Readings of Your Work: Final for 2017!

Final Prose Class for the Year with Helen Hagemann on Friday, 1st December @ 1pm. We will have two hours of  "READINGS OF YOUR WORK" with a coffee break in between. Please bring along your favourite piece to read for approximately 5 - 8 minutes. This is very good practice, as well as having others hear your work! Any member who has prose poetry, vignettes, flash...

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Shifts in POV: J.K. Rowling's "The Casual Vacancy"

Workshop: Shifts in POV with Helen Hagemann @ the Fremantle Arts Centre, Friday, 17th November, 1pm-3pm.  Readings of J.K. Rowling's "The Casual Vacancy". Writing exercises will look at shifts in POV from chapter to chapter and within a single chapter.  For those writing short stories this will also be a challenge. Venue: Fremantle Arts Centre, Upstairs Room,...

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The Bechdel Test: Friday, 3rd November with Helen Hagemann

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel Workshop: The Bechdel Test with Helen Hagemann @ the Fremantle Arts Centre, Friday, 3rd November, 1pm-3pm.  Readings of Virginia Woolf's short story "The Widow and the Parrot: a true story." The Bechdel Test now a benchmark in movies is also a testament to the influence Virginia Woolf still has on not just literature, but all modern art...

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The Droste Effect: For your Writing

Workshop: The Droste Effect with Helen Hagemann @ the Fremantle Arts Centre, Friday, 20th October, 1pm-3pm.  Readings of Delmore  Schwartz's short story "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities". Writing exercises will involve using the Droste Effect  to tell a particular story - of a story within a story, within a story, etc. Venue: Fremantle Arts Centre,...

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Prose @ Hubbles Yard Cafe

Prose @ Hubbles Yard Cafe with Helen Hagemann Friday, 6th October, 1pm-3pm. This is a critiquing workshop and the idea is to help writers who may have some flash fiction, a short story or novel/chapter opening that they would like others to comment on. All writers at different levels can participate and give brickbats and bouquets. (ie.constructive criticism). You can...

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Looking @ Tom Cox with Helen Hagemann

Looking @ Tom Cox with Helen Hagemann @ the Fremantle Arts Centre, Friday, 22nd September, 1pm-3pm.  Whether published or not this workshop is about promoting yourself as a writer on all social media platforms. Published British author and social-media guru Tom Cox will be our focus as a template.  Venue: Fremantle Arts Centre, Upstairs in the Print Studio. Time: 1-3pm....

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Reflexive Writing: A workshop with Helen Hagemann

Workshop: Reflexive Writing Friday 8th September, 2017. Please note: Class will be held in the Print Studio. Venue: Fremantle Arts Centre, Time: 1-3pm. What to bring: Notepad, pen, laptop or iPad Cost: OOTA $25 - NON-OOTA $30 (ask for membership form to save). For information on joining OOTA and what we do, please visit our website ootawriters.com In reflexive (self‐reflective)...

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Workshop: The Anti-Fairytale with Helen Hagemann

Workshop: The Anti-Fairytale with Helen Hagemann @ the Fremantle Arts Centre, Friday, 25th August, 1pm-3pm.  Readings of Grimm's "The Fisherman and His Wife". Writing exercises will involve looking at the story in a modern context of turning it into "magic realism". Venue: Fremantle Arts Centre, Upstairs Room, however enquire at desk. Time: 1-3pm. What to bring:...

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Workshop with Alice Nelson: 'Voicing the Void: Writing about difficult experiences'.

Workshop with Alice Nelson: Voicing the Void, Writing about Difficult Experiences. Friday 11th August 1-3.00pm at the Fremantle Arts Centre. The theme around Alice's workshop is writing about difficult subjects (obviously not necessarily writing about trauma, but about topics, experiences and issues people may find it challenging to find a way to narrate). There will...

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Writing about Nature: incl. Peter Cowan's "The Red-Backed Spiders".

Writing about Nature with Helen Hagemann @ the Fremantle Arts Centre, Friday, 28th July, 1pm-3pm.  Readings of Peter Cowan's "The Red-backed Spiders". This workshop will introduce ideas on how we can write about nature in our short stories. The "feel good" or "prissy" approach to nature is often boring for the reader. Therefore, we will look at Peter Cowan's short...

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Prose Class at Hubbles Yard Cafe

Writing at Hubbles Yard Cafe with Helen Hagemann Friday, 14th July, 1pm-3pm. This workshop will introduce the critiquing group and how we go about helping one another with our writing. Writers can participate with constructive criticism and also bring along a piece of writing. The last hour of the class will be creative writing exercises. Payment is optional as this is...

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Syntax & The Sentence with Helen Hagemann

Syntax & the Sentence Prose Class, 30th June, 2017 This workshop will focus on breaking out of controlled syntax and sentence structure. Using Natalie Goldberg's book Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within, we will look at ways of unlocking the usual sentence structure of "subject/verb/object" and also ways of joining nouns with verbs to see what...

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The Poetics of Space: writing about intimate spaces

The Poetics of Space with Helen Hagemann Friday, 16th June, 1pm-3pm. This workshop is about taking a journey into intimate spaces, through old houses, dream homes, cellars, attics, verandahs, sheds, up stairs, under stairs, even where a whole house might serve as a portal to the imagination. Writers will read sections of Gaston Bachelard's text "The Poetics of Space" and...

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Inspiration through Photography with Helen Hagemann

Inspiration through Photography will focus on several photographers including Juno Gemes (AU), Deidi von Schaewen (DE), and famous aperture photographers, Berenice Abbott (US), Walker Evans (US) and Eugène Atget (FR). Friday, 19th May, 1pm-3pm. Instead of readings we will look at the various artists' works choosing certain photographs to write about. Writers may choose...

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Writing about Health: incl. Brenda Walker's "Reading by Moonlight"

14.00 Writing about Health with Helen Hagemann @ the Fremantle Arts Centre, Friday, 5th May, 1pm-3pm.  Readings of Brenda Walker's "Reading by Moonlight". This workshop will introduce writing ideas on health to help deconstruct our own experiences so that we can look more deeply into how health has affected the characters that we create on a day...

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Writing About Art (2) - Contemporary Impressionist, Daniela Selir

This workshop is a continuum of studying Daniela Selir's painting "Arts Centre Cafe"which is the subject for the City of Rockingham Short Fiction Awards 2017. Most of Selir's work is contemporary, and as well, hints of a style by the old French Impressionists, including Renoir and Claude Monet. The Impressionist movement was characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible...

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Ekphrasis: Writing About Art workshop with Helen Hagemann

Ekphrasis: "Writing About Art" will focus on a painting by Daniela Selir (1994) titled "Arts Centre Cafe" with the option of entering the City of Rockingham Short Fiction Awards. Friday, 7th April, 1pm-3pm. We will read short extracts of ekphrastic prose by John Ruskin, William Thackeray, Robert Rosenblum and in particular Homer's Bk 18 of the Illiad. Writing exercises...

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Gothic: The Darker Elements - a workshop with Helen Hagemann

This workshop will look briefly at the Gothic and especially how to create those darker effects in your writing. Friday, 24th March, 1pm-3pm. We will read an extract from Edgar Allan Poe's short story The Fall of the House of Usher. Writing exercises will look at the elements of the Gothic and its effect, particularly the effects Poe chiefly sought - terror, passion and...

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