Lydia Millet, Katy Yocom, and 2 Fiction Workshops

July 5, 2019
Lydia Millet’s novel Sweet Lamb of Heaven begins: “When I insisted on keeping the baby, Ned threw his hands into the air palms-forward.” So we are plunged into Anna’s story of an unfortunate marriage and the birth of their daughter, Lena. Weary of Ned’s neglect, Anna flees with Lena, traveling anonymously from Alaska to Maine and encountering an unusual cast of characters, while Ned launches his pursuit. With surprising plot twists and philosophical musings about politics and God, Sweet Lamb of Heaven is a cerebral summertime page-turner.  
Lydia Millet’s fiction workshop at KyWomenWriters will focus on the sort of sentence-level craft that is exemplified in her own work, which shines with startling sentences, such as the one beginning this e-newsletter. A few slots are still available for:
Write the Extraordinary. Whether you’re drawn to write literary fiction, YA fiction, spec, sci-fi, or any other genre, making work that captures the best of your imagination begins with a sentence. If it’s the right one, that sentence becomes a paragraph, becomes a page, becomes a chapter, becomes a book. In this workshop we’ll work toward sentences and paragraphs that inspire us and stand out from the rest—that can launch you into a new project or turn a current project that’s lagging into something new.
For a deeper dive into Millet’s craft, we also offer a free workshop next Saturday, July 13, led by Katy Yocom:
Pre-conference workshop on the fiction of Lydia Millet. Millet has written books and stories that range from the philosophical to the satirical, on matters including the inventors of the atom bomb, political culture under George H. W. Bush, the discovery of mermaids in a coral reef and the crises of extinction and climate change. This workshop will introduce you to her work and give writing prompts based on her short fiction. The workshop is FREE and limited to 12 participants. To secure your spot, please email kentuckywomenwriters@gmail.com, and we’ll email you a pdf of the assigned story by Millet, “Girl and Giraffe.” Saturday, July 13, 10:30a.m. - 12:30 p.m., Carnegie Center, lower level, Pam Sexton Room.
A few words about Katy Yocom, whom we are very luck to have at the helm of this workshop. Katy is Associate Director of the MFA program in Creative Writing at Spalding University, a board member of KyWomenWriters, and this month becomes known as the author of a debut novel, Three Ways to Disappear. This novel, which touches on the fate of the vanishing Bengal Tiger of India, has interesting connections to the Millet story, “Girl and Giraffe,” that will be discussed in Yocom’s workshop. Of Three Ways to Disappear, best-selling author Sy Montgomery said, “The characters--both human and tiger--are so alive they practically leap off the page. The drama feels absolutely real. And the urgency of the book’s message has never been greater.” Be sure to check out Katy's fascinating essay in Newsweek on tigers and the genesis of her novel.