"Start Where You Are" Creative Writing Workshop Taught by Harvard Alum Novelist Mary Rakow, Ph.D.

Mechanics Institute Board Room
57 Post Street, San Francisco, 94104 (at Montgomery Street BART station)

Join fellow Harvard alums and Mechanics Institute authors and authors-to-be for a 3-hr creative writing workshop with Harvard alum and novelist Mary Rakow.

Saturday June 13, 2015
1 p.m. - 4 p.m.

Registration closed!

Harvard Club Members: $ 30
Mechanics' Institute Members $40
Non-Members: $ 40

The Format
The focus is on individual critique. Class limited to 10 participants. Please bring 11 copies of your work (5 page maximum). Open to writers at all levels working in any prose form: fiction, memoir, non-fiction, biography, short story, creative non-fiction.

The Philosophy
Many creatures must make, but only one must seek within itself what to make (Frank Bidart). We are that creature. We alone must make objects of meaning. Bring what you have to this writing workshop: the opening line of a story, a novel excerpt, an idea. Find what you are trying to make. Get started. Go deeper into what you have. See more clearly the finishing touches you must now do. Take a step toward more powerful, truthful and beautiful work.

The Instructor
Mary Rakow, Ph.D., comes to fiction from theology. A graduate of Harvard Divinity School, she is the recipient of a Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship. Her novel, The Memory Room, was shortlisted for the Stanford University Libraries Saroyan Prize, finalist for Los Angeles Times Fiction Prize, and one of The Los Angeles Times Ten Best Books of the West in 2002. Her non-fiction work, Martinez Celaya, Working Methods, is the first comprehensive study of the astonishing Cuban-born visual artist. Her second novel, This is Why I Came, forthcoming December, 2015 (Counterpoint Press), is heralded as a "Blakean tour de force" (Janet Fitch, White Oleander, Paint It Black).

Mary Rakow is a breathtaking writer and passionate teacher. Sam Dunn, Failing Paris.

Limited to 10 participants.
Mary will be available for individual conversation after class.

Questions? Email Mary: www.maryrakow.com