Richard Peabody's Novel Writing Workshop

Madam Mayo recommends! Here's the news from Richard Peabody:

I'm dusting off my novel class for what may be the last hurrah. Peabody's Novel Class for Spring 2009. Critique Your Complete Novel, Not Just a Couple of Chapters:

Limited to 5 students. We meet every two weeks on Wednesday nights (except the last one) 7:30 until 10pm at my house in Arlington, Virginia. Four to five blocks from Virginia Square Metro station.

1. March 4
2. March 18
3. April 1
4. April 15
5. April 29
6. May 13
7. May 19

Cost is $500 to be paid before the first night. Due to people dropping the class at the last minute and forcing me to cancel the entire session I now require that $125 of this fee be non-refundable and paid before the class begins. Every participant turns in their complete novel and synopsis the first night along with 5 copies for everybody else and me. That way you get handwritten notes on everything from everybody. And you should feel free to recommend cuts, improvements, make suggestions, mark the manuscripts up at will. That's what this class is all about. By meeting every two weeks each participant should have plenty of time to complete their critiques. If you can't attend every meeting (which I demand save for unforeseeable illness or death in the family as it's a question of fairness and honor) please don't bother signing up.

Why do I teach this class? Because you can go to your favorite bookshop and lift any number of contemporary novels off the shelf and read a few chapters only to discover that they fall apart at chapter four. Why? I've found that most MFA programs only critique the first three chapters of your manuscript. Plus, I've learned from the hands-on experience of teaching this course that a complete reading and critique is absolutely the best way (dare I say only way) to go. What's the advantage of a small class like this one? There's nothing quite like having five people discuss your characters as though they were living people for 2 1/2 hours. What sorts of novels are eligible? Generally I handle serious literary fiction (both realism and experimental works), but the class has included YA , Sci-Fi, Mystery, Horror, Thriller, and Romance novels. If you are interested do please email me a chapter and a synopsis. I'm only considering completed novels in the 250-350 dbl. spaced page range. (That's one-sided, double spaced, 12pt. in Courier font.) Anything longer than that is pretty much wishful thinking right now due to grim market economics and politics. Most first novels are 300 dbl. spaced pages which equals 200pp. in book form. Simply a fact of the biz. Second novels are frequently a different story.

Alumni from Peabody's 22 years of university, Writer's Center, and private classes with filmed screenplays, books in print (or forthcoming) include: Mark Baechtel, Doreen Baingana, Toby Barlow, Maggie Bartley, Jodi Bloom, Sean Brijbasi, Peter Brown, Robert Cullen, Priscilla Cummings, Katherine Davis, Lucinda Ebersole, Sandy Florian, Cara Haycak, Dave Housley, Catherine Kimrey, Rachel King, Adam Kulakow, Nathan Leslie, Redge Mahaffey, Charlotte Manning, James Mathews, Meena Nayak, Matthew Olshan, William Orem, Mary Over ton, Saideh Pakravan, Carolyn Parkhurst, Sally Pfoutz, Nani Power, Carey Roberts, Lisa Schamess, Brenda Seabrooke, Julia Slavin, David Taylor, Lisa M. Tillman, Sharlie West, and Yolanda Young.

My address is 3819 North 13th Street, Arlington, VA 22201. My house is 2 blocks from Quincy Park and the Central Library on Quincy Street. We are 3 doors from Washington-Lee High School where Quincy crosses 13th Street. My phone number is (703) 525-9296. My cell is (703) 380-4893

Richard Peabody wears many literary hats. He is editor of Gargoyle Magazine (founded in 1976), has published a novella, two books of short stories, six books of poems, plus an e-book, and edited or co-edited nineteen anthologies including: Mondo Barbie, Mondo Elvis, Mondo Marilyn, Mondo James Dean, Coming to Terms: A Literary Response to Abortion, Conversations with Gore Vidal, A Different Beat: Writings by Women of the Beat Generation, Grace and Gravity: Fiction by Washington Area Women, Alice Redux: New Stories of Alice, Lewis, and Wonderland, Sex & Chocolate: Tasty Morsels for Mind and Body, Enhanced Gravity: More Fiction by Washington Area Women, Kiss the Sky: Fiction and Poetry Starring Jimi Hendrix, Electric Grace: Still More Fiction by Washington Area Women, and Stress City: A Big Book of Fiction by Fifty DC Guys. Gravity Dancers, a fourth volume of fiction by Washington area women writers, is forthcoming in May 2009. Peabody teaches fiction writing for the Johns Hopkins Advanced Studies Program and the Writer's Center in Bethesda, Maryland.. You can find out more at www.wikipedia.com and/or www.gargoylemagazine.com

The Amazon.com Carousel Widget, That Embeddable Chunk o' Code

Madam Mayo has discovered widgets. You might have noticed the Pug-A-Day widget over on my sidebar. New on the sidebar is the amazon.com widget featuring my books as well as a few anthologies (by Lee Gutkind, Monica De la Torre and Michael Wiegers, Dinty W. Moore, Richard Peabody, Andrei Codrescu and Laura Rosenthal, and Robert L. Giron) that include my stories, essays, poems, and / or translations. Scroll all the way to the bottom of this blog and you'll find the widget for pug books. I was amazed at how easy it was to do these.

The Real Deal, War Stories & More: Peabody's Electric Grace with Rose Solari and Washington DC Women Writers, December 5th

My amigo Richard Peabody's felicitous invitation to all & sundry!

Electric Grace: Still More Fiction by Washington Area Women will launch at Politics & Prose on Wednesday December 5th at 7pm. Rose Solari (poet, essayist, teacher, whose fiction was featured in Enhanced Gravity, the 2nd volume in the trilogy) will MC a panel of contributors: Michelle Brafman, Merle Collins, T. Greenwood, Joanne Leedom-Ackerman, Faye Moskowitz, Barbara Mujica, Jessica Neely, Amy Stolls, Hananah Zaheer, and Christy J. Zink. These ten will read a paragraph from their work as a warm-up and then Rose will guide the panel via her own questions and audience questions re. their writing experiences in DC area and beyond. A great opportunity to hear the real deal about the writing/publishing biz, writing with kids, spouses, et al., realistic expectations, women’s roles (now and then), and war stories. The panel is a combo of established writers and relative newcomers. If it’s anything like the past two launches this should be a blast. Everybody should have ample time to vent, rant, share, laugh, and tell choice anecdotes. It’s like a literary reunion and a gathering of the tribes. Hope you can make it.
Politics and Prose, 5015 Connecticut Ave NW, WDC 20008
(202) 364-1919
www.politics-prose.comBook lists for $18.95 and features 42 women writers. 435pp. Copies will be available at the launch, from our site, and via Amazon.com and the Writer’s Center.

Yours Truly MC'ed the last of Richard Peabody's Washington Women Writers anthologies, Enhanced Gravity, and has a short story in the first one, Grace and Gravity. Read my blog post about them here. More anon.

Washington Women Writers: The List Grows Longer

Apropos of the lists of Washington Women Writers (the embryonic and the Kim Roberts-expanded), Richard Peabody writes:

"Hey Gals: Well, all of the blurbers on the anthologies I've done are folks who used to live here in the area. So if you really want to expand the list you have to immediately add:

Randy Sue Coburn
Elizabeth Hand
Elizabeth Oness
Nicole Louise Reid
Aurelie Sheehan
Mollie Best Tinsley

Other historical literary women and some contemporaries would include:

Ann Aikman
Louisa May Alcott
Mrs. Larz Anderson
Temple Bailey
Joanne Bario
Ann Beattie
Rebecca Brown
Rita Mae Brown
Zenith Brown
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Mary Cahill
Tracy Chevalier
Eleanor Clark
Carmen Delzell
Anna Dorsey
Ann Downer
Thulani Davis
Katharine Dunlap
Matilde Eiker
Kate Field
Katherine W. Fulton
Margarita Spalding Gerry
Elinor Glyn
Joanne Greenberg
Grace Greenwood
Martha Grimes
Doris Grumbach
Mildred Haun
Clair W. Hayes
Ann Hood
Forestine C. Hooker
Julia Ward Howe
Deborah Insel
Frances Parkinson Keyes
Elinor Lane
Martin Leimbach
Natalie Sumner Lincoln
Anne Lindbergh
Grace Denio Litchfield
Clare Booth Luce
Mabel Dodge Luhan
Sara MacAulay
Julia Markus
Harriet Martineau
Gardner McFall
Mrs. Lowell Melliett
Olga Moore
Toni Morrison
Gloria Oden
Katharine Paterson
Mary Plum
Katharine Anne Porter
Barbara Raskin
Marjorie Kinan Rawlings
Tova Reich
Joyce Renwick
Mary Roberts Rinehart
Caryl Rivers
Doris Rochlin
Anne Royall
Muriel Rukeyser
Joanna Scott
Lionel Shriver
Molly Sewell
Alice Sheldon (a. k. a. James Tiptree)
Harriet Prescott Spofford
Christina Stead
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Phyllis Theroux
Caroline Thompson
Inez Sheldon Tyler
Joyce Warren
Helen Whitney
Kathleen Winsor
Elinor Wylie

Folks who live here right now not even counting the other 75+ women in Grace & Gravity or Enhanced Gravity:

Teresa Bevin
Margaret Blair
Connie Brisco
Beth Brophy
Laura Brylawski-Miller
Maxine Clair
Brenda W. Clough
Merle Collins
Laura Costas
Marcy Heidish Dolan
Laura Fargas
Candida Fraze
Barbara Goldberg
Marita Golden
Eloise Greenfield
Tammy Greenwood
Virginia Hartman
Ellen Herbert
Esther Iverem
Lynn Kanter
Kyi May Kaung
Catherine Kimrey
Annette Curtis Klause
Jane Leavy
Joanne Leedom-Ackerman
Barbara Lefcowitz
Beverly Lowry
Sarah Grace McCandless
Barbara Mujica
Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Diane Orenstein
Michelle Parkerson
Lauren Rabb
Elisavietta Ritchie
Kwelismith
Susan Sonde
Elisabeth Sullam
Mary L. Tabor
Rangeley Wallace
Riggin Waugh
Joyce Winslow
Anna Ziegler

And of course there are tons more. I haven't even begun to list poets only poets who also write fiction. At least that I'm aware of today... Plus I have another 42 women (some listed above) soon to appear in Electric Grace: Even More Fiction By Washington Area Women. (Pub date will be in 11/2007 with a launch at Politics and Prose).
Cheers, Richard Peabodywww.gargoylemagazine.com