2019 Chesapeake Writers’ Conference
Sunday, June 23
TIME | LOCATION | DESCRIPTION |
1:00 PM - 5:00 PM | Daugherty-Palmer Commons | Check-in |
6:00 PM - 7:00 PM | Daugherty-Palmer Commons | Dinner with your workshop participants and faculty mentors |
7:00 PM - 7:15 PM | Daugherty-Palmer Commons | Welcome |
7:30 PM - 8:30 PM | Daugherty-Palmer Commons | Lecture: Patricia Henley Establishing a Writing Habit |
8:00 PM - 10:00 PM | River Center | Social Time |
Monday, June 24
TIME | LOCATION | DESCRIPTION |
7:30 AM - 9:00 AM | Great Room | Breakfast |
8:30 AM - 9:30 AM | Campus Center 226 | Teachers’ Pedagogy Session (Teachers only, or by permission) |
9:45 Am - 10:45 AM | Blackistone Room, Anne Arundel Hall | Craft Talk: Liz Arnold “Fact and Feeling: Strategies Toward a Disciplined Lyric” Lyric poetry is not pure lyricism. It’s a mix of many ways of speaking, ranging from near-prose to near-song, each level of intensity of language enhancing the power of the others. How to manage these various ways of speaking and their interactions will be the focus of this talk. Poets discussed will include Louise Glück, Emily Dickinson, George Oppen, and Frank Bidart. |
11:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Blackistone Room, Anne Arundel Hall | Lecture: Crystal Brandt “What Makes a Song Great?” We’ve all been there: a music-loving friend guarantees that you will absolutely love their new favorite song as much as they do. Just listen to it, they say, cueing it up. What happens next — love, hate, ambivalence, or indifference — is the subject of this craft lecture. We’ll look at the space between the songwriter’s intention and the listener’s reception as we explore what makes a song great, how and why greatness happens, and who gets to decide. |
11:00 AM - 1:00 PM | Great Room | Lunch |
1:15 PM | VARIOUS LOCATIONS (see below to find your workshop) | Workshops Begin |
1:15 PM - 4:15 PM | Kent Hall 316 | Fiction, Matt Burgess This workshop will be descriptive rather than prescriptive. You will not have a group of people telling you how to rewrite your story. Instead, we will describe how your story is working—focusing on basic elements of narrative craft such as plot structures, characterization, and point-of-view—so that you can make your own best decisions on how to revise. We will also conduct short, in-class writing exercises designed to stretch your creative muscles, make you more comfortable with experimentation, and serve as raw material for future stories. |
1:15 PM - 4:15 PM | Kent Hall 212 | Fiction, Patricia Henley Writing the Memorable Short Story This workshop is about possibilities and choices short story writers make. You may bring a draft of a story already written or you may come with only an idea for a story. In early drafts, everything you write should feel malleable. We will focus on how to use the tools of craft—point-of-view, sensory description, character development, your sense of place, and structure--to make your story publishable and unforgettable. |
1:15 PM - 4:15 PM | Kent Hall 317 | Creative Nonfiction, Jeannie Vanasco This workshop will be a supportive discussion and examination of participants’ writing, as well as an exploration of some of the major forms and styles within the genre. |
1:15 PM - 4:15 PM | Anne Arundel N204 | Songwriting, Crystal Brandt Combine lyrics, melody, and performance and you’ve got a song. Add style, heart, and unity — all of those elements working together — and you’ve got the makings of a great song. In this workshop, we will work towards the latter by sharing original songs in a supportive and constructive space, listening for and reflecting on the poetry that lives between the words and music, and participating in exercises that will invigorate and sustain your individual songwriting practice. What can our favorite songs teach us about our own skill and effort, craft and connection? How can we use that information to build songs that preserve the integrity and energy of inspiration while fine-tuning structure and technique? Is there really a secret chord? We’ll explore these questions and more. All skill levels, voices, and genres welcome. |
1:15 PM - 4:15 PM | Anne Arundel N104 | Poetry, Liz Arnold In this workshop, you will read other students' poems as well as poems by past and present masters from a short anthology I will provide. The conversation will span centuries as student work is discussed in the context of the best poetry that's been written. You will learn how to make choices for your poems, and how revision is an ongoing process. You will write in a handful of forms in the evenings, and these newer poems will be discussed as well as poems you bring with you to the conference. My hope is that you will leave the workshop with a fuller appreciation of the possibilities for your writing than you had on entering it. |
1:15 PM - 4:15 PM | River Center Seminar Room | Youth Workshop, Matthew Henry Hall In this workshop, high school aged conference attendees will explore poetry, fiction, personal narrative, and playwriting. Students will read and write in traditional forms such as sonnets, villanelles, short stories, standard memoirs, and plays as well as read and use less traditional forms and techniques— prose poems, automatic writing, cut-ups, magical realism and first-person journalism as well as writing scripts for television, movies, and graphic novels. This workshop’s fast-paced and wide-ranging literary tour will help young adult writers discover the literature, which truly inspire their lives and writing. |
5:00 PM - 6:30 PM | Great Room
| Dinner |
7:30 PM - 8:30 PM | Blackistone Room, Anne Arundel Hall | Faculty Reading: Nadeem Zaman Jerry Gabriel Jeannie Vanasco Patricia Henley |
8:00 PM - 10:00 PM | River Center | Social Time |
Tuesday, June 25
TIME | LOCATION | DESCRIPTION |
7:30 AM - 9:00 AM | Great Room | Breakfast |
8:30 AM - 9:30 AM | Campus Center 226 | Teachers’ Pedagogy Session (Teachers only, or by permission) |
9:45 AM - 10:45 AM | Blackistone Room, Anne Arundel Hall | Craft Talk: Matt Burgess “How to Plot a Novel” As a group, over the course of an hour, with much second-guessing and argument, we will plot an original novel from start to finish. |
11:00 AM - Noon | Blackistone Room, Anne Arundel Hall | Craft Talk: Nadeem Zaman “Conflict Makes The Story” The heartbeat and lifeblood of stories is conflict. Conflict comes in several forms. Conflicts can be external, conflicts can be internal. Conflicts are part of our everyday existence. So it is with fiction; in the case of this craft talk short fiction (although the methods may just as easily be applied to longer works). Whether conflicts manifest in a shouting match at a family gathering, burrow deep in our consciousness and create inner struggles of conscience, or cause irreconcilable strife between partners, the stories of our lives are rich with conflict. |
11:00 AM - 1:00 PM | Great Room | Lunch |
1:15 PM - 4:15 PM | VARIOUS LOCATIONS | Workshops Begin |
Kent 316 Kent 212 Kent 317 River Center Seminar Room Anne Arundel N204 Anne Arundel N104 | Fiction, Matt Burgess Fiction, Patricia Henley Creative Nonfiction, Jeannie Vanasco Youth Workshop, Matthew Henry Hall Songwriting, Crystal Brandt Poetry, Liz Arnold | |
5:00 PM - 6:30 PM | Great Room | Dinner |
7:00 PM - 8:00 PM | Blackistone Room | Participant Reading |
8:00 PM - 10:00 PM | River Center | Social Time |
Wednesday, June 26
TIME | LOCATION | DESCRIPTION |
7:30 AM - 9:00 AM | Great Room | Breakfast |
8:00 AM - 9:00 AM | Campus Center 226 | Teachers’ Pedagogy Session (Teachers only, or by permission) |
9:15 AM - 12:15 PM | VARIOUS LOCATIONS | Workshops Begin |
Kent 316 Kent 212 Kent 317 River Center Seminar Room Anne Arundel N204 Anne Arundel N104 | Fiction, Matt Burgess Fiction, Patricia Henley Creative Nonfiction, Jeannie Vanasco Youth Workshop, Matthew Henry Hall Songwriting, Crystal Brandt Poetry, Liz Arnold | |
11:00 AM - 2:00 PM | Great Room | Lunch |
1:00 PM - 5:00 PM | Free Time/Excursions | |
5:00 PM - 6:30 PM | Great Room | Dinner |
8:00 PM - 9:00 PM | Blackistone Room, Anne Arundel Hall | Faculty Reading Liz Arnold Matt Burgess Crystal Brandt Matthew Henry Hall |
9:00 PM - 10:00 PM | River Center | Social Time |
Thursday, June 27
TIME | LOCATION | DESCRIPTION |
7:30 AM - 9:00 AM | Great Room | Breakfast |
8:45 AM - 10:15 AM | Cole Cinema | Publishing Panel Discussion Lea Beresford, senior editor at Bloomsbury Susanna Einstein, agent at Einstein Literary Management Mark Drew, editor at the Gettysburg Review |
10:30 AM - 12:30 PM | Aldom Lounge | Publishing Meetings |
11:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Campus Center 226 | Teachers’ Pedagogy Session (Teachers only, or by permission) |
11:00 AM - 2:00 PM | Great Room | Lunch |
1:15 PM - 4:15 PM | VARIOUS LOCATIONS | Workshops Begin |
Kent 316 Kent 212 Kent 317 River Center Seminar Room Anne Arundel N204 Anne Arundel N104 | Fiction, Matt Burgess Fiction, Patricia Henley Creative Nonfiction, Jeannie Vanasco Youth Workshop, Matthew Henry Hall Songwriting, Crystal Brandt Poetry, Liz Arnold | |
5:00 PM - 6:30 PM | Great Room | Dinner |
7:30 PM - 8:30 PM | Blackistone Room, Anne Arundel Hall | Craft Talk, Jeannie Vanasco “Experimenting with Metanarratives in Creative Nonfiction” When and how do we describe our writing process within our writing? When fiction writers do it, their works are usually referred to as metafictions and postmodern. But in nonfiction, “meta-ness” is basically just reflection or “telling.” In this seminar, we’ll examine nonfiction works—from memoiristic to journalistic—that refer to their own making. We'll also experiment with writing about our own works in progress. |
8:30 PM - 10:00 PM | River Center | Social Time |
Friday, June 28
TIME | LOCATION | DESCRIPTION |
7:30 AM - 9:00 AM | Great Room | Breakfast |
8:30 AM - 9:30 AM | Campus Center 226 | Teachers’ Pedagogy Session (Teachers only, or by permission) |
9:45 AM - 10:45AM | Blackistone Room, Anne Arundel Hall | Craft Talk, Matthew Henry Hall “Improv + Writing” What can writers learn from improv? Find out at this extremely interactive Craft Talk. First, we will go over the basics of improv. Volunteers then will get a chance to do basic improv warm-ups, then two-person scenes. As we go, we’ll discuss as a group the benefits of these activities for writers. Note: Participation in the improv exercises is not required but will (most likely) be extremely fun. |
11:00 AM - 12:00 AM | Blackistone Room, Anne Arundel Hall | Craft Talk: Patricia Henley “Telling It Like It Is: Writing in the First-Person”
Alice Munro once told an interviewer that she keeps revising until her stories sound like autobiography. That’s something I loved about her early stories when I started writing. And Wally Lamb says: “I like to write first-person because I like to become the character I am writing about.” Too many times, first-person stories are rejected or fall flat because the writer hasn’t truly inhabited the character. We tend to write our first drafts of first person stories as if the writer is the character. In this talk, Patricia will provide examples from first person stories and novels wherein the characters jump off the page into the reader’s heart. Come prepared to do some writing. |
11:00 AM - 2:00 PM | Great Room | Lunch |
1:15 PM - 4:15 PM | VARIOUS LOCATIONS | Workshops Begin |
Kent 316 Kent 212 Kent 317 River Center Seminar Room Anne Arundel N204 Anne Arundel N104 | Fiction, Matt Burgess Fiction, Patricia Henley Creative Nonfiction, Jeannie Vanasco Youth Workshop, Matthew Henry Hall Songwriting, Crystal Brandt Poetry, Liz Arnold | |
4:30 PM - 5:30 PM | Cole Cinema | All Faculty Q&A |
5:00 PM - 6:30 PM | Great Room | Dinner |
7:00 PM - 8:00 PM | Blackistone Room, Anne Arundel Hall | Music by Crystal Brandt & Matthew Henry Hall |
8:00 PM - 10:00 PM | Lawn in front of Townhouse Greens | River Concert Series |
8:00 PM - 11:00 PM | River Center | Social Time |
Saturday, June 29
TIME | LOCATION | DESCRIPTION |
7:30 AM - 10:00 AM | Daugherty-Palmer Commons | Continental Breakfast and Goodbyes |