Playwriting, Writing for Young Adults, & Writing in Twain's Library: Spring Workshops at the Mark Twain House & Museum

Playwriting: A Workshop with Sarah Moon

Saturday, March 22, 1:00 pm - 4:00 pm

In this workshop, we'll dive into dramatic writing with a handful of fresh writing exercises and short readings from the world's great dramatists. We'll discuss writing habits, keys to great dialogue, vivid characters and effective revision. We'll also cover some of the practical aspects of playwriting like submitting to contests and producing your own work. Why write drama? As Oscar Wilde said, "I regard theatre as...the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being." Come share!

Sarah Moon's plays have been produced and workshopped in Washington D.C., Indianapolis, Boston and New York City. Her play with music,Tauris, an adaptation of Euripides' Iphegenia at Tauris, premiered in the 2013 Planet Connections Festivity in NYC, receiving the Planet Connections Award for Best Book of a New Musical or Play with Music. Other recent New York credits include End of the Dog Days in the 2013 Summer Play Festival at the Players Theatre and Turtles in the April edition of Fresh Produce'd at the Drama Bookshop. In 2004, she received an MFA in Playwriting from Brandeis University where her play Losing the Game won the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Award for Best Original Play. Sarah is currently working toward her PhD in English Composition and Rhetoric at the University of Connecticut.

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

Writing in Mark Twain's Library

Sunday, March 23, 9:00 am to 11:30 am

"To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement. To condense the diffused light of a page of thought into the luminous flash of a single sentence, is worthy to rank as a prize composition just by itself...Anybody can have ideas--the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph." – Mark Twain

Sometimes, what we need to write our great novel, or even just a good page, is just a little peace and quiet. Throw in some inspiration from Hartford’s favorite author and we’d call that a successful morning. That’s why we’re introducing a new series called “Writing in Mark Twain's Library.” Sign up for a Sunday morning writing session in the Clemens family home: you and a maximum of fifteen other people will have the house to yourselves. Feel inspired by the beautiful sounds of the fountain in the family conservatory; rest your eyes upon Twain’s bookshelves as you ponder your next word. You’ll spend three hours of quiet in the historic library of our very own Sam Clemens. No doubt you'll begin your own masterpiece.

$50 for two and a half quiet hours in Twain's library. RESERVATIONS REQUIRED. (860) 280-3130, or click here for tickets.

Writing from the First Person for Young Adults: A Writing Workshop with Dayna Lorentz

Saturday, April 12, 1:00 pm - 4:00 pm

I dance, I scream, I cry: Writing in the First-Person Present for Young Adults

Lift the cover of any Young Adult novel lining the shelves of your local bookseller or library, and you’ll likely find that it’s told from the first person point of view, and in the present tense. Bestsellers The Hunger Games, Thirteen Reasons Why, Divergent, and Speak: all first-person, present tense narratives. In this workshop, we’ll discuss the appeal of this point of view for writing YA in particular, and also the kinds of problems it presents and limitations it entails. We’ll look at popular examples of the form, and also write and workshop short pieces of our own.

Dayna Lorentz is the author of the No Safety in Numbers trilogy (Dial/Kathy Dawson Books). The first book in the series, No Safety in Numbers, was selected by the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) as a 2013 Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers, and the second, No Easy Way Out, was a Barnes&Noble Bookseller’s Pick for Teens. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing and Literature from Bennington College. A former attorney, Dayna is now a full-time writer and lives with her husband, two kids, and dogs in Vermont. If you ask nicely, she will show you the proper way to eat a cupcake. Visit her at www.daynalorentz.com and NoSafetyinNumbersBooks.com.

$40. Call: (860) 280-3130 for more information & ticketing. Or, click here for tickets.