Monday, September 8th, 2014 at 7pm at The Writers Room
740 Broadway, 12th Floor, Manhattan
Closest subways: 6 to Astor or N/R to 8th Street/NYU
Cost: FREE
This year Ideasmyth has partnered with The Writers Room to create their new continuing education school, The Master Class Room. To kick off their first fall semester, there will be an inaugural showcase featuring the Masters themselves. Join us at the Writers Room on Monday, Sep. 8 at 7pm to meet these literary rockstars as they present teasers of their work that underscore the creative principles that have brought them the kind of success they wish for their students. The featured talent includes:
- Judy Goldschmidt
- Signe Hammer
- Anne Landsman
- Nova Ren Suma
- Katherine Wessling
- Ideasmyth Creatrix-in-Chief Victoria C. Rowan
Our instructors will treat the audience to a good show and will be available to answer any questions about their classes. Ideasmyth is a results-oriented boutique, and the evening will give attendees the chance to witness works completed at the highest level of their genres.
We welcome any fence-sitters who are curious about The Writers Room and Ideasmyth, any students who are currently enrolled in these upcoming classes–or any previous Ideasmyth alumni.
Meet the Featured Readers:
Judy Goldschmidt has been a YA and Middle Grade book publishing professional for fourteen years. She began her career as an editor/developer at the premier children’s book packager, Alloy Entertainment, where she edited the NY Times bestselling series The A-List. After that she was an editor at Penguin Group Young Readers, before returning to packaging at Full Fathom Five (the company that brought you the New York Times bestselling series I Am Number Four and Dorothy Must Die), where she’s currently the editor of the New York Times best-selling series, The Kicks, and developing four exciting new series. She’s also blogged for MissLiterati.Com, a blog geared for YA readers and aspiring writers, and is the author of the critically acclaimed Raisin Rodriguez trilogy.
See Judy Goldschmidt in action this fall in her course, Breaking into YA Fiction.
Signe Hammer’s memoir, By Her Own Hand: Memoirs of a Suicide’s Daughter, was described as “fascinating and disturbing,” with “an ironic distance worthy of Jane Austen,” in the New York Times Book Review, which named it a Notable Book. Hammer is also the author of Daughters and Mothers: Mothers and Daughters, an Alternate Selection of both the Literary Guild and the Book-of-the-Month Club and a best-seller and feminist classic in Germany; and Passionate Attachments: Fathers and Daughters in America Today. She is the editor of Women: Body and Culture: Essays on the Sexuality of Women in a Changing Society.
Her short stories have appeared in Playgirl and the anthologies Pleasures: Women Write Erotica and Erotic Interludes: Tales Told by Women. Her articles have appeared in Travel/Holiday, Harper’s Bazaar, McCall’s, Parade Science Digest, Health, Mademoiselle, The Ladies’ Home Journal, Working Woman, Ms., The San Francisco Examiner and The Village Voice. Her poems have been published in Fiction, New England Review, and On Barcelona.
She has received fellowships to The MacDowell Colony, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Blue Mountain Center. She is a long-time member of The Writers Room.
She has read her work at Nuyorican Poets Café, The Knitting Factory, Dixon Place, Cornelia St. Café, WOW Cafe, The Writers Room, NYU Programs in Creative Writing; Women’s Ink; Women’s Salon, St. Adrian’s and Dr. Generosity’s. As a dance-theater performer, she was a founding member of Meredith Monk/The House.
She has been an editor at both a major book publisher, Harper & Row, and a national magazine, the Hearst publication Science Digest. She taught writing to adults for 12 years as an Adjunct Associate Professor of Creative Writing at New York University, where she received an Award for Teaching Excellence, and as a Lecturer in the Science and Environmental Reporting Program, NYU Graduate School of Journalism. She currently teaches winter writing workshops in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.
See Signe Hammer in action this fall in her Nonfiction Revision Intensive course.
Anne Landsman is the author of the novels, The Rowing Lesson and The Devil’s Chimney. The Rowing Lesson was awarded South Africa’s two top literary awards – the 2009 Sunday Times Fiction Prize and South Africa’s 2009 M-Net Literary Award for English fiction – and was shortlisted for the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature and the Harold U. Ribalow Prize. Award nominations for The Devil’s Chimney include the PEN/Hemingway Award and the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize. She has contributed essays to the anthologies Touch, An Uncertain Inheritance and The Honeymoon’s Over and has written for numerous publications including Vanity Fair, The Washington Post, The American Poetry Review, The Believer, The Guardian and The Telegraph.
She has taught at Brooklyn College, Columbia University, the New School for Social Research and the University of Wyoming.
See Anne Landsman in action this January in her The Habit of Writing seminar.
Nova Ren Suma is the author of the young adult novels Imaginary Girls (Dutton, 2011) and 17 & Gone (Dutton, 2013) as well as the middle-grade novel Dani Noir (Simon & Schuster, 2009), which was reissued for the YA shelves as Fade Out. Her next YA novel, The Walls Around Us, is forthcoming from Algonquin Young Readers in Spring 2015, with a second YA novel to follow, slated for 2016.
Nova has an MFA in fiction from Columbia University and has been awarded fiction fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, the MacDowell Colony, the Millay Colony, Yaddo, and an NEA fellowship to attend the Hambidge Center. She has worked for publishers including HarperCollins, Penguin and Marvel Comics, and has taught YA novel writing workshops and master classes with Mediabistro, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program and at SCBWI conferences, and is a YA mentor with the Virginia G. Piper Center at Arizona State University for their “Your Novel Year” program. She has been a member of the Writers Room since 1999. Visit Nova online at www.novaren.com or follow her on Twitter at @novaren.
See Nova Ren Suma in action this fall in her YA Novel Writing Intensive course.
Katherine Wessling has spent more than two decades as a fact checker and reporter. She honed her skills as a researcher at Esquire magazine working with writers such as Tom Wolfe, Jim Harrison, John Berendt, Pete Hamill and Peter Maas. Since then, she has created the research department at Good Housekeeping magazine, been a research editor at O, The Oprah Magazine, gone in-house as a research consultant for Mediabistro and freelanced in the research departments of over a dozen other major national media outlets. As a corporate communications consultant for News Corp., Katherine mined online news sources and blogs daily to create the go-to list for media news. She has also done primary research for playwright Eve Ensler, YA writer and style journalist Veronica Chambers, investigative journalist and New York Times bestselling author Vicky Ward, and others.
See Katherine Wessling in action this fall in her Advanced Research and Reporting seminar.
Ideasmyth Founder Victoria C. Rowan began editing her school’s literary magazine at 16. Since then, she has spent over 25 years working in all forms of media, writing for dozens of publications; providing
Having midwife-ed such a range of projects and enterprises she has come to this conclusion: creativity can only consistently thrive when the rest of the artist’s life works and allows space for its potential. Sessions with Victoria will not only help you craft a better book, essay, play, poem, website copy or business plan, but they will also help you become the person you always wanted to be.
See Victoria C. Rowan in action this fall in her workshop, Readying Your Book for Literary Agent Consideration, and her Developmental Intensive.
The Writers Room is New York City’s first shared work space for emerging and established writers of all genres. Founded in 1978 by writers for writers, in this professional workspace creativity flourishes in an atmosphere of mutual support. The Writers Room provides over 200 writers with a quiet, affordable place in which to work. In addition to workspace, the Room offers a reference and research library for the use of its members; seminars and workshops on subjects of interest to writers; readings of members’ works; and community for people working in a solitary profession. In 2012, members published thirty fiction and non-fiction books and many magazine articles, plays & screenplays. Members have written more than 1,000 books since the doors of The Writers Room opened. Open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
Ideasmyth is a holistic creative communications, coaching and branding consultancy founded by Victoria C. Rowan whose previous professional lives included founding the multi-million-dollar education division of Mediabistro.com, artistic programming of the greatest living writers for the 92nd Street Y, writing for dozens of publications, websites and public radio including: Time Out NY, New York Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, The Financial Times, The Moscow Times and NPR. Through personalized coaching and workshops, Ideasmyth mentors and supports clients in creating and cultivating their endeavors, increasing their brand exposure and achieving their most important personal and professional life goals. Since 2000, her Independent Project workshops and coaching practice have helped nearly 1,000 writers produce many critically acclaimed books, theater, websites and other multimedia projects.
