Friends of Library host workshop for young writers in Los Gatos
The Friends of the Los Gatos Public Library is sponsoring two fiction writing workshops to teach children and teenagers writing skills and techniques for character and plot development.
The teen workshop, for ages 13-16, takes place April 27, and the children's workshop, for ages 8-12, is on May 4. Both are at the Los Gatos Neighborhood Center, 208 E. Main St., and both run from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., with a half-hour lunch break.
Martha Stockton Alderson, an award-winning local author and Friends board member, is heading the project. "Opening the world of writing to young people is an exhilarating experience," she says. "You don't have to pull it out of them--their imaginations are free."
"Writers will first explore a character--an animal, person, mechanical being or whatever is in their heads. Then they create the situation, and, before they know it, the story is unfolding," Alderson explains. She says most children come to the workshop because they have creative imaginations or because they love books and stories. "The ones who weren't sure they wanted to be at the workshop will be the ones complaining [it's] too short when it is time to quit," she adds.
Alderson, a Bay Area native, was among the team of California Writers Club (CWC) members who presented the Jack London Writers Camp for Kids last year. She has won recognition in several contests, including the 1998 William Faulkner Writing Contest and 10th annual Jack London Writing Contest. She holds bachelor's degrees in psychology and speech and a master's degree in speech pathology, and she has written both fiction and nonfiction. Alderson also is the founder of a speech, language and learning disability clinic for 4- to 18-year-olds.
Three other CWC writers who also taught in the Jack London Writers Camp for Kids will be at the Young Writers Fiction Writing Workshop--award-winning memoirist and short story writer Luisa Adams; Teresa LeYung Ryan, author of Love Made of Heart; and Marie Elena Gaspari, a published author and poet.
To sign up for the workshop, call 408.399.5700. Registration is $10 per child. The Friends of the Los Gatos Public Library will provide writing materials, drinks and cookies; the children bring lunch.
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