I. Scene Writing with Jennifer Lang on Monday, September 16 from 18:00 – 21:00 in Raanana

This workshop is suitable for anyone contemplating, intending or already in the process of writing a memoir or novel. We’ll delve into the nuts and bolts of scenes—what they entail, why they’re important, how to construct them. We’ll read and study scenes from works by Ann Hood, Kerry Corrigan, Ann Packer, and Jenna Blum, as well as do writing prompts to help us understand when and how to use scene in our own writing. This workshop is suitable for writers of all genres. Details at http://israelwriterstudio.com/scene-writing-workshop/ http://israelwriterstudio.com/scene-writing-workshop/

II. Word Painting with Jennifer Lang on Wednesday, September 18th from 10:00 – 13:00 in Raanana

Sensory details—the smell of your mother’s favorite perfume forty years ago, the sight of your grandfather’s dentures on the bathroom sink, the feel of your first boyfriend’s black leather jacket against your bare arms—invoke the five senses to help the reader picture the setting and feel engaged in the story. In this workshop, we’ll awaken and enlist each of our senses through readings and prompts to infuse our prose with energy. Open to all genres, all levels. Details at http://israelwriterstudio.com/word-painting-workshop/ http://israelwriterstudio.com/word-painting-workshop/

III. Wake up to the Extraordinary with Jane Medved on Wednesday, November 20 from 10:00-13:30 in Raanana

We are all surrounded by mundane tasks, habitual routines and objects so common we simply stop seeing them. As writers we face the same basic challenge: how do we turn the stuff of our day-to-day lives into compelling writing? How do we reignite our sense of awe to the world right in front of us? How do we make art out of the everyday? In a series of readings and guided writing exercises, we will explore how familiar objects and spaces all have their own stories to tell. We will study how others have cracked open and elevated the commonplace; how they have released the holy in the mundane. This is a multi-genre workshop, combining poetry and lyric essay. Details at http://israelwriterstudio.com/wake-up-extraordinary/ http://israelwriterstudio.com/wake-up-extraordinary/

IV. Do you have a body of work already written--short stories, chapters from a novel or memoir, fiction or nonfiction--that needs a keen eye, group feedback? Interested in an evening workshop group in Tel Aviv?

V. Best way to learn about upcoming workshops, read good writing, and connect to the local literary scene is to LIKE https://www.facebook.com/israelwriterstudio/https://www.facebook.com/israelwriterstudio/ https://www.facebook.com/israelwriterstudio/ or email jennifer@langonline.com

Sign-ups for the September workshops happening now. Don't miss out on the early-bird discount.

Israel Writers Studio presents a phenomenal fall line-up:

1. Word Painting with Jennifer Lang on Wednesday, September 18th from 10:00 – 13:00

As Neil Gaiman writes, “All we have to believe with is our senses, the tools we use to perceive the world: our sight, our touch, our memory. If they lie to us, then nothing can be trusted. And even if we do not believe, then still we cannot travel in any other way than the road our senses show us; and we must walk that road to the end.”

Sensory details—the smell of your mother’s favorite perfume forty years ago, the sight of your grandfather’s dentures on the bathroom sink, the feel of your first boyfriend’s black leather jacket against your bare arms—invoke the five senses to help the reader picture the setting and feel engaged in the story.

In this workshop, we’ll awaken and enlist each of our senses through readings and prompts to infuse our prose with energy. Open to all genres, all levels.

See http://israelwriterstudio.com/ word-painting-workshop/ http://israelwriterstudio.com/word-painting-workshop/ for details about registration.

2. Wake up to the Extraordinary with Jane Medved on Thursday, October 3 from 10:00-13:30

We are all surrounded by mundane tasks, habitual routines and objects so common we simply stop seeing them. As writers we face the same basic challenge: how do we turn the stuff of our day-to-day lives into compelling writing? How do we reignite our sense of awe to the world right in front of us? How do we make art out of the everyday?

In a series of readings and guided writing exercises, we will explore how familiar objects and spaces all have their own stories to tell. We will study how others have cracked open and elevated the commonplace; how they have released the holy in the mundane. This is a multi-genre workshop, combining poetry and lyric essay. Come prepared to explore and write!

See http://israelwriterstudio.com/wake-up-extraordinary/?et_fb=1&PageSpeed=off http://israelwriterstudio.com/wake-up-extraordinary/?et_fb=1&PageSpeed=off for details about registration.

3. Stay tuned for another eye-opening workshop on Wednesday, November 13 from 10 - 14:00 with Adi Singer, founder of workplay

A Seminar on Narrative Point of View

for fiction & nonfiction writers

with award-winning author, Jessamyn Hope

July 18, 2019, 09:30-15:00

Jerusalem

How your story unfolds will depend in large part on who is telling it—that is, on your narrator. But how do you know which narrative point of view will best serve your story? Should your narrator be in first person or third? What about second? And if in third, should it be subjective, objective, or omniscient? Would it be better to have multiple points of view or stick with one? And what about tense? Should the narrator be telling a story that happened in the past, present, or possibly the future? If it’s in the past, from what vantage point is the narrator telling his or her story: the day after it all happened or fifty years later? And how does point of view affect the narrator’s voice?

Whether all of the above terminology is new to you or you have been thinking about Point of View for a long time and are merely unsure which one would work best for your current project, this seminar can help. Together we will explore the advantages and disadvantages of various narrative points of view so that you can choose the right one for your short stories, novels, and creative nonfiction. We will do this by studying your own favorite work of literature; by analyzing excerpts from famous novels; and by doing writing exercises based on your current work in progress.

Bio: Jessamyn Hope is an award-winning novelist and memoirist based in New York City. Her debut novel Safekeeping was a recommended read by The Boston Globe; acclaimed by The Globe and Mail; won the J.I. Segal Award; and was a finalist for the Paterson Fiction Prize and the Ribalow Prize. Her short memoirs—originally published in Ploughshares, Five Points, PRISM International, and other literary magazines—have received two Pushcart Prize honorable mentions and have been anthologized in Best Canadian Essays, The Broadview Anthology of Expository Prose and the forthcoming volume of The New Spice Box: Canadian Jewish Writing.

For more information & registration: http://www.writespacejerusalem.com/the-eye-of-the-beholder-8203a-seminar-on-narrative-point-of-view-with-jessamyn-hope---july-18.html http://www.writespacejerusalem.com/the-eye-of-the-beholder-8203a-seminar-on-narrative-point-of-view-with-jessamyn-hope---july-18..html

Interested in exploring other avenues of writing? Check out WriteSpace Jerusalem's website for in-person and online coaching, workshops and seminars: www.writespacejerusalem.com http://www.writespacejerusalem.com/

Nadia Jacobson

Founding Director, WriteSpace Jerusalem

All Writers Welcome!

Marketing. UX. Knowledge Base. Technical. Internal Comms.

Join us at our 2nd Words Matter annual event. Come to network, eat, drink and have fun with peers from all over Israel working in every kind of industry and language.

MC: Nora Ginio, Head of Wix Writers´ Guild, with a few words from
David Schwartz, VP of Product at Wix.com

RSVP here - https://www.wordsmatterevent.com/?fbclid=IwAR2GZUxBhThiPLo2I6GDPz2HU2U_gmzrJa52xkEWxjUPTgTmATLtibDBkbA%20https://www.wordsmatterevent.com/?fbclid=IwAR2GZUxBhThiPLo2I6GDPz2HU2U_gmzrJa52xkEWxjUPTgTmATLtibDBkbA

Parts of the Whole: From Sentence to Paragraph to Story

with prize-winning author & teacher,

ILANA BLUMBERG

Thursday, July 4

10:00-15:00

Katamon, Jerusalem

All our stories are made up of language: of sentences and paragraphs. So what makes a story powerful and memorable when we read it?

This workshop will slow down to focus on crafting our prose in ways that make our ideas and feelings memorable, evocative, powerful. Have no fear! Most first drafts cannot achieve this. So we will investigate the process in which we can refine our language, as we go.

Looking closely at very different examples of inspiring prose, we will consider together how to build strong sentences, how to calibrate the force of a set of sentences that make up a paragraph, how to find the right rhythms for the stories we are telling, the right images, the right balance between everyday language and high language. At the same time, we will, as always, be thinking about the whole: the stories we want to tell, and perhaps even need to tell.

Texts may include sections from Exit West, by Mohsin Hamid; The Last of Her Kind, by Sigrid Nunez; and the stories of Katherine Anne Porter.

Register here: http://www.writespacejerusalem.com/parts-of-the-whole-from-sentence-to-paragraph-to-story---ilana-blumberg---july-4-2019.html

Ilana Blumberg is the author of Open Your Hand: Teaching as a Jew, Teaching as an American(Rutgers Press, 2018) and the Sami Rohr Prize-winning memoir, Houses of Study: A Jewish Woman Among Books. She directs the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar-Ilan University where she is a senior lecturer in English literature. She is widely published in Victorian studies and has won teaching awards from the University of Pennsylvania and Michigan State University.

Posted by

nadiaj12@gmail.com

Yoga-Writing Workshop with Jennifer Lang on Thursday, June 13 from 10:30 – 14:30 at Israel Writers Studio in Raanana We all have stories to tell. For some of us, they lie buried, deep inside, occasionally rising up and taking us by surprise. In this workshop, we will plumb our bodies and our minds through movement and meditation to find our stories and begin to write them. We’ll explore how the practice of yoga enriches the art of writing. As Susanna Harwood Rubin said, “Writing can be a purging, a meditation, a creative investigation in the same way that a yoga practice can burn off what isn’t serving us, draw us into contemplation, or ignite our creativity. The process can feel hesitant or fluid, peaceful or driven, playful or gut wrenching.”

Join writer and yoga instructor, Jennifer Lang, for an inspiring day of play and work. Through a thoughtful mix of breathing, meditation, and movement accessible to everyone, writing exercises, group sharing and discussion, we will dive into our minds and generate new work.

Details at http://israelwriterstudio.com/yoga-writing-workshop/

Making History: How To Write Historical Fiction

with award-winning author, Janice Weizman

May 30, 09:30-15:00

Whether it's second-temple Jerusalem, the French Revolution or London in the swinging sixties, if you feel an urge to write a historical novel, then clearly a particular time and place in history have charged your imagination. But configuring the plot is only the first step. Good historical fiction captures the authentic feel of life, not just the physical details, but the way people spoke, loved, worked, and dreamed. It addresses questions such as: What did people of the time believe about the world? What limited them? What frightened them? What gave them hope?

​In this workshop, we’ll talk about how you can work towards really getting inside your chosen time period. We’ll explore not only how to get the sights and sounds right, but also how to create an accurate psychological picture of the people you’re writing about – one that draws readers in and intrigues them as much as it has you. And we’ll discuss how to craft an imagined narrative while remaining true to what is essential about your chosen setting, and showing how the life and times of your characters make them the people they are.

Register here: http://www.writespacejerusalem.com/making-history-how-to-write-historical-fiction-with-janice-weizman---may-30.html

Date: May 30

Time: 09:30-15:00

Location: Katamon, Jerusalem

1. Build a Better Story: Focus on Storytelling Structure Workshop with Sari Friedman on Thursday, May 16 from 10:30 – 14:30 at Israel Writers Studio in Raanana

Whether you’re writing a literary novel or easy-reader children’s book, a science fiction movie script or flash fiction, your job is to hook your readers with an intriguing beginning, increasingly engage your readers as your story develops, and give them a satisfying and evocative sensation of closure at your story’s end. In this workshop you’ll do several exercises, write in short productive spurts, and cover everything from the basics of storyboarding and narrative structure to sophisticated techniques for generating dramatic suspense. You’ll learn the differences between storytelling styles; strengthen your ability to build a spectacular beginning, middle and end; and fortify your understanding of plot, drama, narrative arc, story architecture and more. Open to all levels, all genres.

Details at http://israelwriterstudio.com/build-a-better-story-workshop/ http://israelwriterstudio.com/build-a-better-story-workshop/

*The Sentence Wants to Celebrate: A Writing Workshop *

*with Judy Labensohn*

Thursday, March 7, 2019 9:30 AM – 2:30 PM

Yes, the sentence wants to celebrate, but so many writers put blocks in its

way that it can’t express joy, sorrow or awe, let alone simple facts. What

to do with these writers? I will try to show you how your sentences can

sing and celebrate by playing with word choice, placement, order, sounds,

meaning, and length. You will be amazed what your sentences can do, if you

only let them.

In this workshop, we will read and analyze amazing sentences from the past

and present, long and short, funny and sad, deep and superficial, high and

low. Then we will look at your sentences. (Bring a short piece of writing

in its first or fiftieth draft.) We will dive into your sentences to loosen

or tighten them. Your sentences will breathe like never before.

Bring your erasures and scissors, because you will need them to release

your sentences from the chains that bind them. Consider pliers as well. I

will supply a garbage bag.

You’ve heard of clutter, no doubt. Maybe your home is full of it. Once you

start clearing your sentences of clutter, you become ready to clean your

house, as well. This alchemy works in the opposite direction, too. If you

clean one drawer before the workshop, your sentences will thank you. They

want to celebrate, for heaven’s sake.

Bio: Judy Labensohn is the author of the unpublished memoir, *Our Names Do

Not Appear*. She has been publishing her writing and poetry in the US,

Israel and Canada since 1967. Founder of The Writing Pad, The Writing Gym,

and Just Cuts (for hair, not sentences), currently she studies body

movement and music theory in Tel Aviv.

Place: 53 Be’eri, Tel Aviv, near Savidor Central Train Station and R.

Namir and Arlozorov

Time: 9:30 AM – 2:30 PM, Thursday, March 7, 2019

Maximum number of participants: 9

Cost: NIS 390, includes handouts, hot drinks and nosherei; possibly a

quinoa salad.

Registration: email judylabensohn@gmail.com . Indicate your preference for

bank transfer or check, made out to Judy Labensohn, sent through Israel

Postal service.

These workshops fill up quickly, so don’t obsess too long.

Judy Labensohn, Author,

*Our Names Do Not Appear*

Founder,

*The Writing Pad *www.writeinisrael.com

*Just Cuts, *holistic hair styling

Memoir Writing Workshop at Israel Writers Studio

As Isabel Allende says, “A memoir forces me to stop and remember carefully. It is an exercise in truth. In a memoir, I look at myself, my life, and the people I love the most in the mirror of the blank screen. In a memoir, feelings are more important than facts, and to write honestly, I have to confront my demons.”

In this workshop, we’ll stop to look in the mirror at ourselves, our lives, and the people we love (and other verbs) and turn the images we see and the memories we have into words on the page. We’ll read excerpts by memoirists Cheryl Strayed (Wild), James McBride (The Color of Water) and Lucy Grealy (Autobiography of a Face), do writing exercises, and share our stories. Geared toward memoir writers, this workshop is open to all genres and levels.

Date: Thursday, March 7th, from 10:30-14:30

Bio: A San Francisco Bay Area native, Jennifer Lang lives and writes in Raanana. Her essays have appeared in Under the Sun, Ascent, The New Haven Review, and on NPR's "Hanukkah Lights" podcast, among others. A Pushcart Prize and Best American Essays nominee, she earned an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and serves as Assistant Editor for Brevity.

Place: Raanana, easy access from Tel Aviv, Herzilia, Kfar Saba, Hod Hasharon, Netanya; a 5-minute walk from 501, 47, 347, 29 buses on Ahuzza

Cost: 390 NIS includes kosher vegetarian lunch, beverages

Registration: Space is limited. Call 054 256 7157 or email jennifer@langonline.com mailto:jennifer@langonline.com to sign up

FROM EVERYDAY TO DRAMATIC MOMENT http://www.writespacejerusalem.com/from-everyday-to-dramatic-moment---ilana-blumberg---feb-28-2019.html

a masterclass with award-winning author & prize-winning lecturer

ILANA BLUMBERG

FEBRUARY 28, 10:00-15:00

We will explore two different ways to narrate our past as it explains who we are today: we can tell this story by finding critical, dramatic moments that we believe shaped us or we can try to evoke the general tenor of the world in which we grew up.

How can we put these two approaches into balance so as to create compelling narratives of our own development?

​How can such writing help us understand who we understand ourselves to be, and what we see as our place in the world, today?

This workshop is relevant for fiction writers considering how to create rich characters, as well as memoir writers reflecting on their own lives.

For more information & registration: http://www.writespacejerusalem.com/from-everyday-to-dramatic-moment---ilana-blumberg---feb-28-2019.html http://www.writespacejerusalem.com/from-everyday-to-dramatic-moment---ilana-blumberg---feb-28-2019.html

Ilana Blumberg is the author of Open Your Hand: Teaching as a Jew, Teaching as an American(Rutgers Press, 2018) and the Sami Rohr Prize-winning memoir, Houses of Study: A Jewish Woman Among Books. She directs the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar-Ilan University where she is a senior lecturer in English literature. She is widely published in Victorian studies and has won teaching awards from the University of Pennsylvania and Michigan State University.

Date: February 28

Location: Talbiya/Katamon

Time: 10:00-15:00

Cost: 490 NIS

Nadia Jacobson

www.writespacejerusalem.com http://www.writespacejerusalem.com

Breathe life into your writing

The Writing Pad invites

you to

*Tracking Our Lives through Reflective Journaling:*

*A Workshop with Dr. June Leavitt*

Jan. 31, 2019 10 AM

– 3 PM

In this seminar for writers, artists and all creative souls, we will

learn how to become more intimate with our own experiences through the

craft of reflective journaling. Unlike normative diary keeping, we begin

with writing exercises that bring our focus to a recent *cycle* in our

lives. We note down the atmosphere of the period, the people who were

important to us, the projects we did, the sensations, images and insights

that have stayed with us. We then expand upon our reflections on the

period, through writing tasks that involve personification of events,

dialogue, and the chronicling of memories. These creative techniques for

digging deeper into our experiences can be applied beautifully by writers

to gain more intimacy with their fictional or autobiographical characters!

*Tracking our Lives through Reflective Journaling* would not be

complete without reading excerpts from the diaries of Virginia Woolf in the

context of her very strange life. We will do this in order to compare her

understanding of the diary genre with the evocative journaling methods we

will be plying.

Participants are asked to bring a new, five-subject, ruled notebook to the

workshop.

Bio: *Dr. June Leavitt* lectures in mystical literature at Ben Gurion

University, works as a freelance writer and facilitates a creative writing

workshop in Jerusalem. Her publications include *The Mystical Life of Franz

Kafka,* (Oxford, 2012) and *Esoteric Symbols: the* *Tarot in Yeats, Eliot

and Kafka*, (University Press of America, 2007), as well as* Flight to

Seven Swan Bay *(Feldheim, 1985) a novel for young adults that was reissued

by Feldheim, 2012 as a classic for young readers. The publication of her

diaries-- *Storm of Terror: A Hebron Mother's Diary *(Ivan Dee*, *2002*)*

and *Maze of Terror *(Laffont, 1996), excerpts of which appeared in *US

News and World Report,* caused her to experiment with journal writing in

order to spur understanding and creative growth. For the past two years,

Leavitt has been an active participant in curative journal workshops

throughout the United States, as well as an avid scribe, dedicated to

tracking her own life.

Originally from New York, Leavitt earned her BA in English

from the University of Wisconsin. After graduating, she homesteaded five

years in the woods of New England, immigrating to Israel in 1979, where she

raised five children. She received her Masters in Foreign Literature from

Ben Gurion University when she was 56 and her PhD when she was 60. She lives

in Kiryat Arba with her husband..

Place: The Writing Pad, 53 Be’eri, Tel Aviv

Time: Thursday, January 31, 2019 10 AM – 3 PM

Cost: NIS 420, includes readings, coffee, tea and nosherei. Does not

include food for short lunch break.

Registration: email judylabensohn@gmail.comand indicate whether you will

send a check or make a bank transfer to secure your place.

Judy Labensohn, Author,

*Our Names Do Not Appear*

Founder,

*The Writing Pad *www.writeinisrael.com

*Just Cuts, *holistic hair styling

Finding Focus & Tackling Structure

with visiting memoirist, Annette Gendler

January 10, 09:30-15:00

When writing stories from real life, finding focus is a challenge as so many parts and people in our lives relate to each other.

The first part of this workshop will introduce you to several techniques of finding focus in your writing projects. We will examine texts and analyze how the writer managed to distill a larger story into a compelling narrative. We will also review several approaches to structure as focus alone does not necessarily help us find the right way to tell a story.

In the second part, we will discuss structure as we review students' manuscripts (up to 20 pages double-spaced) which must be submitted at least one week prior to the masterclass.

More information & registration: http://www.writespacejerusalem.com/finding-focus--tackling-structure-with-annette-gendler---jan-10-2019.html http://www.writespacejerusalem.com/finding-focus--tackling-structure-with-annette-gendler---jan-10-2019.html

Location: Tabliya, Jerusalem

Writing the Family Drama Workshop with Janice Weizman REGISTRATIONS UNDERWAY

In this workshop, we’ll look at stories and personal essays that take the complex world of the family as their setting. We’ll discuss the elements that go into the crafting of a Family Drama, as well as issues that may arise when drawing on our own memories, and most importantly, we’ll do writing exercises that aim to provide structure and inspiration for those looking to further their own work in this genre. Open to all levels and genres. Investment: 390nis includes light kosher vegetarian lunch and beverages. Call Jennifer Lang at 054 256 7157 to sign up. 

Move your story from your imagination onto the page. 
Learn how to manage the creator and editor sides of your brain. 
Break through “writer’s block".

Engage your senses and push your story through from beginning to end in creative writing workshops with fiction writer, Nadia Jacobson, and hybrid and creative non-fiction writer, Batnadiv HaKarmi. In each of the workshops, participants will hone specific skills through in-class writing prompts and submit pieces for in-depth feedback.

This ten-week series will focus on character development, point of view, setting, dialogue, story arc, time, rhythm and narrative pace.

This intermediate workshop is appropriate for those interested in writing fiction and creative nonfiction. 

Time: Sunday mornings, 10:00-12:00

Dates: October 7-December 23

More information & registration

Nadia Jacobson is a Jerusalem-based writer and editor. She is a fiction editor at the Ilanot Review, an Israeli journal of creative writing in English, and served as co-Municipal Liaison for the Jerusalem region of National Novel Writing Month, 2016 (nanowrimo.org). She holds an MA in English Literature and Creative Writing from Bar-Ilan University, and her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in The Binnacle, Annalemma, Every Day Fiction, and a number of anthologies. A long-time member of the Jerusalem Writing Circle, she has taught creative writing at Emunah Ve’Omanut and privately, and has experience coaching writers from first draft to publication.

Batnadiv Hakarmi is a Jerusalem-based writer, editor and artist whose works have appeared in Poetry International, the Ilanot Review, and Partial Answers. She holds an MA in Comparative Literature from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where she taught composition and Introduction to Fiction. A long time member of the Jerusalem Writing Circle, she founded and directs Night Writers, Jerusalem. She currently teaches creative writing at Emunah Ve’Omanut, a branch of Emunah College. Her work can be seen at www.batnadiv.com.

Reflect & Contemplate: Techniques for Personal Essay & Memoir Workshop with Sherri Mandell 2 SPOTS LEFT

This is the time period when we are called to reflect upon our lives. It’s fitting then to study the personal essay and memoir because what often distinguishes them is the quality of reflection. In this workshop, you will practice simple techniques that enhance contemplation in your writing so that your essays become richer and more textured. Along with deepening reflection in the story you are telling, you will make space for speculation, imagination, association, interpretation, deeper insights and understanding. Open to all levels and genres. Investment: 390nis includes light kosher vegetarian lunch and beverages. Call Jennifer Lang at 054 256 7157 to sign up.