EVENT RECAP
2015 Highlights
2015: Snowstorms and sunny days!
The second IWR built on the success of the inaugural year, attracting world-famous authors and nearly 100 participants from a dozen countries including Australia, Singapore, Bangladesh, Malta, Russia, Netherlands. Additions to the program included a larger teaching faculty and an optional two-day “Relax and Write” program, a tour of the Harpa Concert Hall, and a contest to win a spot at the IWR.
FEATURED AUTHORS
2015 Speakers
Adam Gopnik
New Yorker staff writer
Alison Pick
Man Booker Prize nominee
Andri Snær Magnason
Icelandic Literary Prize winner
Ari Trausti Guðmundsson
Lecturer, Nonfiction Writer
Barbara Kingsolver
Orange Prize for Fiction winner
Gerður Kristný
Icelandic Literature Award winner
Guðni Th. Jóhannesson
Historian, Writer
John Vaillant
Governor General’s Award winner
Jónína Leósdóttir
Author, Playwright
Linn Ullmann
Critically acclaimed Norwegian author
Marcello Di Cintio
Award-winning travel writer
Ruth Reichl
Bestselling food writer and editor
Sjón
Nordic Council Literary Prize winner
Taiye Selasi
Granta “Best Young British Novelist”2015 Workshops
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How many times have you wondered how a novelist was able to write so convincingly about his subject, or how a nonfiction writer got access to her information. Behind almost every good story is a
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How do you decide what to include when writing memoir? How do you tell the truth when looking back from a great distance? What belongs to you, and what's off limits? In this workshop we’ll discuss
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Descriptive writing succeeds when it gives us that "you are there" feeling, when we're not only thinking and seeing, but feeling the story. In this workshop we will explore and practice the crafting
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Some of the greatest moments in literature are about very small and complicated things. In her Paris Review-interview, author Paula Fox recalls teaching a fiction writing class at the University of
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We explore how the books we have read have inspired us to become writers. All authors start as readers and through their writing can’t help passing on their reading experiences and excitements to
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Looking through Roget for ways to describe flavor, you come up very short. Taste. Savoriness. Insipidness. Sweetness. Sourness. Pungency. Once you’ve exhausted the usual suspects, what do you do?
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A thorough dissection of the novel The Blue Fox, what inspired it and what it is made of, stylistically as well as in its author’s appropriation of archival material. Sjón opens his author's tool
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A journal can be a writer’s best friend. It’s a place to record plot ideas, snippets of dialogue, inspirational quotes, and self-exploration that will fuel any genre. Come prepared for a variety
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This workshop will consider what fiction writers can learn from screenwriters. Focusing on three areas -- plotting, description, and dialogue -- we'll explore how traditional screenwriting strategie
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Strong characters are crucial for good narrative of all kinds—fiction, non-fiction, and memoir. This workshop will give you the opportunity to develop a new character, or to get to know a pre-exis
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In 1959, C.P. Snow warned that the worlds of science and of letters were dangerously dividing as "the two cultures." That gap continues to widen as modern writers and scientists pursue highly specia
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Literary essays are a unique form -- having neither the argumentative, point-scoring, thesis-making form of the academic paper, nor the summary- judgment form of the book review. The literary essay
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We live in an age when many people try to write first person or "personal" essays, but often underestimate the technical difficulty or frustrating intricacy of the form. The goal of every memoir-ess
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In a world where every place has been discovered, what is the point of travel writing? In this workshop, we will discuss the changing role of narrative travel journalism in today’s hyper-connected
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The world is full of characters waiting for an author. In this workshop, participants will examine how to get to the heart of other people’s stories. We will discuss interview techniques, learn to
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This workshop will consider the relative merits of four narrative voices: first person singular, first personal plural, second person, and third person subjective. Writers will be encouraged to expe
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In his preface to Look Homeward Angel, Thomas Wolfe wrote: "Fiction is fact selected and understood... fiction is fact arranged and charged with purpose." Writers commonly begin from a spark of inci