Events

• August 8, 6:00 PM

  Screenwriting Workshop

  Four Sessions, 3 hours each (6-9pm) Tuesdays, August 8, August 15, August 22, and August 29 Fees & Payment Options: $220 General / $200 AAWW Members (JOIN THE FAN CLUB!) Full payment due before first class. Maximum of ten students. Why you should take this class: Writer & Director Darine Hotait bridges the gap between literature and cinema due to her genuine fascination and devotion to both. A mentor in numerous screenwriting workshops at film festivals and institutions such as the Med Film Festival in Rome, Arab Film Festival in Rotterdam, Mizna Literary Gathering in Minneapolis, among others —Darine invites you to learn how to take the elements that construct a screenplay into development: act structure, character development, and scene breakdown. Class Description: Develop your screenwriting skills with award-winning writer and director Darine Hotait, whose films screened at top international film festivals, received multiple Best Fiction awards and were acquired by Sundance TV, AMC Networks & BBC Channel. Her feature screenplays were selected at Cannes Film Festival's International Scriptwriters' Pavilion and were among the top 5 finalists at Hearst Screenwriting Competition. She's the recipient of the AFAC cinema grant and a current literary fellow at New York Foundation for the Arts. Over the period of 4 weeks, writers will be guided through the process of developing a feature film screenplay using various hands-on exercises. Participants are expected to have a one-page storyline that they wish to develop into a feature film screenplay during the workshop. REGISTER HERE Questions? Contact Tiffany Le at tle@aaww.org Darine Hotait is the writer and director of various short films Beirut Hide and Seek (2011), and I Say Dust(2015), which screened at over 70 international film festivals and received multiple Best Short Fiction awards. Her films received prestigious distribution and were acquired by reputable platforms such as AMC Network, Sundance Channel, BBC Channel, Shorts International & The Journal of Short Films. Her debut science fiction feature film project Symphony of a Flood was selected at the International Screenwriters' Pavilion at Cannes Film Festival 2016 and was a finalist at the prestigious Hearst Screenwriting Competition at San Francisco Film Society. Her plays and short stories have been published in numerous publications in print and online. Darine has mentored over 50 screenwriting workshops around the world at various institutions and international film festivals. Since 2010, Darine serves as the founder and creative director of Cinephilia Productions in New York City, an incubator for the development of writers and filmmakers from the MENA region. Praise for I Say Dust (2015) “The film’s power and beauty comes in its subtlety. The story’s intensity and potency lies in Darine’s ability to sing cinematic brilliance in the interstices between scenes and to reveal more about the characters in their silence. The plot is unsaturated and always in dialogue with the audience: what is strategically unpictured by Darine is viscerally felt by the viewer.” — Leena Habiballah, Qahwa Project, US “The characters are complex, the writing – interspersed with poetry – is so touching, and the shots so poignant it just seems like a damn shame it’s a short rather than a feature length film.” — Wided Khadraoui, Kalimat Magazine “There is romance, sweet and ephemeral - an encounter more potent, perhaps, for the sense of coming home. A thoughtful film which packs a lot of ideas into a tight space, I Say Dust speaks well to the talents of those involved. It’s no surprise that it has multiple awards to its name.” — Jennie Kermode, Eye For Film (Edinburgh) ..
  
• August 9, 7:00 PM

  Workshop: Protest Poetry

  Four Sessions, 2 hours each (7-9pm) Wednesdays August 9th, August 16th, August 23rd, August 30th Fees & Payment Options: $200 General / $180 AAWW Members (JOIN THE FAN CLUB!) Full payment due before first class. Maximum of fifteen students. Why you should take this class: Poet Sally Wen Mao, award-winning author of Mad Honey Symposium (Alice James Books, 2014), has been anthologized in The Best American Poetry 2013, BOMB Magazine, Poetry, and more. You can explore Lavender Town in The Margins and check out the feature in Bustle listing her as one of the best poetry debuts in the last five years. Sally Wen Mao invites you to re-invent language and to re-invent the familiar in this protest poetry workshop. Class Description: We are living in a senseless political era. How do we react, as writers, artists, and citizens? Where do we channel our anger, our protest, our ideals – how do we do right by our art and our politics? In this workshop, participants consider the political poem and examine the ways to approach resistance through language, lyric, and form—in poetry or in lyric essays. Drawing from contemporary poets like Layli Long Soldier, Tommy Pico, Timothy Yu, Srikanth Reddy, Solmaz Sharif, and Claudia Rankine, we will examine over the course of several sessions the tools we can use to dismantle the powerful narratives that silence and oppress – and in that process, discover our own political voice. This course will include writing exercises and generative sessions as well as a workshop. REGISTER HERE Questions? Contact Tiffany Le at tle@aaww.org Sally Wen Mao is the author of OCULUS (Graywolf Press 2019) and Mad Honey Symposium (Alice James Books, 2014). She is the recipient of awards and fellowships from Poets & Writers, The Cullman Center at the New York Public Library, Kundiman, Jerome Foundation, and Bread Loaf Writers Conference, among others. Her poems have received a Pushcart Prize and published in Tin House, Poetry, Best American Poetry 2013, and A Public Space, among others. ​”​Linguistically dexterous and formally astute, Mao’s tight and textured debut ​[Mad Honey Symposium] ​conjures an absurd, lush, occasionally poisonous world and the ravenous humans and animals that travel through it. . . . With echoes of Glück and Plath, Mao generates stunning landscapes where the flora and fauna reflect her presence and strength of voice.​” —Publishers Weekly, starred review “In Mad Honey Symposium, Sally Wen Mao offers delicious diction: ‘archipelago . . . arpeggios;’ ‘horntails / swarm the wax leaves;’ ‘Fetal and feral, we curl;’ ‘mouth on your pendulum;’ ‘in the rigmarole of lucky living—!’ She also offers a heightened attention to how words work and work out in various contexts. The poet takes us all over the place in time and geography—from her mother’s bed to Audubon’s dreams to sputnik to hive and back again—all in the service of feeling deeply. A lovely debut collection.” —Kimiko Hahn..
  
• August 11, 6:00 PM

  Workshop: Experimental Fiction

  Three Sessions, 3 hours each (6-9pm) Fridays, August 11th, August 18th, August 25th Fees & Payment Options: $150 General / $100 AAWW Members (JOIN THE FAN CLUB!) Full payment due before first class. STUDENT RATE AVAILABLE FOR LIMITED SEATS Why you should take this class: You’ve got something special in the works but you keep running into walls. There’s a hidden flavor that you can’t quite name? Trying to remember that movie you watched how many years ago? Break out of your comfort zone in this intermediate fiction workshop with seasoned Catapult Instructor and critically acclaimed writer, Jade Sharma. Brief Description: Experimental Fiction: Breaking the rules. In the course we will write pieces that play with the normal conventions of plot, story, and character. You will be given short assignments to sharpen your skills, as well, as, each student will submit pages of either a short story of an excerpt of a novel. Writers like Beckett, Mary Gaitskill, Lorrie Moore, George Saunders, Donald Bartholomew, as well, as more obscure works will be read to explore how different writers break convention and when it works and when it doesn't. REGISTER HERE Note: For your first class be prepared with an introduction of your 5 favorite works, and why. Also,bring your writing to share but there is no cap or maximum. Questions? Contact Tiffany Le at tle@aaww.org Jade Sharma is the author of Problems (Emily Books/Coffee House Press). Drawn to troubled characters, her novel was described by The New York Times as a rule-breaking debut with vulgarity that "is deeply and powerfully feminist. Most of Sharma's best lines are too profane to print; Maya's narration is crude, unsettling and often shamelessly sexy." Jade is a writer living in New York with an MFA from the New School, she is living the unromantic unhip dream. Catapult Testimonials: "Jade Sharma will root out anything in your manuscript that is fake, disingenuous, weak, or just plain bad, and she frames her critiques with humor and honesty. Your work will be stronger for it, and you will be too." Ruth Curry (Co-founder of Emily Books) "Jade Sharma has a brilliant analytical and critical mind, and is devastatingly effective at x-raying fiction to discern levels of clarity, originality and emotional honesty." Xan Price "Being in class with Jade was always a pleasure. Her insights into other students' work were deeply intellectual and offered interesting perspectives on storytelling. She personally made time to read my stories outside of class, as well, and we often exchanged work. I'm so glad to have gotten to study with her. She helped my work immeasurably." Sarah Gerard (Author of BINARY STAR)..