Writer's Guild hosts 'Spring Writes' Writer's Conference

The Evergreen State College’s Writer's Guild is hosting the first-ever Spring Writes Writer's Conference Saturday, May 6th from 9 a.m. to 6:30PM in the Cedar Room at the college’s Longhouse Center. Tickets go on sale April 24th at the Evergreen Bookstore. Five dollars for students and $7 for community members. There is limited seating at the conference.

Sandra Yannone, the director of Evergreen’s writing center, will give a workshop on line breaks from 9AM to 10:30AM. Writing Poetry requires consummate juggling skills: attention to sound, metaphor, form, and individual words. In fact, writing poetry requires keeping so many balls in the air that a few tend to get overlooked in the blur of motion. Her workshop will focus on a key aspect of poetry, the line break. Yannone has published book reviews and poetry in Prairie Schooner, Ploughshares, Calyx, Connecticut Review, The Laurel Review and 13th Moon in addition to her poetry chapbook Top, published by Ultima Obscura Press. She is the recipient of the Academy of American Poets Prize.

Steven Hendricks' workshop is called Structure Combinatorics and will run from 10:45Am to 12:15PM. Drawing on concepts and methods employed by the Oulipo and in particular Italo Calvino, the workshop gives participants the opportunity to play with strategies for broad manipulations of narrative structures, to experiment with combinatorial approaches to developing fictions, and to use these methods to create new approaches to works-in-progress. Steven Hendricks is a visiting member of the faculty at The Evergreen State College. He teaches writing, book arts, and letterpress printing. Learn more about him at http://academic.evergreen.edu/h/hendrics/

After a break for lunch, we'll reinvigorate our brains and bodies with Painted Word from 1:30PM to 3PM. Paper, paint, and brushes will be available to explore the meaning of words through an action other than writing. Supplies for making altered books will also be available. Altered books are pieces where the artist takes an old book and uses it to tell a new story. The artist can use some or none of the original text and pictures. Paint, collage, string, and ink are a few of the objects used to alter books.

Bill Ransom will lead us in the "50% Solution" from 3:15PM to 4:45PM. This workshop offers both poets and prose writers tips and exercises for effective revision of a fresh draft. Attention to a few very simple details pays excellent results in both styles. Bring rough drafts of your work or results of previous in-class writing exercises (from any writing workshop anywhere.) Bill Ransom is the author of six novels, six collections of poems, numerous short stories, and articles. His poetry was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. He is also teaches writing at The Evergreen State College. Learn more about him at www.sfwa.org/members/ransom.