F222. Preaching Beyond the Choir: The Value of Creative Writing Outside the Major

B114, Oregon Convention Center, Level 1
Friday, March 29, 2019
1:30 pm to 2:45 pm

 

This panel considers what best to offer a student if given one shot, one class, to make creative writing relevant in the student’s day-to-day life. Panelists will share diverse approaches to the classroom that expose students to ways of viewing both written work, and the world around them, as spaces that can be shifted and enhanced through creative effort. They will engage in a discussion on the importance of exposure and representation, aspiration and a writer’s brass tacks.


Participants

Moderator:

Katherine Zlabek is the author of the chapbook Let The Rivers Clap Their Hands. Her fiction has appeared in Boulevard, the Kenyon Review, and Ninth Letter. She won an AWP Intro Journals Award in 2012. She currently teaches writing in Washington, DC.

David James Poissant is the author of The Heaven of Animals, winner of the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award, and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize. His work has appeared in the Atlantic and the New York Times. He teaches in the MFA program at the University of Central Florida.

Charles Rice-González is an Assistant Professor at Hostos Community College/CUNY. His novel, Chulito, received awards and recognition from the American Library Association and the National Book Critics Circle. He earned an MFA from Goddard College, cofounded BAAD! The Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, and is a playwright.

Michelle Y. Burke is the author of the poetry collection Animal Purpose. She is an Assistant Professor in the Humanities at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, where she teaches creative writing, literature, and composition.

Melinda Moustakis is the author of Bear Down Bear North: Alaska Stories, which won the Flannery O' Connor Award. She is the recipient of a PEN/ O. Henry Prize, Hodder Fellowship, NEA Fellowship, Kenyon Review Fellowship, Jenny McKean Moore Fellowship, and the Rona Jaffe Cullman Fellowship at NYPL.

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February 7–10, 2024
Kansas City, Missouri

Kansas City Convention Center