Creative Writing: Storytelling and Improvisation at the NAG

There are still a few days left to sign up for a winter writing class at the Northfield Arts Guild.  This is your opportunity to workshop your writing with author Rebekah Frumkin, whose work was recently featured in The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2009, edited by Dave Eggers.  For a description of the classes Rebekah is offering at the NAG, and an exclusive interview with Rebekah, click "Read More."

Looking for a place to workshop your short story, poem, play, memoir, humorous pastiche? The Northfield Arts Guild is hosting a new workshop called "Creative Writing: Storytelling and Improvisation" where writers of all ages and skill levels can share their work. The class is designed to help writers fine-tune their writing in preparation for anything, whether the ultimate goal is to share it with close friends or publish it in a literary magazine. Roundtable workshopping methods as well as a good dose of improvisatory exercises (or "sudden writing" as it's sometimes called) will give writers the feedback and inspiration they need.

And don't worry if you're still in elementary school - there's a class for you too.  "Tell Your Story: Creative Writing and Improvisation for Kids" is designed for kids between the ages of 7-12 who love to write. We'll be writing stories, poems and plays (some of which we may act out), as well as doing other artistic projects to inform our writing. So bring a pen, a notebook, some action figures and some funny hats: this class will get wild.

Rebekah Frumkin is a sophomore at Carleton College. Her writing has appeared inThe Best American Nonrequired Reading 2009, Post Road and Timothy McSweeney's Internet Tendency, among other places. She is a regular contributor to the Common Review, the literary magazine of Chicago's Great Books Foundation.

Rob: Some people might ask, "Rebekah, what planet did you come from?"  You won your first writing award when you were seven, and while you were still in your teens your writing attracted the attention of Dave Eggers, who included one of your stories in Best American Nonrequired Reading 2009.  Did your parents lock you in the basement with a very large dictionary, a pencil, and a notebook when you were a little girl?  How do you explain the phenomenon of Rebekah Frumkin?

Rebekah: I got started writing because I realized I wasn't going to make it in basketball —in the second grade I'd already gotten cut from the park district team, which I was paying to play on—so I figured it was time to fall back on literary fiction as a career. It was a wise and lucrative decision; I've never regretted it once. Also, the basement-lockings really helped me hone my craft.