Winter Wheat 2016: Fiction Panel Features Part III

Fiction, fiction, fiction. Check out the last of our fiction panels at this years Winter Wheat!

 

“Good Girl/Bad Girl: Creating Complexity in Female Characters,” with Bridget Adams

Have you ever begun reading a novel and known exactly what to expect from the female characters? Have you ever wondered why your own female characters seem static, cliché, unreal? It can be tempting to fit fiction women into archetypes—making them “good girls” or “bad girls.” In this workshop, we’ll look at the work of female writers, from Emily Bronte to Jeanette Winterson to Elena Ferrante, who center their stories on unruly, difficult, and complicated women. We’ll examine the techniques each writer uses to develop character, and spend time creating unforgettable female characters of our own.

Bridget Adams is currently a first-year student pursuing her MFA in creative writing at Bowling Green State University. Her work has appeared in The Susquehanna Review and OPUS magazine. She is a winner of SUNY Geneseo Awards in Fiction and Poetry.

(this workshop will be held on Saturday, November 5th from 9:30-10:45am. If you’re interested in attending this workshop, select C1 when you register!)

 

“Magic in the Making,” with Nathaniel Meals

This workshop begins with a general, if abbreviated, introduction to magical realism as a genre, its post-WWII Latin American origins, its rise in popularity, and its present place in world literature. From there, the focus will shift to a discussion of the typical features of a magical realist fiction. Using notable texts authored by some chief practitioners of the genre, we will explore how these devices are employed and to what aesthetic ends. Finally, the workshop will close with a few short writing exercises to get your magical juices flowing.

Nathaniel Meals is a first-year graduate student in creative writing at BGSU. He grew up in Pittsburgh, PA, and attended Duquesne University, where he studied English and philosophy.

(this workshop will be held on Saturday, November 5th from 9:30-10:45am. If you’re interested in attending this workshop, select C5 when you register!)

 

“Creating Your Fictional Hometown,” with Eric Wasserman

“Every good writer has a conflicted relationship with the place where he grew up.” Kevin Kline could not have spoken truer words in the movie Orange County. Do you struggle with wanting to write autobiographical fiction? Is where you grew up crucial to those stories, but you can’t seem to get beyond your personal history that rests there? In this writing-intensive workshop we will explore techniques that will help you create your own fictional hometown, similar enough to the real thing that you will not lose that special sense of place, but different enough to free yourself artistically.

Eric Wasserman is the author of a collection of short stories, The Temporary Life (University of Akron, 2005) and a novel, Celluloid Strangers (Second Wind, 2011). He is an Associate Professor of English at The University of Akron, where he teaches fiction writing, literature and film studies. You can visit him at www.ericwasserman.com.

(this workshop will be held on Saturday, November 5th from 11:00-12:15pm. If you’re interested in attending this workshop, select D6 when you register!)

 

“The Seven Deadly First-Page Sins,” with Tex Thompson

There’s no one right way to begin your story—but there are plenty of wrong ones. In this class, we’ll take you on a cautionary tour through the pits of page-one hell, complete with agent pet peeves, reader turn-offs, and “thanks but no thanks” editorial deal-breakers. Don’t let your manuscript suffer in form-rejection torment: Let us guide you through the slush-pile inferno and lead your story toward the light!

Arianne “Tex” Thompson is a “rural fantasy” author, professional speaker, and comma placement specialist. Look for her internationally published epic fantasy Western series, Children of the Drought (Solaris), and find her online at www.thetexfiles.com!

(this workshop will be held on Saturday, November 5th from 3:00-4:15pm. If you’re interested in attending this workshop, select F8 when you register!)

Winter Wheat 2016: Fiction Panel Features Part II

Fiction galore! Here’s some more fiction-focused panels at this years Winter Wheat!

“The Kitchen Sink, the Teaspoon: Telling It All vs. Telling Barely Enough,” with Brad Modlin

When should writing go maximalist and pack itself full with details, complexities, chewy sentences, asides, long paragraphs, regret from high school days, and nostalgia for the tangerines your aunt gave you? When to—minimalist—seize the jugular? We will explore examples of maximalism and minimalism from writers of all three genres, such as David Foster Wallace, Amy Hempel, Margaret Atwood, and David Shields. And we will flex both kinds of muscle in our own writing exercises. All genres welcome.

Brad Modlin is the author of Everyone at This Party Has Two Names (Southeast Missouri State U Press, 2016) which won the Cowles Poetry Book Prize—and the author of Surviving in Drought, a small forthcoming fiction collection that won The Cupboard’s annual contest. His nonfiction publications include River Teeth, Florida Review,Fourth Genre, and DIAGRAM. Find him at bradaaronmodlin.com

(this workshop will be held on Friday, November 4th from 4:30-5:45pm. If you’re interested in attending this workshop, select B6 when you register!)

 

“Look Who’s Talking: Writing Believable Dialogue,” with Courtney Ebert

Anyone can get stuck when trying to write dialogue that is believable and stays true to their characters. We may even let our own voices overpower our characters’ voices, forget that our characters are doing something while they talk, or let our characters ramble on too long. In this workshop, we will explore different ways to obtain believable dialogue from our everyday lives, to make sure that our characters’ dialogue/voices are not too similar, and to create dialogue with a necessary conflict for the story.

Courtney Ebert is a senior at BGSU studying French and creative writing. She is an intern at Mid-American Review.

(this workshop will be held on Saturday, November 5th from 9:30-10:45am. If you’re interested in attending this workshop, select C4 when you register!)

 

“Arias and Air Guitar: Writing about Music in Fiction,” with Rebecca Orchard

From A Visit from the Goon Squad to The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter to Kazuo Ishiguro’s Nocturnes, music plays an important role in the lives of many fictional characters. Just as a vivid description of setting can anchor a work in the physical world, a compelling musical moment can give insight into a person’s inner world. What makes a musical description vivid, interesting, and essential to the dramatic action of a work? This workshop will explore ways to write about fictional encounters with music through prose examples and musical prompts.

Rebecca Orchard holds a degree in music performance from the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University and is a current MFA student in fiction at BGSU. In between, she has been a professional baker, a New Yorker, and a wannabe arts commentator.

(this workshop will be held on Saturday, November 5th from 11:00-12:15pm. If you’re interested in attending this workshop, select D4 when you register!)

 

“Brainstorming the Novel,” with Lawrence Coates

“Brainstorming the Novel” will be a discussion / workshop on conceiving and developing your novel idea. The presentation will feature an outline of the seven basic plots, some guided exercises that can be shared, and some questions that can be used to strengthen your idea or the manuscript you’re currently working on.

Lawrence Coates has published five books, most recently The Goodbye House (U of Nevada Press, 2015), a novel set amid the housing tracts of San Jose in the aftermath of the first dot com bust. His work has been recognized with the Miami University Press Novella Prize, an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction.

(this workshop will be held on Saturday, November 5th from 1:30-2:45pm. If you’re interested in attending this workshop, select E3 when you register!)

 

“Flash Fiction Battle to the Death,” with Brian Lee Klueter and Zachary Kocanda

Back by popular demand! Contestants will have 40 minutes to write a flash fiction piece based on a photo prompt. Two finalists will be determined by the group. Those finalists will read their pieces to a live audience, who, through applause, will determine a champion.

Brian Lee Klueter has a BFA in creative writing from BGSU, and is the former creative nonfiction editor of Prairie Margins. He currently lives in Columbus, OH, and is addicted to chicken fingers.

Zachary Kocanda is a second-year MA student in creative writing at Ball State University. He earned a BFA in creative writing from Bowling Green State University, where he was editor-in-chief of Prairie Margins and an intern for Mid-American Review.

(this workshop will be held on Saturday, November 5th from 3:00-4:15pm. If you’re interested in attending this workshop, select F5 when you register!)

Winter Wheat 2016: Fiction Panel Features

Do you like fiction? Check out these 5 panels at this year’s Winter Wheat!

 

“On Writing Horror: Avoiding Ghastly Clichés,” with Olivia Zolciak and Tanja Vierrether

Creepy dolls, dark basements, experiments gone wrong, and groups splitting up and encountering their inevitable doom. It’s all been done before, but there’s something about the horror genre that keeps readers craving that visceral fear of the unknown and unexplainable. Therefore, it is important to engage readers in a genre that is constantly reproducing similar motifs. In this workshop, we will discuss common horror fiction clichés and how to work in a space defined by them.

Olivia Zolciak is an MA student in English at BGSU and an assistant editor with Mid-American Review.

Tanja Vierrether is an MA student in German at BGSU and an assistant editor with 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 A8 when you register!)

 

“Death in the Afternoon—at Winter Wheat: Writing Believable Death Scenes,” with Nick Heeb

In this workshop, participants will learn innovative ways to write death scenes in their fiction. Participants will have an opportunity to write their scene depicting the death of a character—remember, the death doesn’t need to be violent, it just needs to be authentic. Please come prepared with a character you’re ready to kill off!

Nick Heeb was born in western South Dakota. He is currently working towards an MFA in fiction at BGSU.

(this workshop will be held on Friday, November 4th from 4:30-5:45pm. If you’re interested in attending this workshop, select B4 when you register!)

 

“Stories as Jokes/Jokes as Stories,” with Samuel J. Adams

In this workshop, we will examine jokes and stories that follow a punch line/non-sequitur structure. After reading Saki’s exemplary The Open Window, we will review academic theories of jokes and then briefly discuss fictional works that follow this structure, along with some time-honored jokes and acts from comedians who have mastered the art of storytelling. After that, we will generate stories that adhere to this structure, either by fleshing out a joke we already know, or turning a humorous instance from our lives into comedic writing. A few participants will perform their work at the end of class.

Samuel J. Adams was born in Japan and grew up in Northern California. Before entering BGSU’s MFA program in fiction, he taught school in Estonia, wrote for lifestyle magazines, made wine, and managed a vocational program for adults with disabilities. And no, he is not named after the beer.

(this workshop will be held on Saturday, November 5th from 9:30-10:45am. If you’re interested in attending this workshop, select C2 when you register!)

 

“The Protruding Moment in Fiction,” with Brad Felver

This session will investigate the “protruding moment” in fiction—big, often bizarre, memorable events that tend to stick in the reader’s brain long after finishing reading. We will consider what makes a moment truly protrude: the anatomy of them, their benefits and potential pitfalls, and how to structure stories to best make use of them. Ultimately, we will start sketching out some ideas for protruding moments in our own work.

Brad Felver’s stories have recently appeared in One Story, Colorado Review, Harpur Palate, and Zone 3, among other places. He teaches at BGSU.

(this workshop will be held on Saturday, November 5th from 11:00-12:15pm. If you’re interested in attending this workshop, select D3 when you register!)

 

“Have Some Backbone: Using Unexpected Structures to Challenge Your Prose,” with Jameelah Lang

As a writer, it’s sometimes easy to fall into expected patterns in your work, depending upon a few reliable tricks for plot, structure, and language; this can lead to a writing rut or prevent your work from making leaps and strides. We will amass new tools for dealing with structure in prose, taking a critical lens to the ways that emerging and experimental writers disrupt structural patterns. We will discuss examples of interesting patterns in text, song, and film, establish some ground rules for how they are used, and practice applying them to our own work in freewrites and writing exercises.

Jameelah Lang is an Assistant Professor of English at Franklin College and holds a PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Houston. Her fiction recently appears in The Kenyon Review and Pleiades. She has received awards from Bread Loaf, Sewanee, VCCA, and Hub City Writers Project.

(this workshop will be held on Saturday, November 5th from 3:00-4:15pm. If you’re interested in attending this workshop, select F6 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!)