Creativity Tool Kit: A Master Class with Clay McLeod Chapman. The author of Tribe: Homeroom Headhunter will offer a fun workshop examining creativity and how to jump-start yours. Hands-on instruction will leave you with concrete take-aways for defeating the blank page!
June 19; 10:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m., with an hour break for lunch, not included
St. John’s Church Parish Hall
2401 E. Broad Street
$60 for JRW members
$100 for non-members.
Clay McLeod Chapman is the author of rest area, a collection of short stories, and miss corpus, a novel. Miss corpus was recognized in part of The New Yorker’s “Reading Glasses” series in 2003.
Currently, he is writing a trilogy of children’s novels titled “The Tribe”—book one, Homeroom Headhunters, hit the shelves in 2013, and book two, Camp Cannibal, came out in April.
Recently, Chapman’s story “the battle of belle isle” was featured in Akashic Books’ regional-noir anthology Richmond Noir. He was a contributing author on “The Rolling Darkness Revue,” a roaming reading-series of horror writers created by Glen Hirshberg and Pete Atkins, culminating in the anthology At The Sign of the Snowman’s Skull. He was a contributing author to One Ring Zero’s “As Smart As We Are” album, featuring such writers as Paul Auster and Jonathan Lethem. He will occasionally write from time to time for his geek-gods Marvel Comics and Fangoria Magazine.
Chapman’s story “late bloomer” was adapted into film by director Craig Macneill. An official selection at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, the short won the audience award for Best Short at the Lake Placid Film Festival and the Brown Jenkins Award at the 12th Annual H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival. Their most recent collaboration, “Henley,” a short film based on the chapter “The Henley Road Motel” from his novel miss corpus, was an official selection at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. It was awarded Best Short Film at the 2011 Gen Art Film Festival and the 2011 Carmel Arts and Film Festival.
Upcoming films include a feature length version of “Henley,” produced by The Woodshed (Elijah Wood, Daniel Noah, and Josh C. Waller) and Parent Company Films (Noah Greenberg) and the sci-fried feature “White Space.”
Chapman is the creator of the rigorous storytelling session The Pumpkin Pie Show. In its ten-plus years of existence, it has performed internationally and continues to perform in New York City annually with long-time scene-stealer Hanna Cheek.
Chapman was educated at the North Carolina School of the Arts for Drama, the Burren College of Art, and Sarah Lawrence College. He currently teaches writing at The Actors Studio MFA Program at Pace University.
James River Writers extends our appreciation to St. John’s Church for being a sponsor of our 2014 Master Class series. Proceeds benefit James River Writers.