The Prairie Gate Literary Festival is offering free Craft Talk Workshops the morning and afternoon of Saturday, October 8. Please see the descriptions below and then register to reserve a spot.
Workshop 1, Teresa Peterson & Walter LaBatte
Location: Briggs Library, SmartBoard Room #240
Title: Weaving Stories: A Glimpse Into the Writing and Research Process
Time: Saturday, October 8 10:00 a.m.-11:30 a.m.
Description: Authors Teresa Peterson and Walter LaBatte will share their writing and research process, the challenges they faced, and the compromises and solutions they applied to complete their project Pejuhutazizi: Dakota Stories and Storytellers. Teresa will also share her first children’s book, Grasshopper Girl and the support she received from Native owned publisher, Black Bears and Blueberries Publishing. If time allows, Teresa will also share a piece and writing prompt from her current writing project. Topics covered in the workshop include: digging into research sources, challenges (e.g. multiple voices, stories vs history, family/community/Dakota people representations, language translations & interpretation, maintaining voices vs editor).
Workshop 2, Gwen Nell Westerman
Location: Briggs Library, McGinnis Room
Title: Listening to the Land
Time: Saturday, October 8 12:30 p.m.-2:00 p.m.
Description: The workshop will include short writing exercises that focus on learning to listen to the land and our connections to it. Through observing and re-presenting images, participants will move through the process of free-writing to collecting lines to building poems.