This seven-month/seven-genre writing series is for writers of all levels and areas of interest. The series is held one Saturday a month from 2-5 pm at Arrowhead, the historic home of Herman Melville. Listed dates are subject to change. In the event of snow/blizzard conditions, workshops will be postponed.
$325 for the series; to register email education@berkshirehistory.org
Participation is limited to twelve writers; participants are highly encouraged to attend every workshop.
November 9, 2024
Jana Laiz
Inspired by Melville: Gratitude For the Gifts
To start this six month series, Jana will tour participants through Arrowhead, introducing them to the life and works of Herman Melville. Every participant will then have the opportunity to write in Melville’s study, with a unique set of prompts to inspire creativity in the place Melville called home from 1850-1863. Participants have been so inspired by this unique opportunity and have expressed their gratitude in a variety of ways that Jana decided to add a new component to her workshop. Before the pandemic, Jana was running pop-up gratitude workshops at various tea houses and coffee shops. It was so much fun and so well received that she will bring some of her favorite gratitude writing exercises to this workshop. Expressing gratitude has been proven to improve health and mood and allow creativity to flow. Jana is grateful every time she sets foot in Melville’s study.
About the Facilitator
Writer-In-Residence Emeritus and Education Coordinator at BCHS Arrowhead, Jana Laiz is a writer with a purpose, changing the world one book at a time. Her books range in topics from climate disruption, refugee issues, equal rights to elder stories. Since being offered her residency in 2012, Jana has fallen in love with Melville and Arrowhead and continues to learn more every day. She is the award-winning author of Weeping Under This Same Moon, A Free Woman On God’s Earth, The Twelfth Stone, Billy Budd in the Breadbox – The Story of Herman Melville & Eleanor, Thirty-Five Days to Baltimore and more. Jana leads workshops for children and adults all over the world. Visit her at www.janalaiz.com.
December 14, 2024
Brandi Megan Granett
Going Places: Setting Goals and Starting Your Marketing Journey
This workshop will guide you through essential steps to move your work from concept to submission. You’ll learn how to set clear goals, maintain accountability, and craft an elevator pitch that captures the essence of your story. We’ll delve into writing compelling query letters, researching agents, small presses, contests, and literary magazines, and developing strategies for managing submissions. Additionally, you’ll explore ways to build a strong online and community presence as a writer.
Through practical exercises like visualizing your finished book cover, writing an elevator pitch, and crafting a personal contract, you’ll leave with actionable steps to propel your writing career forward. By the end of this workshop, you’ll have the tools and confidence to navigate the path to publication and connect with the literary world.
About the Facilitator
Brandi Megan Granett is an author, higher education administrator, and writing professor. She earned her Ph.D. in Creative Writing at Aberystwyth University and her MFA in Fiction from Sarah Lawrence College. Ampersand + Arrow published Ever Glade in 2019. Triple Love Score, was published by Wyatt-Mackenzie in Fall 2016. Morrow/HarperCollins published her first novel, My Intended, in 2000. Her short fiction appeared in Pebble Lake Review, Folio, Pleiades, and other literary magazines and is collected in the volume, Cars and Other Things That Get Around. She teaches part-time in Drexel’s MFA Program and in the Creative Writing Department at Southern New Hampshire University. She serves as the Assistant Director for Course Improvement, e-Learning and Special Projects at Thomas Edison State University. When she is not writing or teaching or loving her dogs, you will find her on the archery range or asking strangers if she can take pictures of their dogs.
January 11, 2025
Sarah Trudgeon & Janet Elsbach
Microdosing Poetry
In several short experiments, we’ll combine poetry with textile arts, music, visual art, and prose to jolt ourselves out of our usual patterns of thinking and writing, looking to famous poetry experimenters such as the Surrealists, Bernadette Mayer and the New York School, and the Dadaists for inspiration and joy.
About the Facilitators
Sarah Trudgeon is the author of the poetry chapbooks Dreams of Unhappiness and The Plot Against the Baby. She is the literary director of The Mastheads, an experimental, Pittsfield-based arts and humanities project, and the director of the project’s poetry-in-schools program, Fireside.
Janet Elsbach is a writer, teacher and connector who loves to see and draw lines between individuals, ideas and projects. She is stubbornly committed to the tiny kindnesses that transform human connections, and also loves some good trouble in the name of collective justice. In addition to writing and teaching writing, she is deeply committed to animal rescue work, mutual aid and food sovereignty. Her book, Extra Helping: Recipes for Caring, Connecting, and Building Community One Dish at a Time, was published by Roost.
February 8, 2025
Sheela Clary
What Storytelling Teaches Us About Good Writing
Telling a story that entertains a live audience has a lot in common with writing that entertains a reading audience. In this class we will practice the three C’s of good storytelling — Character, Conflict, Change — by sharing stories aloud, and then transpose these to the page.
About the Facilitator
Sheela brings an eclectic professional history to bear on her teaching, writing and storytelling. She’s been a language teacher for thirty years, including with the Peace Corps in Papua New Guinea, worked in nonprofit development and program management, and for the past decade written features, reviews and personal essays for the Berkshire Edge. Her writing can also be found at her substack, Clarity. Sheela is a Moth StorySlam winner who runs live story events around the county and teaches and consults on storytelling, an Italophile who teaches language and cooking classes, and Communications Consultant for Berkshire Hills Regional School District. She has a BA from Tufts University in English and Italian and an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts.
March 8, 2025
David Black
Pitching, Selling, Writing, and Producing a Hollywood Screenplay
David Black will give a workshop on writing and pitching and will use clips from his work to illustrate his discussion. He will invite the class to use their own work to help discuss the process of storytelling on the big and little screen.
About the Facilitator
David Black is an award-winning journalist, novelist, screenwriter, and producer. His novel Like Father was named a Notable Book of the Year by The New York Times and listed as one of the seven best novels of the year by The Washington Post. The King of Fifth Avenue was named a notable book of the year by The New York Times, New York Magazine, and the A.P. NPR’s Weekend Edition called The Extinction Event one of the five best books of the summer. TV Guide chose one of his Law & Order shows – “Life Choice” – as one of the 100 best episodes in the history of television. David received the Edgar Allan Poe Special Award from the Mystery Writers of America for best fact crime book for Murder at the Met. He has published eleven books and over 150 articles in magazines, including The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, and Rolling Stone.
April 12, 2025
Barbara Weisberg
Stranger than Fiction: Creating Narrative Nonfiction
True stories about scandals, crimes, and tragedies are irresistible to many readers. Through discussion, prompts, and exercises, writers in this workshop explore essential elements of narrative nonfiction and techniques for telling a riveting true tale.
About the Facilitator
Facilitator Barbara Weisberg, a former television producer, is the author of two books of narrative nonfiction, Strong Passions: A Scandalous Divorce in Old New York, named an “Editors’ Choice” in 2024 by The New York Times Book Review; and Talking to the Dead: Kate and Maggie Fox and the Rise of Spiritualism, named one of the Best Biographies of 2004 by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She received her M.Phil. in American Studies from Yale University and her M.F.A. from Brooklyn College, where she was awarded the MacArthur Scholarship in Poetry.
May 10, 2025
Elizabeth Doss
The Ten Minute Play
Playwright Elizabeth Doss will lead writers toward creating original scenes and/or ten-minute play in three short hours. In this time, participants will learn a bit about dramatic theory, compose new scenes, share their work and ultimately make their language come alive in time and space as only the theatre can deliver. Come one and all with big hearts and open minds, and let’s put our ideas into action.
About the Facilitator
Elizabeth Doss is a writer, performer, director and playwright based in Austin, Texas. She is a Co-artistic director of the theatre collective Paper Chairs, which has produced world premieres of her original plays Murder Ballad Murder Mystery, Hillcountry Underbelly, Mast, Poor Herman and Catalina de Erauso. Paper chairs has also produced her translation/ adaptions of Federico Garcia Lorca’s, The Audience and The Divine Narcissus by Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz. Her play Slumber Party, was featured as part of the UTNT Showcase in March 2017 and Theatre En Bloc produced her play Severe Weather Warning at the Long Center in May 2019. Doss holds a BA in Spanish and an MFA in Playwriting, both from the University of Texas at Austin. She takes delight in having played herself and Herman Melville in Mark Blumberg’s whimsical auto-fiction memoir film, The Act of Reading. Her personal essay, “What Poor Herman Means to Me” was published in Leviathan in the fall of 2022. Most recently, paper chairs and BCHS co-produced Poor Herman at Arrowhead in July 2024 which played to sold-out Berkshire audiences.