Announcing Spring Classes!

Good Tales and How to Tell Them: A Storytelling Writing Course with Tom Lee

Wednesday, March 19, through April 23, 2014, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm

Six Wednesday evenings, March 19th - April 23

The Mark Twain House's Storyteller-in-Residence, Tom Lee will lead a class exploring the nature of traditional stories - sometimes hundreds, sometimes thousands of years old.

We will look at stories from a variety of world traditions and discover how telling stories opens up a dialogue with the teller and the listener.

Tom Lee has told stories professionally for twenty years. His interest in traditional stories began while he was working as a cook in a tiny fishing village in Scotland. Tom's first storytelling performances were tales from Grimm, told in the the London pub theater called, appropriately, "The Man in the Moon." In the United States, Tom has worked in classrooms with children of all ages. "When it comes to stories," he says, "children have taught me everything I know." A roster artist with the Connecticut Commission on Culture and a frequent guest artist at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Yale Center for British Art. Tom is a fellow with the Connecticut Writing Project at the University of Connecticut. Tom Lee lives in Chester, Connecticut, where he gardens overambitiously. This class is appropriate for anyone interested in telling a good story. Educators, writers, and artists may find it particularly useful in developing their crafts.

$265. Call: (860) 280-3130 for more information & ticketing. Or, click here for tickets.

Memoir Writing Course with Mary-Ann Tirone Smith

Wednesday, March 19, through April 23, 2014; 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm

Six Wednesday evenings.

With pen or keys, we will revisit episodes in our lives that will not let us go, and we will think on those episodes wearing the analytical hat of the mathematician. We will write and re-write those episodes until we find the key to unlock what we are trying to understand, to grasp, to make sense of. We will not depend on the serenity of “once upon a time,” but instead learn to create the sense that what happened to us then is happening to us now, without the security of probable escape, no promise that everything will turn out just dandy. We will learn what is required to put our memories into an irresistible, provocative and coherent story, for that is what a good memoir is (as opposed to an autobiography and we’ll see the difference). Thankfully, we will be helped along by examining excellent memoirs already published.

Mary-Ann Tirone Smith was born and raised in Hartford, and has lived in Connecticut all her life except for the two years she served as a Peace Corps volunteer on Mt. Cameroon, an active volcano rising 14,000 feet above the West African equatorial sea. She has published eight novels, and collaborated on a ninth with her son, Jere Smith. Her memoir, Girls of Tender Age, was selected as a community read by several cities and towns, and is an ongoing favorite of book discussion groups. Her work has been reprinted in seven foreign languages, and in paperback, audio and ebook editions. Her short stories and essays have been included in several collections. She was awarded the Diana Bennet Writing Fellowship at the Black Mountain Institute, UNLV, where she worked on a Civil War novel just completed: The Honoured Guest: Anne Alger Craven, Witness to Sumter, in Her Words.

$265. Call: (860) 280-3130 for more information & ticketing. Or, click here for tickets.

Fiction Writing Course with Nancy Antle

Wednesday, March 19, through April 23rd, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm

Six Wednesday evenings, March 19th - April 23

Study the fine art of writing fiction under the experience and tutelage of Nancy Antle.

Nancy Antle has been writing and teaching for over thirty years. She is a 2013 MFA in fiction graduate from Southern CT State University and is currently a writing mentor/volunteer with the Afghan Women’s Writing Project online which “provides a platform for Afghan women to develop their voices and discover their power in the world.” She has taught beginning fiction writing at Southern CT State University, novel writing for Bulldog Tutors in New Haven and children’s book writing for both Gotham Writer’s Workshop and the Institute of Children’s Literature. She has published short stories, books and poems for adults, young adults and children. She lives with her husband in New Haven.

$265. Call: (860) 280-3130 for more information & ticketing. Or, click here for tickets.