1 Saturday, July 9, 10am-4pm Berkeley
$95 members/$110 others
Testimonials for Alison
“What is that elusive thing called ‘voice’?” asks instructor Alison Luterman. “How do we find and cultivate our own unique voice, and how do we learn to love and work with what we’ve got?”
“We all know the experience of reading a few lines of poetry or prose and being able to identify the author even without looking. That’s a voice. A page of Toni Morrison does not sound or feel like a page of David Sedaris. And a page of whatever you write should not look or feel like that of the person sitting next to you around the table, even if you desperately admire his or her writing.”
This workshop will start with our relationship to our own physical voices, the ones that growl and squeak and betray our emotions, the voices that whisper and shout inside of us. We’ll remember the songs and sounds of our youth, that primal soundtrack that formed us. “There’s an incredible richness of memory and association available to us through that early music,” says Alison. “Like Proust’s madeleine, it can be a memory trigger for the hundreds of stories and poems that are lying await inside of us.”
In this workshop we will read, write, share, and repeat. There also may be some singing but participation is completely voluntary. No one will be put on the spot.
Alison Luterman has published essays in The Sun, Modern Love, L.A. Review, Radiance, Response, The East Bay Express, The Boston Phoenix, and Salon. She has also written an e-book of essays entitled Feral City, about midlife domestication, remarriage, and second chances (available from SheBooks). Alison is also the author of three books of poetry: The Largest Possible Life, See How We Almost Fly, and Desire Zoo. Last but not least, she writes plays, including Saying Kaddish With My Sister, Glitter and Spew, and a musical, The Chain. Visit her website for more details.