BRATTLEBORO — Whether your aim is to punch up your writing with lively, accurate quotes and rich detail or you just want to know the skills professional interviewers use to get the story no one else has, a workshop will offer some helpful and practical tips and techniques.
Vermont Independent Media's Media Mentoring Project brings you into the world of an award-winning newspaper reporter and skilled screenwriter for an hour with “The Art of the Interview” with Olga Peters.
Learn how to persuade sources from all walks of life to reveal something of themselves for your audience. Topics include ethics, equipment, preparation, and active listening. Participants may bring questions to share.
Peters, the senior staff reporter for The Commons, covers community and municipal news, economics, agriculture, and mental health, and reports extensively on the many vital local, regional, and national issues surrounding Entergy's Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant.
Moreover, she is a member and past president of Vermont PBS' Community Council, and is a frequent panelist on “Vermont This Week,” Vermont PBS' signature weekly public affairs series. Vermont PBS featured Peters' stories of the victims and heroes of Tropical Storm Irene on its “Public Square” special on that historic, reverberating event.
Lauded by the New England Newspaper and Press Association for excellence in news and feature writing, Peters also is an experienced independent film and television script editor and producer in the United States and United Kingdom.
She took her master of arts in screenwriting and producing for film and television from the University of Westminster, London, and her bachelor of arts in creative writing and literature (with honors), from Alfred University.
“The Art of the Interview with Olga Peters” takes place Thursday, Oct. 30, from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m., at Brooks Memorial Library, 224 Main St., in the meeting room next to the Children's Room on the top floor. The program is free, though your tax-deductible donation of $10 to the Media Mentoring Project is warmly welcomed. Vermont Independent Media members should plan to attend without guilt.
For more information, call John Snyder, Media Mentoring Project coordinator, at 413-325-6348, johnsnyder@commonsnews.org, or visit commonsnews.org.