Workshop Descriptions & Instructors

Christine Hemp

Finding Your Way In: The Beginning of Something
Weekend Workshop July 21-22

Writing to Be Heard: Nonfiction for the Audience with Short Attention Span
One-Week Workshop July 22-27

Biography

Finding Your Way In: The Beginning of Something
Weekend Workshop July 21-22

Having trouble stepping into the piece you’ve dreamed of writing? Are you proud of your dialogue and scenes, yet unclear how to enter your memoir? Do you have lots of ideas but can’t seem to find the right door to your short story or poem? This course is about beginnings, finding the way into your story, poem, novel, essay, or memoir. Using Richard Hugo’s Triggering Town as inspiration, we’ll ponder the difference between triggering subject vs. generating subject and learn how our initial entry can lead us beyond our original intention. We will also address shape, purpose, and structure. If you’re stuck on the porch fumbling with your keys, this course will open the door to reveal space and possibility. For experienced and novice writers alike.

Writing to Be Heard: Nonfiction for the Audience with Short Attention Span
One-Week Workshop July 22-27

We’ve all heard an NPR piece for which we’ve stopped the car. Or, glancing through The New York Times, we’ve stumbled upon a stirring “Lives” column. Yes, and surfing the web, we admit we’ve been riveted by a blog entry that reaches out and grabs us. During this intensive week, we’ll compose pithy pieces that address the immediacy of our culture, even as we reach for literary standards. Radio commentary, blog dispatch, podcast, flash nonfiction, arts review—we’ll try our hand at each and aim to woo our audience not by shock and awe, but by authenticity and literary heft. For experienced and novice writers alike.

Biography

Christine Hemp has read her commentary and poems on NPR’s Morning Edition. She has also received an Iowa Review Award for Literary Nonfiction, the Harvard University Conway Award for teaching writing, the Paula Jones Gardiner Award for Poetry at Floating Bridge Press, and a Washington State Artist Trust Fellowship for her memoir in progress. A poem of hers traveled 1.7 billion miles in space on a NASA mission to monitor the pre-natal activity of stars. That Fall, Hemp’s collection of poems published in 2011, was selected for the New Women’s Voices Series at Finishing Line Press. She writes, produces, and hosts a radio program for KPTZ public radio called “The Hempsonian Institute of Higher Yearning.” She lives in Port Townsend, Washington.

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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 24, 2012