Note from the Director: This workshop was offered in 2020. Learn more about this year’s workshops.
Creative Writing Sampler Workshop
Writing workshop in New Jersey
January 17-20, 2020
Led by Mimi Schwartz, Laura McCullough and Joe Costal
If you are eager to explore three different genres under the tutelage of award-winning writers and teachers, here’s your chance. Over the long weekend, you will engage with key elements of each genre, practice techniques that will turn your writing into a sensory experience and develop and refine your own style. Stimulating prompts will provide springboards for writing, sharing and discussion. Whether you’re seasoned or haven’t put pen to paper in far too long, this workshop will energize your writing. The Sampler will offer:
- Memoir—Saturday with Mimi Schwartz
- Poetry—Sunday with Laura McCullough
- Fiction—Monday with Joe Costal
*Workshop size is limited.*
Frequently Asked Question
Q: Do I have to be experienced in all three genres to take the Creative Writing Sampler?
A: Not at all. This workshop is for anyone who wants to explore three different genres and get some practice in each one. The workshop is designed to accommodate beginners as well as experienced writers. If you have more questions, see our full list of FAQs.
“Seriously, this may have been the best weekend of my life. I’m more of a memoir writer, but the Creative Writing Sampler so turned me on to poetry and fiction that I think I now want to dedicate myself to more advanced study of one of those. WHEN I come back to another Getaway, I might take something different only because this sampler workshop did such a great job.”
~ Lynn, Newburgh, NY
Biographies
Mimi Schwartz is the author of seven books, her latest, When History Is Personal, came out in March 2018 (University of Nebraska Press). Other recent books include Good Neighbors, Bad Times – Echoes of My Father’s German Village (winner of a Foreword Magazine Award for Memoir in 2008, and the New Hampshire Outstanding Literary Nonfiction Award, 2008); Thoughts from a Queen-Sized Bed (a JCC book club pick for ten best nonfiction, 2002) and Writing True, the Art and Craft of Creative Nonfiction, in its second edition and used by undergraduate and MFA programs nationwide (written with Sondra Perl). Mimi’s essays have appeared in The Missouri Review, Agni, Creative Nonfiction, Fourth Genre, Calyx, The New York Times, Tikkun, The Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine, Florida Review, Brevity, The Writer’s Chronicle, The Writer, among others. Seven have been Notables in Best American Essays. She’s been a MacDowell Fellow, a Geraldine R. Dodge Fellow and is Professor Emerita at Stockton University. For more information and to read some of her work, go to www.mimischwartz.net.
Laura McCullough’s Dumb Beautiful Beast is forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press, which published three other collections of her poetry. The Wild Night Dress, selected by Billy Collins in the Miller Williams Poetry Prize Series, was published by University of Arkansas Press in 2017. Panic won the the Kinereth Genseler Award and was published by Alice James Books. She edited two anthologies of essays on poetry, A Sense of Regard: Essays on Poetry and Race and The Room and the World: Essays on the Poet Stephen Dunn. Her prose and poetry have appeared widely in places such as Michigan Quarterly Review, The Southern Review, The Georgia Review, The American Poetry Review, Guernica, Pank, Gulf Coast, The Writer’s Chronicle, Best American Poetry and others. Visit her website: www.lauramccullough.org.
Joe Costal’s poems, short stories and essays have appeared in dozens of magazines, journals and websites—most recently in Painted Bride Quarterly, Watershed Review, Barrelhouse and Philadelphia Stories. Joe has presented workshops at The Muse & Marketplace, North America’s largest writing conference. His writing has won distinction from GrubStreet, Rowan University (where he graduated with an MA in Strategic Communications and a BA in English), Rider University Hispanic Writers’ Conference and Wesleyan University. Joe supervises the Humanities at a public high school and teaches writing at Stockton University. Visit his website and listen to him read his short story published in Glassworks.
