Wyoming Arts Council

Schedule announced for Sept. 22-24 Casper College Literary Conference

Uncategorized | August 10, 2011

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Kristen Elias Rowley

Schedule for the Casper College Literary Conference (all events at CasperCollege unless noted otherwise). Notice that the Wyoming Arts Council fellowship reading will be held at 3 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 24, in the Goodstein Foundation Library lobby:


Thursday, Sept. 22

• 2-4:30 p.m., CE 217 South – 
  Laurie Kutchins workshop: “Uprising in the Creative Writing Process.”
  Invite an uprising, a revolution, a transformation into your personal story. Start something new or bring a draft of something that needs an infusion of the new and unprecedented. Working closely with the energies of uprising, transition, and subversive imagination, this workshop will offer generative exercises for new writing or for a radical revision of an existing piece. 

• 5:30 p.m., Summit Elementary School – 
  Poetry and Potluck with Naomi Shihab Nye

  Naomi Shihab Nye

  The Wyoming Humanities Council is bringing this award-winning poet, writer, and educator to Wyoming to culminate a year-long Civility Matters! initiative, supported in part by the Wyoming Department of State Parks and Cultural Resources through funding by the Wyoming State Legislature. Out-of-town conference attendees can bring fast food or just themselves to the potluck.

Friday, Sept. 23

• 8:30-11 a.m., CE 217 South – 
  Pam Houston workshop: “Into the Deep End: Getting a Piece of Writing off to a Running Start (w/o Boring Yourself to Death First).”
  The blank page is a bad mo’ fo’. And sometimes we are so afraid of it we fill it up with a whole lot of throat clearing that, in the best case scenario we end up cutting later, and in the worst case scenario derails whatever energy sent us to the blank page in the first place. In this class we will talk about (and practice) getting the good stuff down first. The most salient image, the most memorable bit of dialogue, the white hot story moment that we are most terrorized by… We will worry less about trying to keep everything under control and more about getting all those electrically charged particles on paper. 

• 8:30-11 a.m., CE 217 North – 
  Patrick Madden workshop: “The Double Perspective in Memoir and Personal Essay.” 
  The most effective way to make individual experience interesting to a readership of strangers is to universalize it by reflecting from a current writerly perspective on past events lived in relative ignorance. This workshop will offer a brief theoretical framework and several examples of the double perspective, then give participants the chance to split their viewpoint on a piece they’ve written before (please bring at least three pages of your own memoir/personal essay to the class).

• 12-1:45 p.m., CE 217 North – 
  Kristen Elias Rowley workshop: “Getting Published: Everything You Need to Know About Finding – and Getting – the Right Publisher for Your Book.” 
  Whether you’ve finished your manuscript, or are just getting started, this workshop will help you focus in on how to find the right publisher for your book. For fiction and nonfiction writers alike, this session will cover how to pitch your book to editors, how to identify which publishers to approach, how to make yourself and your manuscript appealing to publishers, and the pitfalls to avoid when submitting your material. A crash course in dealing with editors and publishers, this session will provide for plenty of Q&A time so that attendees will come away with a firm grasp on how to get noticed by an editor for all the right reasons. Participants are encouraged to bring a sample proposal or cover letter.

• 2-4:30 p.m., CE 217 South – 
  Laurie Kutchins workshop (continued)

• 5-7 p.m. – 
  Dinner at Poor Boys
  
  
  739 North Center Street

• Free Public Talks/Readings

• 7:30 p.m., Durham Recital Hall, Aley FineArtsCenter – Laurie Kutchins: “Words From the Wind”

• 8:30 p.m., Durham Recital Hall, Aley FineArtsCenter – Patrick Madden: “The Infinite Suggestiveness of Common Things”

Saturday, Sept. 24

• 8:30-11 a.m., CE 217 South – 
  Pam Houston workshop (continued)

• 8:30-11 a.m., CE 217 North – 
  Patrick Madden workshop (continued)

• 11 a.m. – 1:45 p.m., CE Vista Lounge – 
  Manuscript critiques by Kristen Elias Rowley 
  Proposal and manuscript sample of a chapter or two (50 pgs. max.) should be emailed on or before Sept. 1 to Kristen at krowley2@unlnotes.unl.edu with header clearly stating “Casper College and ARTCORE conference submission.” Exact times for individual critiques will be posted in CE.

• Free Public Talks/Readings

Pam Houston

• 2 p.m., Goodstein Foundation Library lobby – Pam Houston: Contents May Have Shifted: “A Reading and Conversation About Places and Moving Between Them.” 

• 3 p.m., GFL lobby – 
  Wyoming Arts Council – Fellowship winner announcements and readings

• 4 p.m., GFL lobby – 
  Kristen Elias Rowley: “Book Business: Publishing with a University Press.”

• 5 p.m., GFL lobby – 
  Free reception, all invited. 

• 9 p.m. – Metro Coffee Company, 241 S. David, downtown Casper, 
  Open readings and poetry slam, 
  – Emceed by George Vlastos.

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