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Descriptions of Crescent
Dragonwagon’s Writing-Related Presentations & Short Workshops for
Adults |
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How I Became an
International Reading Ass |
| Personal,
anecdotal, this is the most autobiographical of Crescent’s talks. From
her childhood as the daughter of a writer (Hollywood biographer Maurice
Zolotow --- now the answer to a Trivial Pursuit question “Who was
Marilyn Monroe’s first biographer?”) and a writer-editor (children’s
book writer and HarperCollins children’s book publisher emeritus,
Charlotte Zolotow), to her own first publication at sixteen, to her
marriage to writer-artist Ned Shank, Dragonwagon traces an adventurous
life lived through and with books and those who write them. You’ll meet
poets, artists, playwrights, writers of cookbooks, novels, and
children’s books; you’ll learn why CD has the unique distinction of
having fixed cornbread for both a U. S. President and titled royalty,
how she came to co-found the mid-South’s first writers’ colony, and what
it’s like to be on the Today Show. This talk, rousing, funny, and
ever-changing is probably the one of CD’s presentations best-suited for
almost any general audience. |
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Length
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What’s Included;
further notes |
Audience |
| 1
hour talk |
45-minute talk,
with 15 minutes for Q-&-A. |
Writers, readers, teachers,
business persons, those interested in American
culture, trends, and social history, book club members… anyone with the
slightest interest in anything. |
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Unadulterated: Writing for Children |
| As former
children, all adults ought to be experts in childhood. Why, then, do so
many suffer from amnesia? How do those who write for children (or want
to) escape this forgetfulness, becoming able to see at a child’s eye
level, while using adult writing skills and experiences to create
literature? Ideally, books for children are so vibrant adults love
them too. Learn how those who write for children overlay adult and
childhood experiences and ways of understanding the world, as well as
how the collaboration between author and illustrator takes place.
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Length
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What’s Included;
further notes |
Audience |
| 1
hour talk |
45-minute talk, with 15 minutes for Q-&-A. Includes a short reading by
Crescent. |
Teachers, librarians, parents, those interested in the creative process,
book club members. |
| 2½ hour
workshop |
45-minute talk, 15 minutes for Q-&-A, slightly longer reading by
Crescent. Group & individual writing exercises / play. Optional reading
aloud by group members. Participatory and interactive. |
Teachers, librarians, parents, those interested in the creative process,
both would-be and professional children’s book writers, book club
members.
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Fearless Writing’s
Greatest Hits |
| A
taste of the weeklong intensive writing workshop Dragonwagon developed
over 20 years ago, this sampling whets the appetite of would-be writers
and others interested in the creative process. Based on what workshop
attendees have told CD about what Fearless taught them and how it
changed their writing (sometimes their lives), this talk offers a little
of what the Fearless experience is like. Not sure if you’re ready to
take a full week’s class, or if you have it in you to be Fearless?
Wonder about changing entrenched ways of thinking what you do (and don’t
do) versus what you say you want to do? Fearless Writing’s Greatest Hits
will get you started, satisfying you while leaving you hungry for more. |
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Length
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What’s Included;
further notes |
Audience |
| 1
hour talk |
45-minute talk,
15 minutes for Q-&-A. |
Writers and
readers, teachers, librarians, therapists, anyone interested in the
creative process and how breakthroughs occur. |
| 3 hour workshop |
45-minute talk, 15 minutes for -Q-&-A. Group & individual writing
exercises / play. Break. More writing, group & individual. Optional
reading aloud by group members. Participatory, interactive. |
Writers and
readers, teachers, librarians, therapists, anyone interested in the
creative process and how breakthroughs occur. Those who want to write
but think they can’t.; those at a transitional point in their lives.
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Lusty Appetites: Wok
on the Wild Side |
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Although there have always been readers who say “I read cookbooks like
novels,” in recent years, cookbooks have developed into much more than
recipe collections, though the standards for recipes which work are
higher than ever. With cookbook-novels (Heartburn, Like Water
for Chocolate), cookbook mysteries (The Butter Did It,
Killer Pancakes), cookbooks which explore social history, religion,
and place (Perfection Salad, Olive Trees and Honey,
Shuck Beans, Stack Cake, & Honest Fried Chicken), and literary
cookbooks ( M.F.K. Fisher’s books, Honey from a Weed ) these
books are as much literature or entertainment as they are how-to. Most
of all, perhaps, there are culinary memoirs and histories (Growing Up
on the Chocolate Diet, Tender at the Bone, Bittersweet, Taste of
Memory, Stand Facing the Stove), and cookbooks which combine
elements of all these (Passionate Vegetarian). The rise of this
trend, paradoxically, accompanies the fast food industry, TVFN’s
popularity, the celebrity chef phenomenon, and rising levels of obesity
in a world obsessed by thinness. And, is food is the new sex?
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Length
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What’s Included;
further notes |
Audience |
| 1
hour talk |
45-minute talk,
with 15 minutes for Q-&-A. |
Writers and readers, cooks (home and professional), those interested in
American culture, trends, and social history |
| 3 hour workshop |
45-minute talk, 15 minutes Q-&-A, 20 minutes on “the recipe up, down,
and sideways.” Break. Group & individual writing. Students will write a
recipe and do a short piece of culinary-related memoir. Participatory,
interactive. |
Writer, readers, cooks (home and professional); those interested in
American culture, trends, and social history, cooking teachers, those
who’d like to write a cookbook or are compiling family recipes or
histories. |
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Story:
Giving Form & Pattern to Our Chaotic Lives |
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Part of the pleasure of reading fiction, short or long, is that things
usually come out. Loose ends get tied up satisfactorily. If, as Chekhov
said, it’s mentioned that a gun is hanging on the all at the beginning
of the short story, it must go off by the end. |
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part of the challenge of living is that things usually do not
come out, in the sense of being completed. We enter life somewhere in
the middle of history (that of the world, our countries, our families)
and we leave likewise. In the interim, we try to place ourselves in
context, making sense of often unpredictable, seemingly senseless
events, both good and bad, for, as the anthropologist Ray Rappoport
remarked, “We are meaning-making animals.” For a writer, that meaning
lies in viewing the rich and troubling events of life as material.
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| But
what form should that material take--- memoir, autobiography, fiction?
And how can non-writers, as well, use the materials of their lives
(memories, keepsakes, traumas, documents, family stories, photographs,
friendships and hatreds) to give form and pattern to the
too-quickly-rushing-by days? Explore these perplexing questions, and
develop some empowering, outside the box answers, unique to you, with
Crescent Dragonwagon. Memoir, essay, “liberated scrap booking”, keeping
a journal, working on a family history, recipes, and combining elements
of all of these are discussed. |
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Length
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What’s Included;
further notes |
Audience |
| 1
hour talk |
45-minute talk,
with 15 minutes for Q-&-A. |
Writers and
readers, book clubs and discussion groups, journal-keepers, scrap
bookers, historians, teachers, documentarians, therapists, counselors,
grandparents. |
| 3 hour workshop |
45-minute talk, 15 minutes for Q-&-A, 20 minutes on documents, sources,
and interviewing. Break. Group & individual writing exercises / play.
Students will learn do a short piece of memoir. Participatory,
interactive. |
Writers and readers, book clubs and discussion groups, journal-keepers,
scrap bookers, historians, teachers, documentarians, therapists,
counselors, grandparents. |
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©Dragon,
Pen & Inc. 2000-2007 :: Last Updated:
03/05/07 ::