AUTHOR MOLLY GLOSS TO SPEAK AT AUGUST 27 COWG MEETING

Central Oregon Writers Guild’s August 27 meeting features award-winning author Molly Glass, whose topic “Got Rhythm?” addresses writing style. She quotes writer Virginia Woolf who said, “Style is a very simple matter. It’s all about rhythm.” And noted author John Gardner has said rhythm is all about sentence length. So it follows, as Molly says, “The best way to talk about rhythm is to talk about the length of sentences. Mostly in good writing, I see and hear a pleasing variety, not just sentences of varying length but also varied constructions that make use of everything in a writer’s tool kit.” Molly will furnish handouts of exemplary work in which sentence length has been used in service to the story. Molly says, “By looking at the way other writers used sentence length, I think we can begin to see not only how important rhythm is, but how effective the length of sentences can be in evoking a particular mood or tone or image.”

Author Molly Gloss is a fourth‑generation Oregonian who lives in Portland. In 1996 she was the recipient of a prestigious Whiting Writers’ Award, given annually to ten emerging writers in fiction, nonfiction, poetry and plays. Her novel The Jump‑Off Creek is a Pacific Northwest classic, a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for American fiction, and winner of the Oregon Book Award and the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award. The Dazzle of Day, a novel of the near future, received the PEN Center West Fiction Prize and was a New York Times Notable Book. Her novel Wild Life, set in the woods and mountains of Washington State at the turn of the twentieth century, won the James Tiptree Award. Her recently released novel The Heart of Horses takes place during the winter of 1917 among the farms and ranches of Eastern Oregon. It has already garnered widespread attention and praise in the national press. To learn more about Ms. Gloss, go to her website www.mollygloss.com. The meeting will take place at the Central Oregon Community College Redmond Campus, 2030 SE College Loop, Building 3 Room 306, 6:30 to 9:00 p.m. Meetings are free and open to the public.

Upcoming Meetings:
Thursday, September 24, Bend author Diane Hammond will speak on the topic, "Writing Fiction in the Real World. One Author's Experience."
Thursday, October 22, special speaker is Redmond children's book illustrator K.C. Snider.