Tag Archive for: online

The Muse & The Marketplace:”Why Do We Do This?” Keynote Panel

Victor LaValle (He/Him)Keynote Panelist

Rebecca Makkai (She/Her)Keynote Panelist

Maggie Shipstead (She/Her)Keynote Panelist

on May 19 2023· Tagged: conference, digital, grub street, keynote, maggie shipstead, networking, online, Panel, publishing, summit, the muse & the marketplace, victor lavalle, virtual

A Virtual Evening with Rebecca Makkai: I Have Some Questions For You

on January 17 2023· Tagged: book signing, Book Tour, Books & Books, conversation, discussion, free, I Have Some Questions For You, IHSQFY, Livestream, Midtown Scholar Books, online, Prairie Lights, q&a, reading, signing, virtual, work-in-progress, zoom

Electric Lit Presents: The Craft of Covid in Fiction

The dynamic, unpredictable nature of the pandemic has forced novelists to become pundits, predicting what the world will look like when their novels are published.

They also face unique craft challenges: how do masks affect dialogue, character descriptions, and scene? How do social distancing and quarantine warp relationship dynamics?

Rebecca Makkai chose to move the events of I Have Some Questions for You to 2018, but still had to negotiate Covid protocol for courtroom scenes set in 2022. The protagonist of Weike Wang’s Joan Is Okay is an emergency room doctor in New York City; when Covid hit, Wang revised the novel to feature overwhelmed hospitals. A deadly flu ravages the globe in Phase Six by Jim Shepard, and the lessons of the Covid pandemic are in the distant past.

These three novelists will discuss the drafting and revision process of their novels and explain how they tackled the ever-changing question of how Covid should factor into their work.  Moderated by Halimah Marcus.

This year’s Masquerade of the Red Death is celebrating excellence in pandemic fiction with special guests and book giveaways at our party in Brooklyn on Friday, October 21, as well as related virtual salons. This salon is free for Masquerade ticket-holders*, $10 for the general public, and $5 for EL members.

*Masquerade ticket holders will receive an email with a discount code to register for free.

on September 23 2022· Tagged: crowdcast, digital event, Electric Lit, Electric Literature, online, online event, online workshop, Rebecca Makkai, salon, virtual workshop, Webinar, workshop, zoom

Northwestern Summer Writers’ Conference: The Origins of The Original

The Northwestern University Summer Writers’ Conference is back! This year, the conference is entirely online again so you can join us from anywhere in the world. Details are forthcoming. In the meantime, please save the dates!

The conference is hosted by the Northwestern University School of Professional Studies MA in Writing and  MFA in Prose and Poetry programs.

on May 20 2022· Tagged: class, conference, conferences, course, education, Northwester Summer Writers' Conference, northwestern, online, Rebecca Makkai, virtual event, workshop, writing, Writing Workshop

Friends of the Bronxville Public Library Presents: Lan Samantha Changin conversation with Rebecca Makkai (Zoom)

Lan Samantha Chang, author of The Family Chao,
in conversation with
Rebecca Makkai, author of The Great Believers

The Friends of the Bronxville Public Library (FOBPL) is pleased to host award-winning author Lan Samantha Chang, who will discuss her new novel, The Family Chao.  FOBPL is equally thrilled to host acclaimed author Rebecca Makkai to moderate this event.

For the recent MyHometownBronxville article, click here. 

Thursday, April 21, 2022
7:00-8:00 p.m. via Zoom

This event is free, but registration is required.

To register, please click here.

Registration closes on April 21, 12:00 p.m.
(Zoom link will be provided through Eventbrite Registration on April 21.)

THE FAMILY CHAO is an electrifying and devastating portrait of a Chinese American family grappling with trauma, grief, race, love, and longing. Brimming with comedy, suspense, and heartbreak, Lan Samantha Chang’s masterpiece is one of the most ambitious novels about America in recent years.

Lan Samantha Chang is the award-winning author of a collection of short fiction, Hunger, and novels The Family Chao, Inheritance and All is Forgotten, Nothing is Lost.  A recent Berlin Prize Fellow, she also has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation.  Chang is the first Asian American and the first female director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She lives in Iowa City.  For more on Lan Samantha Chang and The Family Chao, click here.

Moderator Rebecca Makkai is the Chicago-based author of the novels The Great Believers, The Hundred-Year House, and The Borrower, as well as the short story collection Music for Wartime. The Great Believerswas a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and received the ALA Carnegie Medal and the LA Times Book Prize, among other honors.  Makkai is on the MFA faculties of Sierra Nevada College and Northwestern University, and she is Artistic Director of StoryStudio Chicago.  For more on Rebecca Makkai, click here.

Signed copies of The Family Chao are available for sale now at Womrath Bookshop. 

The FOBPL appreciates your donations.  Thank you! 

on April 18 2022· Tagged: author talk, Bronxville, Bronxville Public Library, conversation, digital event, events, free, Friends of the Bronxville Public Library, in conversation, Lan Samantha Chang, online, online event, Rebecca Makkai, Samantha Chang, The Family Chao, zoom

The Porch: The Origins of the Original with Visiting Writer Rebecca Makkai

When we sit down to write, the first words, scenes, characters, conflicts, and settings we come up with are often the least original ones of which we’re capable. Digging past the obvious, the stock (and even the products of the collective unconscious), we might finally arrive at stories that are strikingly new and memorable. In this class we’ll cover some key elements of originality — specificity, idiosyncrasy, complexity, repetition, and change — and talk about accessing them both in drafting and revision.

on April 15 2022· Tagged: author talk, character building, class, digital event, discussion, education, lesson, online, Online Class, online event, Online Learning, online workshop, Rebecca Makkai, The Porch, virtual class, virtual event, virtual workshop, workshop, writing class, Writing Workshop, zoom

Joshua Ferris in conversation with Rebecca Makkai: A Calling for Charlie Barnes

About the Book:

Someone is telling the story of the life of Charlie Barnes, and it doesn’t appear to be going well. Too often divorced, discontent with life’s compromises and in a house he hates, this lifelong schemer and eternal romantic would like out of his present circumstances and into the American dream. But when the twin calamities of the Great Recession and a cancer scare come along to compound his troubles, his dreams dwindle further, and an infinite past full of forking paths quickly tapers to a black dot.

Then, against all odds, something goes right for a change: Charlie is granted a second act. With help from his storyteller son, he surveys the facts of his life and finds his true calling where he least expects it—in a sacrifice that redounds with selflessness and love—at last becoming the man his son always knew he could be.

A Calling for Charlie Barnes is a profound and tender portrait of a man whose desperate need to be loved is his downfall, and a brutally funny account of how that love is ultimately earned.

About the Authors:

Joshua Ferris is the author of three previous novels, Then We Came to the End, The Unnamed and To Rise Again at a Decent Hour, and a collection of stories, The Dinner Party. He was a finalist for the National Book Award, winner of the Barnes and Noble Discover Award and the PEN/Hemingway Award, and was named one of The New Yorker’s “20 Under 40” writers in 2010. To Rise Again at a Decent Hour won the Dylan Thomas Prize and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. His short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, and Best American Short Stories. He lives in New York.

on September 27 2021· Tagged: A Calling For Charlie Barnes, author talk, in conversation, Joshua Ferris, Midtown Scholar, online, virtual event, zoom

Exile in Bookville Presents: Authors on Tap: Nick Flynn and Rebecca Makkai

on August 10 2021· Tagged: author talk, authors on tap, exile in bookville, in conversation, Nick Flynn, online, Rebecca Makkai, this is the night our how, virtual event, zoom event

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.

on May 18 2021· Tagged: class, course, Lighthouse, Lighthouse Writers Workshop, Lit Fest, online, Online Class, Online Learning, online workshop, workshop, Writing Workshop

Society For The Study Of Midwestern Literature Celebrates Mark Twain Award Winners Marilynne Robinson and Rebecca Makkai

Marilynne Robinson and Rebecca Makkai, winners of the 2020 and 2021 Mark Twain Award for Distinguished Contributions to Midwestern Literature, in conversation with Phil Christman, author of Midwest Futures. (Free for current SSML members; open to non-members for a $5 registration fee.)

SSML Members Register HERE

Non-Members Register HERE

on May 11 2021· Tagged: Award, digital event, discussion, Literary Award, Mark Twain Award, Marylinne Robinson, online, Panel, Phil Christman, Society For The Study Of Midwestern Literature, SSML, virtual event