Schedule of Events
Prairie Gate Literary Festival (PGLF) 2019
Thursday, Oct. 10
10:00 a.m. - 12 noon: Registration for Workshops
Student Center
*Note: Registration is also available online here.*
7-9 p.m. Author Readings: (Sarah Stonich) and (Ariel Gordon)
Briggs Library Lower Level
Friday, Oct. 11
10:00 a.m.-12 noon Registration for Workshops
Student Center
*Note: Registration is also available online here.*
4:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. Author Panel Discussion "From Here to There"
Briggs Library Main Level
Description: Explores the journey each made to become an author, their own process of writing, and what creative paths they are excited to explore next.
7:30 p.m. - 9:30 p.m. Author Readings: (Alan Shapiro) and (Bill Willingham)
Briggs Library Main Level
Saturday, Oct. 12
9:00 a.m. - 10:00 a.m. Same Day Registration for Workshops
Student Center
10:00 a.m. - 11:30 a.m. Craft Talk Workshops
Workshop #1: Ariel Gordon, Student Center, Prairie Lounge
Title: Writing to Trees
Description: Have you ever spent an afternoon under a tree? Did you spend your childhood climbing trees? Do you have a tree outside your office window or overhanging your kitchen window that you somehow find yourself attached to? This workshop is about considering our relationshipps to trees, whether they're on the street, in a park, or in the wilderness. Using forest bathing practices, we will contemplate trees on the University of Minnesota, Morris campus. Participants will come away with new nature-writing techniques and a sheaf of new writing. (Suitable for all genres.)
Workshop #2: Alan Shapiro, Student Center, Moccasin Flower
Title: Sentence and Line
Description: We will examine the poems students bring into class in terms of the sentences they employ and the way, for expressive purposes, those sentences are broken across the line.
Note: Alan expects individuals to bring in their own poetry to analyze.
11:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. Lunch, Student Center Alumni Room
12:30 p.m. - 2:00 p.m. Craft Talk Workshops
Workshop #3, Sarah Stonich, Student Center, Prairie Lounge
Title: Give My Monster Life
Description: "A child sees his world before he understands it." John Berger.
We feel, smell, touch, hear our worlds before we understand them. Evocative prose is achieved when we understand the five senses are a vital to writing as they are to life. This workshop is for all writers wishing to imbue their fiction, memoir, or creative essay with sensorial layers to add depth and authenticity.
We'll examine how behavior and action are determined as much by sensorial reactions as they are by intellect. We will 'learn' our characters through their reactions, and bring them to life in Technicolor prose.
You already own your five best writing tools, our aim is to attune our senses to the habit of awareness to utilize those tools. Writing can feel effortless when channelling what we have observed and gathered. Our concern is not your plot, storyline, or setting, but how you might texture your work and add authenticity to it.
Workshop #4, Bill Willingham, Student Center, Moccasin Flower
Title: How Comic Books Created All of Civilization
Description: In this presentation, veteran comic book writer and artist Bill Willingham will reveal the true history of comic books, including how they predate prose novels by millennia, and how all of human civilization was dependent on them.
How can this be? Come and see for yourself, and maybe even challenge these preposterous claims. There will be time for a Q and A after the formal part of the presentation, which can include some practical applications of what's covered, for those who might be interested in pursuing writing and drawing for comics.