EVENT RECAP
2019 Highlights
2019: Laughter & Learning
The sixth IWR was a week filled with laughter, learning, and inspiration. Writers from over 20 countries participated in over 45 workshops and literary events. One writer praised the retreat as incredibly organized, with a positive and open atmosphere, run with heart. Another called the 2019 IWR an experience of a lifetime for an aspiring writer in need of inspiration and encouragement.
FEATURED AUTHORS
2019 Speakers
Alda Sigmundsdóttir
Writer, journalist and speaker
Ann Hood
NYT bestselling author
Auður Jónsdóttir
Icelandic Literary Prize Winner
Chigozie Obioma
Man Booker Prize finalist
Dagur Hjartarson
Tomas Gudmundsson Prize Winner
Elizabeth Renzetti
Bestselling author and journalist
Ivan Coyote
Hilary Weston Roger's Trust prize nominee
Lilja Nótt Þórarinsdóttir
Speaker on Golden Circle and Geology, Ecology and Literary Inspiration tours
Lina Meruane
Chilean writer and scholar
Louis de Bernières
Commonwealth Writers' Prize winner
Paul Yoon
Harvard University lecturer
Priya Basil
Commonwealth Writers' Prize nominee
Ragnar Helgi Ólafsson
Icelandic Literary Prize nominee
Sarah Moss
Creative Writing Prof and award-winning author
Sigurlín Bjarney Gísladóttir
Literary Borgarfjörður tour guide
Tessa Hadley
Windham Campbell prize winner2019 Workshops
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What makes for strong characters in fiction? Is it a character’s back-story, voice, language, actions, quirks, mysteries? Is it the degree to which a character changes? Is it other characters?
The
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Ivan Coyote is the author of 10 collections of short stories, one novel, the co-editor of an anthology, and the producer of four short films, six full-length theatre shows, and three albums that combi
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The hardest thing to write about is now because this moment is perpetually in motion, becoming something else. This flux is especially charged in politically uncertain times, and perhaps, for this ver
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Ivan Coyote is the author of twelve books, and the creator of three albums, four short films, four full-length stage shows, and a renowned performer. Ivan also believes that the very first step in com
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Whether you write with flowery descriptions or in short terse sentences, we all must use description in our work. How else would we know what was happening in the scene, with the character, and of cou
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This sounds so elementary. But the fundamental effort of good fiction is to put things – weather, people, moods, events – into the right words which make them live on the page. I will be asking st
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This workshop will be designed around a short story which participants need to read in advance: ‘Gold Watch’ by Irish writer John McGahern, available in his collected stories (published in the UK
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The beginning of your story—fiction or non fiction—does much of the heavy lifting. It establishes whose story it is, what the protagonist wants, and what’s at stake for him or her. We will look
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The objective correlative was defined in 1917 by TS Eliot and is a writer’s secret tool. We will discuss exactly what the heck it is, why it’s so valuable, and how to best use it in your own writi
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General level
While the advice for young writers is to write “what you know” and “the way you speak”, we will explore the opposite path: how to write about what you have neve
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Advanced level
Virginia Woolf asked herself why illness was not a literary theme as were love and war. A century later the tide has changed: so many writers, including myself, use di
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I observed once at a literary festival that I often delete complete early drafts of my novels to begin again with a new document. I was surprised by the audience’s shock; my writing process is messy
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There’s a persistent idea that some landscapes or objects are innately inspiring to writers and artists: big mountains, grand sunsets, sweeping beaches, usually the kind of surroundings most us don
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I recently wrote that “fiction, in its untrammelled position, speaks to no one and yet speaks to all.” It is the canvas by which, for many thousands of years, writers have attempted to design and
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There are really two kinds of plot: plot driven by events within which the character (and other characters) flow, and plot which exists merely as a function of characters. We will look at how to write
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How does a person become a writer? How does a writer stay a writer? Does being a writer involve writing? Are there rules? And if so, what are they? …
Ragnar Helgi will try to answer these and oth
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In this course Ragnar Helgi will use his experience from writing My Father’s Library (nominated in 2018 for the Icelandic Literature Prize) to explore various themes connected to the intersection be
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Ask a writer’s friends or family, and they may agree with Graham Greene’s famous observation that every writer has a “splinter of ice” in his heart. They may even see themselves reflected in t
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They are widely shared and debated, loved by publishers and readers. The essay is an art form that has been with us for centuries, but has never been more popular than today. The best essay writers ar
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We use the word cliché frequently when talking about writing, but what exactly do we mean? What is a cliché and how can we recognize it in our own writing? Cliché rears its head (note the cliché)
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What does it mean to write sensually? How does a writer convey the full physical experience of being alive? In this workshop we’ll read writers such as James Salter, Albert Camus, Arundhati Roy, and