Ethel Rohan's Blog, page 9

Exciting Writing Workshop & Banquet Dinner Giveaway

There’s not much to be said about the period except that most writers don’t reach it soon enough. – William Zinsser

I’m excited to return a second time to teach my ‘Brilliance of Brevity’ writing workshop with Abroad Writers’ Conference in Ireland. This year, the conference will be held in Dublin, at the gorgeous period residence, Butler’s Townhouse, Ballsbridge.

My workshop runs for three afternoons and will cover both short-short fiction and non-fiction. We will read and analyze stories and personal essays, and use their deconstructed skeletons to kickstart our own work. Those students who have repeated my class know I always teach new stories, use new prompts, and focus on new craft elements for every workshop. That keeps the class fresh, energetic, and inspiring for everyone, including me.

This workshop’s focus is on deconstructing the celebrated works of diverse and leading writers of short-short fiction and non-fiction and using those skeletons to kickstart our own work–bones that we’ll put the meat back on to create our own body of work. The workshop is ideal for students at all levels and although we’ll focus on short-short writing, my approach is to share everything I know about great storytelling and getting published, regardless of length. We will read and write hard and deep in a safe, fun, and enthusiastic setting.

I’m excited to also offer my students an exciting giveaway. We’ll pull a student’s name from a hat each day of my workshop and those three lucky writers are invited as my guest, free, to attend the Abroad Writers’ Conference banquet dinner at Butler’s Townhouse on any night of their choice, December 12-19th (dinners are filling fast and dates are subject to availability. Currently, Dec. 15th is sold out). Attendees at these dinners include such literary and publishing luminaries as Mary Costello, Medbh McGuckian, John Banville, Kevin Barry, John Boyne, Declan Meade, and more. It will be wonderful!

This scrumptious meal will be prepared by Nancy Gerbault, AWC’s Founder & Director, and world-renowned master chef, Michael Ruhlman. Ruhlman is an award-winning chef and writer, and has penned over twenty non-fiction books. He has also starred on several TV culinary shows including, Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations and Cooking Under Fire, and The Next Iron Chef.

There are only five spaces left in this workshop. Join us!

Brilliance of Brevity Writing Workshop

Fiction & Non-Fiction

Monday, December 14-Wednesday, December 16; 1-4 pm

Butler’s Townhouse

Ballsbridge, Dublin

To register: Contact Ethel Rohan: ethelrohan@gmail.com or Nancy Gerbault, Abroad Writers’ Conference Founder and Director: abroadwriters@yahoo.com

TESTIMONIAL:

“I’m a poet. As far as I know, I’ve always been a poet. It’s the way I’ve chosen to tell my stories. But lately many of those stories have spilled over their boundaries, asking for something more than I’m able to give them. I knew I needed an entry into the intimidating world of fiction, and Ethel Rohan’s flash fiction workshop, during the Aboard Writers Conference in Ireland, was beyond perfect. She was just the guide I needed — she made it easy to realize the parallels between my poetry and longer prose works, and led stimulating group conversations that left me feeling more than capable of not only beginning work in a new genre, but in conquering it. In fact, I’m using two pieces crafted in her workshop as the basis for a new book of short prose pieces. She gave me that much confidence!” –Patricia Smith, National Book Award Finalist, Winner of the 2014 Rebekah Bobbitt Prize from the Library of Congress, and Winner of the Academy of American Poets 2013 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize

BIO:

Ethel Rohan’s first novel, The Kingdom Keeper, will publish from St. Martin’s Press in early 2017. She is also the author of two story collections, Goodnight Nobody and Cut Through the Bone, the former longlisted for The Edge Hill Prize and the latter longlisted for The Story Prize. She wrote, too, the award-winning chapbook Hard to Say (PANK) and the award-winning e-memoir single, Out of Dublin(Shebooks).

Winner of the 2013 Bryan MacMahon Short Story Award, and shortlisted for the CUIRT, Roberts, and Bristol Short Story Prizes, her work has or will appear in The New York Times, World Literature Today, PEN America, Tin House Online, The Irish Times, BREVITY Magazine, and The Rumpus, among many others. She has reviewed books for New York Journal of Books, and elsewhere.

Her most recent work appeared in the anthologies THE LINEUP: 20 Provocative Women Writers (Black Lawrence Press, 2015); Winesburg, Indiana (Indiana University Press, 2015); DRIVEL: Deliciously Bad Writing by Your Favorite Authors (Penguin: Perigee, 2014). She is also a contributor and associate editor to the anthology Flash Fiction International (W.W. Norton, 2015).

She will/has guest-lectured and/or taught writing at Book Passage; San Francisco State University; the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto; San Francisco Writers’ Conference; Green Mountain Writers Conference; The London Short Story Festival; The Abroad Writers’ Conference; Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP); the inaugural Los Gatos-Listowel Writers’ Week, 2016; and the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Festival, among others. She received her MFA in fiction from Mills College, CA, 2004. Raised in Dublin, Ireland, Ethel Rohan lives in San Francisco where she is a member of The Writers’ Grotto and PEN America.

A Master Plan for Rescue

Bay Area Friends, one week from today, on Thursday, July 16th at 7:30 pm, I’m in conversation with Janis Cooke Newman at The Booksmith, San Francisco, to discuss her tender, imaginative, and gripping new novel, A Master Plan for Rescue.

Already, BBC named the novel a Top-Ten Summer Read and it made Vanity Fair’s Hot Picks list. A Master Plan for Rescue publishes on July 14 from Riverhead Books. I look forward to a truly special evening next Thursday when Janis and I will chat this novel in particular (both its content and its crafting), and the writing life in general. I’ll also be asking just how valuable are books in the modern era, anyway? Please do join us!

Set in 1942 New York and Berlin, a magical novel about the life-giving powers of storytelling, and the heroism that can be inspired by love. It’s the innocent love story of a child and the family he has lost. And it is is the romantic tale of a young man who discovers the love of his life, then witnesses her decline, which changes the arc of his future forever.

Propelled by history and imagination and set against a vivid period backdrop, A Master Plan for Rescue is a beautiful, hopeful novel that suggests that people’s impact on the world doesn’t necessarily end with their lives.

Peter Orner says Janis Cooke Newman, “has a rare ability to completely inhabit totally disparate characters. Here, in this World War II-era story, two strangers come together and attempt the impossible. And once again, Newman breathes pulsing life into what we thought was history.”

Janis Cooke Newman is the author of the Bay Area Bestseller, Mary, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist and USA Today’s Best Historical Fiction of the Year. Newman is also the author of The Russian Word for Snow, a memoir about adopting her son from a Moscow orphanage. Newman’s travel writing has been published in numerous newspapers and magazines, including the LA Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and Backpacker.

Halleluia

My first novel, The Kingdom Keeper, will be published by St. Martin’s Press in early 2017. I find it impossible to put into words how happy, and relieved, and grateful I feel.

The publicity blurb:

Award-winning author Ethel Rohan’s debut novel, THE KINGDOM KEEPER, is set in Ireland and follows morbidly obese Billy Brennan who, in the wake of his teenage son’s inexplicable suicide, begins a weight-loss campaign, the first step in his ambitious plan to stop suicide, a crusade that further rocks his family and ruffles his neighbors, but ultimately proves that with courage, determination, and love, one man’s small actions can bring about enormous change. To Brenda Copeland at St. Martin’s Press by Jeff Kleinman at Folio Literary Management (North American).

 

Getting Heard

The Shebooks anthology, Whatever Doesn’t Kill You, won a silver medal in the Independent Book Publisher (IPPY) Awards. My memoir single, Out of Dublin, is included in the anthology. Huge congrats to editor, Laura Fraser, and to my fellow five contributors, Faith Adiele, Barbara Graham, Susan Ito, Beth Kephart, and Mary Jo McConahay.

The audio version of Out of Dublin also just released. You can listen to a two minute audio sample here. I admit it felt stirring, and gave me goosebumps, to hear the work read, and read so well. Huge thanks to narrator, Billie Fulford-Brown.

After decades of secrets and silence, it is surreal to listen to me, trying to get heard. It is a little shattering, too. I intend fierce, beautiful things to fill-in the cracks and breaks.

Wait till I tell you

was something my dad often said before he’d start a sceal (the fada accent is missing from sceal, look both ‘sceal’ and ‘fada’ up if you need to).

Wait till I tell you, driving scares me, especially driving on freeways, or to new places, or at night, or on narrow, winding roads, or on cliff edges, and on and on. I’m afraid of losing control, of getting lost, of hurting myself, or someone else. I sweat salt beads that sweat salt beads and my heart tries to get outside me, to run away.

I’m afraid and I wrote about it, for a potential readership of 20 million at Ozy Magazine.

I’m afraid and I’m maybe crazy.

In the illustration Ozy used, I’m also a blonde.

Yes, a blonde.

That’s blondism, another made up word like ethrophobia (just read my essay already).

This is the photo of the tree I mention in the essay (which they didn’t use).

Beep, beep.

Congratulations, Winners

Congratulations winners of the Shebooks first print anthology, Whatever Doesn’t Kill You.

Please send me your addresses and I’ll get your copy in the mail right away. Huge thanks to all for entering and your interest.

I hope you three winners enjoy the read.

Shebooks Giveaway

Shebooks have published their first anthology, Whatever Doesn’t Kill You: Six Memoirs of Resilience, Strength, and Forgiveness, a collection of six of its “Best of Shebooks 2014″ non-fiction essays which includes my contribution, Out of Dublin. My fellow authors are Faith Adiele, Barbara Graham, Susan Ito, Beth Kephart, and Mary Jo McConahay. Editor is New York Times best-selling author, Laura Fraser.

“I know now that we never get over great losses; we absorb them, and they carve us into different, often kinder, creatures…We tell the story to get them back, to capture the traces of footfalls through the snow.” — Gail Caldwell, Let’s Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship.

I have 3 copies of Whatever Doesn’t Kill You to give away.

If you’re interested in receiving a copy, please leave a 10-25 word response in the comments to any book you’ve read in 2014. I’ll select 3 lucky winners this Friday, December 12. Worldwide entries are welcome.

Thanks.

Nice News

I learned yesterday my story collection Goodnight Nobody won in the Fiction: Short Story category of the 2014 USA Best Book Awards. It’s a welcome boost. To celebrate, Queen’s Ferry Press has deeply discounted the book and it’s now selling for only $6.95 (regular $16.95). Here’s more information on the Award.

I want to say more. I really do, but I find I have very little to say these days, here, anywhere really. I’m putting everything into finishing my novel.

How are you, though? Tell me about you.

Cover Reveal: Whatever Doesn’t Kill You

Come hear me, and my five fellow contributors, read from the forthcoming anthology Whatever Doesn’t Kill You: Six Memoirs of Resilience, Strength, and Forgiveness which includes the print version of my e-single, Out of Dublin. Tuesday, October, 14, Booksmith, Haight Street, San Francisco, 7:30 pm. Full details here.

Harder Than Fiction

Really pleased with, and grateful for, this review of Out of Dublin. Out of Dublin will be included in Shebook’s forthcoming print anthology, Whatever Doesn’t Kill You. I’ll be reading from Out of Dublin, alongside my five fellow anthology contributors next Tuesday night, October 14th, at Booksmith on Haight Street at 7:30 pm. Won’t you join us? Please join us.

I’ll be the one trembling.