WRITE YOUR BEST STORY!
4 PART WRITING WORKSHOP
with Johnnie Bernhard,
Award-Winning Author and Speaker
Tuesdays, January 14th, 21st, 28th, & February 4th, 2025 | 1PM - 3PM
204 S Austin St Rockport, TX
$250 For Members, $300 For Nonmembers
Class Information:
Learn the essential skills to writing and publishing in a series of interactive craft classes designed for fiction writers. Each class will feature a fun assignment to jump start your creativity, while honing your writing skills.
Publish Your Story: learn the differences between traditional, self, and hybrid publishing. Vet a literary agent and a publishing company. Write a query letter and synopsis based on industry standards.
The Writing Process: Prewriting, Writing, and Revision. Learn how to jump start your creativity through the writing process. Writers will focus on prewriting activities using a graphic organizer, structuring a plot, and finalizing word count in the revision process.
Fiction and the Editing Process: learn the differences between developmental editing and copy editing. Writers will focus on eliminating unnecessary words and tightening the narrative pace of their writing.
Creating Fictional Characters Who Come Alive: the protagonist and antagonist who make readers turn the pages. Writers will focus on “fleshing out” characters in this step-by-step approach to character development.
About the Instructor:
A former teacher and journalist, Johnnie Bernhard is passionate about reading and writing. Her work(s) have appeared in the following publications: Houston Style Magazine, The Mississippi Press, the international Word Among Us, The Texas Review, and the Cowbird-NPR production on small town America.
A Good Girl (2017, Texas Review Press) was shortlisted in the 2015 William Faulkner-William Wisdom Writing Competition, the 2017 Kindle Book Award for Literary Fiction, and the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Fiction of the Year Award. It was a nominee for the 2018 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize and placed in the permanent collection of the Texas State Library and Archive Commission, Texas Center for the Book.
Johnnie’s second novel, How We Came to Be (2018, Texas Review Press) was named a “Must Read” by Southern Writers Magazine and selected for the 2019 Deep South Magazine recommended reading list. It is the recipient of the Summerlee Book Prize, HM by the Center for History and Culture at Lamar University. The book was featured in a panel discussion at the Mississippi Book Festival.
Her third novel, Sisters of the Undertow (2020, Texas Review Press) was chosen for discussion at the 2020 national AWP Conference, the Pat Conroy Literary Center of South Carolina, the Southern Book Festival/Humanities Tennessee, and Words and Music Literary Feast of New Orleans. Named “Best of the University Presses, 100 Books” by the Association of University Presses, Sisters of the Undertow was placed in the Texas Center for the Book, State Library Collection and received First Place in the Press Women of Texas Communications Contest. It was named a “Big Texas Read” by Gemini Ink of San Antonio and Writing Workshops of Dallas.
Her fourth novel, Hannah & Ariela (2022, TCU Press) was named by Publisher’s Weekly Magazine “Books to Read,” May 2022. TCU Press named the novel its Best Fiction of 2022 in recognition of University Press Week, Association of University Presses. It was selected as novel of the year by the Press Women of Texas and received First Place, Fiction with the National Federation of Press Women.
Johnnie was chosen as a selected speaker in the 2020 TEDx Fearless Women Series. She also supports young writers through the Letters About Literature program with the Texas Center for the Book and the Write for Mississippi program. In 2021, she was named a teaching artist with Gemini Ink Writing Arts Center of San Antonio and the national TAP Summer Institute 2021. Johnnie enjoys teaching workshops for writing communities across the country.
Come for a Meet and Greet at The Splendid Sun Bookstore (2207 Hwy 35, Rockport, TX) on September 28th from 11AM - 1PM!
Tuesdays, January 14th, 21st, 28th, & February 4th, 2025 I 1PM-3PM
$280 members, $330 non-members