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April 2021
Gorton’s Masterclass Series: Rebecca Makkai – A Local Writing Life
This event is virtual “A Local Writing Life”: Local author Rebecca Makkai has achieved national prominence, most recently with her novel The Great Believers — a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and the winner of the ALA Carnegie Medal. Makkai was born and raised in Lake Bluff, and has lived her adult life in Lake Forest. She will talk with Barry Benson, Interim Executive Director of the Ragdale Foundation, about living as a professional writer in Lake Forest,…
Find out more »Speakeasy Workshop: This Will Be Character Building
Join Rebecca Makkai for an intimate workshop designed to help you write an original short story or the first chapter of a novel or memoir -- or to continue work on one in progress. In each session, Rebecca will teach a different aspect of writing craft: backstory, motivation, dialogue, and character evolution. This event has four sessions. E. M. Forster wrote that "incident springs out of character, and having occurred it alters that character." How do we create characters who will both…
Find out more »Gorton’s Masterclass Series: Rebecca Makkai – A Local Writing Life
This event is virtual “A Local Writing Life”: Local author Rebecca Makkai has achieved national prominence, most recently with her novel The Great Believers — a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and the winner of the ALA Carnegie Medal. Makkai was born and raised in Lake Bluff, and has lived her adult life in Lake Forest. She will talk with Barry Benson, Interim Executive Director of the Ragdale Foundation, about living as a professional writer in Lake Forest,…
Find out more »Gorton’s Masterclass Series: Rebecca Makkai – A Local Writing Life
This event is virtual “A Local Writing Life”: Local author Rebecca Makkai has achieved national prominence, most recently with her novel The Great Believers — a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and the winner of the ALA Carnegie Medal. Makkai was born and raised in Lake Bluff, and has lived her adult life in Lake Forest. She will talk with Barry Benson, Interim Executive Director of the Ragdale Foundation, about living as a professional writer in Lake Forest,…
Find out more »Speakeasy Workshop: This Will Be Character-Building
Join Rebecca Makkai for an intimate workshop designed to help you write an original short story or the first chapter of a novel or memoir -- or to continue work on one in progress. In each session, Rebecca will teach a different aspect of writing craft: backstory, motivation, dialogue, and character evolution. This event has four sessions. E. M. Forster wrote that "incident springs out of character, and having occurred it alters that character." How do we create characters who will both…
Find out more »Speakeasy Workshop: This Will Be Character-Building
Join Rebecca Makkai for an intimate workshop designed to help you write an original short story or the first chapter of a novel or memoir -- or to continue work on one in progress. In each session, Rebecca will teach a different aspect of writing craft: backstory, motivation, dialogue, and character evolution. This event has four sessions. E. M. Forster wrote that "incident springs out of character, and having occurred it alters that character." How do we create characters who will both…
Find out more »StoryStudio Chicago Storyball – Stories Matter Foundation Fundraiser
Mark your calendars! Stories Matter Foundation's first ever fundraising event will be online over Zoom on Thursday, April 29 at 7pm Central. We'll have more details soon, including silent auction items, special guests, and award recipients. For now, pencil us in!
Find out more »May 2021
Miami Book Fair Presents: Get Your Story Off the Ground with Rebecca Makkai
Mondays, May 3 – 24 (4 weeks) 8 – 9:30 p.m. EST | Online via Google Meet | Register to receive link There are decisions we make (about entry point, tone, point of view, conflict, stakes, and more) in our opening pages that set us up for stories that practically write themselves, or for ones that are bound to run quickly out of steam. In this four-week class, we will examine and edit student work (on a volunteer basis) in…
Find out more »June 2021
Lighthouse Lit Fest Advanced Weeklong Fiction Workshop: The Arc Of Story, The Architecture Of Plot With Rebecca Makkai
No one’s ever going to force you to write a traditional plot arc, but the tools of narrative momentum—cause and effect, development, change, stakes, suspense—should be in every writer’s tool kit, if only so we know what to rebel against. We'll workshop student fiction in this light—focusing on arc, on shape, on plot or the intentional lack thereof—asking, in every case, what moves the story along, and how it earns and keeps its audience. Accepted participants will submit up to…
Find out more »Lighthouse Lit Fest: Interiority Complex
The great advantage of prose (over theater, film, and life) is that we’re privy to characters’ interior states. But how can a writer get thoughts and emotions across, other than by stating them flat-out or by updating us constantly on breathing and heart rate? We’ll explore ways to use tangent, gesture, backstory, action, association, and more to give characters a rich internal life without resorting to the old cardiopulmonary check-in. This class accommodates 25+ writers.
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