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Event
Creative Writing Day
Workshop Schedule
Charles Vess
What Does That Word Look Like Anyway? (10 a.m.)
Whether you are a writer or an artist or someone who just enjoys reading, your ability to visualize the
words on a page is essential to developing your ideas or enhancing your enjoyment of a novel. Come join
me and I'll show you how to do just that.
Nicholas Piper
Dramaturgy for the Stage (10 a.m.)
This workshop will offer tips on everything from developing your new play to preparing your play for
submission. The group will do scene analysis from new and old work in an effort to better understand
structure, character, and action. Come and find out how to make your play connect with an audience!
Lee Smith
String of Beads (10 a.m. and 1:15 p.m.)
Unlike all other kinds of prose narrative, fiction must have scene development in order to come alive for
the reader. In fact, fiction is like a string of beads: fully developed scenes strung together by pieces of
necessary narrative. The workshop will examine these two very different kinds of writing and see how
they are combined to form short stories and novels.
Gwenda Bond
How Do We Change the World? (1:15 p.m.)
Capturing reality can seem challenging enough, so let's discuss some ways to approach work that departs
from it. Whether you're a beginning writer or just looking to try out something new, we'll talk about
how to get started writing fiction and fantasy stories.
Rita Quillen
Sharpen Your Pencil and Your Poem (1:15 p.m.)
This session will look at revising and focusing on individual words, their sound, connotations, and
denotations, as you work from idea to draft to, finally, a poem. The group will do some exercises and look
at techniques for sharpening your poem's focus and impact. Participants may want to bring a new poem
that they can practice these techniques on. There will be time for discussion and questions at the end.
Gwenda Bond and Charles Vess
A Combined Session (3 p.m.)
Our combined workshop will be a continuation of what Charles is exploring in his previous session,
"What Does That Word Look Like Anyway?" Only this time, the audience will experience Gwenda
reading from one of her stories as Charles draws what he sees there. Before and after we can discuss the
effect that a vivid descriptive passage can have on the reader, and how just a few well-chosen words can
pull the reader into a writer's world and keep them wanting more.
Rita Quillen
Poetry Prompt-Fest (3 p.m.)
This session will present a flurry of sample poems that participants can take with them to use as models
for future inspiration. The workshop participants will do one assignment, ekphrasis (a poem about artwork
or a photograph) and share results. There will be time for discussion and questions at the end.
About the Authors
GWENDA BOND is the author of the young adult novels The Woken Gods and
Blackwood, and coming in October 2014 will be Girl on a Wire about a daredevil heroine
who discovers danger and passion lurking beneath the big top. She has also written
for Publishers Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, Locus Magazine, and the Washington Post, among others. She guest-edited a special YA issue of Subterranean Online and has been a
guest on NPR's Weekend Edition. She has an MFA in Writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts' program in writing for children and young adults, and lives in a hundred-year-old house in Lexington,
Kentucky, with her husband, author Christopher Rowe, and their menagerie. You may visit her online at www.gwendabond.com or @gwenda on twitter.
NICK PIPER is an Associate Artistic Director at Barter Theatre in charge of new
play development as well as a member of the Resident Acting Company. A graduate of
the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, he has dedicated himself to the fostering of new
works in several different capacities. For the past seven years he has served as the Director of Barter Theatre's Appalachian Festival of Plays and Playwrights, a new play festival dedicated to giving voice to the stories and the playwrights of the Appalachian Region. He has helped develop dozens of new plays that have gone on to full production on Barter's stages as well as in regional theatres across the country. As an actor and director, he has spent much of his career working closely with playwrights, originating
dozens of roles and directing several world premieres.
RITA QUILLEN is well-known in Appalachia not only as a writer but also as a
dynamic writing teacher and leader of workshops. Her collection of new and
selected poems, Her Secret Dream, was named the Outstanding Poetry Book of the
Year by the Appalachian Writers Association in 2008. In 2012, her poetry received a Pushcart nomination, and she was one of the semi-finalists for the position of 2012-14 Poet Laureate
of Virginia. Other works are poetry collections October Dusk and Counting the Sums as well as a book of essays, Looking for Native Ground: Contemporary Appalachian Poetry. She recently published her
first novel, Hiding Ezra, and a chapter of it is included in the new scholarly study of Appalachian dialect, Talking Appalachian. Recently retired from thirty-two years of college teaching, Quillen lives on Early
Autumn Farm in Scott County, Virginia.
LEE SMITH is one of the most beloved Southern writers, the author of seventeen
books, including the novels Oral History and Fair and Tender Ladies, both of which are set
in far western Virginia. She is a native of Grundy, Virginia, and a graduate of Hollins
University, but has spent most of her adult life in North Carolina, where she taught creative writing for many years at North Carolina State University and now resides in Hillsborough. Smith has been a frequent participant in the Virginia Highlands Festival, including teaching week-long workshops in the
1970s. At one of those workshops she met Abingdon writer Lou Crabtree who became the inspiration for Ivy Rowe, the main character in Fair and Tender Ladies. Her most recent work is the novel, Guests on
Earth, published in 2013. Some of her material was part of Good Ol' Girls, a musical that appeared at Barter Theatre in 2013.
CHARLES VESS is a world-renowned fantasy artist, now turned author of The
Greenwood, a contemporary middle grade novel told with a unique combination of text,
illustration and sequential narrative art. He is best known for his illustration of work by
Neil Gaiman: Stardust, which was made into a major film, and recently Blueberry Girl, a picture book for mothers and daughters, and Instructions, both based on Gaiman poems. Vess's art is featured in two recent books written by Charles de Lint, The Cats of Tanglewood Forest and Seven Wild Sisters. His award-winning work has graced the covers and interior pages of many comic book publishers including Marvel (Spider-Man, Raven Banner) and DC (Books of Magic, Swamp Thing, Sandman). Outside of publishing, Vess designed and co-sculpted a 16-foot-tall bronze fountain based on A Midsummer Night's Dream for the Barter Theatre.
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LocationVirginia Highlands Community College (View)
100 VHCC Dr.
Abingdon, VA 24210
United States
Categories
| Minimum Age: 16 |
| Kid Friendly: No |
| Dog Friendly: No |
| Non-Smoking: Yes! |
| Wheelchair Accessible: Yes! |
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