CLASS OF 2010
Back Row: Terry Woodward, Jim Breyfogle, Zoe Zygmunt
Third Row: Andrew Cooper, Matt Kimmel, Gerald Warfield, Meira Marom
Second Row: Carrie Mackey, Meg Pontecorvo, Laura Anne Gilman, Jeanne Cavelos, Nivair Gabriel, Erik Bundy
Front Row: Susan Sielinski, Angela Graci, Lorraine Heisler, Nancy Madrid, Mary Ann Marcinkiewicz, Eileen Wiedbrauk
Jim Breyfogle
Odyssey has helped me realize that writing at a high level is not a question of talent or luck, but hard work. It helps cultivate mindfulness while writing and dedicated writing practices. I can whole-heartedly recommend it to aspiring authors as a way to hone both their writing skills and passion.
Erik Bundy
The Odyssey workshop rocked. It pointed out ways in which I was unintentionally cheating my readers. I unlearned bad writing habits. My prose is now bolder, my marketing more intelligent, and my storytelling more emotionally powerful. Now I must go forth and write well. No one wants to disappoint Jeanne.
Andrew Cooper
Odyssey is the best thing I’ve ever done for my writing. It opened my eyes to my strengths and, most importantly, my weaknesses. My writing has made quantum leaps, and although hearing about my weaknesses wasn’t easy, I wouldn’t trade this experience for anything.
Nivair Gabriel
I arrived at Odyssey two days after I graduated from MIT, and as the familiar sleep deprivation began again, I couldn’t help feeling that Odyssey is the MIT of writing—I once more felt that there was so much to learn here that it was like trying to drink from a fire hose. But there was one crucial difference: While MIT decimated me, Odyssey lifted me up. Jeanne has a downright uncanny and divinely gifted way of pointing out all of my problems and kicking me in the ass, yet somehow at the same time never once making me feel that I’m not good enough; in fact, she is so kind and so insightful about my writing that I feel quite the opposite.
Angela Graci
Lorraine Heisler
Odyssey was a transforming experience for me. What I learned about writing was only matched by what I learned about my own capabilities. I cannot imagine a better way to start a career as a writer of fantastic fiction. Jeanne Cavelos is an amazing teacher.
Matt Kimmel
I was on the cusp of evolving as a writer, but I had no way to make that leap. Odyssey helped me achieve that evolution, and now I am a better writer and a great deal more confident about it.
Carrie Mackey
Nancy Madrid
For me, the Odyssey experience reinforced the habit of writing; of actually sitting in the chair and producing a finished product.
The excellent lecture program revitalized and focused my process of revision, and the guest lecturers, professionals from a variety of genres and backgrounds, offered fascinating insights and writing tips.
The success of the program is due to the director, Jeanne Cavelos, and her unique skill set. She possesses a critical editor’s eye, a teacher’s ability to plan and communicate, and a generosity of spirit necessary for a true mentor.
Mary Ann Marcinkiewicz
Attending Odyssey is like walking through the wilderness of the writing process with a guide who knows the way.
Meira Marom
I cannot begin to describe how much Odyssey has given me. It is, in fact, all of the amazing things previous Odyssey grads have said it is, and more. I am now equipped to make my writing the best that it can be. Before Odyssey, I simply was not.
I’ve taken part in other writing programs, and I can attest to the fact that Odyssey is in a different league. The reason for this can be summed up in one word: Jeanne. Never have I come across any teacher of any discipline who was more dedicated, professional, sharp, creative, clear, and good-natured than she is. In fact, I have serious doubts about her being human, and I’ll just say this: She puts the Jeanne in Genius. Her lectures and elaborate, detailed critiques (about eighty of them in six weeks!) are packed full of priceless teachings. I can’t wait to get home and use all my new tools. (After I sleep for a month.) I am so exhausted, but so happy to have experienced Odyssey. I would do it again in a heartbeat. And I wish I could do it again.
I wholeheartedly recommend Odyssey to any writers who are dedicated to seriously improving their craft.
Meg Pontecorvo
Gerald Warfield
I wanted an ordered march through the elements of writing. I wanted concentrated work in the areas in which I was weak. I wanted to produce some brand-new stories within a short amount of time. I wanted to learn about the business of being a writer. I wanted to meet writers and establish a support network. It’s not often you get everything you want, but I did at Odyssey.
Eileen Wiedbrauk
Odyssey is tougher and more intense than any workshop or writer’s conference I’ve attended. By having one mentor and total immersion, I’ve made more breakthroughs in six weeks at Odyssey than in two years in an MFA program. Jeanne is thoughtful and compassionate, but doesn’t let students get away with anything. Her insightfulness and dedication are Odyssey’s greatest resources.
Terry Woodward
I knew it was going to be good to have the Odyssey Workshop experience, but I could never have dreamed it would have made such a different to me as a writer and a person!
Zoe Zygmunt
In only six weeks Jeanne has fostered me from a beginner to someone who feels confident she has the skills to make a career as a professional author. This approach, relating the elements of fiction directly to my own work, has made the difference. I had read books about writing and participated in online workshopping but it never ‘clicked’ like it did here.
Jeanne clearly loves teaching new writers, loves to see how they grow and change over six weeks, and is good at it too.
Memorable Quotes from the Class of 2010
“Why is ancient evil so busy?”
—Alex Jablokov
“So the cat took an info-dump.”
—Jeanne Cavelos
“We had two flashbacks and a break for lunch before the story started on page ten.”
—Mary Ann Marcinkiewicz
“I guess the tiny wings were ineffective, but I just thought they were cute.”
—Nancy Madrid
“I became a verb hunter.”
—Nancy Madrid
“A little demonic klieg light in my head went off.”
—Jim Breyfogle
“You might get really irritated thinking about being a piece of metal.”
—Andrew Cooper
“The ‘dragonettes’ sound like a Motown group.”
—Gregory Frost
“I liked the interaction between the characters, even if they were murderous predators.”
—Erik Bundy
“I would think Death would drive something more menacing than a Jeep.”
—Zoe Zygmunt
“Be offensive. Offensive is interesting.”
—Jeanne Cavelos
“Nothing is personal.”
—Lorraine Heisler
“…Except the pan pizza.”
—Eileen Wiedbrauk
“I think there’s just a lot of purple.”
—Eileen Wiedbrauk
“Do zombie chickens eat brains? Many of them don’t have the heads to eat the brains.”
—Angela Graci
“The zombie chickens acted a lot like regular chickens.”
—Carrie Mackey
“I was impressed at the breadth of chickens . . . I guess that will always stay with me.”
—Matt Kimmel
“I’m not conversant with chicken types.”
—Erik Bundy
“What would happen if regular people were to eat the zombie chickens?”
—Angela Graci
“You’ve clearly been around chickens. Chickens are evil.”
—Laura Anne Gilman
“He just seemed like an expository tool.”
—Nivair Gabriel
“You seem to have this transfusion line into the causal chain blood bank.”
—Meg Pontecorvo
“I loved the story. And I agree it’s a lot like cocaine.”
—Angela Graci
“You’re only going to learn by getting it wrong.”
—Gregory Frost
“There’s nothing like the exercise of writing bad poetry to teach you about sentence structure.”
—David G. Hartwell
“I would prefer to have more description in the way I prefer to have two pieces of cheesecake instead of one.”
—Terry Woodward
“The pacing is quite spritely.”
—Matt Kimmel
“I was grossed out by this story in a very good way.”
—Meira Marom
“He can run up a hill and be panting and it doesn’t have to be lust.”
—Eileen Wiedbrauk
“They didn’t seem very piratical to me.”
—Meg Pontecorvo
“A potluck’s hard to make interesting.”
—Lorraine Heisler
“If you didn’t see that National Geographic special, then you can’t understand my story.”
—Gerald Warfield
“Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.”
—George Eliot, quoted by Elizabeth Hand
“She’s gonna smell a lot earthier and a lot less of jasmine. She’s been living rough.”
—Erik Bundy
“Governess ex machina.”
—Lorraine Heisler
“Not some random elf.”
—Andrew Cooper
“If you do put in a random elf, throw him under the bus.”
—Jim Breyfogle
“If you’re going to have incest and necrophilia that might be too much for one short story.”
—Angela Graci
“Seventy percent of the value of a story comes from the last sentence.”
—Elizabeth Hand, paraphrasing Gardner Dozois
“It used to have an alien in it.”
—Nancy Madrid
“It’s hard to be a hero when you live near your mother.”
—Erik Bundy
“The raccoons are very believable characters.”
—Matt Kimmel
“I didn’t know if she was happy as a tree.”
—Zoe Zygmunt
“I’m not sure if I became desensitized or if I’m so sleep-deprived I just don’t care.”
—Mary Ann Marcinkiewicz
“I appreciate you giving her a nervous tic.”
—Matt Kimmel
“I couldn’t come up with a sound for a constipated parakeet.”
—Erik Bundy
“I loved the constipated paragraph.”
—Nivair Gabriel
“Only trouble is interesting.”
—Michael A. Arnzen
“I think I’d just rather have her freeze to death.”
—Zoe Zygmunt
“I like a good space opera as well as anyone else, but I like it better when we win.”
—Terry Woodward
“I wanted to figure it out before she did and feel smarter than her.”
—Eileen Wiedbrauk
“She behaved kind of strangely, but I’d expect that from a fortune teller.”
—Jim Breyfogle
“My desire for Tarn has increased.”
—Lorraine Heisler
“I kept waiting for the next body part to show up.”
—Lorraine Heisler
“You don’t see enough done with the lungs in fiction.”
—Michael A. Arnzen
“You dumped four names and a rabbit on me in three sentences.”
—Jim Breyfogle
“While I think it’s not impossible for a guy to wear tights, I don’t think those are the same guys who want to fly airplanes.”
—Mary Ann Marcinkiewicz
“Who among us doesn’t enjoy a ritual dismemberment set to music?”
—Terry Woodward
“Maybe he becomes a ghost and haunts himself.”
—Nancy Madrid
“I don’t mind that the questions are absurd. I just thought they would be phrased in a more clinical way.”
—Matt Kimmel
“I was more for the pirates than the mobsters.”
—Zoe Zygmunt
“I had higher expectations for the hot tub.”
—Lorraine Heisler