Event

OMG! I Can't Believe She Did That

Beth Lisick and Jan Richman are pleased to host critically-acclaimed author Vanessa Veselka. She's in town for Litquake and this special, exclusive workshop!

Fiction Workshop: OMG! I can't believe she did that! Getting your characters good and dirty

We love our characters. We want others to love them. But in our attempt to make them understood, we too often kill the mystery that keeps a reader going. We keep their hands too clean and this limits their range. This workshop will be about getting dirty and crossing the line. We will work with a character you bring in, asking, what is it they would never do? And what happens when they do it? Time allowing, we may do some writing exercises and experiment with taking our beloved creations and throwing them to the dogs.

Vanessa Veselka (Portland, OR) has been, at various times, a teenage runaway, a sex-worker, a union organizer, a student of paleontology, an expatriate, an independent record label owner, a train-hopper, a waitress, and a mother. Her work has appeared in Arthur, Tin House, Bust, Bitch, and Maximum Rock 'n' Roll. Zazen is her first novel.