Saturday Morning Writer's Clinic

The January Saturday Writer’s Clinic features two local writers, Maurice Carlos Ruffin and Tad Bartlett, beginning at 9:30 a.m., Saturday, Jan. 11, at the East Bank Regional Library, 4747 W. Napoleon, Metairie.

The sessions – for beginners or experienced writers – are free of charge and open to the public. There is no registration.

9:30 a.m. – “Starting and Finishing Your Stories” – Maurice Carlos Ruffin

 The New Year is the best time to get started with the telling of your story. But how to start? In this session, we'll explore tried and true techniques that will help you find a good place to begin. We'll also discuss how beginnings are related to endings. In combination, these are valuable techniques to overcome writer's block and complete your work. The workshop is for writers of all kinds of prose stories, whether novels, short stories or memoirs.  

Maurice Carlos Ruffin is the author of the national bestseller, The American Daughters, as well as The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You, a One Book One New Orleans selection, which was longlisted for the Story Prize. His debut, We Cast a Shadow, was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and the PEN America Open Book Prize. All three books were New York Times Editor’s Choice selections. Ruffin is the winner of the Iowa Review Award in fiction and the Louisiana Writer Award. Ruffin is an associate professor of Creative Writing at Louisiana State University. 

11 a.m. - “Beginning and Endings'” – Tad Bartlett

 Following up on Maurice Ruffin's workshop on beginnings and endings, we will learn how to find and channel the ingredients that go into those beginnings and endings. If Maurice's workshop is the Dutch oven and roux spoon and well-honed chef's knife, Tad's workshop will be the smoked turkey carcass, the trinity, the andouille, and the roux. With any luck, we'll leave both sessions with a fine pot of gumbo, or at least a path forward into and through your next story, novel, memoir, or other writing project.

Tad Bartlett was born in Ankara, Turkey; grew up in Selma, Alabama; and married into New Orleans. His fiction has appeared in Salvation South, The Massachusetts Review, The Baltimore Review, The Stockholm Review of Literature, and many others; and his non-fiction has been published by The Bitter Southerner, The Chautauqua Literary Journal, The Oxford American (online), The Writing Disorder, and others. His work has been designated as a “notable” essay in Best American Essays and has garnered four Pushcart nominations across both fiction and non-fiction. He earned his MFA in fiction from the Creative Writing Workshop at the University of New Orleans in 2015.

For more information regarding this presentation, contact Chris Smith, Manager of Adult Programming for the library, at 504-889-8143 or wcsmith@jefferson.lib.la.us.