Song and Word Workshops

A grand, mesmerizing novel … (Karen Fisher has) a poet’s sense of the sound and heft of each word. Her compassionate, unsentimental eye makes even minor characters unforgettable.”

(Publisher’s Weekly)

Few people are born storytellers, but the principles of good storytelling can be learned and mastered by anyone with a will to write. Karen Fisher (“A Sudden Country”) says that she is not a born storyteller, yet her story give hope to writers who want their novels to succeed.

“Twelve years ago I embarked on a journey; my heart’s desire was to write a novel that I had dreamed of writing, and to have it published. After countless tries, and countless failures, I achieved what I’d set out to do … I have told a story.”

Her debut novel, “A Sudden Country” (Random House, 2005) is currently appearing on reviewer short-lists of “Best Fiction of 2005” across the country. In February, she’ll receive the Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award, honoring “A Sudden Country” as that association’s choice for the best adult novel of 2005.

Karen will share much of what she has learned and how she learned it. She’ll use her story (and yours, if you like) to explore the principles of good storytelling. She will stress these principles in writing and revision exercises that focus on creating clearer, more truthful, and more compelling writing.

Bring pages of your work-in-progress, or come armed only with desire. The workshop is for all who wish to write (and read) more deeply, more clearly, and with more understanding. A set of comprehensive typed notes will be provided so that you can relax and listen. There will be time for lecture, discussion and exercises; and private time to discuss your own work and ideas.

Karen Fisher has been a wrangler, a teacher, a farmer, an arborist, and a carpenter while raising a family and writing. Her novel was praised by The New Yorker: “A deeply affecting account of the journey West … succeeds in rendering not only the overwhelming landscape and the small, hard details of daily life, but monumental sorrow and the meanderings of love in its many channels.” And Library Journal called it “a literary masterpiece.”

Fee: $310 includes accommodations and five meals.
Optional retreat: Stay Monday and Tuesday after the workshop to work on your own project; $175 includes six meals; two-person limit.