Get Lit!  Writing Workshops
Get Lit!  Writing Workshops, slated for Saturday, April 22, 2006, and beginning at 9 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. Writing genres covered in the workshops will include poetry, fiction, nonfiction, nonfiction for children, and book arts.
 
Register for workshops through the Get Lit!  office. Either download the Get Lit!  2006 Workshop Registration Form and mail it in or drop it off to

Get Lit!  Workshops
 
705 West 1st Ave., Suite 421
 
Spokane WA 99201

or phone in to (509) 623-4262 (for Visa / MasterCard payment).

The fee for a workshop is $50 for one and $45 for your second. Students are eligible for a 50% discount (we'll ask for your current student I.D. at workshops check-in). Workshops seats are assigned on a first-come-first-served basis.

Get Lit!  2006 workshops are sponsored in part by Washington State Magazine and are presented by the Eastern Washington University Press.

You also are invited to attend the free panel discussion, The Editor's Craft, from noon to 1 p.m.

The Art of Suspense
Domenic Stansberry
 
Narrative suspense, at its most basic level, has to do with holding the audience's attention. Our goal, after all, is to keep the readers in wonderment and awe, to bind them to the story so that they will not want to leave, so that they feel the characters' dilemmas as if they were their own. Suspense has to do with maintaining the readers' curiosity about how events will work out, but it strikes deeper ground as well, since the answer to the question "What happens next?" is intractably bound to a character's fate, and also to the philosophical and moral ground of the novel. This session will examine suspense writing from a technical viewpoint by looking at work of a variety of writers, working in diverse narrative forms, including both fiction and nonfiction, in both literary and popular genres. Participants will learn advanced techniques by which writers develop suspense at the structural level.

The Essay and Lesser Forms
Brian Doyle
 
An irreverent look at the essay, the widest and deepest of lity forms, with sidelong adventures into narrative shapes and styles, interviews, articles, monologues, voice, tone, approach, the dark hearts of magazine editors, paeans and elegies to essayists you should have read but didn't or did read but haven't for a long time (which is a great shame), great essayists of our time, and the fifty rules that nonfiction editors live by and never ever tell writers and once you learn them you have to swear you will never tell anybody or else, cross your heart and hope to never be a novelist.

For the Real World is Strange and Wonderful: Science Writing for Children
Cherie Winner
 
Join this author of 17 nonfiction books for children for a discussion of writing about science, nature, and technology for young readers. You'll talk about finding your subject, knowing when you've done enough research, making tough concepts and language more kid-friendly, and working with editors.

Japanese Ukiyoe Accordion Bookmaking
Keiko Hara
 
Design and form the traditional Japanese accordion book using the antique Ukiyoe prints for book cover material. Bring poems and stories you would like to incorporate.
 
— Keiko Hara is a painter, printmaker, book artist, and art professor at Whitman College, in Walla Walla. She will be joined by Atsuo Ikuta, master book and scroll maker and conservation specialist from Kyoto, Japan; Maki Yamashita, translator and book artist from Tokyo; and Kayo Toko, Japanese papermaker from Echizen, Japan.

Re-Seeing Your Poetry
Yusef Komunyakaa
 
We learn best about writing by writing, by listening to others discuss poems in the community of a workshop, and by revising. This intensive workshop aims to encourage each poet by providing a critical sense of his or her work. In addition to submitting poems for discussion, participants will read, critique, and discuss one another's work. We also will talk about working habits and the overall writing process, and share ideas related to craft and aesthetics. Please keep in mind that revision means to re-see. Read Jack Myers' The Portable Poetry Workshop (published by Thomson/Wadsworth).
— Yusef Komunyakaa is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet who teaches creative writing at Princeton University.