'Writing about place' theme for conference
The Writing Eastern Kentucky Conference on Saturday, Nov. 14, in Mt. Sterling will focus on writing about place and offer sessions based on this theme for both writers and teachers.
Morehead Writing Project, Montgomery County Council for the Arts and Morehead State University’s Center for Regional Engagement will sponsor the event.
MSU creative writing faculty Crystal Wilkinson, Chris Holbrook, George Eklund, and Rebecca Howell will join 2009 Chaffin Award winner Mark Powell to lead sessions at the conference for both writers and teachers of writing.
In addition to the featured speakers, authors Nancy Kelly Allen and Annie Jones, and teachers Carrie Coaplen-Anderson, Shane Jordan, George David McKee, Bob Sloan, and Audra Slocum, will lead sessions.
MSU writer-in-residence Wilkinson will present “Home and Beyond: Kentuckians Writing About Place.” She will share passages of Kentucky writing about place; discuss the importance of place-based writing; and culminate the session with some writing exercises based on place. “Home and Beyond” edited by Morris Grubbs has been recommended to complement the session.
Eklund will present “Pyschic State as Place.” He will conduct studio experiments with language apparatus. These early writings will serve as texts toward poetic treatments of psychic states as landscapes--concrete places. Writers will enter the process of the poem and search for their own language of place. Poets will seek new communions between the “real” place around them and the "abstracted" places of the psyche.
Writer, documentary photographer and MSU creative writing teacher Howell will present “Writing Place as Parable.” Howell asks how can we learn to use imagination to approach our landscape in fresh ways; and how exactly do we 'set the familiar [place] in unfamiliar context'? Howell's session will explore the point where 'home' becomes a metaphor, and through it, parable. She will engage in close readings, in-session writing, and workshop to discover how place, our place, can be both realized and revelatory in our work -- leading us to new insight on what it means to get from here to there.
Coaplen-Anderson, assistant professor of rhetoric and composition, will present “Place and Identity.” She will look at how place is an often taken for granted element of identity, yet in life writings such as memoirs, personal narratives, and essays, sense of self often profoundly expresses itself in relationship with home and/or place. This session will guide writers through simple prompts to begin approaching writing about self through considerations of place and/or home. This session also will provide passages and sections from work that does the same, including recommended readings.
Slocum, a high school English teacher, will present “Community-Based Research Projects: Learning about Our Past, Our Present, and Looking to the Future.” The session will focus on a unit of study that centers on the students' communities as a site of inquiry, and the students as social scientists and writers. The presentation will include samples of student work, and example handouts.
Sessions also will be focused on: Will Write For Food, Being A Writer: The New Rules, Writing Workout, and Using Documentary in the Writing Process. The teachers sessions will include: Weaving Words and Digital Storytelling.
Advance register by Nov. 2 for $50; or pay $65 at the door.
The conference will conclude with a reception and presentation of the 2009 Chaffin Award, a reading by the award winner, and a book signing by the many published authors presenting at the conference. The conference fee includes four hours of professional development credit for teachers.
The reception, award ceremony and book signing are free and open to the public.
The registration form and conference details are available at http://moreheadwritingproject.org/wekycon.html.
Posted: 10-23-09
