Im Vopat offers a comprehensive and practical guide on how to get the ideal writing classroom up and running with writing circles. In essence, Vopat has taken the idea of literature circles and applied it to the writing classroom. Writing circles bridge the gap found in the traditional writing workshop between direct instruction and independent work: collaborative learning. Vopat also provides helpful suggestions and forms to get your writing circles started and on track, some of which are similar to the role sheets found in literature circles.
Part memoir, part writing practice, part inspiration, this book is a multi voiced creation of three passionate and committed journal writers. Writing Alone Together reveals the depth and complexity that emerges from going to the blank page, transforming the act of writing into a catalyst for meaningful conversation, storytelling, mindfulness, personal growth, creative self-expression and mutual support. Writing Alone Together is a practice of gathering with other women to write, read and create a sense of community through the transformational power of journal writing. This communal practice creates shifts in consciousness, in our lives and in the world. Each time we meet, we bring the intention of being fully present, listening to ourselves and to one another and sharing our words, thoughts, views, visions, dreams and intuition. While we may not always agree or feel resonance with one another's ideas or experiences, through Writing Alone Together we cultivate acceptance and compassion. Through writing in journals, we discover and remember the stories and poetry of our lives. As we share and reveal these stories within these pages and within our journalling circle, we begin to see new perspectives, gain clarity, find solutions, celebrate accomplishments, notice and change patterns of behaviour and refine our understanding of our life experiences. In this process, we make meaning through our stories, constructing who we are and who we are becoming.
They call themselves the Leopardi Circle -- six members of a writing group who share much more than their works in progress. When Nancy, whose most recently published work is a medical newsletter, is asked to join a writing group made up of established writers, she accepts, warily. She's not at all certain that her novel is good enough for the company she'll be keeping. Her novel is a subject very close to her heart, and she isn't sure she wants to share it with others, let alone the world. But Nancy soon finds herself as caught up in the group's personal lives as she is with their writing. She learns that nothing -- love, family, loyalty -- is sacred or certain. In the circle there's Gillian, a beautiful, scheming, world-famous poet; Bernard, a pompous but lovable biographer; Virginia, a respected historian and the peacemaker of the group, who also happens to be Bernard's ex-wife; Chris, a divorced father and successful thriller writer; and Adam, the youngest of the group, an aspiring novelist who is infatuated with Gillian. And then there's Nancy, an unassuming fiction writer embarking on a new chapter in her own life. They meet to read their work aloud and offer feedback. Over the course of a year, marriages are tested, affairs begin, and trust is broken. Through their complicated relationships, these eccentric characters share their families, their beds, and their histories, and soon find that buried secrets have a way of coming to light. Hearts break and emotions are pushed to the limit in this richly engaging tale of love, betrayal, and literature.
Writing circles empower students with a cooperative learning environment. They provide teachers with opportunities to observe, advise, learn, teach, and take part in discussion. This exciting new book offers everything you need to know about forming writing circles, including sample lessons, learning goals, revision techniques, and tips for encouraging the use of reference tools.
Deborah Lee Luskin's critically acclaimed love story, Into the Wilderness, follows Rose Mayer after she has just buried her second husband and wonders what she's going to do with the rest of her life. The year is 1964, and Rose is no longer a young woman. Reluctantly, she visits her son at his summer place in Vermont, where there are neither sidewalks, Democrats nor other Jews. There is, however, the Marlboro Music Festival. It's there that she meets Percy Mendell, a born and bred Vermonter who has never married, never voted for a Democrat, and never left the state.Both Rose and Percy confront habits of a lifetime, habits that interfere with their undeniable attraction to one another. Rose confronts her religious ignorance and spiritual beliefs, while Percy is forced to question his life-long political faith. All this takes place in the small Vermont town of Orton, (pop. 290). Into the Wilderness is a tale of the outsider infiltrating a new community and how all parties negotiate their differences. It's also a tale of rural Vermont at mid-century, a time when the major technological advance was the Interstate highway, a road-building project that changed rural America as much as the information highway is changing the world today.Readers routinely say, "I didn't want it to end but I couldn't put it down." Into The Wilderness has been hailed as "a fiercely intelligent love story" and "a perfectly gratifying read.""Into the Wilderness is a poignant description of a specific placebut it is also a timeless story of human fulfillment," says Frank Bryan of UVM. "Luskin's heroine Rose Mayer is an honest to God miracle. Rarely has a fictional creation come to seem so perfectly real to me, and never have I cheered out loud as a character in a novel worked her way through the last stages of grief," adds author Philip Baruth.Deborah Lee Luskin often writes about Vermont, where she has lived since 1984. She is a commentator for Vermont Public Radio, a free-lance journalist, and a Visiting Scholar for the Vermont Humanities. Into The Wilderness is her first published novel.
The lonely life of a writer need not be. There are ways to break that isolation and find encouragement and support within groups of like-minded people. Sections in Writing Alone, Writing Together include Writing Practice Groups, Creating Writing Prompts, Group Leadership, and even What to Do with the Bores, Whiners, Control Junkies, and Thugs. Whether the group is oriented toward writing the great American novel or a family memory book, this useful book offers an array of effective techniques to help writers achieve their goals.
“A dangerous town carved out of unforgiving forest, a young girl who can name spirits and tame monsters, a race against time to save the natural world: The Namer of Spirits is what readers want and the world needs.” –Eliot Schrefer, New York Times bestselling author In the frontier village of Last Hope, people dismiss twelve-year-old Ash Narro as a flighty child who claims to hear the true names of things. But when enraged forest spirits attack, Ash shows that the names she hears have power. After taming a destructive forest spirit, Ash teams up with Fen, a wild forest boy, and embarks on an unusual journey to save her village. In this steampunk eco-fantasy, the perils of deforestation and the power of friendship are explored through a fantastical adventure involving giant mistcats, tempestuous forest spirits, a supernatural puppy, and a girl with a special gift for shaping what things become.
Drawing upon previously unpublished archival materials as well as historical accounts, Gere traces the history of writing groups in America, from their origins over a century ago to their recent reappearance in the works of Macrorie, Elbow, Murray, and others. From this historical perspective Gere examines the theoretical foundations of writing groups, challenging the traditional concept of writing as an individual performance. She offers instead a broader view of authorship that includes both individual and social dimensions, with implications not only for the teaching of composition but also for theories of rhetoric and literacy.
What happens when the world’s greatest literary icon dies before she finishes the final book in her best-selling series? And what happens when she leaves that book in the hands of her unstable, neurotic daughter, who swears she’s not a real writer? Sara Grayson is a thirty-two-year-old greeting card writer about to land the toughest assignment of her life. Three weeks after the death of her mother—a world-famous suspense novelist—Sara learns that her mother’s dying wish is for her to write the final book in her bestselling series. Sara has lived alone with her dog, Gatsby, ever since her husband walked out with their Pro Double Waffle Maker and her last shred of confidence. She can’t fathom writing a book for thirty million fans—not when last week’s big win was resetting the microwave clock. But in a bold move that surprises even herself, Sara takes it on. Against an impossible deadline and a publisher intent on sabotaging her every move, Sara discovers that stepping into her mother’s shoes means stumbling on family secrets she was never meant to find—secrets that threaten her mother’s legacy and the very book she’s trying to create.
