After a long, pandemic-related hiatus, RAAC is pleased to announce the return of the RAAC Reading Series on June 25, 2022, at Quievremont Winery (162 Gid Brown Hollow Rd. #335, Washington VA 22747). The event is free and will include light hors d’oeuvres; wine will be available for purchase by the tasting, glass, or bottle. A social hour will begin at 7:00 p.m., during which books will be available for purchase and signature by the featured author. The reading will begin at 8:00 p.m. and last for approximately one hour.
Featured Author
Our featured author will be novelist and memoirist Sharon Harrigan, author of the novel Half (from which she will be reading) and the memoir Playing with Dynamite, both published by the University of Wisconsin Press. Sharon has an MFA in Creative Writing from Pacific University and has published more than 50 essays, short stories, and reviews in the Virginia Quarterly Review, New York Times (Modern Love), The Rumpus, and elsewhere. She received fellowships from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts, as well as the Kinder Award from Pleiades magazine, the Cecilia Joyce Johnson Award from the Key West Literary Seminar, and a Notable Book Award from the Library of Michigan. She works as an independent editor/book coach and teaches creative writing to adults at WriterHouse in Charlottesville, Virginia, where she lives with her family.
Writing Workshop: Deep Dive into Point of View
During the afternoon before her reading, Ms. Harrigan will also be offering a 2-hour writing workshop to writers of all skill levels. Entitled “Deep Dive into Point of View,” the course description follows:
Perhaps you have an idea for a story or a novel. One of the biggest decisions you have to make is which point of view to use. Or maybe you’ve already written a story or a novel. Are you sure the point of view you’ve chosen best fits the material? Point of view is one of the most confusing and misunderstood aspects of fiction writing. It’s so much more complicated than deciding whether to use I (first person), you (second person), or he/she (third person). If you choose a non-default POV such as first or second person, how will you make the reader believe that your narrator has a compelling reason to tell this story now—and an audience in the fictional world the narrator is telling the story to? How will you immerse us in the narrator’s consciousness enough to justify the limitations of this more restrictive POV? And if you choose to write in third person, which kind of third person will you use—the kind that allows us access into only one character’s head or all of them? If you’re writing a novel, can you use different points of view in different chapters?
In this two-hour workshop, we will spend the first hour analyzing short excerpts from published stories and novels that use each kind of POV, both familiar and unusual. During the second hour, we will do related in-class exercises and writing prompts. By the end, you will not only have more tools your own writing, but more appreciation of what you read.
Print hand-outs of the excerpts will be distributed on-site.
The workshop will be held in a private meeting space at Quievremont Winery. It will begin at 2:30 p.m. and run until 4:30 p.m. Writers should bring writing materials (either a pen and paper or laptop). The workshop cost is $20; all participants should bring either cash or a check made out to the Rappahannock Association for Arts and Community (RAAC). Seating is very limited, so those who wish to participate should send an email as soon as possible to: reading@raac.org.