Welcome to the 2020 Winter Wheat Festival of Writing. Please find below links for each of our events, marked in red. If you have any difficulty, please let us know at clouda@bgsu.edu or winterwheat@bgsu.edu. All times are Eastern.
Thursday, November 5
7:30 pm Reading and Conversation with Anna Rose Welch
Zoom Link
Meeting ID: 864 5057 6711
Passcode: 059872
Friday, November 6
5:00 pm Editorial Roundtable
Zoom link
Meeting ID: 890 7638 0335
Passcode: 114467
8:00 pm BGSU Alumni, Faculty, and Student Gathering
Gather link
Passcode: WinterWheat2020
Recorded Workshops Launching
Joe Celizic, How to Query Literary Agents
You’ve finished and polished your novel. Now what? The session will cover the goals, content, and format of the query letter, aimed at attracting the interest of literary agents, complete with a template, examples, and some general rules of thumb for the querying process.
Abigail Cloud, Poetry (and Other Moods) in Motion
A guided presentation and activities designed to help writers think about the movement associations behind words based on sounds, energies, and symbolism.
Karen Craigo, Why Not Be the Laureate of Your Own Life?
Who is the Poet Laureate of your house or apartment? Your building or block? Your town, county, state, nation? There probably is one for the latter two (Ohio: Kari Gunter-Seymour; U.S.A., Joy Harjo). Here’s a question, though: Are you the laureate of your own life? A lot of times, we poets put anything and everything before our craft. We’ll write when the papers are graded, when our coursework is finished, when the dishes are done, when the kids are in bed, when, when, when …. This extra-writing workshop discusses ways to put yourself first.
Karen Craigo, BGSU alum and Poet Laureate of Missouri, will describe how her writing life magically changed when she centered her craft—and how yours can, too. Please access the Google folder for additional materials
Join Mike Hornyak and The Henlo Press in jumpstarting your next creative work. Bring your favorite dictionary and be excited to write as we play a round together. Suitable for poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction and any sort of art, written or otherwise! Please access the Google folder for materials.
Brenna Hosman, Armchair Travel: Writing Places When You Can’t Go to Them
Being able to travel and explore new places is not as possible these days. But what if you want to write about locations you’ve never been or are unable to visit? This presentation outlines strategies to convincingly and appropriately depict settings without having to go to them.
A guided meditation and freewriting activity based on our physical senses. We will ask the participant to gather assorted items representing each sense and then take a mental journey through these sensory artifacts.
Saturday, November 7
Noon-4 pm Bookfair on Gather
Gather Link
Passcode: WinterWheat2020
Live Workshops on Zoom
First Session: 9:30-10:45
Lawrence Coates, The Seven Basic Plots
Meeting ID: 832 2194 6071
Passcode: 459200
Lawrence Coates will lead a workshop on conceiving and developing your novel idea. The session features an outline of the seven basic plots, followed by some guided exercises, and some questions that can be used to strengthen your idea or the manuscript you’re currently working on.
Amanda McGuire Rzicznek, Shift Your Perspective: Yoga and Revision
Meeting ID: 861 7724 2111
Passcode: 990573
We will open our perspectives as we explore familiar yoga poses through a fresh lens. Afterward 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. Please access the Google folder for materials.
Molly Weiland, The Content of Your Character: Illuminating Character through Fictional Spaces
Meeting ID: 825 9961 9323
Passcode: 497496
Explore your characters through the contents of the spaces they inhabit every day. What stories are embedded in the contents of your character’s wallet, purse, car, bedroom, or closet? What does your character hide, and what do they proudly display? Attendees will have opportunity to brainstorm, write, and discuss.
Second Session: 11:00-12:15
Jenna Bazzell, Poetry Chapbook Assemblage
Meeting ID: 881 0904 7670
Passcode: 483147
A workshop assisting participants in compiling and arranging a poetry chapbook. This session requires pre-registration and will continue after lunch.
Justin Carter, The Lyric Flash Essay
Meeting ID: 815 6158 5808
Passcode: 442580
Writing keeps getting smaller. Flash fiction. Prose poetry. And, in the creative nonfiction world, the flash essay. In this workshop, we’ll look at short, lyric essays that combine the truthiness of nonfiction, the language of the poem, and the length of the flash piece.
Sheila Squillante, Everyone Needs Wings or a Sharp Set of Teeth: Fabulism as Self-Care & Escape Hatch in Personal Poetry
Meeting ID: 862 1719 4174
Passcode: 447424
Writing poetry about painful or embarrassing personal moments gets much more fun when you give your speaker wings to escape bullies or a sharp set of teeth she can use to chew her way out of middle school. A sprinkle of Fabulism can be self-care for speaker and poet, both.
Laura Maylene Walter, Novel Writing and Publication: A Lightning-Round Guide
Meeting ID: 844 2667 9069
Passcode: 355010
Learn what it takes to bring a novel to life from start to finish. This session offers practical, forthright advice covering everything from drafting to agents to publication and beyond. Gain a better understanding of the publication landscape and get inspired to take the next step with your own novel.
Third Session: 1:00-2:15
Lisa Favicchia, Cyborgs, Selkies, and Werewolves, Oh My! Feminized Animacies and the Monstrous Metamorphosis
Meeting ID: 875 8535 2582
Passcode: 792510
How alive is a machine, animal, plant, or woman? What are their bodies worth? Who decides this and how do they hurt us? “Consciousness” and its perceived variance among different beings has long fostered the inequality and abuse of marginalized peoples, animals, and resources. This workshop will explore the relationship forced upon both women and nature via their animacies (or lack thereof) through the grotesque horror of monstrous metamorphoses and hybrid humanimal bodies.
Téa Franco, Dating Your Characters
Meeting ID: 878 8090 2409
Passcode: 215148
In this workshop, we will be looking at a character in our current WIPs and learning more about them. We will take time “interviewing” characters and speed dating other participants’ characters so that we each get to know our characters so that they become more real to us
Rebecca Orchard, This Time, This Place, These People: Nailing the Opening of a Short Story
Meeting ID: 819 4984 8453
Passcode: 907212
What is it that grabs us at the beginning of a truly excellent short story? What makes us unable to stop reading on? This workshop will present the elements of a successful opening: the inciting incident that shatters a character’s equilibrium, the long-standing emotional stakes, how the writer establishes unmistakable time and place, and keeps the reader firmly in scene. We will practice writing openings and have an opportunity to share and discuss them.
Amanda McGuire Rzicznek, Comics Aren’t Just for Kids!
Meeting ID: 884 0311 8477
Passcode: 246232
Inspired by Lynda Barry’s Making Comics, we will create a comic and share what we make during this live session. Also, we will discuss literacy comics and genres of comics/graphic novels as well as how comics can help overcome writer’s block, serve as warm-ups for writing, and make life joyous!
Fourth Session: 2:30-3:45
Liz Breazeale, Seeing the Forest for the Trees: Preparing Your Short Story Collection for Publication
Meeting ID: 886 8984 5457
Passcode: 464392
How do you prepare a short story collection for submission and, dream of dreams, publication? In this session, we’ll cover the basics of revising and preparing a short story collection manuscript for submission and, eventually, publication—both in practical and artistic terms, discussing topics ranging from how to order the stories in your manuscript to submitting to contests to whatever happens after.
Rod Martinez, Stomp Stagefright
Meeting ID: 829 5445 4168
Passcode: 823425
When we began our quest in the literary world, little did we think we’d have to stand and speak to an audience. “Stomp Stage Fright” entertains the fear of public speaking with anecdotes, tricks and craft on the subject that I have honed in my seven years of public speaking. Even for us introverts – it isn’t as scary as you think to stand in front of an audience and turn into a literary rock
Kerry Trautman, Bound Together: Communal Journaling with Playful Inspiration
Meeting ID: 844 8544 9126
Passcode: 186863
Inspired by the “Wreck This Journal” series of books by author Keri Smith, this tactile journaling experience focuses on poetry and flash fiction. The leader will create and mail a journal for each participant to have in-hand during a live Zoom workshop. Fun prompts in the journal will be followed together, with time for writing and sharing. The unusual physicality of the writing process will cause writers to create work different from what they might during their typical writing process; a sense of community will be instilled by the collective experience of writers in different locations all holding similar unique objects in their hands. We are unable to sit together, around a table, to create and share our work. However, we can indulge in a communal diversion to generate new writings together. Limited to ten participants, each providing a continental US mailing address. Registration closes seven days prior, to allow for mailing.
Jessica Zinz-Cheresnick, Hybrid Poetry/Text & Image/Hybrid Creation Workshop
Meeting ID: 875 1301 3367
Passcode: 673440
In this workshop, we will discuss some of the latest trends in hybrid creative writing and text+image work in the literary world. We will discuss literary comics, graphic novels, poetry comics, poetry art, and so on. We will also create. The workshop will guide attendees in several generative prompts in creating hybrid work. We will also share information about hybrid publication. (You will also need access to a few materials for our creation exercises, including a recycled magazine to cut items from, a stack of about 20 index cards [or scraps of paper], and some art supplies [ie. Markers, pens, paints, or whatever you might have access too]. A fuller description of the needed supplies will be clarified prior to the panel.)
Through this workshop, I hope that you will uncover something wonderful in hybrid work and possibly for your own work, something to share with Winter Wheat participants, or something to share with your students, fellow writers, or any other human beings.
4:00 pm Reading and Conversation with Karen Babine
Zoom link
Meeting ID: 897 7577 7290
Passcode: 916865
6:00 pm Open Mic on Gather, Hosted by Prairie Margins
Gather link
Passcode:WinterWheat2020