers Institute

ALBANY, NY (12/28/2009)(readMedia)-- New York State Writers Institute Fellow and award-winning author James Lasdun will conduct two creative writing workshops for community writers during the spring 2010 semester. Lasdun, fiction and nonfiction writer, poet, and screenwriter, will offer one eleven-week workshop on the art of the short story and a six-week workshop in nonfiction writing. The workshops are offered free of charge for non-credit and will be held at the University at Albany's uptown campus. Admission to both workshops is based on the submission of writing samples. Complete information on the workshops and submission guidelines may be obtained by calling the Institute at 518-442-5620 or by visiting the Institute's website at:

http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/workshop.html

Please note, all submissions must be received by Thursday, Jan. 28, 2010.

Fiction Workshop

The Art of the Short Story workshop (starting February 23) is aimed at answering the question, 'What is the essential nature of the short story?' Combining a close reading of classic short stories with an equally detailed attention to students' work the workshop will examine the peculiar mysteries of narrative economy and structural inventiveness that distinguish this most artful of literary forms.

Nonfiction Workshop

Encounters with landscapes, other people, or for that matter any facet of life outside one's immediate circumstances, have long provided fertile ground for writers of nonfiction. This six-week workshop (starting March 10) will focus on ways the unfamiliar can be illuminated through one's own singularities as a human being.

James Lasdun is a fiction writer, poet, and screenwriter. Born and raised in England, Lasdun has received awards and critical praise for his work on both sides of the Atlantic. Critic James Wood has said, "James Lasdun seems to me to be one of the secret gardens of English writing . . . When we read him we know what language is for."

Lasdun's recent short story, "An Anxious Man," received the 2006 United Kingdom National Short Story Prize. His newest collection, "It's Beginning to Hurt: Stories," published in 2009, was listed by "The Atlantic Monthly" as number four of its top five books of 2009.

"Seven Lies" (2005), Lasdun's most recent novel, was short-listed for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction, and long-listed for the Booker Prize.

He is also the author of two travel guides with his wife, Pia Davis, "Walking and Eating in Provence" (2008) and "Walking and Eating in Tuscany and Umbria" (1997).

For additional information contact the Writers Institute at 518-442-5620 or online at http://www.albany.edu/writer-inst.

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