2024 Fall Ossabaw Weekend Writer’s Bash
APPLICATION DEADLINE: September 15, 2024
Where shades take us to the past, and shadows forever fall.
Ossabaw Island Writers’ Retreat is happy to announce the opening of applications for our three-day weekend retreat, The 2024 Weekend Writer’s Bash. Held October 25-27, 2024, the retreat will feature workshops and seminars led by our nationally recognized faculty, independent publishers, and evening readings by faculty and participants.
WORKSHOP PARTICIPATION: $1695 tuition covers three days and two nights lodging, meals, manuscript consultations with nationally recognized authors, craft seminars, readings and ferried transportation to the island.
EXCITING NEWS: We’re now offering $100 scholarship discounts for a limited number of university students, military personnel, and teachers. In addition, we’re also offering Sisters in Crime members a $75 discount. Upload a photocopy of your official I.D. in the application form.
Saturday Craft and Seminar Workshops:
Craft Session #1: 9:00 am
Tony Morris will present: The Creative Imagination: Inspiration, that Orphic moment of detached awareness (whose infrequent, disobliging appearance confounds and frustrates many a poet), can only be charmed by one who has practiced the craft of writing in times of expiration—those times when the muse has “passed.” In this seminar I will look at the role of imagery in our writing to evoke the stories and pictures that will give your work the breath of life that will awaken your readers to your story or poem.
Craft Session #2: 10:00 am
Lenore Hart presents Free-For- All: An in-depth and straight-forward analysis of what makes writing click, providing writers with a bag of tools, including character development, dialogue, setting and style, to tell stories that keep readers engaged.
Craft Session #3: 11:00 am
Lee Griffin presents Summary Writing: To keep the story interesting and alive, and the reader reading, we must Show, Not Tell. Often this happens by letting your story unfold through a series of scenes. But the same rule (showing, not telling) applies as well in summary. By choosing revealing details, vivid descriptions, scenes that are not much longer than a snapshot, you can economically give all the background information needed to bring your piece to the time and events in which your story takes place.
Craft Session #4: 11:00 am
Danelle Lejeune presents Writing Everywhere: Writing takes place not just at the writer’s desk, but in the super market, at the gym, walking the dog. How to stay alert to the writing that goes on in our life as we live.
Craft Session #5: 1:00 pm
Amy Condon presents The Job of the Beginning: Whether you are writing a biography, a memoir, speculative or literary fiction, you will spend more time getting the beginning right than any other part of your story. This short session homes in on the key ideas you need to focus on to craft a beginning that sings and makes the reader turn the page.
Craft Session #6: 1:00 pm
Lenore Hart presents Where We Go: Using our travels to inform and invest our work with the textures, colors, sounds, smells, and tastes of other cultures.
Craft Session #7: 2:00 pm
Laura Valerie presents Variations on Voice: A close-up review of the role of voice to shape the driving force of the ethical narrative imperative to speak truth to the reader
Craft Session #8: 3:00 pm
Publishing Panel with David Poyer, Leigh Rich, Amy Condon presents Getting Published: An essential part of any desire to write is publication. This panel will outline some of the essential ideas and tools you will need to develop in order to raise your chances of securing an agent and finding a home for your work.