About
New England Readers and Writers is a voluntary group hosting free workshops serving curious readers and aspiring writers. Our current workshop leaders are:
Michael L. Sevy – Literature Group
…Currently co-leading the Literature Group, Michael recently retired from a career beginning in advertising (including writing and editing for various trade magazines) then working as a database administrator for a financial software company. Composing and playing music from punk rock to ambient and classical minimalism has been a constant throughout.
Michael tries to keep the Lit Group weekly sessions lively with an emphasis on deep analysis of difficult works and explorations of experimental prose and form. Leaning toward long, slow non-narrative fiction in his own reading, favorite authors include László Krasznahorkai, Clarice Lispector, Natsume Sōseki, Marguerite Duras, Robert Musil and Georges Perec.
Some of Michael’s music can be heard here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaLbX7QADown17kutg31yrw
Riki Moss – Read Like A Writer Workshop
…Born in Brooklyn, then University of Chicago, San Francisco Art Institute, then ten years in a NYC loft working in clay, then Vermont. I did a masters degree at Vt College, my thesis was recreating the Villa of the Mysteries, Pompeii. I began creating my own mummified bodies, first in wax, then plaster, resin and wire, then abaca paper. All good until 2008 happened. Luckily, there was a novel in my head. North Atlantic picked it up.
In Read Like A Writer, I pick stories from the Paris Review, New Yorker, Granta, etc. We pull it apart. What works? What’s the voice, the narrator, the history? What’s magical realism anyway? Backstory? Structure? How does Kafka built tension? Empathy? And finally we bring it home writing through prompts; struggling to understand our place in this crazy world.
rikimosswriter.com
rikimossstudio.com
Patrick Brownson – Literature Group
…got his B.A. in Honors English Literature and Western Society & Culture from Concordia University, in Montreal, QC. He is currently co-leader of the Literature Group which started as a small group of readers tackling “Infinite Jest” in the summer of 2013, and became a year-round Lit. group in the summer of 2015. He has also spent time as fiction co-editor and manuscript reader at the Mud Season Review. He is the father of a 3-year-old boy, Wallace.