Have you started a story or essay and gotten stuck? Is there a novel you've worked on in fits and starts that could use greater focus? In this group, we’ll explore narrative building blocks—voice, tone, character development, setting, and plot—as well as the nitty gritty of sentence construction as we consider helpful strategies for revision and completion. We'll talk about what holds our writing back, from practical concerns like structuring your time to the subtler obstacles in the work itself. You'll have the opportunity to receive support from a warm, constructive community and experiment with in-class writing prompts designed to help you discover new perspectives on your work in progress.This session is ideal for writers of all levels. Each participant will be expected to come to the meeting prepared to discuss the reading material and to write.

Instructors: 

Karen Dukess is the author of the novel The Last Book Party (Henry Holt 2019), which was an IndieNext and Barnes and Noble Discover New Writers Pick. She is the host of the Castle Hill Author Talks, a series of virtual and in-person author interviews for Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill on Cape Cod, and has taught writing at Castle Hill and GrubStreet's The Muse and the Marketplace Writing Conference.

Erica Youngren's essays and reporting have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times' Motherlode blog, Slate, Harper's Bazaar, Real Simple, and InStyle.com. She is a contributor to Cognoscenti, the ideas and opinions page for the Boston NPR affiliate WBUR. Erica has a B.A. in literature from Vassar and an M.F.A. in creative nonfiction writing from Sarah Lawrence College and serves on the advisory board for County Harvest, a Westchester food rescue organization.