Turning Life Into Art: Tools for Making Memoir out of Memories
10:00am - 11:30am EST

For writers of personal narrative, memory and emotions provide the raw material for story. Like clay, this rich potential needs to molded and shaped to reflect the artist’s vision – in our case, through the art of language. This workshop is for writers of memoir and personal essay who want to explore literary tools that can help them find the heart of their story and support the process of writing it. Techniques include voice, detail and description, narrative transitions, lyricism, point of view and structure.

Janice Gary is the author of Short Leash: a Memoir of Dog Walking and Deliverance, winner of the Eric Hoffer Prize, Nautilus Book Award and a Finalist for the Sarton Award for Memoir. Her work has been published in River Teeth, Brevity, The Spring Journal, Ms. Magazine, and other publications and as part of the feminist anthology, Women Speak Out. She is on the faculty of the Master of Liberal Studies Program at Arizona State University and conducts writing workshops combining memoir, myth, and the self as metaphor. 

Hope and Renewal: How to Breathe New Life in Your Poetry
1:00pm - 2:15pm EST

Have you been languishing in your writing life? Do you have an old poem that you want to dust off and make new? Are you struggling to put an experience into words that surprises and sharpens the senses? Join our study of Lyn Hejinian’s technique for unpredictability, and poets of hope like Ada Limon and e.e. cummings. From creating razor-sharp metaphors to injecting surprise and hope in your work, this workshop will include brief lectures and group exercises.

Yun Wei received her MFA in poetry from Brooklyn College and studied at Georgetown University and London School of Economics. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in over 15 literary journals including The Boiler, Michigan Quarterly, Shenandoah, Summerset, Poetry Northwest and Wigleaf. Levine Greenberg Rostan Literary Agency represents her debut novel. She works in global health in Switzerland, where chocolate and tears are how she survives mountain sports.

Yun Wei received her MFA in poetry from Brooklyn College and studied at Georgetown University and London School of Economics. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in over 15 literary journals including The Boiler, Michigan Quarterly, Shenandoah, Summerset, Poetry Northwest and Wigleaf. Levine Greenberg Rostan Literary Agency represents her debut novel. She works in global health in Switzerland, where chocolate and tears are how she survives mountain sports.

Rooted in Writing: The Earth, Air, Fire & Water of Your Words
3:00pm - 4:30pm EST

“The tides are in our veins, we still mirror the stars, life is your child, but there is in me...the eye that watched before there was an ocean.” Robinson JeffersYou already have all the elements of the world within you. You may have experienced climate change in your relationships, hurricanes of emotional storms, and rising tides in the ebb and flow of your life. In this workshop you will explore the wild, enchanting, engaging creative powers of the natural world, and the nature of your own inner landscapes. As you water the fertile earth of your past, and put your passions onto paper, you become more grounded in your words and their worth. This workshop offers inspiring prompts, handouts, and a generative space for intensive writing, deep listening, and supportive feedback. All genres and skill levels are welcome.

Dorothy Randall Gray is the author of bestseller Soul Between The Lines (Avon/HarperCollins), an inspirational teacher, award-winning visual artist, and LA Poet-in- Residence. Her publications include Muse Blues, The Passion Collection, Woman, Fierce With Reality, Family, Tamarinda, Sharing the Same Sky, as well as numerous anthologies and literary journals. She is ED of Women Writers & Artists Matrix, former NYU faculty, and Hunter College Poet-in- Residence. Her writing and healing workshops serve professional writers, incarcerated and homeless populations, veterans, at-risk youth, and post graduate students through PEN America, United Nations, Skidmore College, and Columbia University. A global activist, Dorothy changes the world one word at a time.

The Art of Writing About Personal Experience
10:00am - 11:30am EST

“Therefore I would ask you to write all kinds of books, hesitating at no subject however trivial or
however vast. By hook or by crook, I hope that you will possess yourselves of money enough to
travel and to idle, to contemplate the future or the past of the world, to dream over books and
loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip deep into the stream.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

The personal essay, or the narrative essay, is the place where Philo and Sophia
(Love and Wisdom) meet. It’s an extremely rich and satisfying form of life writing.
Personal experience serves as a lens through which one views the world and our
place in language as writers and thinkers. The form itself is malleable, and though
emphasis is placed on the story, ultimately the reader will be left with a bouquet
of questions, reflections, and thoughts expressed in luminous words.

In this workshop, we will explore the techniques of writing the personal essay
through discussion and writing exercises. We will read several passages from
Leonardo Da Vinci’s Notebooks to see how he drew inspiration from the world
around him, turn to Virginia Wolf’s essays on Women and Writing, especially her
remarkable piece “Professions for Women,” and look also at the Lives column in
NYT. Everyone is welcome.

Carmen Bugan, a George Orwell Prize Fellow, is a prize-winning writer based in Long Island, NY. She was born in Romania and has lived in England, Ireland, and France.  Educated at the University of Michigan and Balliol College, Oxford University, UK, with a PhD in English Literature, she is the author of five collections of poems (one a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation), an internationally acclaimed memoir, and a highly praised critical study. Her work has been translated into several languages and appears in publications such as PEN Atlas, Modern Poetry in Translation, the TLS, Harvard Review, PN Review, and others. Her book of essays, Poetry and the Language of Oppression (Oxford University Press) was named an “essential book for writers” by Poets and Writers. She was a Fellow at the Hawthornden International Retreat for Writers (Scotland), a Creative Arts Arts Fellow in Literature at Wolfson College, Oxford University (UK), has received a major individual grant from the Arts Council England, and has taught creative writing and literature in the US, UK, and Switzerland. Carmen is a member of the Geneva Writers Group and of the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers.

Memoir: Mining Our Personal Stories
1:00pm - 2:30pm EST

We will discuss how to mine our personal stories for the gold and “shining” moments that might be hiding under layers of overwriting, mixed metaphor, or lack of clarity. Is your best first sentence buried in the middle of the paragraph? I will show you how to approach your paragraphs and essays with a miner’s eye, searching for the gold, extracting it, and using it wisely in your work. We will accomplish this by doing generative exercises, that are designed to pull out the best material without white-knuckling the computer or listening to the “you’re not doing this right,” voice in your head. It will be fun and productive -- my favorite combination! 

Emily Rapp Black is the author of Poster Child: A Memoir (BloomsburyUSA) and The Still Point of the Turning World (Penguin Press), a New York Times bestseller and an Editor’s Pick. A former Fulbright scholar, she was educated at Harvard University, Trinity College-Dublin, Saint Olaf College, and the University of Texas-Austin, where she was a James A. Michener Fellow. A Guggenheim Fellow, she has received awards and fellowships from the Rona Jaffe Foundation, the Jentel Arts Foundation, the Corporation of Yaddo, the Fine Arts Work Center, Fundacion Valparaiso, and Bucknell University. Her work has appeared in VOGUE, the New York Times, Die Zeit, The Times-London, Lenny Letter, The Sun, TIME, the Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal, O the Oprah Magazine, the Los Angeles Times and other publications and anthologies. She is currently Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California-Riverside, where she also teaches medical narratives in the School of Medicine. She is a member of the Inequities in Health Care Working Group and an architect of the Medical Narratives minor in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. She was recently named the nonfiction editor of The Los Angeles Review of Books. Her book that explores art and disability through the life of Frida Kahlo is forthcoming from Nottinghill Editions/New York Review of Books in 2021.

ReVision Yourself
3:00pm - 4:30pm EST

Whose narrative are you living? Your mother’s? Your father’s? Your culture’s? One stuck in a status quo of your own design? If language constructs the self, then language can deconstruct, and reconstruct, the self. We are the original revision! Just as the human body is in a constant state of regeneration, we can ongoingly conceive ourselves anew. Through the reading and writing of prose and verse, we will reimagine—and liberate—our past, present, and future selves. Say helloooo to YOU 2.o!

Marj Hahne is a freelance editor, writer, and writing teacher, and a 2015 MFA graduate from the Rainier Writing Workshop, with a concentration in poetry. She has performed and taught at over 100 venues around the country, as well as been featured on public radio and television programs. Her poems have appeared in literary journals, anthologies, art exhibits, and dance performances. Committed to making poetry hospitable for everyone, she launched a YouTube channel featuring videos in which she reads poems to dogs (BARK & BARD) and pairs poems with craft beers (MASH), craft spirits (DISTILL), and coffees (PO-JOE).

WRITING SPRINTS
10:15am - 12:15pm EST

• Write more as you allow the words to flow
• Increase writing speed by letting the critical editing brain take a rest
• Reach word count goals you have set for yourself for your WIP
• Reach goals for number of pages written if that is how you want to measure your progress

Cathleen O’Connor, PhD is a writer, speaker, teacher, coach, and intuitive who offers developmental editing, publishing, book layout, and marketing services to other writers. An intuitive dream analyst, she has been quoted in the Huffington Post and had articles published in Canada’s Alive magazine and Australia’s The Sphere. Her books include The Everything Law of Attraction Dream Dictionary, High Heels on the Hamster Wheel - A Fable for the Modern Woman and The Collection: Flash Fiction for Flash Memory. She successfully developed a book launch plan for her 2014 book, 365 Days of Angel Prayers, keeping it at number 1 in its category for several weeks on Amazon and eventually selling the rights in 2017. She is currently at work on her first romance novel.

WRITING CIRCLE: Emergence: Finding Our Way In A Changed World
1:45pm - 3:45pm EST

As we emerge from behind our masks into a very changed world, we need to navigate through an emotional landscape that is at once loving and volatile. How can we regain our balance and redefine need? Where does our wholeness reside?  Using prompts to push us towards Emergence, we will begin to find our way. 

Margie Ann Stanko is an award winning essayist and poet who has spent most of her adult life working with special populations, utilizing the creative arts to access increased self awareness and improved self acceptance.  For 5 years she taught writing at the  Mt. Sinai Hospital School of Medicine, working exclusively with adults with traumatic brain injuries and the medical residents for the Department of Rehabilitative Medicine.  She is an ordained interfaith minister and spiritual counselor, certified in Creative Arts Therapies.  Rather than retire when she left her career as a Recreational Therapist/Hospice Counselor, Margie began her newest venture:  Tea & Stones:  Creative Meditative Experiences, offering individual sessions and workshops to all ages.  She has recently moved to Appalachia, where she lives in an intentional ecumenical spiritual community, Elderspirit.