CityLit Project presents CityLit Studio V: Writers on Craft, Creativity & Community with Novelists Maurice Carlos Ruffin & Donna Hemans, a Free Fall Baltimore Virtual Event

CityLit Studio is a behind-the-scenes look at how writers craft great stories. The Studio includes detailed craft talks and an open inquiry with two accomplished authors. The presentation features readings, information, and discussions of key aspects of craft, and the importance of finding artistic communities. Emerging and established writers, as well as the general public interested in literature, will get a unique look behind the writing and process of two literary stars.

Starting & Finishing Stories with Maurice Carlos Ruffin

”Often, starting a story is the hardest thing to do. In this session, participants will explore tried and true techniques that will help them find a good place to begin. They’ll also discuss how beginnings are related to endings.”

Maurice Carlos Ruffin is the author of We Cast a Shadow, a 2020 finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. The novel was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and a New York Times Editor’s Choice. Ruffin is the winner of several literary prizes, including the Iowa Review Award in fiction and the William Faulkner–William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition Award for Novel-in-Progress. His work has appeared in the Oxford American, Garden & Gun, and Kenyon Review. A New Orleans native, Ruffin is a professor of Creative Writing at Louisiana State University, and the 2020-2021 John and Renee Grisham Writer-in-Residence at Ole Miss. His next book The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You will be published in 2021.

Hit The Ball Where Your Opponent Isn’t: What Tennis Teaches Us About Writing with Donna Hemans
Hit the ball where she isn’t. Move your feet. Keep your eye on the ball. Tennis players have heard these words on the tennis court at one time after another, either as instruction shouted across the net or instructions that play over and over in their heads when a ball, hit too hard, sails beyond the court or the ill-advised drop shot doesn’t even come close to drifting over the net. But what do these instructions also teach us about writing? In this talk, Donna Hemans discusses what tennis teaches her about the craft of writing.

Donna Hemans is the author of two novels: River Woman and Tea by the Sea. Her work has appeared in Electric Literature, Ms. Magazine, The Rumpus, Crab Orchard Review, among others. Donna was the 2007-2008 Black Mountain Institute (University of Nevada, Las Vegas) International Women's Forum Fellow and twice served as the Lannan Visiting Creative Writer in Residence at Georgetown University.

This online (Zoom) event is FREE, but as part of Free Fall Baltimore, attendees must pre-register. The Zoom link will only be emailed to those who register.
Greedy Reads is the event bookseller.

For more information, please visit citylitproject.org for this and upcoming events.

@FreeFallBaltimore @citylitproject