The workshop lineup for Friday, Nov. 12, and Saturday, Nov.13. Please use this listing when registering for the festival. Registration can be found here: 2021 Registration
A Session: Friday Afternoon (Nov. 12, 2021), 4:00-5:15 pm
A1. Everything I Know About Writing, I Learned from Jane Austen (ZOOM WORKSHOP)
Terena Elizabeth Bell
From worldbuilding to dialogue, every device a writer needs to know is somewhere in Jane Austen. Together, let’s explore them. We’ll start by reviewing key passages to learn how Austen did it, then share prompts and exercises designed to help you implement these same techniques in your own work.
A2. Compressing Truth: The Making of Short Poetry
Samuel Burt and Michael Beard
This workshop will focus on wringing significance out of everyday objects and occurrences, using them as lenses into deeper emotional truths. We will share a selection of short poems and discuss how each examines a single moment or often single detail to get at massive emotional ideas. Then, we practice our own compressions.
A3. Black Ink on the White Page
Yassay Masango
Should white authors write about black characters? If so, how? Where are the black writers and characters in the canon of Western art? The goal of this discussion is to address the limitations of art, as well as uncover our societal misunderstandings. To punctuate this conversation, participants will be asked to craft characters along the spectrum of the alterity, i.e., people of color, LGBTQ+, immigrants, etc.
A4. Beautifying the Ordinary: Reimagining Objects through Poetic Form
Maddie Ratcliff
Participants will select ordinary, everyday objects from a list and complete short poems using multiple poetic forms and specific imagery. The purpose is to find inspiration and beauty in common objects, especially when day-to-day activities start to feel uninspiring.
B Session: Saturday Morning (Nov. 13, 2021), 9:30-10:45 am
B1. Brainstorming the Novel
Lawrence Coates
Novelist Lawrence Coates will lead a discussion 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 to strengthen your idea or the manuscript you’re currently working on.
B2. Shift Your Perspective: Yoga and Revision (ZOOM WORKSHOP)
Amanda McGuire Rzicznek
We will open our perspectives as we explore familiar yoga poses through a fresh lens. After a basic yoga practice, we will examine old work in a new light. Discover how stretching the body unlocks the mind and creates space for revision. Needed: space to move & writing to revise.
B3. All Right, Stop. Collaborate and Listen
Kerry Trautman
Inspired by a 25-year collaborative relationship between poets Maureen Seaton and Denise Duhamel, this workshop will discuss poetic collaboration, referencing their book (co-edited with David Trinidad) The Saints of Hysteria: A Half-Century of Collaborative American Poetry (Soft Skull Press 2007). Participants will generate collaborative poems with the opportunity to share.
C Session: Saturday Morning (Nov. 13, 2021), 11:00 am-12:15 pm
C1. Best Practices, Tips, Tricks, and Resources for Running Community-Based Writing Groups
Cassandra Lawton
In this presentation, Cassandra Lawton will discuss literature on writing groups and practices, tips, tricks, and resources informed by professionals for effectively running community writing groups. The presentation will also include a handout for participants to refer to and a list of further references.
C2. Morbidist Poetry: Poetry on a Changing Earth
Tim Neil
Morbidist Poetry sees a pastoral, Romantic sensibility reckon with grim environmental changes, an acute obsession with death, as well as the Capitalist construction of life and how it should be lived. This presentation features contemporary works as examples and attempts to forecast its growth in the coming years.
C3. Writing the Other without Offending (ZOOM WORKSHOP)
Fritze Roberts
This workshop will give you the confidence to diversify the characters you write. We’ll cover how to write people of different genders, sexualities, cultures, and colors without relying on stereotypes or tropes. An open and respectful attitude will be expected of all participants.
D Session: Saturday Afternoon (Nov. 13, 2021), 2:30-3:45 pm
D1. We’re All Friends Here: Setting Goals and Developing a Better Relationship with Your Creative Work
Mary Biddinger
This workshop offers practical advice for writers setting, or recalibrating, goals for creative writing projects. The session leader will offer guidance in a positive, affirming atmosphere, and will address topics ranging from poetry manuscript sequencing to putting together a first journal submission. All levels welcome; much time for Q&A.
D2. Dribbles, Drabbles, and Twitterature
Angelica Esquivel, Molly Weiland, and Felicia Cameron
In this workshop, we will be exploring various forms of short-short fiction. We’ll compose our own six-word stories, mini-sagas, microfiction, and flash fiction. We will also explore the impact of social media and technology on the future of fiction.
D3. Succubae to Cyborgs: Monstrous Women
Kelly Kurtzhals Geiger and Chloe McConnell
We’ll explore the various ways in which the female body is othered and dramatized in science fiction and horror writing. Using Barbara Creed’s The Monstrous-Feminine and Donna Haraway’s A Cyborg Manifesto as jumping-off points, we’ll investigate how the patriarchy separates human from non-human and the abjection of the female.
D4. Persona Ekphrasis Poetry Workshop: Writing the Characters & Stories We Love (ZOOM WORKSHOP)
Julie Lynn
Movies. Video games. Comics. Books. Stories are everywhere and we poets want in on the action. In this workshop we’ll make a home at the intersection of persona and ekphrastic poetry and reimagine the long-standing galleries of art-inspired poetics with work that reflects the stories of our time.
D5. Comics Aren’t Just for Kids!
Amanda McGuire Rzicznek
Inspired by Lynda Barry, JP Coovert, & Ivan Brunetti, we will create a comic and share what we make during this live session. Also, we will discuss how comics can help overcome writer’s block, serve as warm-ups for writing, and make life joyous!
E Session: Saturday Afternoon (Nov. 13, 2021), 4:00-5:15 pm
E1. Writer’s Block Does Not Exist: Generating Fresh and Surprising Writing Even on the Worst Days
Suzanne Hodsden
Do your ideas need a jumpstart? We will begin by reframing our approach to our practice of writing, grounding ourselves in the present moment, and opening up our hearts and minds to…well, sucking. By embracing the suck, we let in the fantastic. Wait and see.
E2. How to Give and Receive an Effective Critique
Christopher Kwapich and Sarah Charles
Because writing isn’t the End Game. People will need to read it, too. Learn not only how to accept criticism, but how to give it effectively. As you learn to constructively dissect someone’s work, you’ll learn to be a better writer in turn.
E3. Flash Fiction Battle to the Death
Kailen Nourse-Driscoll and Christine Potter
The return of a popular tradition! Participants will have half the time to write a flash piece from a photo prompt. The second half is allotted to voting on the best stories, and the finalists then compete for the crown at the open mic on Saturday evening!
E4. Writing and Performing Fluxus-Style Scores
Gabe Pine
Fluxus is an arts attitude of the 1960s and 70s emphasizing artistic process, experiments, and art for all. Together we will read and discuss event scores from Fluxus Performance Workbook (2002), a compilation of scores from over 34 Fluxus artists. We will then write our own concise event scores that instruct joyously ridiculous solo tasks, brief and lively group activities, and offbeat meditative exercises, which we will then try out performing.
E5. Writing the Contemporary Love Poem: Embracing the Truth (ZOOM WORKSHOP)
Remi Recchia
This workshop will feature a brief presentation on traditional and contemporary love poetry. Poets explored will include Ralph Angel, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Burns, Natalie Diaz, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Walt Whitman. Participants will be given a prompt to help generate their own love poems.
Pre-Recorded Workshops, available beginning Friday, Nov. 12.
Accessibility Conscious Language within Literature: How to Become Aware of Invisible Feats
Charity Anderson
Accessibility practices are often associated with legal and ethical compliance within business practices. The application of accessibility consciousness, however, is an ever-growing social responsibility within many circles of life. Cultural elements, such as literature, can be contributing participants of this expanding consciousness’s deflation (or inflation) without even seeing the memorable moments taking place. This presentation aims at making those invisible strides more recognizable within the practice of reading and writing literature.
Available on Youtube
Writing from a Dice Roll: Chance Operations in Poetry
Abigail Cloud
Chance was a key component for the Dadaists, Fluxus, Surrealists, and many other artistic movements and attitudes. How can the roll of a dice, a random pairing of question and answer, or a gleaning of words contribute to a poem? What is the role of the conscious in such an endeavor? In this guided workshop, we’ll experiment with the spectrum of totally random to conscious input to craft poem beings.