Writer’s Studio at ACC is bringing a full day writing conference for students and community members that is the most affordable, quality-laden literary festival you will find, for writers of all levels and ages. Join us on February 22 from 9am - 4pm in the Half Moon (M1800 - Littleton Campus).
Cost: $30 for students, $35 for CCCS Employees, $50 for General Admission, $40 for Seniors.
Enjoy a continental breakfast. Lunch will be catered from Palenque Cocina y Agaveria. The author's / presenter's books will be available for purchase. There will be a closing Open Mic event for participants who would like to read from material they generated during the day's sessions.
About the Sessions and Authors / Presenters
Morning Sessions
The Classics of Story Structure…and the Ever-Popular B-Sides with Jenny Shank
According an old adage, there are only two stories: A Stranger Comes to Town, and The Journey or Quest. We'll study these two classic story structures and learn how to make them fresh for your own writing, as well as the Star-Crossed Lovers trope. We'll also discuss story structures that might not have "classic" status but definitely merit beloved b-side status: The Crazy Neighbor and The Uninvited Guest. If you have trouble thinking of plots for your stories, or struggle with making them fresh, this is the class for you! After our writing exercises, you'll leave with the beginnings of your own classics-in-the-making.
Jenny Shank
Jenny Shank's story collection Mixed Company won the Colorado Book Award in General Fiction and the George Garrett Fiction prize and her novel The Ringer won the High Plains Book Award. Her stories, essays, satire, and book reviews have appeared in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Los Angeles Times, Prairie Schooner, The Toast, Barrelhouse, The McSweeney's Book of Politics and Musicals, and Dear McSweeney's. Her work has been honorably mentioned by The Best American Essays, the Pushcart Prize anthology, and her mother. She writes a monthly newsletter about books, writing, creativity and art called The Tumbleweed.
Theory & Practice: Spoken Word with Jessie McWilliam Thayer
In this workshop we will traverse the history of the oral tradition of spoken word, dating back to the Greeks and Romans and extending into present-day slam poetics and prose monologues.
We will explore the techniques and styles that have been utilized in performing creative narratives throughout human civilization. These include sound structure, vocal inflection, memorization, rhythmic patterns, and more.
Through the course of the workshop, my hope is for everyone to find something from these ancient practices to help them in their journey as contemporary artists. I believe that in spoken word one may find tools that are applicable to all forms of writing.
Please bring a piece of writing to work with, yours or anyone’s.
Jessie McWilliam Thayer
Jessie McWilliam is a performing vocalist and has been a creative writing teacher and voice teacher for 14 years. She has taught both privately and for the Boulder Valley School District, working to inspire kids and young adults to find their own unique voice through poetry, creative writing, and song. She’s been published in a variety of literary magazines, including Rattle, Adroit Journal, American Poetry Review, 32 Poems, and Acorn. She has also been a Button Poetry video slam competition finalist, and took 2nd place in the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize in 2023. Jessie lives in Broomfield, Colorado, with her beloved cat, Boo Siken Salinger. “You're a living novel/ when they tell you it can’t be done/ come undone be done it can be done.” Jessie believes in the power of language. Every person has a story to tell, and through that expression we can all heal. There’s not a day that goes by where Jessie isn’t writing.
Afternoon Sessions
The Magic Circle: Writing as Game Design with Eric Raanan Fischman
Can text on a page be an interactive system that responds to the reader? What does it mean to play a poem as a game, or solve it as a puzzle? How do we write worlds that encourage readers to dive into mystery head-first and learn to swim? In this workshop, we'll examine some fundamental concepts from the field of Game Studies and then apply these to our own craft using targeted writing prompts. Our goal will be to learn how to generate work that creates for the reader the experience game designers call “Meaningful Play.” So get your game faces on!
Eric Raanan Fischman
Eric Raanan Fischman's first book, "Mordy Gets Enlightened," was published through The Little Door in 2017 and reissued by Turnsol Editions in 2021. His work has appeared in Bombay Gin, Twenty Bellows, Tiny Spoon, Bristlecone, New Feathers Anthology, the Mid-Atlantic Review, the Boulder Weekly Newspaper, and more. In 2023, he was one of two winners of Denver Quarterly's Poetry Broadside Competition, with 60 copies letterpressed and a facsimile reprinted in the journal. He's taught workshops for a variety of Colorado-based organizations, including Beyond Academia Free Skool, the Firehouse Arts Center, and Crestone Poemfest. He currently curates the Boulder/Denver metro poetry calendar at boulderpoetryscene.com.
Using Visual Art to Inspire Your Writing with Steven and Kiki Dunn
Writer Steven Dunn and visual artist Kiki Dunn will discuss examples and elements of visual art and experiment with possible ways to translate those elements to writing, from shading and highlighting to composition and character design. Surprise yourself through the act of pulling from one artistic practice into another. This will be a combination of a craft-based and generative workshop.
Steven and Kiki Dunn
Steven Dunn, a.k.a. Pothole (cuz he's deep in these streets), is the author of two novels, Potted Meat and water & power. His third novel, Tannery Bay, is co-written with his homie Katie Jean Shinkle, is forthcoming from FC2 in February 2024. He teaches in the MFA programs at Regis University and Stetson University.
Kiki Dunn is a visual artist and illustrator currently attending University of Colorado Denver. They have illustrated book covers for Business Bear Press and Bloomsbury Publishing UK. KiKi's work has been featured in installations at the Denver Museum of Contemporary Art (Water Closet and Hall of Shame) where they also co-curated the annual Teen Art Show in 2019 and 2020.
For more information or accommodations, contact Juliet Beckman at juliet [dot] beckman [at] arapahoe [dot] edu (juliet[dot]beckman[at]arapahoe[dot]edu) or Jomil Ebro at jomil [dot] ebro [at] arapahoe [dot] edu.