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Workshop Descriptions & Instructors


Marilyn Abildskov
Mary Allen
Kate Aspengren
Thomas Fox Averill
Nancy K.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

Jim Heynen

Jim Heynen

From Memory to Art: Poetry, Prose Poems, Short-Short Fiction
One-Week Workshop
June 14–19

The Loaded Conversation: Writing Effective Dialogue
Weekend Workshop
June 20–21

Biography

 

 

 

 

From Memory to Art: Poetry, Prose Poems, Short-Short Fiction
One-Week Workshop
June 14–19

Does art turn memory into a lie? Maybe, but it can more likely make what we remember worth remembering. This is a workshop that begins with our life experience and comes at it in ways that transform it into something new. The moment we give our attention to form, whether that be the music and repetition we associate with poetry or the structure and narrative progression we associate with fiction, what we thought was only a memory can take on new life. Even as many prominent authors today write in a variety of forms, we’ll try different approaches to discover which manner of saying says it best. We’ll use the writing process itself to see what in our experience is calling for our attention: lots of exercises, lots of fun, lots of surprises. This class is suitable for writers at all levels, beginners to advanced.

The Loaded Conversation: Writing Effective Dialogue
Weekend Workshop
June 20–21

How do they do it—those effective writers of dialogue? Think of Grace Paley, whose characters can say the darnedest memorable things, like “Dying young is a terrible thing, but it saves a lot of time,” or of Lorrie Moore, whose own wit is such a natural fit with her witty characters, or Cormac McCarthy, whose characters’ clipped words can leave tremors in the dead space around them. In the best examples we can find in fiction, dialogue is always more than a tape recorder held up to ordinary speech. It is more than character revelation. It is double-edged, triple-edged, energized by paradox and surprise. Good dialogue can be like a fish leaping out of water or an electrical current coursing through the dry leaves of description. In this weekend, we’ll look at some lively examples of dialogue. We’ll practice the art itself in many short exercises—and we’ll have a ball doing it.

Biography
Jim Heynen is a widely published poet, short story, essay, and novel writer. He is perhaps best known for the short-shorts and prose poems that appear in his collections featuring young farm boys—The One Room Schoolhouse, The Boys’ House, You Know What is Right, and The Man Who Kept Cigars in his Cap—and more recently in two photography books published by The University of Iowa Press, Harker’s Barns and Sunday Afternoon on the Porch. His most recent collection of poems is titled Standing Naked: New and Selected Poems. He has written two young adult novels, Cosmos Coyote and William the Nice as well as Being Youngest, and one major nonfiction book, One Hundred Over 100, which featured 100 American centenarians. He has frequently been featured on National Public Radio reading his own stories and has been awarded National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships in both poetry and fiction. Jim lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.

 

 


 

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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 10, 2009