Hurston/Wright’s Virtual Writers Weekend is a fast-paced intensive workshop period that focuses on one element of craft facilitated by an award-winning professional writer in the genre they are teaching. Participants are welcomed virtually by Hurston/Wright on Friday evening at 6pm EST where they meet their instructor and workshop participants. Workshop sessions begin on Saturday at 9 am EST to Sunday at 4pm EST. The workshop weekend includes one-on-one time with the instructor.
2024 Writers Weekend Virtual Workshops
June 14th – June 16th
Fiction Workshop
This workshop empowers students to explore the elements that constitute great fiction and to integrate these insights into their own writing. Regardless of whether their focus lies in crafting short stories, epic fantasies, historical narratives, or murder mysteries, participants will complete this workshop equipped with the essential tools for honing their craft. Students will
- Acquire proficiency in fundamental aspects such as plot construction, dialogue refinement, and character development.
- Enhance their mastery of sentence-level composition, leveraging techniques such as imagery, precise vocabulary selection, and rhythmic cadence.
- Cultivate the disciplined practices characteristic of seasoned fiction writers, encompassing the realms of editing, revising, and manuscript submission.
Designed for aspiring writers at the outset of their journey or those in the process of establishing themselves, this course caters to individuals who are deeply committed to advancing their skills in the craft of writing.
Fiction Instructor:
JJ Amaworo Wilson is the author or co-author of twenty books. His 2016 novel, Damnificados, won four awards including the Hurston/Wright Award for Debut Fiction and was an Oprah Top Pick. His 2021 novel, Nazaré, won three awards. His short fiction has been published in The Penguin Book of New Black Writing, African American Review, Justice Journal, and A Public Space, among many others. Two of Amaworo Wilson’s non-fiction books won prizes that saw him honored at Buckingham Palace in 2008 and 2011. He is the Writer-in-Residence at Western New Mexico University and teaches creative writing at Stonecoast.
Poetry Workshop
Poetry Workshop Description:
Holding The Grain
This workshop will explore the language of sound supplementing the language of sense. We will study poems that inhabit and orbit a sense of linguistic ineffability, as well as generate poems within that mode of address and expression.
The title of this course is taken from Roland Barthes’ essay “The Grain of the Voice.” Barthes’ ‘grain’ refers to “the body in the voice as it sings, the hand as it writes, the limb as it performs.” We will navigate our understanding of language as material and the ecosystem of the poem as an animate field of knowing, change, and contradiction. We will read some poems together and write as well, but most importantly, we’ll get a sense of the music and dissonance present in the material of our poems. Accepted students will be sent Roland Barthes’ essay “The Grain of the Voice” to read before the start of the workshop.
It is my hope that there will be moments of genuine connection, a greater sense of the potentials of poetic language, and an exploration of language as material.
Poetry Instructor
Taylor Johnson is from Washington, DC. He is the author of Inheritance (Alice James Books, 2020), winner of the 2021 Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America. His work appears in Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review, The Baffler, Scalawag, and elsewhere. Johnson is a Cave Canem graduate fellow and a recipient of the 2017 Larry Neal Writers’ Award from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and the 2021 Judith A. Markowitz Award for Emerging Writers from Lambda Literary. Taylor was the inaugural 2022 Poet-in-Residence at the Guggenheim Museum. He is the Poet Laureate of Takoma Park, Maryland. With his wife, Elizabeth Bryant, Taylor curates the Green Way Reading Series at People’s Book in Takoma Park.
Nonfiction Workshop
Non-Fiction Workshop Description:
Writing as Reverence & Returning
This course is for writers at all levels. Jessica Kehinde Ngo delves into the concept of writing as a journey back to one’s origins. Students will be encouraged to engage in writing exercises that examine various facets of their heritage, such as culinary history, family customs, and community connections.
Students will
- Gain skills in effectively navigating the portrayal of family members and ancestral narratives.
- Explore the nuanced concept of truth as it relates to writing from personal recollection.
- Discover techniques for seamlessly blending personal experiences with broader universal themes.
Nonfiction Instructor
Jessica Kehinde Ngo is a Nigerian-American food writer and memoirist. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in publications, such as Epicurious, Whetstone, TASTE, the James Beard Foundation blog, The Counter, The New York Times, Eaten, and Cuisine Noir. She was a 2022 – 2023 Legacy Network Advisee for the James Beard Foundation and a 2023 winner of an IACP Food Writing Award. She is Associate Professor of English at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles and is currently writing a book about the role plantain has played in her life.
Research Methods for Writers Workshop
Research Methods for Writers Workshop Description:
Utilizing her extensive background in Sociology spanning decades, Lucy Anne Hurston will guide participants through a three-day course emphasizing:
- In-depth exploration of a chosen topic through the sociological perspective.
- Techniques for effectively organizing large volumes of information.
- Ethical considerations in both written expression and presentation.
Prior familiarity with research methods is not a prerequisite. The course will offer a gentle introduction, culminating in a modest project for each participant to showcase to their peers.
Research Methods for Writers Instructor:
Lucy Anne Hurston, niece of prominent 20th-century writer Zora Neale Hurston and Professor Emerita (Sociology), is the author of the remarkable multimedia biography Speak, So You Can Speak Again: A Life of Zora Neale Hurston (2004), drawing from her experience of working on this project and teaching research methods to aspiring scholars.