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RALEIGH—There are all sorts of reasons for poets to attend the North Carolina Writers' Network 2018 Squire Summer Writing Workshops, July 19-22, on the campus of NC State in Raleigh.
The poetry track will be led by Raleigh Review editor Rob Greene. And while Rob's years of editorial and teaching experience are sure to assist even the most experienced writer, his commitment to the writing community serve as an example to attendees of how to comport oneself as a literary citizen.
And community is perhaps the best reason to attend the Squire Summer Writing Workshops—or any literary event at all.
Rob founded RR in 2010 and immediately set about making an impact on his locality. In two years, Raleigh Review was placing poems on Raleigh city buses as part of their Poetry on the Bus program.
In his weekend long workshop, "Poems of Experience," attendees will review three of their previous poems. The remainder of the class will be generative. The generative section of workshop will be spent on the key elements of accessible works of experience that are emotionally and intellectually complex. Registrants will focus on many parts of the craft, though the overriding principle will be on making precise images. Model poems with emotional and intellectual complexity will be shared as the groundwork. Poets will then attempt to make their own poems, and then they will workshop these attempts as they go along. The Poet's Companion and a course-pack will be handed out on the first day in class, and need to be brought to every session.
Each registrant should be ready to handle the intensive instruction and atmosphere of the workshop.
Rob Greene is the editor of Raleigh Review, and he has lived in Raleigh for much of the last two decades. Prior to this he had relocated forty-six times. Greene taught poetry writing at NC State University as a graduate student while earning his Master of Fine Arts. For the past five years he has taught at Louisburg College, where he serves as the advisor for Lou Lit Review. This fall, Greene will begin work on his research Ph.D in creative writing at University of Birmingham (United Kingdom) via distance education. His own poems have been recently published in Open Minds Quarterly, Great River Review, War: Literature & the Arts, and in the Berlin-based annual Herzattacke. His first chapbook, Biloxi Back Bay (Rabbit House Press), was published in early 2017.
The NCWN Squire Summer Writing Workshops offer attendees the chance to study one genre with one instructor over the course of the weekend. There also will be programs, panels, readings, open mics, and more.
Paul Cuadros will lead the track in Creative Nonfiction, "Storytelling from the Point of Truth." Elaine Neil Orr will lead the track in Fiction, "From Character to Plot to Atmosphere."
Registration is capped at forty-two registrants, first-come, first-served.
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RALEIGH—Whether they're writing about their grade-school days, the loves of their lives, or social issues, writers of Creative Nonfiction work to uncover the truth. Sometimes, it's impossible not to involve oneself in a nonfiction narrative. Other times, it's ill-advised.
Paul Cuadros, who will lead the creative nonfiction track at the NCWN 2018 Squire Summer Writing Workshops, July 19-22, at NC State University in Raleigh, was deep into an investigative story when he realized there was no way he could not get involved.
The result? A Home on the Field: How One Championship Team Inspires Hope for the Revival of Small Town America, which tells the story of Paul's experiences coaching a boys' soccer team in Siler City, and the tensions and reconciliations among community members as their town changed quickly around them.
Paul moved to Chatham County in 1999. Forseeing how an influx of Latin-American immigrants would change the culutre of the interior United States, he received a fellowship from the Alicia Patterson Foundation. This fellowship, considered "one of the most prestigious fellowships in journalism," allowed Paul to report on emerging Latino communities in rural poultry-processing towns in the South.
The Jets were state champions, but there was no storybook ending, not really.
"In the epilogue, only one player goes on to higher education and completes a degree," says Paul. "The rest go into the trades and try to fashion a life where their lack of documentation stymies their dreams. The ending shows the sad truth that not having a pathway to citizenship is a roadblock in life. It says that the promise of America is broken. That once upon a time we welcomed immigrants with few qualifications other than the desire to do better, and although we exploited the parents, we allowed the kids to become citizens. Today that is no longer true."
At the NCWN 2018 Squire Summer Writing Workshops, Paul will lead the Creative Nonfiction tract, "Storytelling from a Point of Truth."
Creative Nonfiction, Narrative Nonfiction, New Journalism, Documentary Writing—no matter what you call it, storytelling from a point of truth is the name of the game. There are many ways to tell nonfiction stories today, but they all have tenets that keep them in line and together. The first is finding a compelling story based in truth. Then research, research, research. And then writing, using the creative writer’s tools to craft a compelling, rich, true narrative with a beginning, middle, and end. The nonfiction work depends on the research of the event or story wishing to be told, and so attendees will discuss methods on how to collect information, interview people, hang out, challenge memory, recreate important events and times, and develop a story that reads like a novel but is as true as they can make it. Nonfiction requires the writer to be part reporter, part creative writer. Registrants wll discuss, examine, and learn both sets of techniques and skills. Voice is also key in this, and developing the right voice for the narrative is important. Finally, conferencegoers will discuss pitching the nonfiction work and the development of the all-important proposal. They'll go over ideas in class, as well as their work, and any exercises they may have time for. Attendees should come away from the session with an understanding of the work involved in researching a story, putting it together, and pitching it to someone.
Paul Cuadros is an associate professor in the School of Journalism & Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, as well as the chair of the UNC Scholars’ Latino Initiative, a college mentoring and preparatory program for Latino high school students at six local public high schools. He is an award-winning investigative reporter and author whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Huffington Post, Time Magazine, Salon.com, The Chicago Reporter, and other national and local publications. His book A Home on the Field: How One Championship Team Inspires Hope for the Revival of Small Town America (Harpers Collins), which tells the story of Siler City as it copes and struggles with Latino immigration through the lives of a predominantly Latino high school soccer team, has been required summer reading for undergraduates at UNC-Chapel Hill and several other colleges and universities. In 2014, the book was adapted into the television documentary series Los Jets, produced by Jennifer Lopez and her production company, Nuyorican Productions, Inc. Cuadros is currently working on another book about the Latino community in the American South.
Rob Greene will lead the class in poetry, "Poems of Experience." Elaine Neil Orr will lead the fiction class, "From Character to Plot to Atmosphere."
Registration is capped at forty-two registrants, first-come, first-served.
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ASHEVILLE—Theresa Dowell Blackinton of Durham has won the 2018 Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize for her story “Reunification.” Blackinton will receive $1,000 and possible publication in The Thomas Wolfe Review.
Final judge Sarah Addison Allen described “Reunification” as “Timely, bittersweet, alive with imagery. It takes a skilled writer to infuse a serious and emotional subject with such hope.”
Blackinton is a writer and freelance editor whose work has won the Betty Gabehart Prize for Fiction and the NC State Short Fiction Award and was published most recently in The Iowa Review.
The story “Don’t Give Up on Alan Greenspan,” by Soma Mei Sheng Frazier of California, received first Honorable Mention.
Soma Mei Sheng Frazier is an East Coast native living in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she recently served as a San Francisco Library Laureate. Her award-winning fiction chapbooks, Salve (Nomadic Press) and Collateral Damage: A Triptych (RopeWalk Press), have earned praise from Nikki Giovanni, Daniel Handler, Antonya Nelson, Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, Molly Giles, Michelle Tea, and others. Frazier’s writing has placed in literary competitions offered by HBO, Zoetrope: All-Story, the Mississippi Review, and more.
Robin Solit received second Honorable Mention for “1936: Hang There like Fruit, My Soul,” an excerpt from her unpublished novel Little Wanderers. It was inspired by her experience as the mother of a biracial child, her work with disabled babies in a Romanian orphanage, and her encounters with Mongolian and Russian children while riding the 5,000-mile Trans-Siberian Railway across the vast Eurasian Steppes and the wilds of Siberia during the dead of winter. She lives in the New York metropolitan area.
Final judge Sarah Addison Allen is the New York Times bestselling author of Garden Spells (2007); The Sugar Queen (2008); The Girl Who Chased the Moon (2010); The Peach Keeper (2011); and Lost Lake (2014). Her new novel First Frost is now on sale. She was born and raised in Asheville.
The Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize, which is awarded to a work of short fiction of 3,000 words or less, is administered by the Great Smokies Writing Program at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. The program offers opportunities for writers of all levels to join a supportive learning community in which their skills and talents can be explored, practiced, and forged under the careful eye of professional writers. The program is committed to providing the community with affordable university-level classes led by published writers and experienced teachers. Each course carries academic credit awarded through UNC-Asheville.
The Thomas Wolfe Review is the official journal of The Thomas Wolfe Society, publishing articles, features, tributes, and reviews about Wolfe and his circle. It also features bibliographical material, notes, news, and announcements of interest to Society members.
North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame inductee Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938), was born in Asheville. His Look Homeward, Angel is considered one of the most important coming-of-age novels in the English language. Wolfe was considered at the time of his death to be the greatest talent North Carolina had given to American literature. His novels and collected short stories go beyond autobiography, trying to, in William Faulkner’s words, “put all the experience of the human heart on the head of a pin.” His intense poetic language and thoughtfully developed symbology, combined with his uncanny ability to enter the minds of his other characters and give them powerful voices, elevate the books from memoir to undeniable literary art.
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.