Enrolling Now for in-person Fall Writing Classes at Ball & Socket Arts in Cheshire, CT

In-person, on-site writing classes at Ball & Socket Arts offered in: Memoir with Cindy House, Poetry with Pat Mottola, and Comedy with David Iscoe We are absolutely thrilled to be kicking off our fall 2023 programming with three top-notch writing classes from exceptional local authors. Writers of all abilities welcome! Express yourself, and connect through the written word. Classes begin the week of October 11 and run 10 weeks. Writing Our Lives (Memoir) Instructor: Cindy House 10-week course in-person at Ball & Socket Arts Monday evenings, 6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. October 16 – December 18 (no class Nov. 20) Writing Our Lives How do we begin to make art out of our lives? How do we examine memory and organize the pieces to tell a compelling story? Explore the ways we can shape our lives in words through this creative nonfiction class. Whether you are interested in writing short essays about your life or an entire memoir, this class will help you to find your way to a narrative through class prompts, readings, mini lectures, and regular workshopping/discussion of each other's writing. Cindy House is the author of the memoir Mother Noise (Scribner/Marysue Rucci Books), and her essays and short fiction have appeared in Passengers Journal, Lily Poetry Review, Wig Leaf, Solstice Literary Magazine, Longleaf Review, The Drum Literary Magazine and So To Speak, among others. She opens regularly for David Sedaris at venues such as the Kennedy Center, Symphony Hall, and The Town Hall in New York. She teaches at Gotham Writers Workshop in New York City and in the nonfiction genre in the Lesley University MFA program in Cambridge, MA. She attended the School of the Art Institute in Chicago and holds an MFA in Fiction from Lesley University. Comedy Writing Instructor: David Iscoe 10-week course in-person at Ball & Socket Arts Saturday afternoons, 1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. October 14 – December 23 (no class Nov. 25) Learn the fundamentals of humor writing, and how to use your own experiences and opinions for material. Students will try a few different forms of humor writing (observational standup, joke writing, sketch comedy, and narrative comedy) and study how different comedians and humorists use contrast, character, and creative structure to make their work funny or distinct. Participants will also explore their own personalities and writing strengths to find what they do best and how they might expand their range. Expect to have fun! You don't have to start off funny, just be willing to try (and to be a good audience member for your classmates). David Iscoe: David Iscoe is a writer, educator, and ghostwriter based in New London, CT. He writes strange, cross-genre fiction on his own, and a wide variety of things for hire. He also works as a humor coach and consultant. The most famous place he worked was The Onion, where he served as a TV staff writer, a web series head writer and director, and a senior writer in the video department. David has an MFA from Bennington, and a B.A. from Columbia. Poetry for Everyone! Instructor: Pat Mottola 10-week course in-person at Ball & Socket Arts Wednesday evenings, 6:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. October 11, 2023 – December 20, 2024 (no class Nov. 22) This ten-session poetry workshop will engage you in ways you cannot imagine! Learn to see and enjoy your world as never before. These sessions are designed as an introduction to the joyful abundance of poetry in our lives so that we may all benefit from the beauty around us and within us, and the beauty we create ourselves. Beginning with an introduction to famous poets and poems and to the tools utilized in the craft of writing, you will learn how emotion is recreated on the page. Writing allows you to be whomever you want to be, absorb everything around you and turn it into poetry! Writing allows you to put on a lot of masks – you can be a mad girl, a circus freak, a Vietnam veteran, Barbie, Mother Theresa, a carnival barker, a Japanese woman on the day Hiroshima was hit. And poetry helps you discover who you are. Learn how people deal with what seems intolerably difficult, terrible or wonderful. Poetry makes us so much aware of our world and ourselves, increases sensual appreciation, helps us discover the magical in the ordinary, gives power – a way to shape, transform, discover, catch and hold, a way to feel alive, connected. Absorb everything around you and turn it into poetry. Poetry fills the empty spaces! Cheshire resident Pat Mottola, award-winning poet and Creative Writing Professor at Southern Connecticut State University, will conduct this amazing course. You will receive a packet of materials illustrating best examples of the power of poetry. You will have an opportunity to write and receive feedback on your own work, to put power in your words, emotions on your page. And you are welcome to merely sit and listen and enjoy! So, come and find joy in the ordinary. And remember: The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.(Sylvia Plath)