Join the AU MFA Faculty for a number of writing workshops to work on your craft. All events are free and open to the public:
- July 27, 28, 29 – Tess Taylor: Poetry – Stand in the Place Where you Are: Reading and Writing Stories of Place: How do writers gather from the lived world to tell our stories of place? How do we name the places we’re from? Here in Ashland, we will spend two days building up stories and languages for the places we call home. We’ll experiment with a variety of approaches — looking at art, studying our soil, and unearthing hidden histories. And we’ll read and write together. Come prepared to take risks, have fun, and generate new writing.
- August 1 – Nayomi Munaweera & Lisa Nikolidakis: Writing Family History – One of the greatest concerns for many writers of memoir/nonfiction is how to portray family members. Of course we want accuracy in our work, but the ethics of writing about others often feel murky. Are our interactions with them our stories to tell? What if they ask us not to write about them; do we need permission? Is our allegiance to our art or our family—or is that a false binary? This talk will wrestle with these questions and foster discussion about the many complexities of writing about family.
- August 2 – Marcelo Hernandez Castillo: Poetry & Nature – The Nature Poem in the 21st Century: A Discussion and Workshop with Marcelo Hernandez Castillo: After all, beauty has only three possible endings, and only one of them is bearable,” said the poet Larry Levis. To write the nature poem and step into the tradition of poetry on nature is to, undeniably, write about beauty. To write about nature is also undeniably to write not just about the landscape but also who lives on that land, how they got their, and their present role in relation to the environment. To write about nature in the 21st century is to also consider climate change, migration, socio/economic/racial disparities; which is to say: How can the beauty of the landscape simultaneously exist with the violence inherent in the dynamics of power. This discussion/workshop will focus on a small sample of poets who have used their voice to to engage with nature in both a critical and aesthetic sense. Through guided in class writing exercises, participants will be encouraged to produce new work that tackles the discussions at hand and though not required, will have the opportunity to share.