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Workshop Descriptions & Instructors


Marilyn Abildskov
Mary Allen
Kate Aspengren
Thomas Fox Averill
Nancy Barry
Timothy Bascom
Kyle Beachy
Karen Bender
Linda Bendorf
Maudy Benz
Venise Berry
Bruce Bond
David Bouchier
Michael Dennis Browne
Maggie Conroy
Mary Cross

Thomas K. Dean
Amber Dermont
Janet Desaulniers
Kelly Dwyer
Hope Edelman
Josh Emmons
Jill Esbaum
Sarah Fay
Hugh Ferrer
Katie Ford
Geoffrey Forsyth
Cecile Goding
Douglas Goetsch
Sands Hall
Christine Hemp
Jim Heynen
Rick Hillis
Charles Holdefer
Richard Jackson
Rebecca Johns
Cheryl Fusco Johnson
Wayne Johnson
Daniel Khalastchi
Carolyn Lieberg
BK Loren
Peter Markus
Fritz Mc Donald
James McKean
Gordon Mennenga
Sharelle Byars Moranville
Michael Morse
Barbara Robinette Moss
Marc Nieson
Shannon Olson
Diana Ossana
Lon Otto
Juliet Patterson
Kiki Petrosino
Mark Jude Poirier
Leslie Carol Roberts
Anjali Sachdeva
Sarah Saffian
Sam Samuels
Sandra Scofield
Mary Kay Shanley
Robert Anthony Siegel
Carol Spindel
Karen Subach
Mary Vermillion
Kris Vervaecke
Ashley Warlick
Michelle Wildgen
Bart Yates

BarryNancy Barry

Prose Style: How to Write Out Loud
Weekend Workshop
June 13–14

Re-Thinking Revision in the Essay
Weekend Workshop
July 11–12

Get Your Prose in Shape: Revision Strategies for Essayists
One-Week Workshop July 12–17

Biography

 

 

 

 

Prose Style: How to Write Out Loud
Weekend Workshop
June 13–14

This workshop is designed for essay writers who want to make their prose sing. Strong writing usually conveys the power of the spoken voice, but that doesn’t mean we create fluid prose simply by recording our voice on the page. As writers, we need to revise as much for sound as we do for sense, and this workshop will help us sharpen those techniques that create style in prose—sentence length and rhythm, or alliteration and the tonal qualities within word choice. Readers often recognize or hear a writer’s voice emerging from the page, and good writers know that style should always reinforce, not contradict, an essay’s content or theme. Few of us imagine we can change our voice by a few strokes of the pen, but writers do manipulate those features of prose writing that directly impact a reader’s sense of style. In this workshop, we will work through exercises to increase our command of style. A manuscript is not required; writers who desire a critique should limit their essays to 5 pages. Writers of all levels are welcome.

Re-Thinking Revision in the Essay
Weekend Workshop
July 11–12

There is no magic bullet or pristine checklist for the messy process of revision, but good writers develop a systematic series of questions that they ask as they consciously shape work from one draft to the next. This is a short course on revision strategies, and is intended for those writers who know in theory that revision is essential, but who are uncertain whether their own process and habits are sufficient to the task. We will inventory the relationship between composing practices and revision strategies, and then outline a method to break revision into discrete segments. By sharpening our understanding of what features of an essay we pay attention to at different stages of revision—and by asking ourselves different questions of the essay at those different stages—we can improve our drafts in more systematic ways. The course will include lecture and exercises that participants will try out with one essay brought to the workshop. There will be no group manuscript critique, but participants will discuss and exchange small portions of the revision exercises with one another.

Get Your Prose in Shape: Revision Strategies for Essayists
One-Week Workshop
July 12–17

Even though most writers yearn for an essay to emerge fully-formed, perfectly structured, and full of eloquence, we all know this happens only in our dreams. Real writing is created through revision, but what does that mean? And how does a writer know when an essay is truly, finally, finished? This workshop is designed for writers who want to articulate a revision process for themselves—not so much as a template to follow, but as a vehicle for sharpening the form, meaning, and power within their essays. We will inventory our own practice as writers in order to expand our repertoire of strategies to disentangle the layers of meaning, intention and language that constitute an early draft. We will discuss deliberate and discrete stages of revision, and try out exercises to sharpen our sense of what it means to create “the next version” of an essay. Writers should bring one or two essays that need revision (no more than 15 pages total). Class hour will be spent in both revision exercises as well as manuscript critique.

Biography

Nancy K. Barry (Ph.D., University of Illinois) teaches creative nonfiction, poetry and women’s literature at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. Her essays have appeared in Iowa Woman, the Chicago Tribune and the Baltimore Sun, and she is currently at work on a memoir, Teaching Through Cancer, about sustaining her work as a writing teacher in the midst of cancer treatment.


 

 

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Sponsored by the Division of Continuing Education
Iowa Summer Writing Festival
C215 Seashore Hall
The University of Iowa
Iowa City, IA 52242

Phone 319-335-4160
FAX 319-335-4743
iswfestival@uiowa.edu

Last updated on February 4, 2009