More Announcements from the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing!

Below, please find a couple exciting new endeavors from the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing:

 
YOUR NOVEL YEAR

The Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing is excited to introduce our new accelerated online certificate in writing the novel: A full year working with celebrated faculty and a small cohort to bring your novel to the page!

• Choice of two tracks: Young Adult or Sci-fi/Fantasy.
• Small, inclusive classes and a supportive community of fellow writers.
• Expert instruction from celebrated faculty.
• A full year of mentoring.

Apply by October 31, 2013.


WRITER'S BLOG

The Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing's freshly launched blog kicks off with the first of our ongoing biweekly guest posts by distinguished writers.

Check out Michael Schiffer's "Writer's Blog" here.

Piper Writer's Blog posts feature advice, creative writing, and creative thinking by prominent writers. Check back often and stay inspired as we add to this invaluable resource! Watch for future guest bloggers Dana Stabenow, Tania Katan, T. Jefferson Parker, and many more.

ABOUT MICHAEL SCHIFFER
Happily living and writing in Phoenix after escaping alive from L.A., Michael Schiffer wrote the groundbreaking screenplay for Colors, directed by Dennis Hopper and starring Sean Penn and Robert Duval. His next film, Lean on Me, starring Morgan Freeman, won NAACP Image Awards for Best Film and Best Actor and was followed by Crimson Tide (Gene Hackman and Denzel Washington), The Peacemaker (George Clooney and Nicole Kidman), and The Four Feathers, starring Heath Ledger, Wes Bentley, and Kate Hudson. Schiffer published two books with Simon & Schuster, Lessons of the Road and Ballpark, and is working on a new novel, To End All Wars. His producing credits include Lean on Me and Le Divorce, a Merchant/Ivory film based on the novel by Diane Johnson, a finalist for the National Book Award. A Creative Advisor at the ScripTeast Writers Conference in Poland, Michael has taught for over twenty years and is currently a Trustee Professor teaching actors and writers at Chapman College.

Final Piper Writers Studio Classes Focus on Reader Engagment, Dynamic Characters and Creating a Sense of Place

LAST CHANCE to register for a Piper Writers Studio class! One-day classes will be held on Saturday, October 22nd from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the Piper Writers House on the ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY Tempe Campus.


1. Josh Rathkamp poetry course, "Engaging the Reader with Fact," will focus on fictional techniques and universal facts to explore new ideas to grasp the reader's attention. Josh is the author of Some Nights No Cars at All and the book of poems was published in Ausable Press in 2007. He is now the creative writing director at Mesa Community College.

"Once a woman and I made promises and love in every state between Michigan and Arizona. Once in the car, once in a patch of pines that grew crooked and out of place, once I thought I was romantic, taking her to the roof in the rain..."

-- Josh Rathkamp

2. Winner of the 2009 Hudson Prize and The Best American Short Stories in 2008, Patrick Michael Finn will be teaching a fiction writing course, "Tools for Writing Dynamic Characters." Patrick founded and currently directs the creative writing program at Chandler-Gilbert Community College. This course will focus on developing techniques that will bring the characters on paper to life.

3. "Are We There Yet? Yes We Are!" This writing course will be instructed by best-selling author Mary-Rose Hayes. The focus of this class is to describe in detail the fives senses, vision, touch, sound, taste, and smell all of which gives detail to the sense of place and creation.

For more information about registering for a Piper Writers Studio course, visit the Piper Center website.

Learn The Art of the Very Short Story, or the Essential Forces in Poetry, or even Bringing a Character to Life in just ONE day!

There's still time to register for the Piper Center's upcoming one-day classes. All Classes will be held on SATURDAY, OCTOBER 8th from 10 am to 3 pm in the Piper Writers House on the ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY Tempe Campus.


"The job of a poet who teaches is to be honest about the difficulty of the journey, how often it sinks into the many forms of failure, yet also to hand on that sustaining improbable faith, both by example and by instruction."

-- Gregory Donovan

1. Gregory Donovan's poetry course "Memory vs. Imagination: Essential Forces in Poetry" is all about using imagination to expand creativity. Donovan is the Senior Editor for the online journal Blackbird, he's also the author of the poetry collection Calling His Children Home (winner of the Denvins Award).

2. "The Art of a Very Short Story: Sudden-Fiction, Flash Fiction, and Short-Shorts"
This fiction course will be instructed by K.L Cook, winner of the Spokane Prize for his work Love Songs for the Quarantined. Other published--award winning--novels he wrote are Last Call and The Girl From Charnelle. Writers of all levels are welcome to learn or better enhance their skills in thematic development, plotting, suspense and characterization.

3. The best selling author of EIGHT novels, all in different genre's, Mary-Rose Hayes will be teaching "Action is Character," a course based on character driven stamina, creative thinking and relations to reality. Her most recent published work is called Blind Trust, a political thriller co-authored with US Senator Barbra Boxer.

Registration closes Friday, October 7. For more information about registering for a Piper Writers Studio course, visit the Piper Center website.

Need a Jump Start? Upcoming Class:Four Poems in Four Weeks

"The border is a line that marks difference. On one side, the American narrative; on the other, the Mexican narrative. Identity, for me, functions like the borderlands: a site of hybridization, of interlingualism."

Eduardo Corral,

the FIRST Latino to EVER win the Yale Series of Younger Poet's Competition

Eduardo will be teaching an online poetry course this fall for all levels of inspiring poets. Offered through the Piper Writers Studio, the course will focus on four different types of poems: praise, narrative, imitation and elegy. Also, in this safe and supportive environment, you will learn how to craft your poems through diction, tone, syntax, imagery techniques, line and stanza formation.

Corral graduated from Arizona State University and the Iowa Writer's Workshop. His poem's have appeared in several Literary Journals, such as the Black Warrior Review, Colorado Review, Indiana Review, Meridian, and The Nation. He is the editor and interviewer at thr Boxcar Poetry Review and served as the Olive B. O'Conner Fellow in Creative Writing at Colgate University and as the Phillip Roth Resident in Creative Writing at Bucknell University. Corral won the 2011 Yale Series of Younger Poet's Competition for his poem Border With Violin from his first book of poems, Slow Lightning. You can find some of his work in Miquel Murphy's book of poetry, OCHO #22: Dear America, Don't Be My Valentine.

"Four Poems in Four Weeks"
Course Instructor: Eduardo C. Corral

The week of October 3rd through the Week of October 24th

Online through the Virgina G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University

For more information about registering for this course or other exciting Piper Writers Studio courses, visit the Piper Center website.

Breathing in New Sources of Poems: A Piper Writers Studio Offering

"In making poems, I work with a kind of poetic faith: a trust that the needed material will come, if only I remain alert and open. A trust that additional streams of information, from mythology or history or language itself, will come along to complicate and frustrate the process and ultimately bring it to completion." -- Gregory Donovan

For those of you interested in advancing your poetic side (and who live in or near Phoenix!), The Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing (the proud home of HFR) has an opportunity for you to work with excited professional writers that want to help inspire and educate new talent.

POETRY: "Snow on the Mountain: Breathing in New Sources of Poems"

September 15th-November 3rd, Thursdays 6-8pm at the Piper Writers House at Arizona State University

Course Instructor: Gregory Donovan

Gregory is a senior editor of Blackbird: an online journal of literature and the arts and is one of the founding faculty members of the MFA in Creative Writing Program at the Virgina Commonwealth University. Donovan is the author of the poetry collection Calling His Children Home and won the Devins award in 1993.

For more information about registering for this or other exciting Piper Writers Studio courses, visit the Piper Center website.

Still Time to Register for Our Online Writing Classes!

Deadlines, Deadlines, Deadlines!

You only have a few hours left to register for an online Piper Writers Studio class. Classes include: "Coloring [Inside] the Lines: The Practice of Poetry," "Writing the World a Better Place," "Press Start/Restart: Getting on Track [Again] with Your Writing Project," "Writing for Real" and "Writing the Memoir." The registration deadline is midnight tonight (Oct. 15). Details and registration information are available here.

If in-person classes are more your speed, the Piper Writers Studio is also offering several one-day classes on Saturday, Oct. 23. The deadline to register for of these classes is midnight Sunday (Oct. 17).

Don't Miss your Chance, Sign Up for Piper Writers Studio classes!

Ladies and Gentlemen of the blog, there is something exciting going on at the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing! For those of you who are not aware, the Piper Center is the headquarters of Hayden’s Ferry Review. Throughout the year the Piper Center sponsors some pretty awesome programming including Piper Writers Studio, community classes for writers of all levels and interests. If you are an aspiring writer looking to expand your horizons, or just learn about writing, the Piper Writers Studio is for you. The Piper Writers Studio offers classes in three formats, 8-week, one-day and online, because we know that not everyone can make it out to Tempe. 8-week sessions are for those of you who want some intensive work, while one-day classes offer outstanding instruction on a Saturday afternoon. Classes are offered in poetry, fiction and non-fiction, so there is writing for everyone. They also offer a couple classes for all genres for the equal opportunity souls out there. Check out all of the class descriptions and teacher bios here!

Piper Writer's Studio Classes Start February 15th!

The Piper Center for Creative Writing, the home of HFR, is once again offering their Piper Writer’s Studio classes. These courses are open to writers of all levels and give students an opportunity to learn from experienced writers and teachers. Here are just a few of the classes that will be offered this spring:

Poetry: “Ekphrasis: A Conversation Among the Arts”
Instructor: Mark Haunschild
Mondays, 6:30-8:30 February 15- April 5

Break out of the traditional workshop in this class where you’ll go to art museums to create poems in response to local artwork. The class will focus on generating and revising original poems, as well as a collaborative long poem in response to an exhibition. Mark Haunschild is a former HFR editor and a graduate of ASU’s MFA program.

If you’re interested in taking a class, but aren’t in the area, check out our online courses, like this one:

Poetry: “Four Poems in Four Weeks”
Instructor: Sarah Vap
February 15-March 8

Having trouble getting started or keeping at it? Often, the most difficult part of writing is putting that first word on the page. This course will focus on the art and craft of generating first drafts. Prompts, questions, exercises, and readings each week will work toward building new poems. Sarah Vap is a graduate of ASU’s MFA program and the co-editor of the online journal 42opus. Check out her poetry in HFR issue 44!

Interested in taking a course but don’t have the time to commit to weekly classes? Try a one-day workshop to get a full course in just one day! Here’s just one of the classes offered:

Nonfiction: “From Ordinary to Extraordinary”
Instructor: Tania Katan
Saturday, February 20, 9-3:30 PM

Learn how everyday incidents can be crafted into amazing personal narratives! Through writing exercises, group discussions and individualized encouragement, we’ll transform the ordinary into the extraordinary. There will be opportunities to read your writing aloud. No writing experience is necessary. Tania Katan is a local author whose memoir, My One Night Stand With Cancer, won the 2006 Judy Grahn Award in Nonfiction and was an honoree of the 2006 American Library Association’s. Check out our Cup of Ambition interview with Tania Katan here!

This is only a brief sampling of the classes Piper Writer’s Studio offers. To see the full range of classes offered, click here.