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Abby Wasserman
Literary Arts
Thursday Writing Groups
Every Thursday, 10 a.m. to noon OR 2 to 4 p.m.
8-session fee: $160, $144 OHCA members.
Single sessions $24 by appointment only.
A supportive and challenging environment to deepen writers’ abilities to take risks. Join us to write close to the bone and from the heart. For prose writers (journal, essay, memoir, fiction).
Fiction Writing Workshop – The Short Story
ASHLEY HALLSTED
Mondays, Jan 9-30; Feb 6-27; and/or March 5-26.
6:30 to 8:30 p.m.
4-session fee: $80, $65 OHCA members.
Single session: $24.
This class is designed for writers of all levels who wish to explore the craft of short fiction. Each week, we will examine the short story form as practicing writers. We will discuss isolated aspects of craft in the context of published stories and students’ own manuscripts. As a writer in this workshop, you will be encouraged to take creative risks and experiment with different approaches to fine-tune your unique voice in a safe and respectful environment. The objective here is to develop new skills and narrative techniques while trying out some fun writing prompts. At the end of 4 weeks, you’ll have a better grip on how to use these techniques as tools for building your stories. Join us! RSVP the Wednesday prior to each session.
Ashley Hallsted received an MFA in writing from the University of San Francisco. She currently leads private writing workshops at the SF Writers Forum and is completing Now Is Too Late, a collection of short stories. Away from the page, she can be found walking two very cuddly dogs around the city.
Poetry Reading: After the Firestorm and Western Solstice
SUSAN KOLODNY and LEONORE WILSON
Thursday, January 26.
7 to 8 p.m.
$10, $8 OHCA members.
Susan Kolodny’s poems appear in many journals including New England Review and The Beloit Poetry Journal, and in several anthologies, most recently The Place that Inhabits Us--Poems of the San Francisco Bay Watershed. Her first collection, After the Firestorm, is now in print from Mayapple Press. Susan is also a psychoanalyst practicing in Oakland where she works with artists, writers, and others and is the author of The Captive Muse (PsychoSocial Press2000).
Leonore Wison has taught at various universities and colleges in the San Francisco Bay Area. She continues to live on her family cattle ranch in Napa, California. She has won fellowships to the University of Utah and Villa Montalvo Center for the Arts. Her work has been in such magazines as Quarterly West, Madison Review, Third Coast, Poets Against the War, Nimble Spirit, and Trivia: Voices of Feminism. An advanced review for Western Solstice from Cathy Colman, author of Borrowed Dress and Beauty’s Tattoo is: " Leonore Wilson’s Western Solstice contains poems that spring whole and marvelous, shimmering from the earth. Born from a profound, wide-ranging, original and feminine mind, they bewitch the reader with a lush, passionate voice that is ‘all impulse of towards’ and a tensile form that is as breathtaking as its content. This book is a true treasure.” RSVP to save your seat by January 24.
Haiku Workshop
Thursday, February 23.
7 to 9 p.m.
$24, $20 OHCA and Haiku Society members.
Join us to learn about haiku and how you can use the form to express yourself, tell stories, and more. The class consists of guidelines and tips for writing haiku, and in-class writing exercises. This class is for everyone--the true beginner (with no prior writing experience) as well as for more experienced writers who want to learn more about the form. RSVP by Friday, February 17 to save your space.
Writing for Artists
RUTH GENDLER
Sunday, March 11.
Noon to 4 p.m.
$50, $40 OHCA members.
Writing, like art-making, is both work and play. This workshop is devoted to recovering the sense of writing as play—whether it’s the act of drawing the shapes of the letters and investigating the spaces between words, inventing conversations between beloved and less favored colors, allowing the shapes in one’s paintings to speak out loud, making up a dream for an artistic ancestor. We will explore ways that writing and art are similar and different as well as ways that each practice illuminates the other.
Our work will be rooted in the qualities of curiosity, clarity, courage, creativity and courtesy. This afternoon offers a time to try new ways of writing, a place to listen to the river of words that flows underneath our everyday activities, and a time and space dedicated to imagination, language and soul. RSVP by March 7.
Writing the Natural World
JULIET GRABLE
Sunday, March 18.
1 to 5 p.m.
$50, $40 OHCA members.
Do you enjoy spending time in the natural world and long to transmit these experiences into written prose? This intensive workshop will give you the tools to begin doing so. Topics covered include the importance of journaling, using your powers of observation, capturing concrete sensory details, finding the story, themes of cycles and seasonality, and the role of humor and reverence. RSVP by March 14.
Environmental writer Juliet Grable divides her time between Southern Oregon and Sausalito, CA. She holds a B.S. in Ecology and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of San Francisco. Juliet regularly contributes to Bay Nature Magazine; she is also working on a nonfiction book entitled On Richardson Bay: Notes from a Year of Living Aboard, in which she weaves a personal narrative about living aboard a sailboat with the natural history and ecology of Richardson Bay. Juliet is an avid birder and enthusiastic observer of the natural world.
Wednesday Evening Writing Group
Wednesdays, 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.
This group is at capacity. Please call with inquiries.
8-session fee: $200.
For writers working on long-term projects such as memoirs and novels.
Call or email the O’Hanlon Center Office to reserve your place:
415-388-4331 or office@ohanloncenter.org OHCA accepts cash, checks and credit cards (over the phone or in person in the office).