Spring Conference 2007 was held at Elliott University Center in Greensboro, NC. The conference is over, but we have left this conference information on the site so that you can refer to it as a model of what our Spring Conference is like.

Half-Day Workshops: Spring Conference 2007
Saturday, June 2

To register for separate morning and afternoon classes, choose from among the half-day sessions listed below. Select one class for the morning session, and another for the afternoon session.

Morning Classes, 9:00 - 11:00 am (choose one)

   FICTION WORKSHOP: Scene, Summary, and the Handling of Fictional Time, with Michael Parker

An intense look at the two essential temporal components in fiction -- scene and summary -- including their relationship to dramatic tension, character development and, ultimately, meaning. Reading and discussion of passages from classic and contemporary prose.

   POETRY WORKSHOP: Now Look What You Have Done, with Stuart Dischell

This intensive class looks at the ways in which poets make poems and provokes the conscious and unconscious decisions that writers make regarding their structures and strategies. We will look a several exemplary poems and may critique poems by the participants. The pace will be fast moving, and the atmosphere critical, supportive, and possibly humorous.
BRING YOUR OWN POEMS.

Afternoon Classes, 2:00 - 4:00 pm (choose one)

   PUBLISHING PANEL, with James Clark (moderator), editor of The Greensboro Review

Panelists Mark Smith-Soto, editor of the International Poetry Review, Kevin Watson, editor of Press 53, and Scott Douglass of Main Street Rag talk about what it takes to get published.

   POETRY WORKSHOP: Writing In Circles Without Getting Dizzy: The Craft of the Sestina and Villanelle, with Carolyn Beard Whitlow

Using samples from Lewis Turco's The New Book of Forms, workshoppers will explore the challenges and pleasures of reading and then creating poems on contemporary topics written in traditional poetic forms that go beyond the sonnet. The sestina and villanelle require that the poet master techniques of repetition and/or rhyme, while controlling line length and meter. We will explore similarities and differences between these two poetic forms and others that will allow variety in employing traditional verse forms.

   CREATIVE NONFICTION WORKSHOP, with Lee Zacharias

This workshop will include a discussion of the range of the genre, examples of ways creative nonfiction can be structured, and such issues as truth and fiction in creative nonfiction. It will also include suggestions for reading and an in-workshop writing exercise.