Austin Bat Cave

We Believe in the Power of Words

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The Sentence Lab

Olga Vilkotskaya

Open Genre | Online
Wednesday, 6:30—8:30pm
November 3rd

$45.00 – $90.00

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The fees from ABC’s adult writing workshops subsidize our free writing programs for kids, whose work is collected in a yearly anthology, and pay our adult workshop instructors. A limited number of seats in each class are reserved for scholarships, which cover 100% of tuition-fees and are awarded on a first-come, first-served basis. All are welcome, and we especially encourage BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ writers to apply.

Turn a poet’s eye to prose and explore how description, metaphor, image, variation, and other poetic tools figure in the narrator’s voice—the vehicle for telling any great story. We’ll read passages from several novels and stories and examine how the texture and architecture of the sentences builds atmosphere and keeps us engaged. Then, in sharing passages from your own work, you’ll explore your own tendencies, imitate styles you admire and see what comes from a playful approach to sentences. You will leave class with ideas about how to enliven your prose and develop your story. With readings from Lucia Berlin, Kent Haruf, Spencer Reece, Kiese Laymon, Ali Smith, Anna Burns, and George Saunders.

This class is for writers in all genres who want to expand their view of the sentence or line and to open up a piece of writing that feels stale to them. Please bring two paragraphs (200-400 words) from your story or novel that has either seen no revision or only slight revision. It should not be from a piece that you consider completely finished, because we will be playing with seeing it anew.

This Austin Bat Cave adult writing workshop is open to writers of all levels and is limited to 30 students.

Want a 25% discount? Join the ABC Writer’s Club.

About the Instructor

Olga Vilkotskaya

Olga grew up in the Pacific Northwest and was shocked to see pomegranates and loquats growing on the sidewalk when she moved to Austin. She is a graduate of the Michener Center for Writers in poetry and fiction and has published in Pacifica Literary Review, Mare Nostrum, and The Monarch Review. She is looking for a good home for her first poetry collection, Vision of a Coming Spring. Her work plays with family history, humor and melancholia, the peculiarities of the body and memory. She has a children’s book forthcoming in 2022 about Austin’s celebrity pup, Kaxan, and his journey from the streets to the KXAN newsroom. Olga has been a massage therapist for eight years and runs a private practice specializing in prenatal and postpartum massage in Austin.

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