Winter Wheat 2016: Lit Techniques and Ideas Panels

Check out these great workshops at Winter Wheat!

“Writing Respectfully and Accurately about Characters with Disabilities,” with Sheri Wells-Jensen, Tex Thompson, Jason Wells-Jensen and Abberley Sorg.

Being inclusive means more than choosing to designate one of your characters as disabled. It means (1) asking yourself why you want to include that character, (2) doing the research to make sure you are able to portray that character with accuracy and respect, and (3) taking steps to follow through to make sure your depiction does no harm. This workshop provides guidelines and hands-on activities to practice these skills.

Jason Wells-Jensen was the “language architect” for Tex Thompson’s Children of the Drought series of rural fantasy novels. He has taught linguistics and ESL in Puerto Rico and on the mainland, and also has degrees in library science and music.

Sheri Wells-Jensen is a linguist at BGSU who specializes in teaching English to speakers of other languages. She has worked as a language creator for Scholastic Books and writes about disability with special emphasis on blindness.

Look for her internationally published epic fantasy Western series, Children of the Drought (Solaris), and find her online at www.thetexfiles.com!

Abberley Sorg is a student in the Literature and Textual Studies MA program at BGSU. Prior to this, she attended the University of Toledo’s Sociology MA program. Her research interests include representation of disability in media and literature and societal perceptions of individuals with personality disorders.

(this workshop will be held on Friday, November 4th from 4:30-5:45pm. If you’re interested in attending this workshop, select B8 when you register!)

 

“Let’s Deal With This Thing Called Family,” with Marissa Medley

Families can be a source of inspiration for writers. Whether good or bad emotions flow from these relationships, they can give us much to write about. Here we can take a look at how to write about families and explore why we do this as writers. We’ll also look at writers like Sylvia Plath and Rita Dove. And, of course, we’ll have some writing time to get our emotions on paper.

Marissa Medley is a senior at BGSU studying arts management and creative writing. She is the poetry editor of BGSU’s Prairie Margins. She enjoys playing steel drums and working at the local record store.

(this workshop will be held on Saturday, November 5th from 9:30-10:45am. If you’re interested in attending this workshop, select C6 when you register!)

 

“Giving Snow White the Heimlich Maneuver and other Tales: Using Classic Tropes and Characters in Original Writing,” with Erika Schnepp

One of the strongest techniques a writer (of any genre) can employ is drawing on the common chords and tropes we as readers have seen since we were little: tropes like religious figures, characters from fairytales, and literary and pop culture figures who have managed to stand the test of time. Also increasingly popular is the updating of these characters for the modern era, introducing the figures and themes to new generations and even subverting outdated messages to better represent the lessons we want to pass down now versus generations ago. It is just as important that the stories are used in a fashion that increases a new theme and that the same story isn’t merely retold. This workshop will explore ways common tropes and characters are currently being updated and played with in prose and poetry, as well as methods to revitalize the tropes for your own work without being bogged down in their shared history.

E.B. Schnepp is a poet from rural Mid-Michigan who’s found herself in the flatlands of Ohio with an MFA from BGSU and a bad procrasti-baking habit. She is currently the Director of the Learning Center and Retention Coordinator at OSU Lima. Her work can also be found in Crab Fat, pacificREVIEW, and Paper Nautilus, among others.

(this workshop will be held on Saturday, November 5th from 9:30-10:45am. If you’re interested in attending this workshop, select C7 when you register!)

 

“Do Tell: 100 Facts for Writing Sensory Details,” with Laurin Wolf

Thanks to William Carlos Williams, we know, “There are no ideas but in things.” Thanks to the glittering handbooks for writers, we know that concrete details are what make writing powerful. We know we need more grit and gusto in our details. But how do we get at those precious details? If your prosody engine needs a jump-start on the details, do tell. In this workshop, we will look at examples from poetry, fiction, and nonfiction that rely on objects to tell a narrative. The workshop culminates in a fact-finding exercise using random objects to generate narrative.

Laurin Wolf has an MFA from Kent State in poetry. Her poems have appeared in Pittsburgh Poetry Review, PoetsArtists, Rune, Scholars & Rogues, PMS, and Two Review. She hosts the monthly reading series MadFridays and guest hosts the radio program Prosody on WESA. She teaches at Robert Morris University.

(this workshop will be held on Saturday, November 5th from 11:00-12:15pm. If you’re interested in attending this workshop, select D7 when you register!)

 

“Collars, Capes, and Chantilly Lace: Learn to Describe Clothing,” with Anne-Marie Yerks

Clothing is the costume of life and creates identity. What are your characters wearing? Lend a layer of realism to your fiction, poetry, and nonfiction with precise descriptions of fabrics, seams, and shapes. We’ll go over a fashion vocabulary list then swatch out a sample of fashion-forward prose.

Anne-Marie Yerks is the author of a novel, Dream Junkies (New Rivers Press, 2016), and lives outside Detroit. She has work forthcoming in Modern Memoir (Fiction Attic Press) and in Juked. She is a blogger for Sewingmachinesplus.com and is working on a BA in fashion. Find her @amy1620 and at www.annemariewrites.com.

(this workshop will be held on Saturday, November 5th from 11:00-12:15pm. If you’re interested in attending this workshop, select D8 when you register!)

 

“Making Details Matter,” with Christi Clancy, Alicia Holliday, Miette Muller, Lexi Schnitzer, and Alby Leonardi

A well-chosen detail has the power to reveal character, advance plot, convey social and economic status, and establish a sense of place. Think of the kielbasa and rosaries hanging from the car mirror in Stuart Dybek’s story “We Didn’t.”

This workshop will focus on some strategies I’ve employed to help writers make effective use of details, including classroom exercises and writing prompts. I also leverage the campus and surrounding community as fertile ground for quirky, surprising, and sometimes heartbreaking details. The trick is to move away from Google searches and out of our comfort zone; we are more likely to notice details when our senses are on alert in unfamiliar (but safe) spaces.

We’ll discuss activities like the “battle of the details” to architecture hunts, and field trips to quirky museums and strange auctions. We’ll engage the workshop in several short detail-writing exercises.

Christi Clancy teaches English at Beloit College. Her work has appeared in The New York Times and Chicago Tribune, and in Glimmer Train Stories, Hobart, Pleiades, Midwestern Gothic, the minnesota review and elsewhere.

Alicia Holliday, Miette Mueller, Lexi Schnitzer, and Alby Leonardi are all students at Beloit College.

(this workshop will be held on Saturday, November 5th from 3:00-4:15pm. If you’re interested in attending this workshop, select F2 when you register!)

Winter Wheat 2016: Publishing Panel Features

 

Winter Wheat is only two weeks away! Interested in the field of publication? Check out these panels on publishing at this year’s writing festival!

 

“Market Yourself as a Writer,” with Nicole L. Reber

Marketing starts long before your book is published. It should start before your book is even written. Springboarding from the FUSE conference’s theme of literary citizenship, this workshop will talk about how helping other authors, getting free books, and the very act of writing are just some of the many free ways to market yourself. Starting early also helps build a better platform, which leads to quality agent contracts and publishing deals. We’ll set aside some time to generate ideas for marketing yourself, then more time for a Q&A.

Nichole L. Reber’s nonfiction, prose poetry, and lit crit have been in Entropy, Fanzine, World Literature Today,PANK, and elsewhere. She writes monthly on nonfiction, Asian lit, and world indigenous lit for the Ploughsharesblog. She won LunchTicket’s Diana Woods Memorial Award in Creative Nonfiction this year.

(this workshop will be held on Friday, November 4th from 3:00-4:15pm. If you’re interested in attending this workshop, select A6 when you register!)

 

“Beginning Copyright for Writers,” with Scott Piepho

This workshop will offer an overview of basic copyright law concepts that writers need to know. Participants will learn about negotiating contract terms to protect their continued access to their work. The session will also cover the basics of fair use—when a writer can use a snippet of someone else’s work. A writing prompt will consist of song lyrics that participants must work into a piece of writing while staying within fair use.

To offset his law degree, Scott Piepho is studying creative nonfiction in the NEOMFA program. His award-winning biweekly column “Cases and Controversies” appears in a number of Ohio legal newspapers. His work has also appeared in the Akron Beacon Journal, The Devil Strip, and Catalyst Ohio.

(this workshop will be held on Friday, November 4th from 4:30-5:45pm. If you’re interested in attending this workshop, select B7 when you register!)

 

“Bookbinding Basics,” with Suzanna Anderson

Presenter Suzanna Anderson will demonstrate basic bookbinding techniques and forms, including the X-Book, Snake Book, and a Basic Sewn Signature. The session will include a writing period to write in the new books. Attendees will make three books to take home and write in. Writing exercises will approach writing from a new angle using unconventionally sized paper.

Suzanna Anderson studied creative writing at BGSU. She participates in National Novel Writing Month every year. Currently, she is the editor-in-chief of The Magnolia Review and the review editor at The Odd Ducks. She blogs about her graphic novel progress at Ashes: The Graphic Novel.

(this workshop will be held on Saturday, November 5th from 11:00-12:15pm. If you’re interested in attending this workshop, select D1 when you register!)

 

“Book Design & Typesetting Techniques for Small Presses,” with Nikkita Cohoon

This workshop will provide an overview of a typical typesetting workflow for InDesign, with tips for file placement, document setup, creating paragraph and character styles, selecting typefaces, and other design considerations. Best practices will be discussed, with recommendations for creating a house style guide, as well as suggestions for streamlining workflow and preparing a book for print.

Nikkita Cohoon is a graphic designer specializing in book and document design as well as web branding for creatives. She has done typesetting and design for Black Ocean, Tinderbox Editions, and Futurepoem. She also collaborates with writers and artists to design websites to complement and provide a platform for their writing. She holds an MFA in creative writing from BGSU.

(this workshop will be held on Saturday, November 5th from 1:30-2:45pm. If you’re interested in attending this workshop, select E4 when you register!)

Winter Wheat 2016: Poetry Panel Features Part III

We wrap up our Winter Wheat poetry panel features with these last 5 amazing workshops. Be sure to check them out!

 

“That’s Absurd! How to Write Absurdist Poetry,” with Jen Pelto

Whether you’re still Waiting for Godot or undergoing a Metamorphosis, this workshop will discuss the thematic and philosophical elements of absurdism, provide post-postmodern examples from working writers, and give you the space to play with language to write your own absurd poems!

Jen Pelto is a poet and taxidermist who hails from West Michigan, pursuing an MFA in poetry at BGSU. Her work can be found in Prairie Schooner, Heavy Feather Review, Rock & Sling, and elsewhere.

(this workshop will be held on Friday, November 4th from 3:00-4:15pm. If you’re interested in attending this workshop, select A5 when you register!)

 

“Forcing Found Poetry and Reluctant Collaborative Discovery,” with Jessica Zinz-Cheresnick

Do you get annoyed by found poetry and think it lacks the creative pulp of other work? Or is it the only way you can get writing? Do you detest collaborative poetry or poems with multiple writers? Or do you embrace the struggle two people might have in trying to create one piece?

I used to devalue found poetry. I also hated the concept of poetic collaboration and recognizing that two writers wrote one poem. However, after not getting much of my own writing done in the last several years of teaching, found poetry allowed me to get writing again. After being forced to collaborate on a poem in a festival workshop a few years ago, I was rejuvenated by the resulting poem. I want to bring this life to your work too.

In this workshop, we will discuss found poetry, both its concerns and merits. We will also discuss the ethics of collaborative poems, the judgments of them, and the value in them. Then, participants will be guided in writing a collaboratively found poem.

Jessica Zinz-Cheresnick is a faculty member in the General Studies Writing Program at BGSU and holds an MFA in poetry. Her work has appeared in The Rubbertop Review and Fjords Review, and she also reviews for Mid-American Review.

(this workshop will be held on Friday, November 4th from 3:00-4:15pm. If you’re interested in attending this workshop, select A7 when you register!)

 

“The ‘Art’ of Poetry: Storytelling through Narrative Collage,” with Kristin LaFollette

Narrative collage has its beginnings in the Dadaist and Surrealist movements of the 1910s and 1920s and is a hybrid genre that combines elements of image and text. This workshop will examine works like Heather Cousin’sSomething in the Potato Room and Claudia Rankine’s Don’t Let Me Be Lonely and will give writers the opportunity to experiment with incorporating visuals into their own original poetry.

*Note: Participants should bring a laptop computer to the workshop.

Kristin LaFollette is a PhD student at BGSU. Her poems have been featured in West Trade Review, Poetry Quarterly, and Cordite Poetry Review, among others. She also has artwork featured in Harbinger Asylum, Plath Profiles, Pretty Owl Poetry, and Spry Literary Journal. Her graduate thesis was a work of narrative collage.

(this workshop will be held on Friday, November 4th from 4:30-5:45pm. If you’re interested in attending this workshop, select B5 when you register!)

 

“Architectural Follies: Playing with Experimental Structures in Poetry,” with Erika Schnepp

This workshop will examine the often thin line between shaped poems and visual art, playing with the way poems can straddle that line, as well as the sometimes quiet way shape and punctuation can impact how a poem is read and experienced. We explore the challenge of curating Emily Dickinson’s letter poems to prose poetry and more explosively hyper-structured poems, as well as how to use forms and structure without the structure overpowering the poem.

E.B. Schnepp is a poet from rural Mid-Michigan who’s found herself in the flatlands of Ohio with an MFA from BGSU and a bad procrasti-baking habit. She is currently the Director of the Learning Center and Retention Coordinator at OSU Lima. Her work can also be found in Crabs Fat, pacificREVIEW, and Paper Nautilus, among others.

(this workshop will be held on Saturday, November 5th from 11:00-12:15pm. If you’re interested in attending this workshop, select D5 when you register!)

 

“‘Raid the Other World’: Writing Prose Poems,” with Callista Buchen

Marianne Moore suggests that the problems of definition, of “trying to differentiate poetry from prose,” are the “wart[s] on so much happiness.” In this workshop, we’ll happily blur boundaries and focus on writing prose poems. We’ll look at and try out different kinds of prose poetry, exploring how the prose poem can “borrow” the strategies of non-poems, what Michael Delville calls the prose poem’s “propensity to transcend traditional distinctions.” As we’ll see, all genres are full of contradictions, and recognizing and exploiting these contradictions will help us create exciting new work.

We’ll write lots of our own pieces, using the prose poem form to challenge boundaries. We’ll think about both the boundaries of form and the perceived boundaries of content, since as Delville argues, “what is at stake here is the extent to which poetry, like any other discourse or cultural practice, can have claims to larger concerns in the world outside the text” (x).

Callista Buchen is the author of The Bloody Planet (Black Lawrence Press, 2015) and Double-Mouthed (dancing girl press, 2016). Her work appears in Harpur Palate, Puerto del Sol, Fourteen Hills, and many other journals, and she is the winner of the Langston Hughes Award and DIAGRAM‘s essay contest. She is an assistant professor at Franklin College in Indiana.

(this workshop will be held on Saturday, November 5th from 3:00-4:15pm. If you’re interested in attending this workshop, select F1 when you register!)

 

Winter Wheat 2016: Poetry Panel Features Part II

 

Our poetry panel features continues with these 5 great workshops that you can attend at Winter Wheat!

“From Lyric to Lebowski: Writing the Pop Culture Poem,” with Donora Hillard

What does it mean to write a “good” pop culture poem? How can poets use pop culture to access elements of love, anxiety, misery, hope? Led by Donora Hillard, whose most recent full-length poetry collection, Jeff Bridges, was released by Cobalt Press in 2016, this workshop will work through those questions and more. Participants will each leave with a poem draft that gets to the root of what we love—and why we love—in the public consciousness.

Donora Hillard is the author of Jeff Bridges (Cobalt Press, 2016), The Aphasia Poems (S▲L, 2014), and other books of poetry. Her work appears in Hobart, Women in Clothes (Penguin), and elsewhere. She teaches at The University of Akron and lives in a tiny house with the writer Andrew Rihn.

(this workshop will be held on Friday, November 4th from 3:00-4:15pm. If you’re interested in attending this workshop, select A3 when you register!)

 

“First, Put Pen to Paper: Instructions as Poetry,” with Daniel Gualtieri

Modern and contemporary poetry contains a great tradition of poems written as sets of instructions, advice, or even recipes. This poetic form can provide interesting structural advantages, a confident and assertive voice, and fresh content for the poet of today. In this workshop, we will delve into the nature, use, and assembly of these instructional poems, take a look at some examples from great poets of the past and present, and spend time writing our own instructional poems and discussing them in a small-group setting.

Dan Gualtieri is an MFA poetry student at BGSU, and a native of Columbus, OH. He writes fiction and creative nonfiction in addition to poetry, and thrives on continental philosophy, theology, caffeine, and sushi.

(this workshop will be held on Friday, November 4th from 4:30-5:45pm. If you’re interested in attending this workshop, select B3 when you register!)

 

“Poetry as Meditation,” with Karen Craigo

For the presenter, each day begins with a poem—one that aims to change her own mindset and to encourage peaceful contemplation in others. Join this workshop to consider the idea of poem as meditation—a tool for connecting with a universal mind. Most poetic education is based on the very useful idea of a piece of writing as a flawed product that requires tinkering. This session explores the notion that a piece of writing might just be an artifact of the spirit, rather than a workshop fix-it project—while understanding that neither mindset suffices on its own.

Karen Craigo is the author of the poetry collection No More Milk (Sundress, 2016) and the forthcoming collection Passing Through Humansville (ELJ, 2017). She maintains Better View of the Moon, a daily blog on writing, editing, and creativity, and she teaches writing in Springfield, Missouri. She is the nonfiction editor and former editor-in-chief of Mid-American Review, the reviews editor of SmokeLong Quarterly, an editor of Gingko Tree Review, and the managing editor of ELJ Publications.

(this workshop will be held on Saturday, November 5th from 9:30-10:45am. If you’re interested in attending this workshop, select C3 when you register!)

 

“Existence as Conditional on Others’ Perceptions and the Deconstruction of the Self,” with Remi Recchia

The goal of this workshop is to produce new poems centered on the idea of the existence or nonexistence of the self. The focus of this workshop will be to deconstruct your own ideas of who you are and see if there is a core “you” and how it affects your creative work. After a brief presentation, we will examine who we think we are as writers and, more importantly, humans, and challenge these perceptions during a discussion/workshop and in-session writing time. This session is appropriate for all levels of writers or anyone who is interested in existence.

Remi Recchia is an MFA candidate in poetry at BGSU. He has been published in Glass: A Journal of Poetry,Cutbank Literary Journal’s online “All Accounts & Mixture” series, and The Birds We Piled Loosely, among others, and has a piece forthcoming in Ground Fresh Thursday Press.

(this workshop will be held on Saturday, November 5th from 1:30-2:45pm. If you’re interested in attending this workshop, select E8 when you register!)

 

“Writing a Love Poem that Doesn’t Suck,” with Luke Marinac and Lyric Dunagan

How can an emotion as powerful as love so often give rise to overly sentimental, cliché-riddled poetry? Is it impossible to wrangle this emotion in writing without feeling as though we’ve forgotten our pantaloons and lyre?

Although the love poem is well-trodden territory, it’s constantly presenting us with new and strange paths to assuage our confessional impulses. From ancient Mesopotamia to Kobe Bryant, we’ll examine how the love poem has evolved throughout the years and its function in contemporary society, then experiment with approaches to crafting a love poem that doesn’t suck.

Luke Marinac, a transplant from Appalachian Tennessee, is in the MFA Program at BGSU. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in the North American Review, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Anamesa, and Stirring, among others.

Lyric Dunagan graduated with her MFA in poetry from the University of Tennessee in 2016. Her poetry has previously appeared in Cactus Heart, New Madrid and The Volta among others.

(this workshop will be held on Saturday, November 5th from 3:00-4:15pm. If you’re interested in attending this workshop, select F7 when you register!)

 

“Pastoral” by John Beardsley: A Review

Published in Vol. XXXVI, no. 1, John Beardsley’s poem “Pastoral” is reviewed by an editor of Mid-American Review.

As we enter Beardsley’s “Pastoral,” we take from the simple and familiar title a sense of impending rural comfort. The compendium of our experience with the pastoral rushes forward and leaves us anticipating a romantic exploration of rural life and landscape. 

We then are given the first line of this “Pastoral,” in “The snow sang like a shot,” and immediately know that there is a complexity here. Our attention is called to a dominating feature of this landscape, the snow, which seems to live so fully and joyously that it sings, but like a shot. The juxtaposition of the staunch violent noise of a gun firing with the purity of a living, singing snow leaves the reader fascinated about this world, this pastoral, in which the violent and the beautiful can exist in such magnificently direct proximity.

Beardsley continues to develop his initial image by crafting the snow into an all encompassing entity that “sunk all it could see / into its curves and blued / barrels…” The snow takes the underlying forms of the pastoral landscape and makes them its own, adopts them into its own intimate contours. But this pastoral snow is as willing to reveal as it is to consume and “gave it out / again blistering.” The snow releases the forms held within it just as strikingly as it takes them in.

Once we find ourselves situated within the poem’s snow capped pastoral body, the speaker of the poem enters, a voyeur over the snow, “looking across it.” The speaker looks through the snowscape “at the long black body / of an animal I cannot / name…” Just as the speaker cannot identify this black creature streaking through the trees, we are left with a blurred image of the animal fleeing from the “shot” through the white gleam of the snowy landscape. The animal “…moved like / a loss a blood through / paper birches.” We are struck again by the brilliant contrast of beauty and violence involved in the image of an obscured animal moving fluidly, “like a loss of blood,” through the trees of the landscape, staining the glistening snow with the ruby traces of its recent wound. The bark of the “paper birches” seems to magnify the contrast of red and white.

Next, we arrive joltingly at a sense of isolation within the snowfield, as “it was talking to itself.” The landscape maintains its sense of life and voice, but now it seems highly personal, as if the speaker of the poem is overhearing the field’s intimate laments. But the speaker is not obtrusive. Instead, they identify with this overhead self-intimacy, identify with the field talking to itself, “as I do at night.”

At this point, we see the speaker and the landscape as two isolated, intimate figures that share a sense of value in the personal voice.

But the speaker must address this bleeding figure that runs through the snow topped, birch-laden woods. This unnamed animal that seems so integral to the scene at hand. “O stranger in the distance,” the speaker announces, “I’ve made you a fetish / of neck-wrung chickens / to keep off our fathers’ / hungering ghosts…” In this shocking moment, the speaker reveals a depth in his sentiment for the distant stranger. The motives and actions of the speaker are brought into question, as well as the history involved in their complex present state.

The obscurity behind the “stranger in the distance” allows our minds to wander, wondering if perhaps the stranger is no longer the wounded animal, wondering if perhaps the stranger is now, to the speaker, something or someone beyond this scene in the snowy woods. We become aware of a depth in the obscurity of the images.

Still, the speaker is engulfed in the interaction of beauty and violence that has so far saturated the poem, as “I bound / their throats in my sawn-off hair.” But again, their internal stance on this interaction is questioned as they cry out, “O god of embarrassment, / god of bullets-in-the-back,” and make a sacrifice to this addressed being, exclaiming that “I give you my teeth, pink / at the root.” They proceed to “Sleep in this lot I’ve dug / where even the snow can’t see.”

We arrive back at the initial image, the all-encompassing snow that has taken every feature of the landscape under its vast white arms, into its body. But not the speaker. The speaker arrives at a point so personal, a point so privately intimate that they sleep “where even the snow can’t see.”

The final line of the poem revisits the ongoing theme of beauty interacting with violence. It weighs the joy of song against the brutality of retrieving that joy from within the core of a conflicted individual, as the speaker proclaims, “I’ll scrape out the song from my lungs.”