Community Programs
Young Writers’ Camp
Rising 6th, 7th and 8th grade girls are invited to join Meredith faculty, some of whom are published essayists, poets and novelists, for a week of creativity, learning and fun. Meredith’s five-day Young Writers’ Camp is an opportunity to read and discuss lively works of literature, sharpen your editing/grammar skills and work on independent writing projects throughout the week.
In addition to structured class time, there will be opportunities for recreation. Lunch and snacks will be provided.
Visit Meredith’s Community Outreach Program web site for dates, costs and registration.
Questions? Contact Robin Colby at (919) 760-2290 or colbyr@meredith.edu.
Writing Workshop for Women
Each summer since 1997, the Meredith College Departments of English and Community Outreach have sponsored a writing workshop for women who are writing, who want to write, and who want to try writing.
The workshop offers instruction, critique of manuscripts, and—not the least of its advantages—new friends who share a common interest. Dozens of women have benefited from these workshops and from other writer events sponsored by Meredith during the academic year.
During this one-week workshop, outstanding instructors guide students in poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, or using journals as a source for poetry, essays, and fiction. For inquiries, suggestions, or concerns, email Ashley Hogan, workshop coordinator at hogana@meredith.edu.
Summer 2008 Course Descriptions
- Poetry with Betty Adcock
- Fiction with Louise Hawes
- Nonfiction with Zelda Lockhard
Participants will work with images, sound, texture, line, and form, using in-class exercises, discussion, and master poet examples to explore the elements of poetry. They will devote energy to re-seeing and reshaping early drafts. The workshop is open to all comers, but those who wish to do so have the option of submitting up to three poems with their application to acquaint the instructor with their previous work.
Betty Adcock has published six books of poems with LSU Press, most recently Slantwise, which was selected as the L.E. Phillabaum Prize Volume for 2008. Retired Writer in Residence at Meredith College, she has also taught at Duke and Lenoir-Rhyne. She is on the faculty at the Warren Wilson MFA program for writers. Her awards include the Pushcart Prize, the Roanoke-Chowan award, the Zoe Kincaid Brockman Award, the North Carolina Award for Literature, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She was co-winner (with Carolyn Kizer) of the Poets’ Prize for 2003.
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This session is open to any writer who wants to focus on the building blocks of fiction: characterization, sensory description, and scene. If you have a short story or novel underway; or if you simply want to test the fictional waters, you'll find that sharing your writing with others in a safe, supportive environment will expand your mastery of both language and craft. During each workshop, we'll discuss the strengths and possibilities for further growth in each other's work. We'll also do in-class exercises designed to deepen our penetration of scene and character, and to foster an approach to revision that makes it a challenge, not a chore. And yes, because one of the goals of this week is to start you on your way to a submittable manuscript, we'll also talk about queries, agents, and the market today. Please bring the opening five pages of a short story or novel to the first workshop.
Louise Hawes is the author of the 2007 short story collection, Anteaters Don't Dream (University Press of Mississippi) and more than a dozen novels, including The Vanishing Point, a 2005 Book Sense and Bank Street College Pick and NY Public Library Best Read for the Teenager. Hawes, who currently teaches in an MFA in Writing program, has served as Writer in Residence at the University of New Mexico and John Gresham Visiting Author at the University of Mississippi. She has taught locally at UNC-Chapel Hill, UNC-Charlotte, Duke, and Meredith. Her short fiction has been published in literary journals and is included in The Reader Writes the Story, Canadian and World Fiction (Prentice Hall); Love and Sex, Ten Stories of Truth (Simon and Schuster); and Such a Pretty Face (Abrams). Her latest book is a collection of "fairy tales for grownups," Black Pearls, a Faerie Strand (Houghton Mifflin, 2008). For more information about her books or to read some of her lectures on writing, go to www.louisehawes.com.
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Nonfiction with Zelda Lockhart
This workshop is designed to help women use the very life that seems to hinder and prevent their writing (career, kids, school, family) as the fuel and source of personal essays. Techniques on going from the work-a-day mind to the profound creative writing mind in 0-60 seconds will help make tangible the goal of writing whole essays, or even a book-length autobiography or memoir. Though the long-awaited writing sabbatical may be in your future, the life you currently live is the material for those essays. Why not write them while you are swimming in it? The goal by the end of the week is for each participant to write the first draft of a short personal essay, and to have laughed as well as commiserated with her new writing peers. Information will also be given on how to get that essay published.
Zelda Lockhart, a graduate of Norfolk State University and Old Dominion University, is author of Fifth Born, published by Atria Books/Simon & Schuster in August 2002. The novel was a Barnes & Noble Discovery selection, and won a finalist award for debut fiction from the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Legacy Foundation. Lockhart is also the author of The Evolution, a serial novella, currently appearing in the archives of USAToday.com's Open Book series. Lockhart's second novel, Cold Running Creek, was published in 2007 by LaVenson Press, and in January 2008 won an Honor Fiction Award from the Black Caucus of The American Library Association. Her essay "Tracking Love" appears in The Honeymoon's Over, an anthology, published February 2007 by Warner Books, and her essay "Without a Word" appears in When I Was a Loser, published March 2007 by Free Press/Simon & Schuster. She currently resides and writes in Hillsborough, NC, and welcomes visits to her web site: www.zeldalockhart.com
Workshop Coordinator
Ashley Hogan, workshop coordinator, has been writing poetry and fiction since grade school. She is a graduate of Appalachian State University and received an M.A. from North Carolina State University, where she studied fiction writing with Lee Smith, Angela Davis Gardner, and John Kessel. She has taught creative writing, composition, and American literature at Appalachian State University and NCSU and currently teaches at Meredith College. Her fiction and essays have appeared in Cold Mountain Review, Brightleaf, and at ImperfectParent.com. She lives in Raleigh with her husband and two young sons.
