Michelle Brafman is a writer and educator. Her debut novel, “Washing the Dead,” was featured in Book Riot’s compilation of 100 essential books on women and religion. Her second work, “Bertrand Court,” showcases stories that have garnered numerous accolades, including a Special Mention in the Pushcart Prize Anthology.
Michelle’s essays have graced the pages of Oprah Daily, O Quarterly, Slate, LitHub, The Forward, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Tablet, and other publications.
She instructs fiction writing at the Johns Hopkins MA in Writing program and is the founder of Glen Echo Workshops, where she leads monthly multi-genre workshops and teaches summer college essay writing classes.
Margaret Talbot has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2004. Formerly a Contributing Writer at The New York Times Magazine and Executive Editor of The New Republic, her articles and essays have been featured in esteemed collections, including “The Best of the Best American Science Writing” and “The Art of the Essay.”
Talbot, a recipient of the Whiting Writers Award, was a Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation. Her memoir/biography, “The Entertainer: Movies, Magic, and My Father’s Twentieth Century,” published in 2012, received acclaim from USA Today as a “fascinating social history of America” and Slate praised it, saying “Talbot has woven a tale as romantic and vivid as any film could hope to be, while still seeing every bit of it plain.”
Her latest work, “By the Light of Burning Dreams: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the Second American Revolution,” co-authored with her brother David Talbot, was released by HarperCollins in 2021.
Jarvis Slacks
Jarvis Slacks
Monica Mische is a Professor at Montgomery College, Rockville, where she teaches composition and developmental English, coaches students with disabilities, and helps edit the Potomac Review. She holds a PhD in literature from the Catholic University of America. When time allows, she writes non-fiction.
Jarvis Slacks is a Professor at Montgomery College, Rockville, where he teaches composition and creative writing. He holds an MFA from the University of North Carolina and, in his own writing, focuses primarily on fiction. By advising students in Humanities, he hopes to give students the same opportunities that he had: “Sometimes, we only need a chance. “
In this workshop—intended for writers working at all levels—we will run through a series of guided prompts designed to both help participants understand the basic elements of point of view, as well as how to pump energy into an already completed work. Point of view is arguably the most intuitive, and yet the most misunderstood element of fiction writing. Consider this scenario: an altercation occurs after a minor collision at a busy intersection. How does the story change when viewed through the eyes of the guilty driver, or police officer called to the scene, or the Labrador Retriever who seizes the opportunity to chew through the arm rest in the back seat?
Susan Coll is the author of seven novels including the USA Today bestselling Real Life and Other Fictions (2024), Bookish People (2022), and The Stager (2014), a New York Times and Chicago Tribune Editor’s Choice. Her 2007 novel Acceptance was made into a television movie starring Joan Cusack. Her work has appeared in publications including the New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post, Washingtonian Magazine, Moment Magazine, NPR.org, and Atlantic.com. She was a recent president of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation and is the events advisor at Politics and Prose Bookstore.
Everyone seems to be carrying around ideas for a memoir these days. Should you write one? Why? What mistakes should you avoid? Workshop participants will examine and discuss recently published memoirs. They will also open their literary suitcases for inspection.
Randon Billings Noble is an essayist who has two books published by the University of Nebraska Press: her collection Be with Me Always (2019) and her anthology of lyric essays, A Harp in the Stars (2021). Other work has appeared in the Modern Love column of The New York Times, Brevity, Creative Nonfiction, and elsewhere. Currently she is the founding editor of the online literary magazine After the Art and teaches in West Virginia Wesleyan’s Low-Residency MFA Program and Goucher’s MFA in Nonfiction Program.
You can read more at www.randonbillingsnoble.com.