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Writing Workshop on NYPL with Gerry Visco

[IMG:top]Gerry Visco wears glasses[/IMG]


You can't try to do things; you simply must do them.
Ray Bradbury

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them.
George Bernard Shaw

If you wait for inspiration, you're not a writer, but a waiter.
Anonymous

Are you a talker or a writer? A thinker or a doer? If you have a story to tell and are prepared to work, stop dreaming, get up off your ass, and let’s do it!
Gerry Visco





Writing Workshop with Gerry Visco Writing Workshop with Gerry Visco


Do you want to write but you’ve mainly talked about it, thought about it, or never finished the material you began? What about that long overdue memoir?

Now’s the time to stop thinking and actually do it.

Join our workshop where we will support one another to produce high-quality writing. Experienced writer and journalist will motivate the class to write and learn constructive feedback and editing techniques which can be applied to your own work.

I’ll provide in-class writing exercises and techniques on how to write an article, essay, or proposal for a book project with the goal of publishing. Creating and maintaining a well-written blog will be one strategy in establishing a writing career.

Lectures, handouts, exercises to free up the creative process, and provocative guest speakers will shake you out of the doldrums. We'll read selections from writers who have mastered the craft of prose to inspire us and we'll occasionally read our own material aloud in class.

In an informal and fun atmosphere, we'll talk about how to write pitch letters, feature articles, essays, profiles, cultural reviews, memoir pieces, and outline the steps necessary to develop a book proposal and chapter. Journalistic techniques like hooks, angles, “ledes,” research, and interviewing, as well as such craft elements as description, structure, character, and voice will be discussed. We'll talk about marketing your material. The workshop will be conducted in a positive, supportive atmosphere providing direct and honest feedback. We’ll all work on freeing up our creativity and developing our own personal style of expression with occasional experiments in form or technique. I'm looking for a diverse group and I encourage you to apply even if your work is controversial or your primary genre isn’t non-fiction – writing it out in prose may free you to develop material for poetry, fiction, spoken word, and dramatic writing.

Writing Workshop with Gerry Visco at the New York Public Library, free, beginning Monday April 6th and ending on June 29th, 2009. 6 to 8 PM. 96th Street Branch—New York Public Library. 112 East 96th Street (between Lexington and Park Avenues) New York, NY 10022.


Admission Requirements:
Please send a letter of interest (including a brief bio) and a writing sample (less than 2,000 words) including contact information (phone and email address). If you have a few links to your work, feel free to email those as well or if you've worked in workshops in the past, the names of the instructors.

Please email this to me at gerryvisco@gmail.com

Gerry Visco is a freelance writer, photographer, and radio host who has published in New York Press, The Village Voice, The New York Sun, New York Magazine, Fit Yoga, Beyond Race, Our Town, West Side Spirit, the Chelsea Clinton News, New York Blade Gay City News, Spread Magazine, The Villager, Columbia Review, the Adobe Anthology, and other publications in print and online. She hosts a show on WKCR FM entitled “Arts and Answers.” Originally from Boston, Mass., she's lived in New York City since 1974. Her subjects have included personalities such as Sufjan Stevens, Todd Haynes, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Penny Arcade, Clayton Patterson, Buck Angel, Crispin Glover, the Cockettes, David Del Tredici, the Cockettes, writer Daniel Mendelsohn, and other artists, musicians, and performers. She's written restaurant reviews, pieces covering NYC neighborhoods, features about yoga and martial arts, humorous essays, and profiles of people who aren't afraid to be on the edge. She's writing a memoir about her descent into the gritty exhilarating inferno of New York City during the 1970s and 1980s. Visco has an MS from Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism in 2005, an MFA from Columbia's School of the Arts in 1990, a BA from Columbia's School of General Studies in 1987, and an AAS from Fashion Institute of Technology in 1980. She taught a fiction workshop for Gotham Writers' Workshop for seven years and has also worked as an editor, actor, secretary, model, teacher, coat check girl, census taker, and muse but is currently employed as an indentured servant at Columbia University. www.gerryvisco.com
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