This class will help you to realize your vision on paper, whether you have draft in hand, or compelling ideas, as yet unexpressed. Explore the writing process during this three-part certificate program. You will be given prompts to spark drama, deepen characters and enhance your familiarity with standard elements of writing fiction.

Participants will examine short classics - two novels, two short stories - and discuss them from the writer’s perspective. As a writer you will receive creative response from interested, sympathetic readers. At the end of the course, you will have fully developed stories or chapters, and confidence in your narrative and editorial skills to continue growing as a writer.

Instructor:
Laura Kalpakian is the acclaimed author of ten novels and three collections of short fiction. Her memoir essays have appeared in anthologies and magazines. She has taught the memoir since 1992. She has received a National Endowment of the Arts, a Pushcart Prize, the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award, and the first Anahid Literary Award for an American Writer of Armenian descent. Her most recent novel American Cookery was nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

Laura is the recipient of a 2009 Mayor's Award for the Arts from the Bellingham Arts Commission and the mayor. She lives in Washington State with her two sons.