SQUIRE ONLINE 2020

Community, but not Communicable

ONLINE WORKSHOPS

July 9-12, 2020

The North Carolina Writers' Network brings you our first-ever SQUIRE ONLINE summer writing workshops, a weekend’s worth of intensive, socially-distanced study in one of three genres.

Each workshop will be limited to 12 registrants, who should be dedicated writers ready to handle the intensive instruction and atmosphere of the workshop. A get-to-know-each-other Zoom session on Thursday evening will lead to a craft lecture by your instructor on Friday evening, followed by in-depth workshop time on Saturday and Sunday.

Support for Squire Online is provided by the NC Arts Council, the Community Foundation of Western North Carolina, and the family of Chick and Elizabeth Daniels Squire.

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FEES AND DEADLINES | SCHEDULE-AT-A-GLANCE | COURSE DESCRIPTIONS | FACULTY BIOGRAPHIES

Fees and Deadlines

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You can join the Network when you register, and pay the member rates plus the appropriate member dues:

$80 standard 1-year membership
$60 reduced membership (Senior 65+, Full-Time Student, Writers 30 or Under, Writers with Disabilities)
$140 2-year membership
$110 2-year reduced membership

Scholarships

A limited amount of scholarship aid is available to deserving writers who otherwise could not take part in Squire Online. If you would like to apply for a scholarship, please send a C.V. and a “Statement of Writing Intent” of no more than 1,000 words to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. no later than Friday, June 19.

Cancellations

Cancellations must be made in writing and arrive at the Network office (via USPS or e-mail) by 4:00 pm, Friday, June 26, for you to receive a refund, less 25 percent. Send request to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. No refunds for cancellations received after June 26 or for no-shows.

For Writers with Special Needs

The North Carolina Writers' Network strives to make our programs and services accessible to all writers, including those with special needs. If you require closed captioning, please let us know no later than Friday, June 19.

Deadlines

• June 19: Deadline for all scholarship applications
• June 19: Deadline for special-needs requests
• June 26: Deadline to receive a refund for cancellation
• June 29: Deadline for registration

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Schedule-at-a-Glance

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Course Descriptions

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Begin Again; Begin Better: Fiction with Bryn Chancellor
Story and novel openings are a tall order with a ticking timer. In a short space, fiction writers must establish character, voice, point of view, and setting; put the situation and plot in motion; offer some sense of trouble or tension; and deploy arresting language and style that mesmerize and propel a reader deeper into the narrative. In this workshop, we’ll examine some pitfalls of beginnings—throat clearing, feet dragging, false starts—and practice how to craft compelling openings, especially through compression and simultaneity. Of course beginnings don’t exist in a vacuum, so we’ll also talk about middles and ends, those other pesky parts of story-making.

We’ll use the openings of your own submitted pieces (see below), which we will read in advance and discuss in each session, and revise them till they shine. Along the way we’ll start some new ones through prompts. Please also have ready a favorite opening page of a novel or short story that you love.

Please submit up to 1,200 sequential words from the beginning of a single work on the same day you register for Squire Online. Submissions should be saved in a single MS Word document, using double-spaced, 12-point, Times New Roman font, with numbered pages, and sent as an attachment to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. The Word document’s file name should include your own last name, and the title and your name should appear on the submission. The sample you submit will be the work discussed in class, and your submitted work will be shared with other registrants.

Each registrant should be ready to handle the intensive instruction and atmosphere of the workshop.

But It Really Happened Just Like That: Our Stories, Our Truth: Creative Nonfiction with Patrice Gopo
Have you ever written a story from your life, only to discover the details created a dull tale on the page? Or perhaps you wonder if the story you’ve lived, the story you are here to tell, will hold a reader’s attention and matter in this vast world steeped in a multitude of words? In this creative nonfiction workshop, we’ll use the personal essay as our springboard for discussion about how we write creative nonfiction that rises above anecdote and moves forward with unstoppable momentum.

Workshop participants will submit essays or excerpts up to 1,200 words when they register (see below). We’ll intentionally use these contributions to move us into fruitful conversations about craft—both general and specific to creative nonfiction.

Please submit up to 1,200 sequential words of a single work, along with your current CV, on the same day you register for Squire Online. Submissions should be saved in a single MS Word document, using double-spaced, 12-point, Times New Roman font, with numbered pages, and sent as an attachment to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. The Word document’s file name should include your own last name, and the title and your name should appear on the submission. The sample you submit will be the work discussed in class, and your submitted work will be shared with other registrants.

Each registrant should be ready to handle the intensive instruction and atmosphere of the workshop.

Courting the Muse, Finding Your Voice and Other Good Things that Don't Happen without Applying the Elbow Grease: Poetry with Dannye Romine Powell
Using the three poems each participant submits with his or her registration (see below), we will look at ways to improve each poem. Is each poem saying what the poet intended? Extra words? Enough music? Cliches? Does the poem make an emotional connection with the reader and with the poet herself?

Using poems by widely published poets as examples, we will look at how mystery works throughout a poem, how sound creates emotion, how repetition appeals to the ear, how dreams can spark poems, how emotion connects the poet to the reader. Also, the tricks of the trade. Respecting the muse. Showing up to write. Reading aloud. Taking care of that fascinating organ called the brain.

Please submit three poems, totaling no more than five pages, on the same day that you register for Squire Online. Poems should be saved in a single MS Word document, using single-spaced, 12-point, Times New Roman font, and sent as an attachment to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. The Word document’s file name should include your own last name, and your name and the title of each poem should appear on the submission. The sample you submit will be the work discussed in class, and your submitted work will be shared with other registrants.

Each registrant should be ready to handle the intensive instruction and atmosphere of the workshop.

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Faculty Biographies

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Squire Online Faculty

Bryn Chancellor is the author of the novel Sycamore, a Southwest Book of the Year, and the story collection When Are You Coming Home?, winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize. Her work has appeared in Brevity, Gulf Coast, Colorado Review, Crazyhorse, The Common, Publishers Weekly, and elsewhere, and she is a grateful recipient of fellowships from the North Carolina, Alabama, and Arizona arts councils and the Poets and Writers Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award. A graduate of Vanderbilt University’s M.F.A. program, she is associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

Patrice Gopo was born and raised in Anchorage, Alaska, and she is the child of Jamaican immigrants. Her writing often considers racial identity formation, race relations, and the search for a sense of belonging. Her essays have appeared in a variety of publications, including Catapult, Creative Nonfiction, and online in The New York Times and The Washington Post. She is the recipient of an NC Arts Council Literature Fellowship, and her essay collection, All the Colors We Will See, was a Fall 2018 B&N Discover Great New Writers selection. When she’s not writing, she enjoys speaking to groups about the power of personal storytelling. She lives with her family in Charlotte: www.patricegopo.com.

Dannye Romine Powell's fifth collection, In the Sunroom with Raymond Carver, is out in the spring of 2020. She has won fellowships in poetry from the NEA, the NC Arts Council, and Yaddo. Her poems have appeared over the years in The Paris Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, Southern Review, Harvard Review Online, Beloit Journal, 32 Poems and many others. She is also the author of Parting the Curtains: Interviews with Southern Writers. For many years, she was the book editor of the Charlotte Observer.

Squire Online 2020 is made possible with support from the North Carolina Arts Council, the Community Foundation of Western North Carolina, and the family of Chick and Elizabeth Daniels Squire.

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