Summer Events

Friday & Saturday, June 14 & 15 . . . . 9am - 3pm
and Sunday, June 16 . . . . 9am - 1pm

A Bunch of Heads are Better than One:
Three Days of Focused Peer Critiquing 
A Writing Workshop by Ron Rozelle 
Ron Rozelle’s Wordsmithing 101: How to Plan and Write More Clearly and Creatively, From a Memo to the Great American Novel and Telling Your Own Story: How to Research and Write your Memoir have been popular writing workshops for many participants. In this new workshop he is offering up-close and personal perusals and critiques, by himself and the other members of the group, of story or memoir ideas and several pages of first draft manuscripts. The number of pages presented by each participant will depend on the size of the group, but in this workshop almost all of the time will be spent critiquing, letting each writer learn from the hits and misses in each other’s writing and from suggestions for different and perhaps better word choices and more effective ways to tell the unique story.  Writers will learn as much or more from critiques of others’ work as their own.
 
It will be great fun and time well-spent for folks serious about writing and for others who haven’t taken that leap just yet but are considering it.  Even if you bring nothing to the table in the way of pages, you will go away with an abundance of ideas and new and useful ways to plan effectively and write clearly and well. Teachers looking for ways to improve students’ planning and writing, and new ways to have them look deeper into your reading assignments will benefit greatly from this as well. Educators from several school districts who have taken Ron’s other workshops have given them top ratings and received in-service credit from their districts.
 
In order for writers to get the most out of the critiques the number of participants must not exceed twenty. Having attended either or both of the previous workshops is not a prerequisite for coming this time. Feel free to bring what you’re working on (no major profanity, politics or proselytizing please), an idea you’re considering working into a book or story, or just show up to listen, take part, learn, and have an interesting, informative and enjoyable three days. Each participant will be responsible for providing double-spaced, twelve-point font, typed pages they wish to have critiqued for each member of the group, including Ron, on the first day (we’ll let you know the range of pages and number of copies needed in advance) so that some of the reading and marking of the manuscripts can be done at home, leaving most of our time for actual critiquing and discussion.
 
Space is limited, so sign up soon. Ages 18 and up.
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ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR:
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Ron Rozelle, recently retired after a forty year teaching career, is the author of ten books, among them Into That Good Night, a memoir, The Windows of Heaven, a novel of the 1900 Galveston storm, A Place Apart, a novel set in modern day Ohio, Warden: Death and Life in the Texas Prison System, coauthored with Jim Willett, and Description & Setting: Techniques and Exercises for Crafting a Believable World of People, Places, and Events, a volume in the Writer’s Digest Write Great Fiction series.
 
He is the recipient of the Katherine Munson Foster Memorial Award and is an Honorary Professor of Letters at Alvin College. His memoir, Into That Good Night, the first non-agented property published by New York’s venerated Farrar, Straus, & Giroux in over five years, was a national short list finalist for the P.E.N. Prize and the Texas Institute of Letters Carr P. Collins Award and was selected as the second-best work of nonfiction in the nation for the year 1998 by the San Antonio Express-News. He has taught writing workshops at numerous conferences and universities, and was twice the memoir teacher at the Newman National Writer’s Conference at Mississippi College.
 
His articles have appeared in a wide variety of publications, and he has been a featured author at the Texas Book Festival in Austin and the Texas Folklife Festival in San Antonio. Touching Winter, a novel made up of a quartet of stories, was published in October, 2005, by TCU Press and was a short list finalist for The Texas Institute of Letters Best Fiction of the Year Prize.  My Boys and Girls are in There: The 1937 New London School Disaster (Texas A&M University Press) was the recipient of the Calvert Prize, was pronounced the “sleeper hit” of the 2012 Texas Book Festival, and was a short list finalist for the Best Nonfiction Award given by the Writers’ League of Texas. Sundays with Ron Rozelle, a collection of newspaper columns, was published by TCU Press. His tenth book, Exiled: The Last Days of Sam Houston, was recently published by Texas A&M University Press. In 2007, Ron Rozelle was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters.
Ron and his wife Karen, a retired third grade teacher, are happy grandparents and empty nesters, with the exception of two elderly opinionated cats, with whom they live in Pearland. A graduate of Sam Houston State University, Class of 1977, Ron holds degrees in English and Political Science and was named the 2017 SHSU Distinguished Educator of the Year, the highest honor given to alumni of the College of Education.
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Ron Rozelle with his muse, his granddaughter Zoe.
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Ron Rozelle Writing Workshop
Friday, June 14,  9am - 3pm
Saturday, June 15 ,  9am - 3pm
Sunday, June 16, ​ 9am - 1pm

Student Center, Room 2/3
Blinn College, Brenham

Class Fee:  $200
Registration deadline:  June 7, 2019 ​