Iowa Summer Writing Festival


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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 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 Swander Mary Vermillion Kris Vervaecke Ashley Warlick Michelle Wildgen Bart Yates	Timothy Bascom An Enormous Eye: Writing the Contemplative Essay One-Week Workshop June 7–12 Memoir: The Writer As a Window on the World One-Week Workshop July 5–10 The Journey Within: Travel Writing and Transcendence Weekend Workshop July 11–12 Biography An Enormous Eye: Writing the Contemplative Essay One-Week Workshop June 7–12 According to art critic Herbert Read, “True art persists as an object of contemplation.” One of the reasons that it has this capacity to hold our attention—like the note of a tuning fork—is that it has been created out of contemplation. The reflective, or contemplative, essay is characterized by such focused concentration. The author tends to circle a subject, spiraling away and dropping back to describe it from all angles and to plumb it for meaning. Though the writers of such essays may concentrate on a concrete object—a surgeon’s knife, a family photo, a dying moth, a buckeye—the writing almost always transcends that object, reaching toward provocative or universal insight. In this workshop, we will read from a range of essays, looking for useful techniques and searching for our own “objects of contemplation.” Our aim is to generate new material that can be workshopped during our time together, but participants are invited to bring a work in progress as well (12 pages maximum). Writers of all levels are welcome. Memoir: The Writer As a Window on the World One-Week Workshop July 5–10 The most common criticism of memoirs is that they are too self-centered, even narcissistic. However, the best memoirs tend to reveal as much about the world as the self. For example, James Carroll sheds light on the rift between youth and parents during the Viet Nam war, and Vivian Gornick captures the sexual politics of the same period. Such revelations are possible if the narrator becomes a lens the reader looks through, turning personal experience into a kind of portal, a window that opens on a particular time and place in history. In this workshop, we will discuss and practice strategies for making our life experiences meaningful in this broader sense: connecting private memories to public events, enriching remembered moments through deeper research, and situating the self in a clearly defined culture. The course is primarily for writers who have begun a memoir and would like to make that story universally engaging. Bring a chapter in progress (no more than 16 pages), and we will try to generate new material as well. The Journey Within: Travel Writing and Transcendence Weekend Workshop July 11–12 There is a reason many writers go on pilgrimages. Travel dislocates us. It awakens our senses in the process, making us hyper-alert. Disoriented, we start to see anew, whether we have crossed an ocean or driven fifty miles to an unfamiliar town. For awhile we may feel “alive” in a spiritual way. Travel takes us somewhere internal, not only external. After cataloguing our own journeys, both literal and figurative, we will write about several that seem to have emotional or spiritual heat. We will also read from the rich traditions of travel literature that have a spiritual or internal dimension, giving attention to authors as diverse as Peter Matthiessen and Joan Didion, Viktor Frankl and Algazali, Scott Russell Sanders and Jack Kerouac. And in the process, we will look for ways to express transcendent experience without becoming predictable, clichéd, or dogmatic. Our emphasis will be on starting new material and developing it through the workshop process. Biography Timothy Bascom’s memoir—Chameleon Days: An American Boyhood in Ethiopia—won the Bakeless Literary Prize and was published by Mariner Books. An excerpt was selected by Jamaica Kincaid for The Best American Travel Writing 2005. Bascom has also published a novel, Squatters’ Rites, anda collection of essays, The Comfort Trap. His essays have appeared in a wide range of journals, including The Missouri Review, Fourth Genre, Boulevard, Image, Modern Bride, The Kansas City Star Magazine, and the in-flight magazine of China Airlines.

	Site Map \| Welcome \| Workshops by Session Date \| Workshops by Instructor Workshops by Genre \| Registration & Housing Information \| Registration Form 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 19, 2009