Lucky Baby red velvet cake....mmmm!

As you may or may not know, dear blog readers, I’m up the spout. Do people say that in America, or is it an English idiom? Let me translate, just in case. I’m knocked up. Got a bun in the oven. Preggers. I’m…preg-Nancy.

The baby is due at the end of July, and my husband and I are busy doing that nesting thing, by which I mean throwing away — or hawking online — everything we possibly can in order to make way for what is bound to be a massive baby (I’m 6′ and my husband is 6′4) and all his massive baby swag. And this also means the end of an era. Since 2006, I’ve been holding weekly workshops in our living room — but no more! Baby’s coming, and baby’s taking over. Well, taking over the living room, at least.

The salons that I’ll be teaching this summer will be hosted by my gracious mother-in-law, the poet Alison Jarvis, and I’m currently sourcing space for the fall workshops.

In the meantime, though, I have two workshop groups just finishing up and one of them was kind enough to throw me an surprise baby shower at the end of our last session together. I was very touched. Reader, I almost cried.

The photo above is of the awesome red velvet cake that we ate, and the photos below show the workshop group and the living room workshop space. (Please note — there are not usually open bottles of alcohol at my workshops, but this was a special occasion.)

A big thank you to everyone in the group for making this such a great workshop and for all your wonderful gifts!

The Workshop Group (and my color-coded bookshelf)

The workshop living room space (and that's me on the left, grabbing my belly!)

And this seems like a good opportunity to include the other publishing news I sent out in the newsletter.

The first item was regarding the publication of Elyssa East’s fabulous book, Dogtown: Death and Enchantment in a New England Ghost Town. Elyssa’s book is a true crime story, combined with the history of an abandoned colonial settlement and expanse of wilderness close to Gloucester, Mass. In a signature review for Publisher’s Weekly, Joyce Carol Oates called the book “…fascinating, richly detailed and remarkably evocative.”

I was lucky enough to get a sneak preview of the book when I read it and offered some feedback, pre-publication. It’s a real page turner, and takes the reader deep into a mysterious, intriguing historical world. At Elyssa’s launch party, at Word, in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, on December 1, I was awarded “Top Dog” honors (along with some other people who had helped Elyssa’s book along the way, including her agent Brettne Bloom and her fiancé, Yulun Wang, one half of Pi Recordings). Pic of the award below — ain’t it pretty?

I also announced — not that she needed me to, considering the great reviews and exposure the book has received — Jessica DuLong’s debut book, My River Chronicles: Rediscovering America On the Hudson, an account of Jessica’s transition from the dot-com world to engineer of the John J. Harvey, a classic fireboat. Jessica’s compelling story is interwoven with fascinating, narrative-driven industrial history, made personal by her deep investment in the preservation of the Hudson river.

Jessica was a member of one of my first ever workshops, back when I was teaching though the Sackett Street Writers’ Workshops. She was honing her sample chapters then, subsequently found an agent and sold the book, and is now busy promoting and reading and being fabulous!

I love hearing about the publishing success of friends, clients, and students. If you have some to share with me, I hope you’ll be in touch.

If you live in or near New York City and you need some motivation, structure, feedback, encouragement, community, and good, solid, craft discussion, please consider joining me. I’ll also supply tasty snacks, of course (anyone who has been in my classes before knows I have a mean addiction to Kettle brand sea salt and black pepper crinkle cut chips, among other things…)

Here are the details:

• These will be craft-focused workshops, open to fiction and nonfiction writers, limited to just six writers per group (so you get more individual attention).
• You’ll get eight sessions, total, and we will meet every other week (so you’ll have structure and feedback over a sixteen week period).
• Each session will last three hours and include some in-class writing and discussion of process (so everyone will engage with their work and leave with a goal).
• Everyone will submit four times, a maximum of 25 pages (so you could produce and workshop up to 100 new pages).
• Everyone will get a one hour phone or in-person consultation with me over the course of the workshop.
• The price? Just $595.

I’ll be running two sessions. One will start the week of September 14 and one the week of September 21. That means I’ll have space for twelve writers this fall. I did an email to my current and former clients about a week ago and there are now only six spots left open. If you are interested in one of them, email me at nancyrawlinson@gmail.com and I’ll be happy to answer any questions and give you information on how to reserve a spot.

If a workshop doesn’t suit you right now, I’m still available for one-on-one consultations. Contact me at nancyrawlinson@gmail.com to discuss the options or check out my website, nancyrawlinson.com, for more information about my services and fees.

All this business development is making me reassess various aspects of my self presentation – including the name of this blog, which you’ll see has changed. Look for some more posts on what makes for a good workshop experience soon.