The Craft & Process of Book-Length Projects

A Reading & Panel Discussion with PVWW's 10-Month Manuscript Program Instructors

*PLEASE NOTE: Last-minute and/or same-day RSVPs will NOT receive the Zoom link through email. Please find the link to attend below this description (click "Read More" and it's at the bottom).

It's maybe the question everyone embarking on a book-length project asks at some point in the process: How do you keep going? How is it humanly possible to sustain a project of this length over years? How do books get finished? There is no easy answer to this, and no one path toward book-completion, but something we know for sure can help with the challenges of sustaining lengthy projects is community around them, as well as learning about what's helped others - both in terms of craft and process - as well as an openness to experimentation. This panel brings together PVWW's Manuscript Program instructors for short readings from their current long-form work, followed by discussion on the challenges of putting together a book-length manuscript as well as strategies and approaches that have worked for them. They will draw on their own experiences (across a range of genres) as well as their experiences leading a cohort of writers through the process of book-creation, over the course of a year. There will be opportunities for questions and comments from the audience, and we hope this becomes a lively discussion with lots of involvement from all who wish to participate. Moderated by Joy Baglio, and featuring Manuscript Program instructors Kate Senecal, Dorian Fox, and Carolyn Zaikowski.

About the Panelists

KATE SENECAL is the Assistant Director of Pioneer Valley Writers' Workshop and the Director of PVWW's Year-Long Manuscript Group Program. She holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is the former fiction editor of Storychord. She's received an honorable mention in Glimmer Train’s 2019 Short Fiction Contest, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2016. Kate’s fiction has been published in The Laurel Review, The Foundling Review, and in Storychord.com. In addition to her work at PVWW, she teaches writing at Grub Street and Umass, Amherst. She is at work on a first novel.

DORIAN FOX’s essays, articles and stories have appeared in a wide range of literary publications, including Brevity, The Rumpus, Gay Magazine, Atticus Review, Under the Gum Tree, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, december, Creative Nonfiction’s Sunday Short Reads and others. His work has also been honored in various competitions and received nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. A longtime Massachusetts resident, he now lives in Brighton, MA. He will lead the 2022 Year-Long Memoir Workshop at PVWW.

CAROLYN ZAIKOWSKI leads both the Year-Long Nonfiction Manuscript Group and the Year-Long Nonfiction Poetry/Hybrid Manuscript Group. She is a death doula and author of the novels In a Dream, I Dance by Myself, and I Collapse (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016) and A Child Is Being Killed (Aqueous Books, 2013.) Her fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared widely, in such publications as The Washington Post, Denver Quarterly, The Rumpus, West Branch, PANK, Dusie, Huffington Post, and Everyday Feminism. She holds an MFA from Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics and is currently an English professor.

Moderator

JOY BAGLIO founded Pioneer Valley Writers' Workshop in 2016, and it has since grown to include over thirty instructors and close to a hundred workshops each year, now completely virtual. Her short stories have appeared in Conjunctions, The Missouri Review, Tin House, American Short Fiction, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. Recent honors include fellowships, residencies, and grants from Yaddo, Vermont Studio Center, the Bread Loaf & Sewanee Writers' Conferences, The Elizabeth George Foundation, among others. She holds an MFA from The New School, and is at work on a first novel and short story collection.

ZOOM LINK:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81641034818