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Liz Alterman: How One Memoir Class Changed Everything

Liz Alterman: How One Memoir Class Changed Everything

Liz Alterman is the author of the award-winning memoir, Sad Sacked, the young adult thriller, He’ll Be Waiting, the suspense novels The Perfect Neighborhood, The House on Cold Creek Lane, and You Shouldn’t Have Done That, as well as the romcom Claire Casey’s Had Enough. Here,…

Mike Allegra: KidLit ‘Gives My Imagination Permission to Run Wild’

Mike Allegra: KidLit ‘Gives My Imagination Permission to Run Wild’

Mike Allegra is the author of 18 books for children and has taught at The Writers Circle for over six years. As a teacher, Mike helps kids, teens, and adults fall in love with creative writing, and express their voices on the page. Here, he…

Instructor Wisdom from Talia Tucker

Instructor Wisdom from Talia Tucker

Talia Tucker lives and writes in New Jersey. She has a BA in communication from Rutgers University and an MA in liberal studies from Loyola University Maryland. She loves mindless comedies and twisty slow-burn dramas, both of which inspire her writing, as does her connection…

Instructor Wisdom from April Darcy

Instructor Wisdom from April Darcy

Prize-winning writer April Darcy brings joy and wisdom to her writing students, even when pushing them through the super-intensive NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) each November.    Her latest fiction can be found in Water~Stone Review and in Shenandoah, where she received the Shenandoah River Fiction Prize. Her…

Instructor Wisdom from Novelist Libby Cudmore

Instructor Wisdom from Novelist Libby Cudmore

Libby Cudmore is a favorite among our Summer Creative Writing Intensives teens. For the last several summers, she’s taught everything from mystery and detective novels to sci-fi/fantasy and micro fiction.  Her brand new novel, Negative Girl, is getting rave reviews. Libby’s also the 2018 recipient…

Writing When Life Gets In the Way

Writing When Life Gets In the Way

by Co-Director Michelle Cameron “Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.” – John Lennon Once upon a time, back when I worked for a digital agency, we were asked to explore a list of life events for a corporate client. No…

The Summer of Eras!

The Summer of Eras!

by Rebecca Kilroy, former Summer Intensive Program Coordinator, moving on to brand new things It’s the summer of Eras! I’ve lost count of the number of Eras tour t-shirts our students wore to the Intensive. Not a single Wednesday special event passed without at least…

On Journaling

On Journaling

by Christina Kapp, TWC Instructor & Outreach Coordinator I wish I could say that my journal was any less cluttered than my desk, my closet, my attic, but it’s not. I aspire to order in so many things and fail miserably. There are plenty of…

Joyously Difficult: Finding Delight in the Creative Work of Poetry

Joyously Difficult: Finding Delight in the Creative Work of Poetry

by Jared Harél, TWC Poetry Instructor “The craft of poetry is not easy. It is better than easy. It is joyously difficult.” – John Ciardi As a kid, I was lazy. Really lazy. It wasn’t a decision so much as a fundamental disposition—something innate and…

Tandem Writing: Two Writers, Two Friends, One Purple and One Green

Tandem Writing: Two Writers, Two Friends, One Purple and One Green

by Samantha Simeone and Lillie Hannon* It’s with just a touch of embarrassment we admit that we met online, specifically at Archive of our Own, which is a hub for fan-works, exchanging comments on each other’s stories about a children’s movie we both felt was…

Wrestling with So-Called Process

Wrestling with So-Called Process

by TWC Memoir Instructor Jill Smolowe There’s a piece of advice commonly offered to people stymied by the tendency to procrastinate: focus on the process, not the outcome. This can be wonderful advice for writers when it’s understood to mean that you should concentrate on…

Getting in the Game: All About Writing Contests

Getting in the Game: All About Writing Contests

by Christina Kapp, TWC Outreach and Development Coordinator When I was in high school I won a sweater in a raffle. Long-sleeved and cropped, it was made of white angora on one side, black wool on the other, with a braided seam down the middle.…