The Gathering of Writers and Readers: 2010 Session Information

Schedule

9:30 to 10:00 a.m.	Registration & Check-in
10:00 a.m.	Keynote Speech: Lee Martin “The Accidental Memoirist”	Cook Theater
11:00 to 12:15	Patricia Henley Establishing a Writing Practice (fiction) Micah Ling Prose Poetry: Beyond Genre Lili Wright From Your Memory to the Page: Flash Nonfiction	Cook Theater South Board Room Cook Mezzanine East Cook Mezzanine South
12:15 to 1:00	Lunch/Box Lunch provided	Cook Theater
1:00 to 2:20	Sarah Layden Up Close and Personal: Essay Writing in the Too Much Information Age (nonfiction) Mary Leader Writing After Still Photographs(Poetry) Barbara Bean Two Sources of Fiction: Reading and Experience (or literature and life.)	Cook Theater South Board Room Cook Mezzanine East Cook Mezzanine South
2:30 to 3:20	Andrew Levy Writing History And Culture (nonfiction) Bryan Furuness Show and Tell (fiction) Shari Wagner Donning the Mask: The Art of the Persona Poem	Cook Theater South Board Room Cook Mezzanine South Cook Mezzanine East
3:30 to 4:20	Karen Kovacik Lights! Camera! Writing! Finding Poetry Through Film Jim McGarrah Chasing the Shadow (nonfiction) Barbara Shoup Novel Ideas	Cook Theater South Board Room Cook Mezzanine East Cook Mezzanine South
4:30 to 5:30	Your Work in the World: A Panel on Publishing Bryan Furuness, Sarah Layden, Karen Kovacik	Cook Theater

Session Descriptions By Genre

Fiction Sessions

Barb Shoup
Novel Ideas
In this hands-on session, would-be novelists will learn strategies guaranteed to help them get their novel ideas off the ground and see them through to completion.

Barbara Bean
Two Sources of Fiction: Reading and Experience (or literature and life.)
We are always taught to read if we want to write well, but what does that mean exactly? One thing we can learn from reading is craft. But I find that in some of my stories I am in a kind of conversation with fiction I love, with writers like Chekhov, Munro, Nicole Krauss, Tea Obrect, Jennifer Egan. The list is long. My characters might struggle with some of the same issues, but end up seeing things from a different angle. How do we take characters from life but transform them through language and ideas? One way, I think, is through this dialogue with other writers.

Bryan Furuness
Show and Tell
Forget that old writing saw, "Show, don't tell." Great writing uses both showing and telling. The trick is to learn not only how to operate in each mode, but knowing when to show and when to tell. Bryan Furuness will discuss how to make this choice, and offer a few exercises that will help you exercise your own skills and editorial discretion. You're welcome to bring a piece of your own fiction to use in these exercises.

Patricia Henley
Establishing a Writing Practice
The mystery writer Elizabeth George says that fiction writers have to have "bum-glue." And short story writer Ron Carlson says that he always gets down to his best work right after he's resisted the urge to walk away from it. How do you get from thinking that you want to write to making writing a habit as ingrained as brushing your teeth? Patricia Henley will give you twelve imperatives that will help you establish a writing practice that will stick with you through life's vagaries. In this session you will have opportunity to trouble-shoot and fine-tune your practice.
This is a practical session. Patricia wants you to go home energized about writing regularly.

Poetry Sessions

Mary Leader
Writing After Still Photographs
Who has not had the experience of staring into a photograph, a still image "frozen in time," or "captured," while noticing details, searching for information, trying to retrieve something of memory, history, nature, meaning? Photographs may have been distorted in the first place or have become so over time or both, but as Susan Sontag put it, with a photograph, “there is always a presumption that something exists, or did exist, which is like what's in the picture.” This hands-on class will explore that existence and that likeness by guiding participants through some strategies of writing poetry based on photographs. The instructor will bring a box of photographic images to rummage from, but participants are also encouraged to bring photographs
that hold some interest, or even mystery, for them already.

Karen Kovacik
Lights! Camera! Writing! Finding Poetry Through Film
Every poet from time to time writes an ars poetica, a poem which sets forth what the poet values about the art form. In this session, we'll look at an ars poetica by Lynn Emanuel that makes use of film noir motifs. Then we'll dip into our own favorite film genres to find new ways to talk about the art of poetry. Get ready to slip into the director's chair and look on poetic craft through a new lens.

Micah Ling
Prose Poetry: Beyond Genre
The line is a necessary tool, (if not a philosophy), for most poets. This session will consider what happens when the line is dropped, or maybe, when the line just continues. Blocks of prose that don't necessarily employ all of the tools of fiction tend to be classified as "prose poems": a foot in both doors. This session will explore the mixing of genre: hybrids that can't quite be defined by a single classification.

Shari Wagner
Donning the Mask: The Art of the Persona Poem
Putting on the mask of a persona is a way to explore another person’s perspective—whether it’s the viewpoint of a historical figure, a character from a fairytale, or a person with an occupation that intrigues you. At the same time, writing from beneath a mask can be a means of delving into hidden aspects of your own personality. In this workshop, Shari Wagner will discuss the process of creating a persona poem and offer an exercise that helps you enter the mindset of an intriguing persona.

Nonfiction Sessions

Jim McGarrah
Chasing the Shadow
What we seem is rarely who we are, especially to ourselves. According to Carl Jung, we want to think of ourselves as nice people. We are accommodating, polite, pleasant, and honest on a daily basis. This is our ego and it creates our self-identity. But, like any other solid object, when placed in direct light we cast a shadow. Writing this human shadow along with the characteristics we view as pleasant and desirable in our narrator is sometimes difficult in memoir because we must face harsh truths about ourselves. However, like all forms of art, memoir is the illusion of reality. If we aren’t believable as characters in our own story, then we run the risk of losing credibility with readers. This is a death sentence in nonfiction. Join me as we learn to find, penetrate, and describe the shadow along with the ego.

Sarah Layden
Up Close and Personal
Essay Writing in the Too Much Information Age Now that sharing our lives has become easier than ever via technology and social networks, how do we cull the best experiences for essays and other personal writing? Is it possible to withhold material long enough to reflect on its significance, or to produce a work longer than 140 characters? Through discussion, writing prompts, and, believe it or not, Venn diagrams, this session will ask you to share -- but only as much as you want.

Lili Wright
From Your Memory to the Page: Flash Nonfiction
Some writers shy away from writing memoir because they don’t trust their memories or fear they don’t remember enough to write a compelling story. In this workshop, we’ll talk about how to turn brief memories into memorable pieces and scenes, which can in turn form the building blocks of larger works. Lili Wright will discuss how to conceive, shape, and edit flash nonfiction. Bring a laptop. You’ll have a chance to write a short piece of your own.

Andrew Levy
Writing History And Culture
Visit most creative nonfiction workshops, and you'll find most people writing memoir. Visit the Amazon top 100, and you'll find something different: most of the creative nonfiction books Americans read are about something outside the self-- or, more interestingly, about hybrids of the self and the world around. In this workshop, we'll talk about how to write about history, how to write about culture, and how not to write about yourself-- at least, until you know how you matter, and why.

Return to the main Gathering information page.