• creative support and inspiration
• exercises and ideas to help shape your pieces
• thoughtful feedback and careful editing
• guidance getting happily published
• simpatico and talented women writers to encourage you
• a lively writers’ community
Elizabeth Fishel (click here for bio) created the first Wednesday Writers group in 1991 and since then has been leading groups both Wednesdays and Fridays in her Rockridge living-room, just a few blocks from the Rockridge BART stop. To guide and inspire each writer to find her own voice, she draws on her wide experience as a writing instructor and the author of four nonfiction books and dozens of magazine articles.
The groups are open to writers at all stages, from those just beginning and writing for their own pleasure and self-discovery to those who are publishing their work. Our group members’ essays have appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle, The East Bay Monthly, Diablo, The Contra Costa Times, and The Christian Science Monitor, and on KQED’s “Perspectives,” among others, and many have published books and contributed essays to anthologies.
More info about the groups and how to join:
• Both groups meet from 10 am - 12:15 pm in 2 sessions, fall and winter/spring
• The Wednesday group meets weekly; the Friday group meets twice a month
• WINTER/SPRING SESSION OF WEDNESDAY WRITERS begins on
Wednesday, Feb. 29 and meets weekly through May 30th. No class on April 11
and May 16. 12 meetings, $420.
• WINTER/SPRING SESSION OF FRIDAY WRITERS begins on Friday, March 9
and meets (more or less) twice monthly through June 8. The dates are: March 9,
23, 30; April 20, 27; May 11, 25; June 8. 8 meetings, $280.
• There is a $50 deposit to reserve a place.
We welcome new members! Kindly contact Elizabeth for more information.
UC Berkeley Extension Workshop:
Writing and Selling Your Personal Essays
Saturday, Feb. 4, 2012, 10 am – 5 pm, $150
UC Berkeley Extension Downtown Center
425 Market St., San Francisco, Room 806, 8th Floor (enter on Fremont St.)
For more information, www.extension.berkeley.edu/catalog/
This information-packed one-day workshop takes your essays from ideas to potential publication. The instructor draws on more than 20 years of magazine-essay-writing experience to share tips on style, structure, narrative arc and the use of anecdote, as well as how to target what different publications want.
Mark Trautwein, editor of “Perspectives” on KQED and Louise Rafkin, a widely published writer also share their expertise on breaking into a variety of markets and give feedback on short essays (300–500 words maximum) that participants are invited to submit up to a week ahead of time. (Deadline is Jan. 28, 2012.)
For more details about how to submit your essay for review, please contact the Writing department at letters@unex.berkeley.edu or (510) 642-6362.
