Workshop Descriptions & Instructors

Faith Adiele
Mary Allen
Kate Aspengren
Thomas Fox Averill
Nancy Barry
Timothy Bascom
Linda Bendorf
Venise Berry
Bruce Bond
Michael Dennis Browne
Susan Taylor Chehak
John Dalton
Thomas K. Dean
Amber Dermont
Kelly Dwyer
Hope Edelman
Josh Emmons
Katie Ford
Patricia Foster
Laura Fraser
Cecile Goding
Douglas Goetsch
Kevin González
John Griesemer
Sands Hall
Christine Hemp
Jim Heynen
Rick Hillis
Charles Holdefer
Richard Jackson
Cheryl Fusco Johnson
Wayne Johnson
Bret Anthony Johnston
Daniel Khalastchi
Zachary Lazar
Carolyn Lieberg
BK Loren
Fritz Mc Donald
James McKean
Gordon Mennenga
Katherine Min
Sharelle Byars Moranville
Michael Morse
Barbara Robinette Moss
Marc Nieson
Shannon Olson
Lon Otto
Juliet Patterson
Anjali Sachdeva
Sarah Saffian
Sam Samuels
Leslie Schwartz
Sandra Scofield
Mary Kay Shanley
Carol Spindel
Karen Subach
Mary Vermillion
Ashley Warlick
Jan Weissmiller
Bart Yates

Nancy Barry

Get Your Prose In Shape: Revision Strategies For Essayists
One-Week Workshop
June 22–27

Writing Out Loud: Voice And Style In The Essay
Weekend Workshop
July 12–13

Biography

Get Your Prose In Shape: Revision Strategies For Essayists
One-Week Workshop
June 22–27

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. Class time will be spent in both revision exercises as well as manuscript review.  

Writing Out Loud: Voice And Style In The Essay
Weekend Workshop
July 12–13

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, 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 several exercises to increase our command of style, as well as intentionally revise an essay to create a memorable style. Writers of all levels are welcome.

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 January 10, 2008