Kathleen Alcala

Spirit, Land and People - writing the stories that bind us together

This course will consist of three one-hour discussions on the creative process of writing as illustrated by the collection of essays, "Yellow Woman and the Beauty of the Spirit." Brief excerpts from other work will be used as well.

Day 1: Introduce participants to the book, and discuss the overall concept that unifies Silko's ideas. We will then talk specifically about our link to the land, and the use of description and setting to enhance and ground one's writing.

Day 2: We will discuss how other art forms can inform and aid the writing process, especially through awareness of the senses.

Day 3: We will discuss the way that stories bind people to each other. We will discuss the uses of dialogue, voice, and the narrative process.

Each hour will include at least 15 minutes of writing exercises. Participants are encouraged to read the book before the class, but it will not be a prerequisite.

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Marvin Bell

Dark Matter & Sticky Stuff: Writing as a Survival Skill

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Sheila Bender

Don't Quit Your Day Job-Write About It

Day 1: Asking and answering the question: What can I write about the work I do when I am not writing? How can I use this writing?

Day 2: Building a network of writers from anywhere

Day 3: Playing the publishing game when you are not a full time writer (and very few of us are!)

Read handouts for each session.

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Jill Johnson

It’s the Words, Stupid: Writers as Storytellers I, II, III

What does it mean when readers and critics call a writer a storyteller? In this course, we will explore the common ground between storytelling and writing. You will learn and practice techniques which help define what kind of storyteller you are. We will search - through story - to discover who you are - as writer, teller, artist.

Day 1: Storying, Listening

Day 2: Telling; Story as Metaphor

Day 3: Storytellers as Writers/Writers as Storytellers; The Deep, Dark Forest

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Kirby Larson

Day 1: Keep Your Eyes off the Page: The Importance of Research in Writing Fiction.

Artists keep their eyes fixed on their subject rather than on the sketchbook; writers can also benefit from this practice by doing various levels of research to enrich their writing.

Day 2: Drawing Lessons for Writers: Shading, Shadows and Negative Space.

In this workshop, writers will explore using characters and story setting to inform use of simile, metaphor and symbolism.

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Frances McCue

Connecting Your Writing to Civic Life I, II, III

As a poet, novelist or memoirist, you might not consider your work as a public act. For months you struggle to craft a piece and then, with luck, it ends up in a literary journal with a tiny circulation. How do you reach into community life with poems and stories? How can your work reach a larger audience? What does it mean to connect the work of writing to the work of being a citizen? In this seminar, we'll do some hand-on mapping of our writing lives and our lives within our communities. Then, we'll discuss new ways that writing can enter the culture and we'll look at the landscape of new economies that are alternatives to academia.

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Randy Powell

Day 1. The Big Picture
What's the point and who cares; reading as a writer; story, plot, structure, unity; choosing a subject; finding the heart of the story

Day 2. Deep-dive, Drill-down
Concreteness, specificity; carressing the details; mechanics; images, narrative, scene, clustering, dialogue; techniques, tips, tricks

Day 3. Some processes
Finger exercises; notebooks, lists, index cards, etc.; how to write a novel--experiments

Day 4. Originality, verisimilitude
Working with what you have; lousy first drafts; inspiration

Day 5. On being prolific
Parking lot and everything else not covered; writing and selling

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Bruce Holland Rogers

Day 1. Invention Techniques
Even when you think you already know exactly what you're going to write, invention techniques can be useful for uncovering facets of your subject that you hadn't thought of. And if you don't yet know what your subject is to be, invention techniques can help you find it. Identifying a few favorite techniques means that you'll never lack ideas.

Day 2. Rights, Copyrights, and Contracts
Writers are artists, but they are also creators of intellectual property. When you sell work for publication, just what is it that you are agreeing to? What rights should you hold onto, and what rights are you wise to share with a publisher? When is it a good idea to officially register your work for copyright? What are some bad contract clauses that the writer should ALWAYS refuse to sign?

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Peggy Shumaker

Poems, Paragraphs, Brief Lyric Nonfiction.

Enjoying work from writers as varied as Naomi Shihab Nye, Russell Edson, Eduardo Galeano, and Mark Spragg, we'll look at ways these genres overlap. We'll read as writers, looking for tools we can adapt for our own uses.

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David Wagoner

Where Am I?
An exploration of psychotopes, the landscapes of the spirit, as they apply to and affect poets and their poetry.

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Carolyne L. Wright

Day 1. Studies with Miss Bishop: Poets and Mentors
Elizabeth Bishop's poetry has had a pervasive influence on a couple of generations of American poets. She was also a beloved and highly individual teacher, whose visiting positions in American universities in the last dozen years of her life put her in contact with young poets across the country, many of whom have become significant voices themselves. In this talk and reading, I focus on the experience of studying with her at the University of Washington in the spring of 1973, and with other beloved Northwest poet-mentors (Madeline DeFrees, Richard Hugo, and William Stafford among them), and I talk about the ways in which these (and a few other) poets' work, presence, and interaction with young poets have influenced my writing, teaching, and growth and development as a poet. In the Q & A, audience members are invited to share exemplary reminiscenses of their own.

Day 2. Trans-Genred Poetics: Moving from Poetry to Prose (and Back Again)
Some years ago, I grew restless with "just poetry." Like many poets, I felt the need to expand my writer's repertoire beyond one genre. Even the lyric-narrative poems I had been writing, about the highly-charged political and social realities of Chile during Salvador Allende's presidency, seemed to have limits. The increasingly political subject matter of these poems--as they explored ways in which sweeping public events, the larger forces of history, impinged on personal lives and the relationships between individual people--began to push me towards nonfiction: memoir and literary journalism. I needed to tell the stories behind the poems, as well as convey more details of social and cultural phenomena, historical background, and the people themselves, in dialogue and dramatized scenes. How, though, to move from the individual speaker's lyric voice to the wide-open field of prose--to the particularity of detail, the nuances that could be suggested in dialogue, the turns and twists of narrated incident necessary to evoke the mood of a particular country at a particular time in its history--and still keep the energy and linguistic freshness of the best poetry? How to move from poetry to prose and back again--how to keep the poetic voice alive in poetry and in prose? These were some the issues I found myself confronting, and which I will discuss here.

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Susan Zwinger

Day 1. The Tradition and Uses of the Illustrated Journal
Great artists, writers, historians, scientists, inventors, thinkers, and many others have kept journals since the beginning of written language. The journal is the writer/thinker's mind made manefest on the page as it evolves and collects new information. Quick sketching to hone representation also helps the writer think with another part of the mind. This session will expand the writer's form and uses of the journal.

Day 2. Journaling for Heart, Art, and Research
From notes on back of napkins and scraps of papers to disjointed cards, the writer's notetaking of the vital world around him is made useful in the organization of a journal. Through form, index, and flexibility the journal becomes a receptacle of all of life while it expands your creativity.

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