Improve your public reading skills.

Do you love to write but are terrified to share your work aloud? Afraid of the flat voice, the expecting audience, the dreadfully mild golf clap at the end? This workshop aims to improve public reading skills. A literary reading is a dynamic opportunity to directly connect with an audience (and sell more books). It’s a performance. And it’s more about technique and preparation than anything else. In this class, we’ll discuss practicable techniques to interactively engage and energize a room (or make them weep). Then we’ll mark up and annotate your work to perform so that you can further develop these skills independently. This class is open to prose or poetry (of all genres) and all writing levels from beginners interested in open mics to published authors wanting to improve their skills for events. This workshop may also benefit participants in other contexts, including speeches, professional presentations, or even revision of written work (the mark-up process reveals a lot). Looking forward to hearing your voice!

In-person class: This workshop will take place at The Writer’s Center, 4508 Walsh St, Bethesda MD.

In this workshop you’ll learn:

• Grammar essentials, with a stress on including verbs and sentence structure.
• An approach to good writing that eliminates friction, entices readers, and gives your sentences and paragraphs momentum and power.

Time requirements

• No additional time required outside of class.

Materials

• Attendees should bring two printed paper copies of a work to read aloud. Work or excerpts between 500-2,000 words are optimal for this workshop. Colorful pens are encouraged, too.

Who should take this workshop?

• This class is open to prose or poetry (of all genres) and all writing levels from beginners interested in open mics to published authors wanting to improve their skills for events.

If you need an accommodation for this workshop, please contact us at access@writer.org. We will attempt to fulfill all requests, but advance notice is necessary to arrange for some accessibility services.