(Click the title to read it online)
The Creative Writing Club of MPC
Spring 2012 Meetings: Thursdays, 3-4PM
HSS Conference Room
(new location)
Open to all MPC students!
NEW Creative Writing classes at MPC
With an exciting new 15-credit Creative Writing Certificate Program and the addition of three entirely new writing workshop courses to the existing curriculum, MPC invites you to explore your imagination and strengthen your creative writing skills in an inspiring variety of genres.
Enroll in one or both of these classes in
Fall Semester 2012:
ENGL 54: NOVEL WRITING
(New Course!)
Suitable for those who have a book in progress and those who want to begin writing one, this is an intensive writing workshop focused on the writing of long-form fiction -- novels, novellas, and book-length story cycles. Course credit is transferable. Pre-requisite: MPC’s ENGL 1A: Composition or equivalent.
ENGL 31: Creative Writing I
Learn and practice the essential skills and techniques of creative writing as you read and write both poetry and short stories. This course is an excellent introduction to the literary arts from the inside – and to the inspiring effects of the writing workshop environment. Be prepared to surprise yourself! Course credit is transferable. Pre-requisite: Eligibility for MPC’s ENGL 1A: Composition.
Courses to enjoy in subsequent semesters include:
ENGL 32: Creative Writing II, providing further study and practice in poetry and fiction, and introducing the writing of creative nonfiction. Offered in Spring semesters. Course credit is transferable. Pre-requisite: Eligibility for MPC’s ENGL 1A: Composition. It is not necessary to have taken ENGL 31 in order to enroll.
ENGL 51: Fiction Writing, an intensive workshop focused on the writing of short stories. Course credit is transferable. Pre-requisite: MPC’s ENGL 1A: Composition or equivalent.
MPC also offers literature classes that provide an expanded appreciation of the writer’s art through time and around the world.
Please see the college catalog online at www.mpc.edu.
To learn more about Creative Writing at MPC, please contact
Henry Marchand at hmarchand@mpc.edu or (831) 645-1321.
Past Creative Writing Events:
Spring 2012
Aimee Bender, author of the novels The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake and An Invisible Sign of My Own and the short story collections The Girl in the Flammable Skirt and Willful Creatures, read from her work and discussed the writing of fiction at an MPC Guest Authors Series event on Thursday, March 15 in the Karas Room. For details, please see The MPC Guest Authors Series page at http://www.mpc.edu/academics/Humanities/Pages/Guest-Author-Series.
Earier in the day on March 15, Aimee Bender visited Henry Marchand's ENGL 32: Creative Writing II class and read one of her stories, "Job's Jobs," which she then discussed with the class. Borrowing from her own teaching of creative writing classes at USC, Aimee engaged the class in a story-building writing exercise involving the conception of characters, setting, tension and resolution.
Also on March 15, Aimee Bender attended the regular weekly meeting of The Creative Writing Club of MPC, where she discussed fiction writing with club members. Learn more about the Creative Writing Club, which is open to all MPC students, at http://www.mpc.edu/FacultyStaff/HenryMarchand/Pages/CreativeWritingClub
Elizabeth Denton, author of the short fiction collection, Kneeling on Rice, led a workshop in How to Start a Short Story on Tuesday, March 6 in BMC107. Twenty-two MPC students participated and each generated potential beginnings for three new short stories! Visiting us from the University of Virginia, where she teaches creative writing, our guest author provided writing prompts that focused attention on character as the wellspring of story; get to know a character and you'll find a story.
On Thursday, March 8, Professor Denton read one of her short stories, "Mick Jagger's Green-Eyed Daughter," in BMC107 before a packed room. The story is not typical of her work, the author noted, in that it develops in a linear fashion; she further noted that in encompassing the entire life span of a character, it differs from most contemporary short stories (though Alice Munro's stories were cited as exceptions).
Also on March 8, Elizabeth Denton and her husband, Mark Edmundson (the MPC Great Books Program's Scholar in Residence) attended the Creative Writing Club's weekly meeting for a discussion of writing that covered a multitude of topics. The meeting was recorded by the Monterey area's AMP TV, as were the week's other seminars and events featuring Professor Edmundson (also of UVA). Watch for these events on AMP's cable Channel 27 and at the AMP web site.
SPRING 2011
The MPC Guest Author Series welcomed multi-award winning Fiction and Nonfiction author Peter Chilson.
Peter Chilson's writing has twice appeared in Best American Travel Writing and in Ascent, Audubon, The American Scholar, Gulf Coast, High Country News, The Long Story, the North American Review, and other publications. He is the author of the book-length memoir Riding the Demon: On the Road in West Africa , and the short story collection Disturbance-Loving Species .
On April 27th, he read from his recent work and discussed his experience working both sides of the fiction/nonfiction line. A book signing followed the reading and discussion.
Fall 2010
Award-winning poet and California native Tess Taylor read from her first collection, The Misremembered World, and from her as-yet unpublished second collection, The Forage House, on October 7th. MPC students, faculty and staff were joined by other members of the Monterey Peninsula community to hear poems including "World's End: North of San Francisco," "The Museum of the Confederacy," "Reading Walden in the Air" and a "circus poem" written in the voice of legendary American huckster P.T. Barnum. After the reading, Ms. Taylor discussed her work and answered questions.
Earlier in the day, Tess Taylor discussed the craft of poetry with Henry Marchand's English 31: Creative Writing class, and also met with members of the MPC Creative Writing Club and other interested students, including ESL students who she encouraged to recite poems from memory in their first languages.
BANNED BOOKS WEEK:
The Creative Writing Club's Banned Books Week events continue to be a smashing success!
In recognition of the American Library Association's annual Banned Books Week, the Creative Writing Club conducts a Banned Books Raffle to raise awareness of ongoing threats to the Freedom to Read.
Books that have been banned or challenged in America's schools and libraries are raffled in the Carolyn Page Garden outside the campus library (TLC) during the last week of September each year.
Also, a Banned Books Read-Out is held in the Sam Karas Room of the TLC during Banned Books Week. A capacity crowd can be expected to listen and join in a public reading of excerpts from books that have been frequently challenged or banned.
Among the works read from at past read-outs are The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 1984, Brave New World, The Satanic Verses, The Awakening, James and the Giant Peach, The Grapes of Wrath, Fahrenheit 451, A Clockwork Orange, Slaughterhouse-5 and many more.
Join us in Fall 2012 during Banned Books Week when we again celebrate the Freedom to Read!
Spring 2010
The MPC Guest Author Series presented novelist Jennifer Gilmore, who read from and discussed her book, Something Red, on Thursday, May 13 in the Sam Karas Room at the MPC Technology and Learning Center. Learn more about Jennifer and Something Red at www.jennifergilmore.net
The Creative Writing Club's Poetry Reading & Slam on April 14th was a blast; a dozen readers presented their own poetry and/or read favorite poems by others, and seven hardy souls competed in the poetry slam.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Henry Marchand, English/Creative Writing Instructor
MFA in Fiction Writing, Pennsylvania State University (1993)
BFA in Creative Writing, Bowling Green State University (1987)
Publications: See below for links to some of my work. My short fiction has also appeared in The Seattle Review, Rosebud, Elysian Fields Quarterly, The Willow Review and elsewhere; I have published additional essays, feature articles and book reviews in The [Cleveland] Plain Dealer, The Toledo Blade Sunday Magazine, The Cleveland Free Times, and The Boston Globe, among other newspapers and magazines. My professional writing background includes general assignment newspaper reporting, ad copywriting, technical report writing, and freelance report and brochure writing for organizations including Planned Parenthood and The American Civil Liberties Union.
Work in Progress: Short stories (always something simmering or rolling at full boil); Finding Daniel (a novel); and The Five Essential Tools of Fiction Writing (a creative writing text).
Where I'm from: Secaucus, New Jersey. Where I've lived: Secaucus and West Milford, New Jersey; Bowling Green, Mansfield, Kent, and Lakewood, Ohio; State College, Pennsylvania; and Pacific Grove, California. I will always be a guy from Secaucus. My years in Lakewood have put Cleveland in my soul. And I do like living in Pacific Grove a whole heck of a lot.
Contact information (for those who don't want to scroll back to the top of the page): hmarchand@mpc.edu; (831) 645-1321. MPC Office: BH103G
Writing by Henry Marchand
You can read some of my work online at:
http://www.paradigmjournal.com/jackson/Marchand_Gone%20Stay%20Gone.html
http://www.americanpopularculture.com/review_americana/spring_2009/marchand.htm
http://home.comcast.net/~wapshot1/spr09/Marchand_AbyssLooksBack.pdf
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/30/opinion/30iht-edmarch.html
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1208-33.htm
[The first three are fiction, two short stories and a novella; the last two are nonfiction. Stop by the office and I can probably give you a copy of another short story or two.]
PHOTO GALLERY
Me with Joshua Converse, 2010 winner of the Ray Fabrizio Memorial Award in Creative Writing, and MPC Board Member Charles Brown. (My apologies to 2011 Fabrizio Award winner Sandra Videmsky and 2012 winner Sarah Goodman for not having photos to post here.)
Me with Ray Bradbury at The Egyptian Theater in Hollywood, October 2008. (Read his short stories, if you haven't already; also, Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles are always worth another look. And by the way, he's a heck of a guy, very friendly; it's always nice to know that's the case with your heroes.)
Me with Morrie, my friend and life coach
(Lesson One: Breakfast...)
