The Writer’s Retreat at Good Contrivance Farm – Workshop & Craft Talk with Debra Spark

Workshop: I Dare You: Three New Ways to Think About Short-Story Writing
Saturday, August 9, 2025 | 10:00 AM-4:00 PM (includes lunch)

Ever sit down to write a story and think, “Wow, I really have this great instigating action that I want to put down on the page, so I can then create some rising action, a climax, and a denouement.”  No, you did not.  And yet that is how fiction often gets talked about in beginning creative writing classes.  This workshop will (very) quickly review the conventional thinking on plot and then propose some new (and hopefully more inspiring) ways to start a story.

This workshop will also include plenty of prompts for starting a new story or developing an existing piece (if you have one you want to bring but no pressure if you don’t).

Craft Talk: The Best Writing Advice and the Worst
Saturday, August 16, 2025 | 5:00 PM

Bring the best and worst writing advice you’ve received and Debra will add hers so that attendees can talk about how they’ve learned to find the good and avoid the bad. She’ll touch a bit on an essay she likes that is actually about Goodreads, but takes on the issue of popular opinion vs. intelligent criticism. Lots to share here! 

Debra’s talk will be followed by a reception and buffet dinner.

About Debra Spark:

Debra Spark is the award-winning author of five novels, including the recent Discipline; two collections of short stories; and two books of essays on fiction writing, as well as editor/co-editor of two anthologies.

Her book reviews, short fiction, articles, op-eds, and essays have appeared in Agni, American Scholar, AWP Writers’ Chronicle, the Boston Globe, the Cincinnati Review, the Chicago Tribune, Epoch, Esquire, Five Points, Food and Wine, Harvard Review, Huffington Post, Maine Magazine, Narrative, New England Travel and Life, the New England Review, the New York Times, Ploughshares, salon.com, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Washington Post, Yankee, and Yale Alumni Quarterly, among other places.

She spent a decade writing about home, art, and design for Maine Home+Design, Decor Maine, Down East, Dwell, Elysian, Interiors Boston, New England Home, and Yankee.

She has been the recipient of several awards/grants including a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, Bunting Institute fellowship from Radcliffe College, Wisconsin Institute Fellowship, Pushcart Prize, Michigan Literary Fiction Award, and John Zacharis/Ploughshares award for best first book. Her novel Unknown Caller was picked for Maine’s statewide summer READ ME program. She has also received residency fellowships from Arteles, Dora Maar, La Porte Pointe, L’Air Arts, MacDowell, Monson Arts, Ucross, and Yaddo.

A graduate of Yale University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she is the Zacamy Professor of English at Colby College and taught for 25 years with the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.

She lives in Maine with her husband, the painter Garry Mitchell.  Her son is a carpenter and cartoonist, which means she raised a child who excels at her areas of utter incompetence.

About Good Contrivance Farm:

Good Contrivance Farm is a 501 C-3 non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the preservation and restoration of small, historic farms in Maryland. Toward that end, our farm serves as a model of historic preservation and sustainable nurture. In bringing people to the farm, we avail ourselves of the opportunity to show visitors how beautiful and useful a restored historic farm can be.