BOOK CLUB VISITS
I love meeting with book clubs, and would love to visit your book club either virtually or physically. A signed, complimentary hardback is provided to the host.
Simply email me at: annamquinn@yahoo.com
or,
if you belong to Novel Network, you can sign up here: https://novelnetwork.com/book-club-membership/
WRITING CONSULTATIONS
Services offered:
Step-by-step guidance in writing a novel or memoir from start to finish.
Techniques to:
- shape and structure your novel or memoir.
- layer and deepen the elements of voice, emotion, point of view, exposition, dialogue, setting, sensory imagery, theme exploration.
- self-edit and revise
Coaching to navigate doubt and uncertainty and become a more confident writer.
Strategies to:
- navigate doubt, imposter syndrome, rejection and perfectionism.
- build self-trust, self-confidence and risk-taking.
- encourage writing from a loose, unrestrained, joyous place.
Working Style:
I deeply understand the exciting, messy, absorbing, confusing, vulnerable, fascinating journey of writing—it’s extremely emotional and intellectual work. My whole intention in working with writers is to encourage their unique voice and style, draw out the essence and strength of their writing, and to offer compassionate, constructive feedback to further deepen their writing skills and experiences.
Availability
I’m available year-round, for either weekly, bi-weekly or monthly meetings. I can meet in-person, on zoom, phone or email. Prior to our initial consultation, I offer a free fifteen-minute phone or zoom conversation.
BIO
Anna Quinn is the author of The Night Child, (Blackstone, 2018) listed as #1 Best Real Psychological Fiction on Goodreads, and Ingram’s 2018 Best Book Group Book. Her second novel, Angeline, (Blackstone 2023) is a 2024 Foreword Review Winner and was nominated for a Washington State Book Award. Her work has garnered blurbs from Meg Waite Clayton, Luis Alberto Urrea, Elizabeth George, Pam Houston, Melissa Febos, Lidia Yuknavitch, Library Journal, and more. Quinn’s writing has appeared in Psychology Today, New York Times Book Review, Medium, Writer’s Digest, and the Alone Together Anthology. She’s been a writing instructor for three decades and is the former co-founder of The Writers’ Workshoppe.
Rates: $75/hr. Special rates available for writing groups of two or more.
Contact: annamquinn@yahoo.com
UPCOMING WORKSHOPS
PAST WORKSHOPS
These are some of my past workshops. Please feel free to contact me about scheduling a workshop for your writing group/organization. Let me know what your group needs and we’ll make it happen.
The Art of Writing Emotional Truth
Dates: Thursday, April 23rd, & Sat. April 25th
Time: 11:30am-1:30 pm
Cost: $120
Where: Raymond Carver and Tess Gallagher Writing Festival. Peninsula College, 1502 East Lauridsen Blvd., Port Angeles, WA
Workshop Description:
Emotion is the underlying support of story—the aspect that unlocks voice, wakes up the body, the heart and touches the soul. Writing visceral emotion can be tricky though, because the most evocative is often the most subtle—it’s often expressed in the tiniest detail or subtext that unexpectedly seeps into our veins and then onto the page. In this workshop we’ll discuss and practice moving your story into the alive, the vivid, the vibrant—the story your reader won’t be able to put down.
Blow Your Mind: A Generative Workshop
Blow Your Mind: Exercises to Loosen Your Imagination with Anna Quinn
Dates: Wednesdays, January 6th – February 28th, 2022
Time: 10:30am to 12:00pm
Cost: $150
Limited to: 12 participants
Where: Online
“The creative imagination is what drives us, nourishes us, gives us the taste and capacity for life. The imagination poses searching riddles, and the moment it does, poetry and science, philosophy and cosmology are born.” Rikki Ducornet
Even the most experienced writers crave inspiration, yearn to breathe in new ideas, shake things up and swim through new portals of imagination. In the company of writers from all genres, and all experience levels, this generative workshop will offer intriguing exercises and fresh approaches to loosen your imagination, make it thrill and ripple, gain fluidity with form, content and style, open up new possibilities, cultivate experimentation and basically, blow your own mind. All you need to do is show up each week with an open and playful intention, and explore the extraordinary, strange, jaw-dropping places that exist within your inventive, original, artistic, infinite self.
Works-In-Progress with Anna Quinn
Dates: Mondays, November 16, 2021 – January 24th, 2022
Time: 10:30am to 12:30pm
Cost: $200
Limited to: 12 participants
Where: Online
Full
This workshop is for anyone with a writing novel, memoir or short story project underway, who desires feedback. The intention of the feedback is to fully draw out the heart, energy, and uniqueness of your work. Feedback will be expressed in such a way that you will feel inspired to keep writing—in other words comments will be open, honest and respectful, never harsh or prescriptive. We’ll review for theme, tension, forward motion, deepening character, emotion, word choice, detail, dialogue, pacing and structure. After receiving feedback, each participant will have time to ask clarifying questions.
Logistics: Sometime during the week before each Monday workshop, you’ll send the other participants your 500-1000 word writing excerpt, (emails will be provided a week prior to our first session). Double-space, use size 12 font and insert page numbers.
Once you receive the other participant’s excerpts, simply print them out and bring to the session. Also print out a copy of your own piece for your use during the session. You do not need to read any excerpts or comment on anything before our sessions. Instead, you will hear each piece for the first time at our Monday session, when the writer reads it aloud—just as we would if we were meeting in person.
Once at the session each person will read their work aloud and the other participants will jot down questions or comments to share orally. I will also offer commentary and facilitate dynamics and time—all of which will be explained at our first session.
Alone with the Whole World: Cultivating Solitude to Deepen Character and Voice with Sonya Lea and Anna Quinn
“How could I go deeper into my own vulnerability if I were to perpetually exist in a public space, if I had to perform (as we all must do, to some extent) in order to participate in society? So this charged isolation was the first step…” – Ocean Vuong
How does a writer build a life so that the imagination can exist? How do we acknowledge, nourish and give our bodies to our stories? How do strengthen our writer’s voice? What losses of our curated selves must happen in order for language to take precedence over our social or public lives? In this two-day workshop, seventeen writers will delve into the spaces where character remains unseen, difficult or evasive. Together we will become liminal enough to allow character influence.
With Anna Quinn and Sonya Lea as mentors, we will offer time for generative writing, ritual, practices to:
- take risks to write outside the bounds of how you expect your voice or your character’s voice to sound
- write what deeply challenges us, or stays underground
- ask questions of your character’s blind spots, fears and fantasies
- write into lies, myths, obfuscations, secrets, changes in thinking
- discuss how reading, silence and observation can inform your work and settle your artistic practice
- practice removal from the public life, and discuss strategies for transitioning to a writer’s life
Revising For Depth and Emotion
The purpose of this workshop is to help you develop the full energy of your writing. Bring up to 1200 words of a short story, excerpt from a memoir or a novel—anything you’d like to enhance, tweak, revise, broaden or polish. We’ll listen to you read it, and then, talk about what happened in our bodies and minds when we heard it. Did it make our eyes well, make us gasp or smile, tighten our chests, bite our lips, race our hearts, wake us up? Think differently? Wonder? Change our perspectives? You’ll hear no you shoulds in this group, only comments and questions that reflect a genuine curiosity and attention to your writing. Oh, and you’ll experience the writing expansion and evolution that happens when you take the time to attend to another writer’s writing as if it was your own. And if you are new to offering feedback, no worries, I’ll give everyone a wonderful list of questions that help draw out the essence and emotion of writing for you to refer to until you’re comfortable. My hope is that by the end of the day, your writing skills will have advanced, and you’ll trust your art even more than we started.
Bring 12 copies of a 500-1200 word piece. (Please respect word count) Double spaced. Size 12 font.
How to Find a Good Literary Agent
Ok, so you have an edited manuscript. Now what? How do you find the best agent for you and your book? What do literary agents do exactly? How do you find an agent that will secure the best possible book deal for you, negotiate a fair contract, protect your rights? What are the steps in finding an agent? What’s in a compelling query letter? A synopsis? Sample chapters? Who gets your book into libraries, bookstores, Costco? What’s an author platform and why do I need one? In this seminar we’ll talk about all these questions and the steps to finding an agent. For private consultation about your specific query or book proposal, contact me here: annaquinn@writersworkshoppe.com
Shaping Your Memoir w/Anna Quinn
The goal of Shaping Your Memoir is to tap into the heart of your richest material and discover a way to shape it into a compelling and transformative story. The course is open to writers of all levels who have a memoir project underway or have a collection of reflections and stories they desire to transform into memoir.
Through the process of facilitated discussions and feedback regarding your own work, you will:
- develop your memoir by identifying turning points to create your narrative arc.
- identify details and imagery to evoke emotion rather than insist upon it.
- identify what to include and what to save for your next book.
- learn about various structures and identify which one best tells your story.
Testimonials
“Anna Quinn brings an innate love of story, a deep knowledge of craft and a canny perception of each writer’s authentic voice. Teaching through example and thoughtful questioning, she challenged me to write better: more original, more concise and more truthful. I could never have finished, nor even started my book without Anna to light the way.” — Ian Owens, author of Riding the Big One – In the Wake of My Ancestors
“Anna Quinn helped me accomplish a lifelong dream of writing a first draft of a novel. She was my teacher as well as a consultant, coach, and editor. Working with her, I felt as though I were in the hands of a gentle surgeon, one I deeply trusted. Her precise insights and encouragement helped keep my book’s heart beating. Any creative spirit would benefit from working with Anna!” —Bonnie Obremski, founder of Storyborne, writer, photographer, producer
“Working with Anna is like having a gentle wind propelling you through the process of writing and the publication world. I started with her by simply saying, “I want to write a book” not having any idea of the process from writing to print, nor the lengthy and arduous journey it would be. With her guidance I have spent the last year writing, leaning into my voice, crafting my book proposal, studying the publication world, querying agents, and ultimately signing with the perfect agent to fit me and my story. Without Anna’s tutelage, I would have never made it to this point. I could not recommend her highly enough to anyone who has the desire to write or is a seasoned writer.” — Anna Nasset, National Speaker, Writer, Activist, annanasset.com
“I’ve participated in Anna’s inspiring writing classes, and was fortunate to be in ongoing memoir groups she led. Anna worked us hard, but smart. Through generous, honest guidance, she left me a deep well of writing tips that I continually draw from.” –Bob Febos