Write Now!

Spend a week exploring the craft and fun of writing with a sampler of group and individual writing exercises, artful brainstorming, creative journaling and special workshops by local authors, culminating in a reading of original works at Chop Suey Books.


All sessions will be held in the upstairs art gallery of Chop Suey Tuey at 2913 West Cary Street in Carytown. Please arrange to drop off your son or daughter by 2 pm and to pick them up by no later than 5 pm each afternoon.

SUMMER SESSIONS 2009

SOLD OUT!!! Session 1, ages 11-13
June 8- June 12

Memoir with Anne Soffee ** Dream Writing with Hannah Huber**Nonfiction with Brandon Reynolds

SOLD OUT!!!! Session 2, ages 11-13
June 15-June19

Humor Writing with Slash Coleman**Poetry with Darren Morris**Storytelling with Denise Bennett

SOLD OUT!!! Session 3, ages 11-17
June 29- July 3

Humor Writing with Slash Coleman **Dream Writing with Hannah Huber ** Storytelling with Denise Bennett

Session 4, ages 14-17
July 6- July 10

Memoir with Anne Soffee**Poetry with Darren Morris**Nonfiction with Craig Belcher


MORE ABOUT YOUR SUMMER SESSION!

In the summer, each week long session runs Monday-Friday from 2-5 pm.

Guest writers will teach workshops from 3-5 pm on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.

The rest of the time will be spent with teacher and writer, Valley Haggard, playing word games, inventing characters, people-watching, free writing, inspecting the words and wisdom of other writers, exercising poetic license and preparing for our reading.

Each Friday afternoon from 4:30-5:00 pm, Richmond Young Writers will give a short reading of original works that is free and open to the public at the historic Byrd Theatre located at 2908 West Cary Street.

Introducing Anna Elise Medinger, who will be assisting with the workshops on Mondays and Fridays. Anna adores middle-schoolers as she vividly remembers the horror of being that age. She also remembers how cathartic "writing it out could be." Anna has been an adjunct instructor of
Composition and Rhetoric for J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College and Virginia Commonwealth University.










Local poet, Jamil "Skript" Jasey, will be assisting us with our readings on Friday afternoons at the Byrd. Host of both the popular Thursday night open mic show...LYRICIST LAB! ....@ BO DILLAZ (916 W. Broad St. Richmond VA every Thursday 7p-10p $5) and the community open mic in the auditorium of the Main branch on 101 E. Franklin St. every second Saturday, we are pleased to have Jamil's expertise and support hosting our reading of student works in progress.

Comedy Writing with Slash Coleman

Comedy Writing
Based on SOL objectives, and taught within a cooperative learning environment, students learn how to take the raw material from their own lives and use joke writing formulas to write and perform funny jokes.

Using a balance of lecture, exercise, and feedback on work from the instructor and classmates, this course gives students a firm grounding in all the basics of joke writing and performance.


Slash Coleman is a comedian and author best known for his
award winning one man show, The Neon Man and Me, which ran Off-Broadway and is now a PBS special. Nominated for the Virginia Governor's Award in the Arts, his shows have been produced throughout the United States.

Storytelling with Denise Bennett

Storytelling
Tell your story out loud. Find your most authentic voice. Risky? Maybe a little. Fun? Oh yeah. I’ll share tips for finding stories from your own life, and how the stories you tell naturally can strengthen your writing.

Denise Bennett tells original and traditional stories often interlaced with harp and vocal music. Performing and teaching in schools, for professional conferences, churches, libraries and retirement communities, she has also been a featured teller for the Williamsburg Storytelling Festival; The Virginia Storytelling Alliance Gathering and the LAUGHS Festival in Loudoun County. Denise has performed her one- woman show, The Heart’s True Scale in a number of venues in Virginia and Maryland including Richmond’s Firehouse Theater and the Henrico Theatre. Master storyteller Elizabeth Ellis says of her, “Denise Bennett is a storyteller and a musician of exceptional talent. Her work is timeless, and flawless. Her work reminds us of the love that dwells in the deep heart’s core.”

Poetry Workshop with Darren Morris

Poetry Workshop
This poetry workshop will allow you to explore the mysterious art of poetry. By contributing your own words and editing techniques, we will create a single poem together.

Darren Morris earned his MFA from VCU in 1998. His first poetry manuscript has been named finalist in national poetry book competitions and his poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Memorious, River Styx, Best New Poets 2006 and 2008, National Poetry Review, and Blackbird (forthcoming). His fiction has been awarded a fellowship from the Virginia Commission for the Arts.

Nonfiction with Brandon Reynolds

The Really Real, Absolutely True Story (Almost): The Tricky World of Nonfiction
When a tree falls in the woods, what happens next depends on the observer – maybe it becomes a canoe, maybe it sues the lumber company, maybe it falls on the observer. But that story, like anything that happens in the world, is created by the writer. So nonfiction, as it is seen in journalism, walks a delicate line between telling a good story and telling the truest one you can. This class will teach writers how to pay attention to the stories the world tells, how to relate them responsibly, and how to get at that truth without sacrificing story. Then the writers will tell the stories of the people sitting right next to them.

Brandon Reynolds is the Arts & Culture Editor for Style Weekly. His fiction has been published there and in the Texas Review. He’s currently working on a history of Valentine’s Meat-Juice and other strange things to drink.

Dream Writing with Hannah Huber

Dreams – A Writer’s Best Friend
In this workshop we will examine a powerful and endless source of inspiration for your writing – your dreams. Tapping into this often ignored resource may be the most useful tool you have when it comes to developing new story ideas, writing a scene, sketching new characters or even creating alternate universes. Your dreams come from your own imagination. A few simple exercises will give you access to your subconscious in a new way and help you draw from the parts of your imagination that only come out at night.

Hannah Huber received an MFA in creative writing from Queens University and her undergraduate degree in creative writing from Hollins University. Her fiction has appeared in the Potomac Review and is forthcoming in the Press 53 anthology, The Home of the Brave; Stories in Uniform.

Memoir with Anne Thomas Soffee

Memoir Writing Everybody’s got a story, but only you can tell YOUR story. This workshop will help you figure out how to get it from your life (and your head) onto the page, and what to do with it once it’s there. We’ll talk about tools that will help you write your life, look at some great memoirs that everyone should read and answer the tough questions, like “what if my friends don’t like what I write about them?”

Anne Thomas Soffee earned her MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1995. She has published two books of memoir, Snake Hips: Belly Dancing and How I Found True Love (Chicago Review Press: 2002) and Nerd Girl Rocks Paradise City (Chicago Review Press: 2005). She currently writes a column and blog for Richmond Magazine and has a short story in Akashic Books’ forthcoming Richmond Noir anthology. The New York Times calls her “funny, trashy and smart,” which pretty much says all there is to say.