Date: Friday, September 19
9 am – 11 am
Location: Ashe County Public Library
Workshop with Elaine Neil Orr
Oh the Things You Can Do: Experimenting with Scene in Fiction Writing
A one-scene chapter? A scene without dialogue? Beginning and ending scenes that bridge a novel? Atmospheric scenes? In this generative lecture/workshop, we will study scenes from classic and contemporary fiction to see how pliable scene-writing can be and to draw inspiration for our own writing. In the generative part of the lecture, attendees will write scenes and be invited to read them aloud.
This workshop is free, but space is limited and registration is required.
Elaine Neil Orr, born in Nigeria to expat parents, brings us an indelible portrait of a young female artist, torn between two men and two cultures, struggling to find her passion and her purpose.
It’s 1963 and Isabel Hammond is an expat who has accompanied her agriculture aid worker husband to Nigeria, where she is hoping to find inspiration for her art and for her life. Then she meets charismatic local singer Bobby Tunde, and they share a night of passion that could upend everything. Seeking solace and distraction, she returns to her painting and her home in a rural town where she plants a lemon tree and unearths an ancient statue buried in her garden. She knows that the dancing female figure is not hers to keep, yet she is reluctant to give it up, and soon, she notices other changes that make her wonder what the dancing woman might portend.
Against the backdrop of political unrest in Nigeria, Isabel’s personal situation also becomes precarious. She finds herself in the center of a tide of suspicion, leaving her torn between the confines of her domestic life and the desire to immerse herself in her art and in the culture that surrounds her. The expat society, the ancient Nigerian culture, her beautiful family, and even the statue hidden in a back room—each trouble and beguile Isabel. Amid all of this, can she finally become who she wants to be?
