Connie Willis has let us know she needs an urgent hip replacement surgery and will not be able to teach in June. Another workshop will take its place, taught by Gail Carriger. Details here!
June 23, 2024 Sunday, 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
At Locus Magazine HQ Preservation Park,
downtown Oakland (near the 12th St BART)
$210.00
Join legendary award-winning author Connie Willis for a one-day intensive Writing Master Class in downtown Oakland this June!
SETTING IT ALL UP: A TUTORIAL IN THE ART OF FORESHADOWING.
Most people think of foreshadowing as “It was a dark and stormy night,” or, worse, those clunky, “Had I but known when I first saw the castle, I’d never have gone in,” things, but foreshadowing is much more than all that. Connie Willis will teach you how to use foreshadowing to set up the plot, set the tone, improve your characters, and make the endings of your stories pay off. She’ll teach you about direct and indirect foreshadowing, hiding your foreshadowing so it can’t be seen, reverse foreshadowing, prophecies and curses, and embedded foreshadowing, as well as what not to do and how to avoid bad foreshadowing. Opus in the comic strip, “Bloom County,” had it right. “Foreshadowing: Your key to quality literature,” and Connie Willis will show you exactly how to do it.
CONNIE WILLIS
Connie Willis is the critically acclaimed author of Doomsday Book, Passage, To Say Nothing of the Dog and Bellwether. Willis has been awarded eleven Hugo Awards, eleven Locus Awards and six Nebula Awards. She was inducted to the Science Fiction Museum and Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2009 and received the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award in 2012. Her stories have an epic feel and range from laugh out loud funny to deadly serious. Her keen observations illuminate the humor, love, and redemption found in both the comic and the tragic. Celebrated as a humorist with spot-on comic timing, she also uses her fiction to examine larger questions: the nature of God, the persistence of suffering and loss, and the role of love and redemption. The Road to Roswell, released to critical acclaim in 2023, is about alien invasions, conspiracies, and the incredibly silly things people are willing to believe — some of which may actually be true!
LOCUS WRITERS WORKSHOPS
Locus Magazine is excited to bring master classes with award-winning authors to the Bay Area. These classes began with writing workshops held in Seattle in conjunction with the Locus Awards Weekend, and have run for over a decade. Past instructors include Charlie Jane Anders, Christopher Barzak, Gail Carriger, Andy Duncan, Amal El-Mohtar, Daryl Gregory, Stephen Graham Jones, Nancy Kress, Yoon Ha Lee, Annalee Newitz, Paul Park, Kim Stanley Robinson, Carrie Vaughn, and, yes, Connie Willis.
Thinking of attending? Please do. We support diversity! We encourage people of color, women, people with disabilities, older people, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people to apply. We welcome people of any gender identity or expression, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, age, size, nationality, religion, culture, education level, and self-identification.
We will have a few seats available for financial hardship or people from marginalized communities; please email locus@locusmag.com to inquire.
For more information about the Locus Awards events, ticketed separately, visit the Locus Awards Weekend site. Exact workshop location and other details will be emailed after registration. Location is in Oakland, CA at the historic Preservation Park. Additional questions? Please e-mail Locus.
