All events at the Kachemak Bay Campus unless otherwise noted.
Friday, May 17
3:00-6:00pm: Registration Desk Open
Saturday, May 18
9:00-10:30am: Opening Presentation and Panel: Wonder in the Wounded World
(Pioneer 201-202)
Debra Magpie Earling, David George Haskell, and Sean Hill
The world has become even more fractured and filled with sadness and division. What does it mean to write about wonder during difficult times. What is the purpose of such writing, personally and in the larger context of our current culture.
10:30-11:45am: Participant breakout discussions and introductions
(Rooms as assigned)
12:00pm-1:30pm: Lunch Break
1:45-3:00pm: Demystifying the Publishing Process: An Interactive Q & A with Hafizah Geter (Janklow & Nesbit) and Ethan Nosowsky (Graywolf Press)
(Pioneer 201-202)
In this workshop participants will be invited to submit their questions in advance, which Hafizah Geter and Ethan Nosowsky will arrange to map out and clarify the publishing process, from submission and acquisition to publication and promotion. Their aim is to show how agents and editors can best collaborate to problem-solve, strategize, and communicate about issues of concern to authors.
3:15-4:30pm: Craft Classes
Basic Instincts: Honing Your Writer’s Intuition
Destiny Birdsong
(Pioneer 201-202)
I am often asked questions like: When do you know you’re ready to write about a thing? How do you begin? And, when do you know a poem is done? The answer to each of these questions is simple yet complex: instincts. Good instincts guide the writing process from inspiration to workshop to submission, but they are often left out of conversations about craft. In this talk, I want to trace my relationship to instincts, and offer a few exercises that allow participants to sharpen their own intuitive impulses.
Cultivating Solitude in the Age of Social Media
Priyanka Kumar
(Bayview 102)
The poet Rilke exhorted writers to cultivate a great solitude. We will explore if and how it is possible to do so in a tech-saturated age. Do we need solitude in order to write?
Micro-Chaps & Origami Haiku
Emily Wall
(Bayview 104)
In this workshop we’ll explore tiny books. We’ll talk about how to write and put together short collections of poems: 5-6 poems. What makes a good book? What poems and forms work well for a small book? Then we’ll craft origami books out of beautiful paper, and begin to fill them with poems. Students will begin their short books in this workshop, and be invited over the course of the conference to complete them and share them with each other and with the instructor.
7:30 Faculty Reading at Kachemak Bay Campus
(Open to the public)
Featuring Nuar Alsadir, Debra Magpie Earling, Jennifer Elise Foerster, David George Haskell, and Sean Hill
Sunday, May 19
7:30-8:30am: Silent writing in community
9:00-10:15am: Craft Classes
Memory and Imagination: The Art of Not Knowing
David Nikki Crouse
(Pioneer 201-202)
It’s been said that our memories are one-part fact and three parts imagination. To write about one’s past is to travel through a land of shadows and impressions. In this session we’ll discuss how memories are made, falsified, and rendered on the page, site some stylistic choices made by a variety of memoirists, essays, and fiction writers, and discuss opportunities to make the fallibility of memory work for you instead of against you as you put your past into words.
Writing about sound. Writing with sound.
David George Haskell
(Bayview 102)
Sound’s textures and layers reveal stories that the other senses cannot perceive. We will use practices of attentive listening to draw these stories into awareness. Then, we’ll explore ways of bringing sonic experience to the page.
The written word is a crystallization of sound (spoken words, frozen in ink) and we’ll also discuss how to honor and elevate the sonic qualities of our writing. We listen with all parts of our bodies, and so all kinds of hearing abilities are welcome in this workshop.
Apophatic and Cataphatic Poetics
Jennifer Elise Foerster
(Bayview 104)
This craft class will consider Apophatic and Kataphatic theologies/philosophies—two distinct forms of contemplation, language, or rhetoric—in the context of poetry. The terms are derived from the Greek words “apophasis,” to move away from speech, and “kataphasis,” to move toward speech. This concept of positive and negative modes of contemplation, speech, language structure, states of mind, or ways of knowing are found across diverse religions and rhetorics. In this class, we will consider Apophatic and Kataphatic as distinct modes of poetic contemplation or attention. We will read poems and poets that engage one or the other, and sometimes both, in theory and in practice.
10:30-11:45am: Participant Reading 1
(Pioneer 201-202)
12:00-1:30pm: Lunch Break
1:45-3:00pm: Craft Classes
History Remade and History Re-envisioned
Debra Magpie Earling
(Pioneer 201-202)
Are you fascinated with history and historical investigations? Have you ever wanted to write about an historical figure or maybe set your story in a time long past? Do you enjoy talking about what you’ve discovered? Maybe you have a story from your own past that has haunted and/or inspired you. In this seminar, we’ll talk about ways to create atmosphere that drops us into the past. We will plot ways to include both the revered and reviled, and the stories that have stuck with us. We’ll write. We’ll discover voices. We’ll enjoy ourselves. Please join me in this dynamic look at the past.
Psychic Reality in Nonfiction
Nuar Alsadir
(Bayview 102)
In psychoanalysis, the “truth” of what happens is not the same as it would be in a courtroom–corroborated fact–but how what happens in external reality becomes embedded in the mind of the person experiencing it. For example, if a person is talking about their mother in a session, it is understood that they are discussing their psychic representation of her–who she is to them, not objectively–which tells us as much about the person speaking as the person being discussed. What is creative nonfiction’s relationship to fact, witness-stand honesty, and truth? How can we represent psychic reality in our work while also writing responsibly about the people and events we are representing?
Discovering Connections: Layers of Nature in Poetry
Sean Hill
(Bayview 104)
How are we voices for wildness? How does the way we are seen in the places we call home affect how we write about place? Can we re-see through defamiliarization? How do the tools of the craft of poetry teach us how to connect with wildness–both ours and that which is outside of us? How do we write ecopoetic poems that address nature and the layers and lenses of our many selves? In this craft class, we’ll consider Denise Levertov’s seminal essay “Some Notes on Organic Form” and Camille Dungy’s concept of “de-pristining” from her essay “Is All Writing Environmental Writing?” to spark our thoughts. We’ll look to poems by Elizabeth Bishop, Elizabeth Bradfield, Derick Burleson, Camille Dungy, Ed Roberson and others that illustrate techniques and strategies for writing eco-poetically. Come ready to explore your layers in nature.
3:15-4:30pm: Panel Discussion “The Journey from Spark to Book”
Destiny O. Birdsong, Priyanka Kumar, and Emily Wall
(Pioneer 201-202)
The writers on this panel will discuss the journeys of their latest books, including the many stages of a book from first idea to a completed, published manuscript that needs support and promotion to reach an audience.
7:30pm: Faculty Reading at Kachemak Bay Campus
(Open to the public)
Featuring Destiny Birdsong, David Nikki Crouse, Hafizah Augustus Geter, Priyanka Kumar, and Emily Wall
Monday, May 20
8:00-10:00am: Nature Walks with Naturalist Guides
Nancy Lord and Conrad Field
Meet at Islands and Ocean parking lot
8:30-10:00am: Yoga with Anna Raupp
(at the Kachemak Bay Campus)
9:00-10:00am: Silent writing in community
10:30-11:45am: Craft Classes
The Ambidextrous Scribe: A Craft Seminar for Multi-Genre Writers
Destiny O. Birdsong
(Pioneer 201-202)
What happens when you’re a writer who wants to say a thing in multiple ways, or finds that, for you, certain subjects only work best in certain genres? In this talk, we’ll discuss what it means to write broadly across a range of topics and forms, and complete exercises to gather clues about discovering your sweet spot(s).
The Nonfiction Novel
Nuar Alsadir
(Bayview 102)
What is a nonfiction novel? Is it different from a work of autofiction? What possibilities does it create for a writer whose work doesn’t fit into any of the classic literary genres? We will discuss the form through examples–particularly Eduard Louis’ History of Violence and Annie Ernaux’s A Girl’s Story–and think about our individual relationships and responsibilities to facts. Please be prepared to write.
Poetics of Listening
Jennifer Elise Foerster
(Bayview 104)
This craft discussion will circle around the act of listening as an eco-ethic and an activist stance that a poet can embrace, embody, and apply to their craft. We will discuss ways in which listening can participate in the making and shaping of a poem. Looking at several exemplary poems, we will consider how we might increase our ways of listening to, in, and through the poem.
12:00-1:30pm: Lunch Break
1:45-3:00pm: Participant Reading 2
(Pioneer 201-202)
3:15-4:30pm: Craft Classes
Acts of Melodrama: Reclaiming a Dirty Word
David Nikki Crouse
(Pioneer 201-202)
Have you ever been accused of being melodramatic? Melodrama is often used as a pejorative to describe many perceived faults of craft: over-the-top language, a focus on drama to the detriment of character, and an appeal to emotion rather than intellect. But one person’s melodrama might be another’s reality, and many writers, from Dostoevsky to Joy Williams to Danielle Evans, use “melodrama” as a means to describe things we often want to avoid: trauma, mental illness, poverty, and so on. In this session we’ll discuss the use of melodrama as a tool like any other and implement some strategies to unlock this important aspect of powerful writing.
The Backbone of the Beast
Priyanka Kumar
(Bayview 102)
We will explore ways in which non-fiction books have been successfully structured, circling back to classics new and old, including Under the Sea-Wind by Rachel Carson, The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen, and Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli.
Pen + Ink: Writing Based on Art
Emily Wall
(Bayview 104)
What happens at the intersection of the visual and literary arts? What if we wrote the story ofa Georgia O’Keefe painting? Wrote a poem based on a film? A memoir based on a tattoo? In this workshop we’ll explore Ekphrastic writing, which is drafting a poem based on a piece of art. We’ll talk about the ways beginning with art can unlock surprising voices and stories in us. We’ll spend some time with a selection of images. We’ll spend part of the workshop writing and experimenting with these techniques.
6:30-8:00pm: Social Time for conference participants
Including festive finger foods!
(Pioneer Hall)
9:00pm: Bonfire at Bishop’s Beach
Tuesday, May 21
7:30-8:30am: Silent writing in community
9:00-10:15am: Panel Discussion: “Building a Writing Life”
Nuar Alsadir, David Nikki Crouse, Jennifer Elise Foerster
(Pioneer 201-202)
This panel will address how writers build a writing life, including the various ways writers support themselves. Learn how to build or find a writing community that sustains your practice. Learn how to fit writing into a life with children, jobs, committees, and myriad other tasks that also claim your time.
10:30-11:30am: Breakout discussions
(Rooms as assigned)
11:30-1:00pm: Lunch Break
1:00-2:15pm: Craft Classes
Story Theater
Debra Magpie Earling
(Pioneer 201-202)
Years ago, I took a fiction workshop from the writer James Welch. He asked us to write stories from specific story scenarios. One scenario included three characters at a breakfast table. At the end of the story one character must throw a glass of orange juice against the wall. Another scenario included several characters waiting for a train and one begins to reveal a story. He asked us to come up with our own scenarios. We had five minutes. At first I panicked but then discovered the exercise bumped me out of myself. I could see stories lining up before me. I wrote four new novel ideas in five minutes. In this generative workshop, we will come up with fresh story ideas. A lot of them. Come prepared to write. Come prepared to join in vigorous conversation about quick ideas. Come prepared to find a treasure of stories.
Nature, science, and narrative
David George Haskell
(Bayview 102)
Scientific study of nature and the environment reveals marvels and brokenness. Yet, science can seem removed from everyday experience and too often proceeds behind walls of jargon and other forms of exclusion. We’ll experiment with using scientific understanding of nature to create compelling and grounded narratives. The workshop assumes no scientific background, just curiosity.
To Whom It May Concern: Epistolary Poems
Sean Hill
(Bayview 104)
From urgent communiqués to notes just to say seemingly trivial things, letters and other forms of correspondence set up a rhetorical and dramatic situation—an attempt to communicate across a distance, to bridge a gap. In this craft talk, attendees will be led through an exploration of the strategies and techniques of the epistolary poem—a poem that takes the form of a letter. The form, made popular by Roman poets Horace and Ovid, has a long history and is still useful and used by a range of contemporary poets. Attendees will be given prompts to begin a draft of an epistolary poem in this craft class with the aim of giving them ways to address, explore, and express the world.
2:30-3:30pm: Closing Address by Princess Daazhraii Johnson
(Pioneer 201-202)
