We hope you’ll join Boise City Writer-in-Residence Alan Heathcock on June 21 from 10:30 a.m. to 12 p.m. at the Library! at Hillcrest for The Five Tenets of Literary Potency: Writing with Urgency. 

The Five Tenets of Literary Potency is an interactive workshop series that distills everything Alan Heathcock has learned over 30 years of writing, editing, publishing, and teaching. Each session focuses on one of five core principles Alan believes are essential to powerful storytelling.

Through years of studying his own work and mentoring other writers, Alan developed a framework to qualitatively evaluate and strengthen writing across all genres and styles. Through trial and error, inflation and conflation, he arrived at five conceptual truths that apply to all genres and styles of writing and can be used by any writer to evaluate and optimize their work.

Guided by Alan, participants will explore how “urgency” is created and exploited on the page for optimizing dramatic potency.

No registration is required, but space is limited. This workshop is geared toward writers of all levels and genres. As mature content may be discussed, parental discretion is advised for participants under 18. Please bring writing materials, such as a notebook and pen.

Upcoming Workshops

• Writing with Meaning: July 19, 10:30 a.m. – 12 p.m. at the Library! at Collister
• Writing with Originality: August 16, 10:30 a.m. – 12 p.m. at the Library! at Bown Crossing

• A Community Reading and Celebration of the Written Word: September 20, 10:30 a.m. – 12 p.m. at the Erma Hayman House 

ABOUT ALAN HEATHCOCK

Alan Heathcock is the author of VOLT (Graywolf Press) and 40 (MCD x FSG). He’s won a Whiting Award, National Magazine Award, and has won fellowships from the N.E.A., Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Lannan Foundation, and has twice been a Literature Fellow for the Idaho Commission on the Arts.