Novel Workshop: The Bird’s Eye with Ru Freeman
Novel Workshop: The Bird’s Eye with Ru Freeman
6 Sessions: Sundays, May 17, 24, 31, 7, 14, 21
12:00-3:00pm ET
Ru Freeman
Ru Freeman is an award-winning writer, poet, and activist who has taught internationally for over 15 years, and whose creative and political work has appeared internationally, including in the UK Guardian, The Boston Globe, and the New York Times. She is the author of the essay collection Bon Courage: Essays on Inheritance, Citizenship & A Creative Life, the short story collection, Sleeping Alone, and the novels A Disobedient Girl, and On Sal Mal Lane, a NYT Editor’s Choice Book.
—
I have taught for decades in the US and abroad, published collections of stories, essays, and novels, and produced anthologies of seminal work on issues of social justice. I have also published poetry, and articles as a freelance journalist, and served as a judge for prestigious awards including the PEN Hemingway Prize. I meet writers where they are, with regard for who they are as people, what has moved them to write, and with a view to helping them go further. I want writers to lean into the emotional truths that underlie their writing, to draw on their strengths, and to develop under-utilized aspects of their repertoire. As a veteran in the literary world, I have an extensive network of contacts across the media and publishing industries. I routinely connect my students to industry professionals when I feel their projects are ready.
Sometimes writers are too close to the material. You have worked on it so long that what seemed like it glittered now appears dull. Characters conjured in full emotional regalia now wander seemingly without purpose. Detail is buried under generalities. Setting is diluted. Dialogue arrested mid sentence. The plot sickens. Perhaps it isn’t quite so bad, but if you are tired of clutching your pages to your chest hoping that it is a good working-draft but harboring a suspicion that it needs something beyond hope to reach its potential, this workshop offers a rare opportunity to have your novel workshopped alongside carefully selected peers. We will deep-dive into segments of your draft, diagnose where it might be stuck, and brainstorm approaches to move it forward. You will have the opportunity to ask for help with specific issues and get input to move your novel forward.
We will workshop 1/3 sections of each of your drafts, responding to questions from each writer. The first two weeks will also focus on compelling beginnings, the second two on sustaining middles, and the last two on endings and how they are earned. Following each workshop, the writers whose work was discussed will meet with me for a half-hour check in to discuss any pressing issues, which equals an hour and a half of one-on-one time with me during the session. You will also schedule a longer hour-long meeting to discuss progress after our entire session has concluded.
Workshop Highlights:
Full workshop of your entire novel
The opportunity to create community with your workshop cohort for future exchanges
Regular one-on-one sessions with the instructor after each workshop and upon conclusion of the session to discuss your work and next steps
Sri Lankan born writer and activist Ru Freeman is the author of novels, short stories, essays, and poetry. Her most recent book is the short story collection, Sleeping Alone (Graywolf Press, 20220), which Publisher’s Weekly, in a starred review, called, “a treasure.” Her novels are On Sal Mal Lane (Graywolf Press, 2013), a New York Times Editor’s Choice, and A Disobedient Girl (Atria, 2009), which Danielle Trussoni called, “startling, subversive and heartbreaking.” She is also the editor of the anthology, Extraordinary Rendition: (American) Writers on Palestine (OR Books, 2015) a collection of the voices of 65 American poets and writers speaking about America’s dis/engagement with Palestine, and co-editor of the anthology, Indivisible: Global Leaders on Shared Security (Olive Branch Press, 2018.) Other creative and political work has appeared internationally, including in the UK Guardian, The Boston Globe, and the New York Times. She is director of the Artist's Network at Narrative4, a contributing editorial board member of the Asian American Literary Review, and a fellow of the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Lannan Foundation. She is the 2014 winner of the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for Fiction by an American Woman. She writes for the Huffington Post on books and politics.
When asked about which form she prefers to write in, Freeman responded: “I like the novel more than the short story. I guess that would be one preference that I have, although I write both. I’ve actually been writing more poetry lately than working on the edits of the new novel, so I guess the hierarchy at this moment would be: poetry, novel, short story. The political pieces have to be written very quickly, because something’s happened and you want to talk about it and it has to be talked about now. There’s a charge that comes from writing that kind of stuff.”
She holds a graduate degree in labor studies, researching female migrant labor in the countries of Kuwait, the U.A.E, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and has worked at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC, in the South Asia office of the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL/CIO), and the American Friends Service Committee in their humanitarian and disaster relief programs.
She currently lives and writes in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania.
