This event is canceled!

Marion Winik’s Workshop:
Great Beginnings: On Reading and Writing Page One

Our approach will be to ask each student to bring an example of a beginning they love — can be from an essay, story, novel, memoir, whatever. Ideally, you will photograph or scan or screenshot the first page or two of your selection so I can display them via a projector.

We’ll analyze what makes these work. I’ll have examples too. The idea will be to generate a list of opening gambits (a preliminary version of which I will have actually created beforehand.)

Then you will rewrite the opening of the piece you bring to class. We may share these or–if the morning discussion has sparked an idea for a new piece–you could write that new opening. I’ll allow 30 minutes for this. Then we’ll share these new openings and discuss!

Saturday, September 16, 2023:
10:00 AM-4:00 PM
$200. Limited seating!

If you’re coming from out-of-town and need lodging, we recommend Holiday Inn Express (443-744-8200); Hilton Garden Inn (410-654-0030); or Hyatt Place (410-998-3630), all very good and in nearby Owings Mills.

University of Baltimore professor MARION WINIK is the author of The Big Book of the Dead, winner of the 2019 Towson Prize for Literature. Among her ten other books are First Comes Love and Above Us Only Sky.

Her award-winning Bohemian Rhapsody column appears monthly at Baltimore Fishbowl, and her essays have been published in The New York Times, The Sun, and elsewhere.

She writes book reviews for People, Newsday, The Washington Post, and Kirkus Reviews; she hosts The Weekly Reader podcast at WYPR. She was a commentator on NPR for fifteen years; her honors include an NEA Fellowship in Creative Nonfiction. More info at marionwinik.com.