Workshop Faculty
Workshops will be led by published authors and writing professionals. Participants will register for ONE of the following workshops, whick will take place in FOUR sessions over two days. Workshops are limited to 12 participants each.
Special Guests: Tom and Laura McNeal
Tom was born in Santa Ana, California. His father was a native Californian who raised oranges, and his mother grew up on a farm in northwest Nebraska, where Tom spent his childhood summers. After earning a BA and a teaching credential from UC Berkeley, Tom moved to Hay Springs, Nebraska, taught high school English, drove a school bus, substituted briefly in a one-room schoolhouse, and began work on what would become his first critically- acclaimed novel, Goodnight, Nebraska. Tom holds an MA in creative writing from UC Irvine and was a Stegner Fellow and Jones Lecturer at Stanford University. His short stories have been widely anthologized, and "What Happened to Tully" was made into the feature film, Tully. His most recent work, To Be Sung Underwater, was named one of USA Today’s Top Five Novels of 2011 (and named a BEST BOOK of 2011 by The Wall Street Journal, The Seattle Times, Booklist, and Shelf Awareness).
Laura Rhoton McNeal was born in Arizona and raised near Air Force bases in Iceland, New Mexico, South Carolina, and Utah. After earning a master's degree in fiction writing from Syracuse University, she taught 8th, 9th, and 11th grade English in Salt Lake City, giving everyone way too much homework, for which she apologizes sincerely. She then married Tom McNeal, with whom she collaborated first on a picture book called The Dog Who Lost His Bob and then on four young adult novels published by Knopf. Her first solo novel, Dark Water, was published in 2010 and was a finalist for the National Book Award and Winner of the 2010 San Diego Book Award for Young People's Literature.
You can find out much more about the McNeals by visiting their wonderful website.
Jovan Mays: Poetry I (Performance & Spoken Word)
Jovan Mays exemplifies the true spirit of community that is the basis of the poetry slam. A member of the 2011 Denver Slam Nuba Poetry Slam Team that won the National Poetry Slam in Boston, and the 2010 Nuba Squad which finished within the top 8 teams at NPS in St. Paul, as well as a participant in the 2010 Individual World Poetry Slam—he has achieved notable success as a slam competitor not only locally but also throughout the Midwest. It is Jovan's commitment to community and education in both urban and rural communities that distinguishes him as an organizer and artist. (Author's Website)
Workshop Focus:
The focus of this workshop will be HOW TO MAKE WORDS COME ALIVE. Drawing on my extensive experiences as both a participant and a leader of a wide variety of workshops, I will guide you through a series of exercises that will generate new material and help you to refine and revise previously-written works—with the ultimate goal of taking your words from the page to the stage. I emphasize a movement-based curriculum focusing on what I call the “three C’s”: developing our CREATIVITY, improving the CONSISTENCY of our voice, and raising our CONSCIOUSNESS as artists. Writers will leave with a higher awareness of how their inner and outer voices work together, how to generate message for effect, and how to prepare their minds to take off.
R.F. McEwen: Poetry II (Contemporary Verse)
R.F. McEwen has been a tree trimmer since 1963 and English teacher since 1972. He is currently a professor of English at Chadron State College, in Chadron, Nebraska, where he has taught since 1986. His poems have appeared in the South Dakota Review, Kansas Quarterly, Melville Extracts, Prairie Schooner, Rural Voices, Midwest Quarterly, The Literary Journal of the Seamus Heaney Center for Poetry, Belfast, and other journals. His Heartwood and other Poems was featured on CBS “Sunday Morning.” He co-produced “Tell a Story: Joe Heaney in the Pacific Northwest” (Camsco), a two-CD collection of the stories of Joe Heaney, the noted Irish sean nos singer and storyteller. His forthcoming Bill's Boy's and other Poems is being published by Black Star Press, Lincoln, Nebraska. And his poem “Stacking Rick Wood: Getting On” is the poem for November in the current (2012) Nebraska Poets Calendar. His poems are written for the most part in blank verse and are more often than not narrative. (Author Info)
Workshop Focus:
This workshop will be devoted to writing narrative poetry, poetry that tells a story, rather than confessional, emotive poetry that explores one's own feelings. Narrative poems explore the feelings of fictional characters involved in fictional plots that carry the weight of universal themes. Homer is a good place to start; closer to home we've got Robinson Jeffers The Roan Stallion and John G. Neihardt's A Cycle of the West. How about The Rime of the Ancient Mariner? And the Childe Ballads. And the whole of Lyrical Ballads? Thomas Hardy's “A Trampwoman's Tragedy” is an excellent narrative poem as is his “Rash Bride.”“The Face on the Barroom floor,” by Robert Service, comes also to mind (mine, at least). We will do quite a bit of writing, some reading and, I hope, discussion of the persistent problems involved whenever one attempts to tell a story that will change, mystify, and provoke an audience of strong readers and listeners.
Milton Wolf: Fiction I: Science Fiction & Fantasy
Milton Wolf is the author of 94 publications (books, journals, encyclopedia articles) that cross numerous boundaries. His book, Visions of Wonder (with the prominent editor of science fiction and fantasy, David Hartwell) was adopted by the Science Fiction Research Association as a recommended text for teaching Science Fiction and Fantasy; and his article “Information as God” was included in The Cybrarian’s Manual.
Workshop Focus:
Come join me for a writing workshop that will open wide your eyes of inquiry and yet keep you focused on the final goal of any writer: to be published. Einstein was not kidding when he said that “Imagination is more important than Knowledge!” On the way to the Known, you sometimes must pass through the Unknown. If you want to tell stories, don’t limit yourself. Fiction doesn’t. And Science Fiction and Fantasy, often joined at the hip, provide an elastic incubator for the imagination. Bring your mind to the workshop on writing science fiction and fantasy and let’s tease out your thoughts, let's put them on paper, let's make them real—if you know what I mean.
Sean Doolittle: Fiction II (General Fiction)
Sean Doolittle is the critically-acclaimed author of several crime and suspense novels. His first book, Dirt, was named one of the 100 Best Books of 2001 by the editors of Amazon.com. His second book, Burn, won the Gold Medal in the Mystery category of ForeWord Magazine's 2003 Book of the Year Award. The Cleanup received the 2007 Barry Award, the Crimespree Magazine reader's choice award, a Spinetingler Award, and a Nebraska Book Award. Doolittle's books have been licensed for translation in several languages and praised by such contemporaries as Dennis Lehane, Michael Connelly, Laura Lippman, George Pelecanos, Harlan Coben, and Lee Child. His short fiction has appeared in The Year's Best Horror Stories, The Best American Mystery Stories, and elsewhere. (Author’s Website)
Workshop Focus:
We're going to take a hands-on approach to generating ideas, framing solid story structures, fleshing out our characters, and tightening our plots. The vast majority of our time will be spent in the most effective way I know how to talk about writing: by reading and discussing each other's material. Your homework: Submit up to 25 pages of your own work, to be distributed to the group in advance. Your submission can be a completed short story, a work still in progress, or a section from a longer piece. There are no restrictions on content. Read the stories you receive from the other group members, prepare some comments about what you've read, and arrive in Chadron ready to talk shop with other folks who care about great stories as much as you (and I) do. I know I'm looking forward to it.
Linda M. Hasselstrom: Prose I: Clean as Bone, Pure as Water: Revising Your Writing
Linda M. Hasselstrom, a South Dakota rancher who has roamed across miles of grassland with no company but her horse, is the full-time resident writer at Windbreak House Writing retreats, established in 1996 on her ranch. Her writing has appeared in dozens of anthologies and magazines. A poetry collection, Bitter Creek Junction, won the Wrangler for Best Poetry from the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City, OK. Bison: Monarch of the Plains, was named best environmental and nature book of 1999 by the Independent Publishers Association. Her latest book, No Place Like Home: Notes from a Western Life, won the 2010 WILLA in creative nonfiction from Women Writing the West. Formerly visiting faculty for Iowa State University, Ames, and online mentor for the University of Minnesota’s Split Rock writing program, Linda is an advisor to Texas Tech University Press. (Author’s Website)
Workshop Focus:
Students will submit up to 20 pages of nonfiction writing by May 10. I will write line-by-line-comments in the text of each submission. Class time will focus on evaluating and revising essays for potential publication with emphasis on language, sentence structure, editing, beginnings and endings and abundant individualized handouts. Please bring to class one copy of your submission for each student. Please attend the opening ceremonies to receive additional information. (Submission instructions will be provided to participants of this workshop after they register)
The written word is to be clean as bone / pure as water, hard as stone.
Two words are not as good as one.
—Old Elizabethan rhyme
Poe Ballantine: Prose II: “Writing Around”
(With the Last Beat Left On the Planet)
Poe Ballantine’s work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, regularly in The Sun Magazine, Kenyon Review, and The Coal City Review. His second novel, Decline of the Lawrence Welk Empire, won Foreword Magazine’s Book of the Year. The odd jobs, eccentric characters, boarding houses, buses, and beer that populate Ballantine’s work often draw comparisons to the life and work of Charles Bukowski and Jack Kerouac. In addition to garnering numerous award nominations including The Pushcart Prize and The Pen/O. Henry Prize, Ballantine’s work has been included in the 1998 Best American Short Story and 2006 Best American Essay anthologies. (Author Info)
Workshop Focus:
My workshops are inspired by my years of itinerancy, "Mining the Lost Years," "The Life of a Drifter," "The Importance of Being an Outsider," and so on. I'm frequently lumped in with the Beat Movement, though I don't share much with them (except the traveling). My non-fiction work is almost entirely emotion-based, and I will share my insights about process, the importance of the small press (breaking in), reader psychology, and any other questions, problems, and concerns the budding writer might have.