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WINSTON-SALEM—As writers, we're often encouraged to "write what we know." Even still, it can take a long time to write toward those parts of ourselves that we know best, those parts we'd prefer to keep hidden: our secret thoughts, dark family histories, dreams, and more. But it is exactly those things that make us feel most vulnerable, which we'd prefer people not see, that we must write about if we're ever going to find our voices and share our truths.
On Thursday, March 17, 2022, at 7:00 pm EST, novelist and poet Jennifer Givhan will lead the online class "Subverting Expectations: Stranger Things, Duende, & Writing into the Upside Down" (Poetry).
Registration is closed.
The underbelly is the vulnerable spot. It could also be the dark spot, the seamy place, the liminal margins. This is the place we are most helpless, most in need of defense. And yet, this is where, in the poem of duende, we must confront. In Stranger Things, the Netflix sci-fi/horror throwback, the children and adults must both contend with the Upside Down, a parallel world distorted, a shadow world askew … The boys in the show describe it as “a place of decay and death, a plane out of phase, a [place] with monsters. It is right next to you and you don’t even see it.”
In this workshop, we will more than see it. We will create poems that are maps to the hidden creatures in our society, our psyches, our pasts—membrane-thin strings connecting the outer shells with the inner viscera of our collective and individual histories. Subverting expectations of the poems, ourselves, and the world around us, we will locate and (re)create maps to the underbellies, to the duende world where madness and abandon often eclipse logic and where, as Tracy K. Smith writes, “skill is only useful to the extent that it adds courage and agility to intuition.” Join Givhan as she guides us into the Upside Down, where our craft skills will help us unleash our inner beasts to battle with the beasts already residing breath-on-the-back-of-the-neck close.
The cost for the class is $35 for NCWN members, $45 for non-members. Space is limited.
Jennifer Givhan is a Mexican-American and indigenous poet, novelist, and transformational coach from the Southwestern desert and the recipient of poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and PEN/Rosenthal Emerging Voices. She holds a Master’s degree from California State University Fullerton and a Master’s in Fine Arts from Warren Wilson College. She is the author of four full-length poetry collections, most recently Rosa’s Einstein (University of Arizona Press), and the novels Trinity Sight and Jubilee (Blackstone Publishing), all of which were finalists for the Arizona-New Mexico Book Awards. Her newest poetry collection Belly to the Brutal (Wesleyan University Press) and novel River Woman River Demon (Blackstone Publishing) are forthcoming this fall. Her poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction have appeared in The New Republic, The Nation, POETRY, TriQuarterly, The Boston Review, The Rumpus, Salon, and many others. She’s received the Southwest Book Award, New Ohio Review’s Poetry Prize, Phoebe Journal’s Greg Grummer Poetry Prize, the Pinch Journal Poetry Prize, and Cutthroat’s Joy Harjo Poetry Prize. Jenn would love to hear from you at www.jennifergivhan.com and you can follow her on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter for inspiration, writing prompts, and transformational advice.
"The Network offered online classes long before the COVID-19 pandemic, and we'll continue to do so moving forward," said NCWN communications director Charles Fiore. "While nothing can replace the energy of an in-person event, online classes can still be inspirational. More importantly, they offer a way to connect with writers across the state and beyond while staying safe."
The online class "Subverting Expectations: Stranger Things, Duende, & Writing into the Upside Down" (Poetry) is available to anyone with an internet connection, or who even owns just a telephone. Instructions for accessing the online class on Thursday, March 17, will be sent to registrants no less than 24 hours prior to the start of class. The class will be archived and made available to registrants for repeated viewings.
The nonprofit North Carolina Writers’ Network is the state’s oldest and largest literary arts services organization devoted to writers at all stages of development. For additional information, visit www.ncwriters.org.
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WINSTON-SALEM—Ashley-Ruth Bernier, a first-grade teacher from Apex, has won this year’s Jacobs/Jones African-American Literary Prize for her story “The Release.”
Bernier will receive a $1,000 prize, and The Carolina Quarterly will consider “The Release” for publication.
Final judge Jacinda Townsend selected Bernier’s story from among nine finalists.
Townsend said of the story, “When a county judge is released from the hospital, she seeks refuge from her demons in an afternoon of fishing. Little does she know that a chance encounter with the unlikeliest of strangers will bring her redemption. Filled with rich lyricism and tightly-drawn structure, ‘The Release’ delivered a gut punch that the reader won't soon forget.”
A teacher as well as a mother of four, Bernier is originally from St. Thomas, U. S. Virgin Islands. She writes contemporary Caribbean mysteries, and is currently finishing a novel told in the form of eight linked “short-ish” stories, the first of which will appear in print in the spring.
“Close” by Leticia Tuset received Honorable Mention. Townsend said, “With language carefully crafted to reveal the rawness within its characters, ‘Close’ tells the story of a most unusual mother-daughter relationship. As an unflinching look of the complications of familial love and the tragedy of missed connection, it gives readers an unforgettable scalding.”
Tuset is a senior at UNC-Chapel Hill, where she is a Morehead-Cain Scholar. She describes herself as “a storyteller at heart,” and says that “when she’s not writing, she enjoys reading, road trips, and playing with her two nieces.”
The Jacobs/Jones contest, sponsored by the NCWN, is open to any African-American writer whose primary residence is in North Carolina. Entries may be fiction or creative nonfiction, but must not have been published before (including on any website, blog, or social media), and must be no more than 3,000 words.
Jacinda Townsend is the author of Saint Monkey (Norton, 2014), which is set in 1950s Eastern Kentucky and won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize and the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for historical fiction. Saint Monkey was also the 2015 Honor Book of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. Her second novel, Mother Country, will be published by Graywolf Press in fall of 2022. Townsend teaches in the Zell Creative Writing program at the University of Michigan.
The Jacobs/Jones African-American Literary Prize honors the nineteenth-century writers Harriet Jacobs and Thomas H. Jones. Jacobs was born in 1813 near Edenton, escaping to Philadelphia in 1842, after hiding for seven years in a crawl space above her grandmother’s ceiling. She published her autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, under a pseudonym in 1861. Jacobs died in 1897 and was inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame in 1997.
Jones was born into slavery near Wilmington in 1806. Able to purchase the freedom of his wife and all but one of his children, he followed them north in 1849 by stowing away on a brig to New York. In the northeast and in Canada, he spoke as a preacher and abolitionist, writing his memoir, The Experience of Thomas Jones, in 1854, as a way to raise funds to buy his eldest child’s freedom.
This Jacobs/Jones African-American Literary Prize was initiated by Cedric Brown, a Winston-Salem native and graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
“The literary award was borne out of my frustration with being unable to readily find much fiction or creative nonfiction that conveys the rich and varied existence of Black North Carolinians,” Brown said. “I wanted to incentivize the development of written works while also encouraging Black writers to capture our lives through storytelling.”
The winner of the 2021 Jacobs/Jones African-American Literary Prize was Isaac Hughes Green of Durham, for his short story “Fifteens.”
The non-profit North Carolina Writers’ Network is the state’s oldest and largest literary arts services organization devoted to all writers at all stages of development. For additional information, visit www.ncwriters.org.
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GREENSBORO—National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship recipient Laura Mullen will lead the Master Class in Poetry, "River of Time and Art," at the North Carolina Writers' Network 2022 Spring Conference, Saturday, April 23, on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Conference registration is open.
Laura Mullen is the author of eight books; recognitions for her poetry include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a Rona Jaffe Award. Recent poems have appeared in Fence, Together in a Sudden Strangeness, and Bettering American Poetry. Her translation of Veronique Pittolo's Hero was published by Black Square Editions, and her translation of work by Stephanie Chaillou has just appeared in Interim. A collection of poems is forthcoming from Solid Objects Press in 2023. She teaches at Wake Forest University.
Here is the course description for the Poetry Master Class, "River of Time and Art."
We feel ourselves to float now, precariously, uncertainly, in a river of time that seems rapid, forceful, and unruly—it’s all too easy to fear we’ll be thrown out of the boat and submerged. “Poetry,” writes Joy Harjo in her memoir Poet Warrior, “is a tool to navigate transformation.” What better way to move through these straits than with(in) art? This workshop will be generative, there will be exercises and prompts, productive of new poetry, and then (looking at previous work) will also offer strategies for revision, grounded in a recognition of your singular and special powers, with a focus on self-awareness and self-acceptance, as we learn to go with the creative flow and move fearlessly toward the wide open.
Registrants must apply to be admitted into the Master Class; each registrant should be ready to handle the intensive instruction and atmosphere of the Master Class. For full application details and more, click here.
Spring Conference is a full day of courses and programming on the craft and business of writing, offering both on-site (in-person) and online sessions. North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame inductee Carole Boston Weatherford will give the Keynote Address. Other poetry options include "Public, Private, & Poetic Place" with Charmaine Cadeau and "Talking the Talk (poetry)" with Stuart Dischell, both on-site.
The online track offers several options for writers in all genres. Online registrants also will be able to watch livestreams of the Keynote Address, Faculty Readings, and Slush Pile Live!, and participate in an online only Open Mic.
Register here.
The nonprofit North Carolina Writers’ Network is the state’s oldest and largest literary arts services organization devoted to all writers, in all genres, at all stages of development. For additional information, visit www.ncwriters.org.
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