Pre-conference Workshops and Seminars » Word Play: Creative Writing Workshop

Ann Fisher-Wirth and Janine DeBaise will lead a creative writing workshop designed to explore the relationships between language, the body, and place. Various activities will help participants access memories stored in their bodies and uncover stories embedded in childhood or later landscapes. The workshop will generate raw material that can be shaped into poetry or prose.

Janine DeBaise has published poetry and creative non-fiction in more than sixty journals, including 13thMoon and the Minnesota Review. Her collection of poetry, Of a Feather, was published by Finishing Line Press.  She teaches in the department of Environmental Studies at the SUNY-College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, New York.

Ann Fisher-Wirth’s third book of poems, Carta Marina, appeared from Wings Press in April 2009. Her third chapbook, Slide Shows, which placed Second in the 2008 Finishing Line Press Chapbook Competition, appeared in December 2009. She also is the author of Blue Window (Archer Books, 2003) and Five Terraces (Wind Publications, 2005) and of two chapbooks—The Trinket Poems (Wind, 2003) and Walking Wu Wei’s Scroll (online, Drunken Boat, 2005). With Laura-Gray Street, Ann is coediting an anthology of ecopoetry in English, forthcoming in 2012 from Trinity University Press. Her awards include a Malahat Review Long Poem Prize, the Rita Dove Poetry Award, a Poetry Award from the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters, two Poetry Fellowships from the Mississippi Arts Commission, nine Pushcart nominations, and a Pushcart Special Mention. She has had a senior Fulbright to Switzerland and has held the Fulbright Distinguished Chair of American Studies in Sweden. She teaches at the University of Mississippi, in the low residency MFA program at Chatham University in Pittsburgh, and at Southern Star Yoga Studio in Oxford, Mississippi.

To pre-register for this workshop, please contact Greta Gaard: greta.gaard uwrf.edu. A fee will be due at regular registration, price is TBD but in the $15-20 range.