This year the following writers will teach our two day writing workshops at the Carver & Gallagher Creative Writing Festival. Look below the instructor list for additional details:
Each workshop will meet on Thursday April 25th and Saturday April 27th from 11:30-1:30. Students will have the opportunity to hand in one short work on the first day and receive feedback from the instructor. Only sign up for one workshop, as they all run concurrently.
To reserve a spot in the workshop of your choice, pay for the workshop on Eventbrite on the same page where the festival tickets can be purchased.
JONATHAN EVISON (fiction): is the author of the novels All About Lulu (Washington State Book Award); West of Here (New York Times Bestselling); The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving; This is your Life, Harriet Chance!; Lawn Boy; and Small World.
Workshop Topic: Trusting the Process
ALICE DERRY (poetry): is the author of Asking, Hunger, Tremolo, Strangers to Their Courage, Stages of Twilight, Clearwater, Getting Used to the Body, Not As You Once Imagined, and translations from the German poet Rainer Rilke.
Workshop Topic: Reading Poetry as a Way to Engender Writing
ANNA QUINN (fiction): is the author of the novels Angeline and The Night Child.
Workshop Topic and Description: The Art of Writing Emotional Truth
Emotion is the underlying support of story—the aspect that unlocks voice, wakes up the body, the heart, and touches the soul. Writing visceral emotion can be tricky though, because the most evocative is often the most subtle—it’s expressed in the tiniest detail or subtext that unexpectedly seeps into our veins and then onto the page. In this workshop we’ll discuss and practice moving your story into the alive, the vivid, the vibrant—the story your reader won’t be able to put down.
CHARLOTTE GOULD WARREN (non-fiction): is the author of Jumna (a memoir), and three volumes of poetry: Gandhi’s Lap, Dangerous Bodies, and If Not Him.
Workshop Topic: Writing a Memoir
LAWRENCE MATSUDA (poetry): is the author of A Cold Wind From Idaho, Shape Shifter: A Minidoka Concentration Camp Legacy, My Name is Not Viola, and co-author/collaborator of three other books: Boogie-Woogie Crisscross, Glimpses of a Forever Foreigner, and Fighting for America: Nisei Soldiers.
Workshop Topic: Villanelle
Various generic perspectives/tips on writing poetry will be explored as a foundation for writing villanelles (but not the strict French form version). The contents will be presented over two workshop periods (Thursday and Saturday) . The desired outcome is to have participants work individually or in pairs to create villanelles (including comic villanelles) and present them to the group.
CMARIE FUHRMAN & GARY COPELAND-LILLEY (poetry): Not one, but two outstanding poets will lead this workshop.
CMARIE FUHRMAN: is the author of Camped Beneath the Dam: Poems. She is the co-editor of Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, and Poetry and Native Voices: Indigenous Poetry, Craft, and Conversations. CMarie directs the Elk River Writers Workshop. CMarie is the Associate Director and Poetry Director at Western Colorado University.
GARY COPELAND-LILLEY: is the author of eight books of poetry, including The Bushman’s Medicine Show from Lost Horse Press and Alpha Zulu, from Copper Canyon Press. He is the Artistic Director of the Port Townsend Writers Conference and teaches in the Western Colorado University Creative Writing MFA program.
Workshop Topic: The Dead Poem Society
It’s about resurrecting them, that’s right. You know those dead poems we’re talking about. We all have them. Those dead and triaged, needing life support near-ghost poems, that keep haunting you. Join us in a generative workshop about revising, or rather re-visioning, the poem from its central images and essential details. Become the poem-whisperer that you need to be through utilizing the craft skills that will sharpen images, bring clarity, enhance rhythm and musicality, and doing it all without blowing to pieces your original draft. Absolutely true, this ain’t snake-oil, this is putting a heartbeat into a poem using the words that you’ve already written. Bring us a draft, and with all of us working together, we will make your dead poem come alive.
TIM McNULTY (poetry): is the author of Ascendance, In Blue Mountain Dusk, and Pawtracks. His nature writing includes: Olympic National Park: A Natural History, The Art of Nature, Washington’s Mount Rainier National Park , Washington’s Wild Rivers, From the Air: Olympic Peninsula, Grand Teton: Where Lightning Walks and Grand Canyon: Window on the River of Time, and ten poetry chapbooks, including: Cloud Studies, Some Ducks, Through High Still Air, Reflected Light, Tundra Songs, As a Heron Unsettles a Shallow Pond, and Last Year’s Poverty.
Workshop Topic: The Power of the Image
LISA C. TAYLOR (fiction): is the author of two collections of short fiction, Impossibly Small Spaces (Arlen House/Syracuse University Press) and Growing a New Tail (Arlen House/Syracuse University Press) as well as three full-length collections of poetry and two chapbooks.
Workshop Topic: Liars, Lovers, and Criminals: Writing Character-driven Fiction Workshop
In this workshop for all levels, participants will explore ways in which their lives compel them to write. Their stories may contain only a shadow of events that sparked the idea or character. Examples of fiction will be shared so participants learn what is possible for their own writing.
Format: Lecture, interactive, writing exercises.
KATE REAVEY (poetry): is the author of Curve, Through the East Window, Trading Posts, and Too Small to Hold You.
Workshop Topic: Kate Reavey’s workshop will be generative. We will read poetry by published writers to inspire and encourage our own drafts. Then we will engage exercises/prompts Reavey has created as well as some she has learned from other writers.
HOLLY HUGHES (poetry): is the author of Hold Fast, Passings, and Sailing by Ravens, coauthor of The Pen and The Bell: Mindful Writing in a Busy World, editor of the anthology Beyond Forgetting: Poetry and Prose about Alzheimer’s Disease and co-editor of Contemplative Approaches to Sustainability in Higher Education.
Workshop Topic:Demystifying Form
If you’ve been avoiding form as too, well, “formal,” join me to explore how organic form can help reveal what your poem is saying. In her classic essay “Some Notes on Organic Form,” Denise Levertov wrote, “form is never more than the revelation of content.” Together, we’ll explore what Levertov means by this and how the decisions the poet makes about line lengths, stanza breaks, and the overall shape of the poem on the page can subtly reveal the content. Trying a different form can also be a great tool for re-vision. Bring two stalled-out poems and an open mind—and together we’ll see how experimenting with form might breathe new life into them.
Each workshop will meet on Thursday April 25th and Saturday April 27th from 11:30-1:30. Students will have the opportunity to hand in one short work on the first day and receive feedback from the instructor. Only sign up for one workshop, as they all run concurrently.
To reserve a spot in the workshop of your choice, pay for the workshop on Eventbrite on the same page where the festival tickets can be purchased.