Announcing our next In-Person Workshop
Making Your Settings Sizzle: The Power of Place
Ruth Nolan
About Ruth Nolan
Ruth Nolan, former wildland firefighter and longtime Professor of Creative Writing at College of the Desert, writes about the Mojave Desert, where she’s lived for most of her life. Her books include After the Dome Fire (Bamboo Dart) and No Place for a Puritan: the Literature of California’s Deserts (Heyday). She is the project director of the award-winning humanities project, Fire on the Mojave: Stories from the Deserts and Mountains of Inland Southern California. She writes columns about desert culture and the environment for KCT Los Angeles and News from Native California. Her newest writing is published in Writing the Golden State: The New Literary Terrain of California (Angel City Press) and in Desert Forest: Life with Joshua Tree (Inlandia Books), both published in 2024
Description of talk:
Join Ruth Nolan to be inspired to find ways to light your settings on fire in ways that give a stronger burn to your writing, whether you are writing fiction, poetry, memoir and/or everything in between. We’ll look at samples of published works where setting jumps off the page and helps propel narrative, tone and excitement and in turn, focus on igniting our own work by tapping into the power of place!
Takeaways:
• Discover why the purposeful development of “place” is one of the most powerful, yet often overlooked, literary devices authors can use to their advantage.
• Learn how to cast “place” as a character with its own motivations in your work.
• Learn some of the techniques used by established writers known for their powerful evocations of setting and place in their work.
• How to use “places you know” to your advantage in the consideration of choosing a setting for your work.
• Practice breathing life into a chosen setting for a work you are writing or planning through several guided prompts given during the lecture.
REGISTER
To receive a full refund minus a $25 cancellation processing fee, attendees must cancel their registration 5 days before the event. No refunds will be given after that time. To cancel your registration, go to palmspringswritersguild.org and click on the blue icon at the top right of any page. Enter user name and password and click "LOG IN". On the next screen click "My event registrations". Select event and cancel registration.
We may take photos and/or videos at any of our events for promotional purposes.
Meeting begins at 12:30 p.m. and ends at 2:30 p.m.
Ready to become a member of the Palm Springs Writers Guild? Please click here.
Event Contact: Jayce Carter
hfheyns@gmail.com
