Burnt Tongue Presents:
Craig Clevenger &
The Storyteller’s Workbench
A Four Week Intensive Writing Workshop
Craig Clevenger, author of The Contortionist’s Handbook, Dermaphoria, and Mother Howl returns to lead his first writing workshop in over a decade.
The Storyteller’s Workbench
Previously Craig Clevenger ran the notoriously popular 200 Proof Storytelling workshop for Litreactor.com, one of their perennial classes that never had an empty seat. (I should know, I tried to get into it a dozen times and it was always full. - Emil)
His debut novel The Contortionist’s Handbook is universally lauded as one of the best neo noir crime novels of the 21st century. He followed relatively soon after with Dermaphoria, which showed a mastery of both prose styling and storytelling rarely seen in the same place and time, let alone the same book. After two explosive novels it was a decade before he published Mother Howl, his return as both a master storyteller and purveyor of the truly bizarre and uncanny. Craig is one of the rarest of authors, with the ability to juxtapose the mundane with the surreal and make you not question it for a second.
This is an opportunity that hasn’t happened in over a decade, and may not happen again, but we’ve convinced Craig that his work at the bully pulpit isn’t done.
He’s taken the experience gained between then and now, and having been there for the first workshops and now organizing and hosting this one, I’m saying he’s topped what he did with the infamous 200 Proof Storytelling workshop.
His work has influenced several generations of published authors. He collaborated in the early to middle ‘00s founding an online writing community with Will Christopher Baer and Stephen Graham Jones named The Velvet. It was a hotbed of activity on par with the early days of Chuck Palahniuk’s website The Cult, producing both a story collection (Warmed and Bound) and more authors who went on to publish than you can shake a stick at. If you were a member of The Velvet, you already know.
For posterity, some plaudits:
Novelist Rob Hart (author of The Warehouse, Paradox Hotel, Assassins Anonymous, and the soon to be released The Medusa Protocol) — “I was lucky to take a couple of workshops with Clevenger along the way, and his thumbprints are all over my work.”
Richard Thomas (award-winning horror author and editor) – “I took some classes, including one with Craig Clevenger, and he encouraged me to submit a story from class, ‘Stillness,’ saying he thought it was very good, something special.”
“There is only one promise I give students who take my workshops and it is, you will come out of this class a better writer than you were when you came in.”
- Craig Clevenger
The Workshop
4 weeks
8 students
$375
This will be a workshop focusing on improving your writing and storytelling, taught by a master, with one on one instruction including a review and personal crit and shop talk for each student at the end of the class. Clev is a generous and amazing teacher. He’s helped people make careers. He’s mysterious. He’s been working on this workshop for months.
This will be more intimate and more relaxed than former workshops with up to 25 students.
This is a class of 8, and spots are expected to fill fast on a first in basis until full.
“If the stars align properly, this doesn’t blow up in my face like a backwoods meth lab, and Craig doesn’t come hunting me for sport after the class is over for having convinced him to make his life more complicated than need be, you might be put on a waitlist for a future, forthwith known as ‘next’ class.”
- Emil
