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Mary Sojouner

The Scalpel and the Thread

A Master Workshop for Writers

with Mary Sojourner
writer, writing mentor and instructor
Using five pages of your own written work
*Learn the beauty of taking the scalpel to your words, and

*Rediscover how to weave threads of color back into your writing

You’ve written for a while, but you need more than a jumpstart, more than free-writing. You want to take your work deeper. Join Mary Sojourner, writer, writing mentor and instructor, and NPR commentator, for a two-part writing circle focused on craft.

The workshop is a Southwest Festival of the Written Word Prologue Event and will take place on Saturday, October 4, 2014, from 9:00am-3:00pm, in Pinos Altos, seven miles north of Silver City NM.

The cost is $95/participant. Space is limited to 10 participants.

To register, email info@swwordfiesta.org or call 520-850-0014.

  • In the morning, you’ll work on developing honing skills, re-structuring passive writing into active and making room for the rhythm of your voice. You’ll learn the beauty of taking the scalpel to your words.
  • During lunch, you’ll work by yourself with your five pages using what you’ve learned in the morning.
  • In the afternoon, you’ll play with adding powerful (and just enough) detail, playing some more with flat sentences and narratives, and creating dialogue that grabs your reader by the throat and heart. You’ll rediscover threads of color in your writing and weave them in.

You’ll need to bring with you,

  • 5 pages of your writing, double-spaced in 12 pt. Times New Roman font
  • your questions about your work, and
  • a lunch.

Sojourner-29             Sojourner Delicate-196x300          Sojourner Sister-of-the-Dream-195x300

Mary honors story and she honors the importance of craft. She teaches the same way she writes-by paying attention to story, then craft. You choose from her cabinet of tools and techniques. You try them out and discover what works for you.

With her help, you discover what is missing in your writing life, not just when you’re at your computer and with your notebook, but in the whole of your life. She writes, “We are in relationship with our writing as we are in relationship with our lives.”

Mary Sojourner is the author of three novels, Sisters of the Dream (1989); Going Through Ghosts (2010) and 29 (2014); the short story collection, Delicate (2001, 2004); essay collection, Bonelight: ruin and grace in the New Southwest (2002); memoir, Solace: rituals of loss and desire (2004) and memoir/self-help guide, She Bets Her Life (2010).

She is an NPR commentator and the author of countless pieces for High Country News, Yoga Journal, Writers on the Range, Matador Network and dozens of other publications.

She was chosen as a Distinguished Writer in Residence in 2007 by the Virginia C. Piper Center for Creative Writing,at Arizona State University in Tempe.

Mary has presented several writing workshops in Silver City, through the Gila River Festival and Aldo Leopold Charter School.

She teaches writing in private circles, one-on-one, at writing conferences and book festivals, and through an on-line course for Matador University.

For Mary, writing is the most powerful tool she has found for doing what is necessary to mend oneself and one’s greater world.

Visit Mary’s website, www.breakthroughwriting.net for more information about her and her work. And check out her blog while you’re there.

Disclaimer:
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Southwest Word Fiesta™ or its steering committee.

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Enriching Life Through Learning in Community

We respectfully acknowledge that the entirety of southwestern New Mexico is the traditional territory, since time immemorial, of the Chis-Nde, also known as the people of the Chiricahua Apache Nation. The Chiricahua Apache Nation is recognized as a sovereign Native Nation by the United States in the Treaty of Amity, Commerce, and Friendship of 1 July 1852 (10 Stat. 979) (Treaty of Santa Fe ratified 23 March 1853 and proclaimed by President Franklin Pierce 25 March 1853).

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Mimbres Press of Western New Mexico University is a traditional academic press that welcomes agented and unagented submissions in the following genres: literary fiction, creative non-fiction, essays, memoir, poetry, children’s books, historical fiction, and academic books. We are particularly interested in academic work and commercial work with a strong social message, including but not limited to works of history, reportage, biography, anthropology, culture, human rights, and the natural world. We will also consider selective works of national and global significance.