CREATING GREAT CHARACTERS: A reading a discussion with Michelle Blake and Dennis McFarland

CREATING GREAT CHARACTERS: A reading a discussion with Michelle Blake and Dennis McFarland

Tuesday, July 29th at 6:30 pm at Putney Public Library

Writers and husband-wife team Michelle Blake and Dennis McFarland will read from their books and then open a discussion about the process of finding a persona voice in poetry or creating a character in fiction writing. If you’re writing a novel or short story, or you’re an avid reader who wants to know more about writers’ work behind the scenes, join the discussion, ask some questions, pitch some ideas. Books they will be reading from are in the library, also, so if you want a deep dive, read one of these ahead of time:

Blake books:

HOW TO ENTER THE PALACE, poems and THE TENTMAKER, mystery

McFarland books:

NOSTALGIA, novel and LETTER FROM POINT CLEAR, novel

Michelle Blake wrote a trilogy of mysteries, with Lily Connor, and her chapbook, Into the Wide and Startling World, was selected for the New Women’s Voices Series at Finishing Line Press. In 2014, she published a collaboration with visual artist Fran Forman, in which she wrote a series of poems and a fable. She has published poems and essays in MORE Magazine, The New York Times, Ploughshares, Southern Review, Banyan Press Anthology, Cedar Creek Review, Prairie Schooner, Solstice Lit Journal, Cider Press Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Asheville Poetry Review, and many other magazines and anthologies. Her latest book of poems, How We Enter the Palace, was published this year by Green Writers Press.

Dennis McFarland is the bestselling author of seven novels: Nostalgia, Letter from Point Clear, Prince Edward, Singing Boy, A Face at the Window, School for the Blind, and The Music Room. His short fiction has appeared in The American Scholar, The New Yorker, Prize Stories: the O. Henry Awards, Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere. He has received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Wallace E. Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University, where he has also taught creative writing.

Putney Public Library is located at 55 Main St in Putney, VT. This event is free and open to the public.