Get to know your own characters better and understand ways to bring them more fully to life.

There are no available registration dates at this time.

The most memorable stories have protagonists who feel as complex and alive and vulnerable, as maddeningly blind yet integrally palpable as ourselves; characters we remember long after we finish the book the way we remember people we know: Jane Eyre, Lily Bart, Anna Karenina, Gulley Jimson, Augie March. You’ll focus on the development and deepening of the fictional characters in your own novel-in-progress or short story. Learn craft techniques such as voice, point of view, dialogue, interiority, and agency, and study various masterfully evoked characters from classic works of literature as well as contemporary novels.

Bring 25 pages of your work-in-progress to share for group workshops and individual feedback. Please come prepared to write and revise: a block of time will be set aside daily for individual work.

Get to know your own characters better and understand ways to bring them more fully to life, in the most essential and mysterious sense of connection to your reader—fulfilling the implicit promise of all beloved stories.

Winter/Spring lodging and meal package available for $475 per week. Includes breakfast and lunch Monday – Friday. Dinner services are not available during our Winter/Spring session. Meal plan (mandatory) without lodging is $125 per week. Plan to arrive on Sunday afternoon/evening to be rested for your workshop which will begin Monday morning, following registration. Workshops will end late Friday afternoon. Lodging is booked for a Saturday departure.

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Instructor: Kate Christensen

Kate Christensen is the author of seven novels, including The Great Man, which won the 2008 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction, and, most recently, The Last Cruise. She is also the author of two culinary memoirs, Blue Plate Special and How to Cook a Moose, which won the 2016 Maine Literary Award for Memoir. Her short works have appeared in many periodicals, including Vogue, Elle, Bookforum, Tin House, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Food and Wine.

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