F234. Renewing Constraint: The Legacy and Practice of Restricted Writing

Gold Salon 4, JW Marriott LA, 1st Floor
Friday, April 1, 2016
3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

 

In a New Yorker interview, Nathan Englander said, “Maybe it sounds crazy, but with writing it’s infinity that is limiting, and the limited that allows for the truly infinite.” From the founding of Oulipo to the contemporary avant-garde, limited forms offer writers new avenues of expression. Focusing on constraint as a tool for enhancing creativity, panelists explore the history of constrained writing and discuss its current applications in practice, pedagogy, and publication.


Participants

Moderator:

Shannon Skelton taught middle and high school English in Alabama and Kentucky before returning to school to study creative writing. She is now an MFA fiction candidate and teaching fellow at Georgia College. Her stories have been published in Image and Ruminate.

April Krassner teaches expository and creative writing in the School of Professional Studies at NYU. She uses constraint-based techniques to help students generate and refine their work. A poet, Ms. Krassner is always interested in language and how it shapes experience.

Laura M. Martin is an MFA candidate at Georgia College. She has a BA in humanities with a double concentration in English and creative writing from New York University. She uses constraint-based methods to stimulate creativity in her students and to structure her own writing practice.

Kristen Miller is the director of programming and development at Sarabande Books where she founded Sarabande Writing Labs, an arts program that brings creative writing workshops to underserved communities in Kentucky. She is a poet, playwright, and MLitt candidate at Bread Loaf School of English.

Douglas Luman is an editor and Pushcart-nominated poet. Currently he is the Found Poetry Review's book reviews editor, editor of So To Speak, assistant editor of poetry at Stillhouse Press, an assistant poetry editor of Phoebe. He teaches composition, literature, and creative writing at George Mason.

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Kansas City Convention Center