Friday, November 14th

Saturday, November 15th

Mid-American Review regrets that there will be no Sunday sessions as part of Winter Wheat 2008.

Session listings:
Friday 2:00-3:15 Sessions
A1: Publishing Workshop
Karen Craigo
With a special focus on poetry and creative nonfiction, Karen will offer an array of publishing do's and don'ts (along with some stories of what absolutely, positively not to do, ever).

A2: Poetic Nonfiction: How Creative Can Nonfiction Be? — CANCELLED
Louella Bryant
Many editors claim that today's nonfiction lacks imagination. Just how creative can nonfiction be before it leaves the realm of truth? This session will look at writers who push the envelope and will challenge you to take your own work to a higher level of art.

A3: There is Nothing New Under the Sun: Transforming the Cliché
Aimee Pogson and Joe Celizic
Are all the good stories taken? We'll talk about what constitutes a cliché and the ways out of the dreaded cliché trap.

3:30 to 4:15 Sessions
B1: Publishing Workshop
Mike Czyzniejewski
Attend this session to hear Mikes thoughts about publishing (with a special focus on fiction). Tales from behind the transom and valuable publishing advice will be featured.

B2: Jumpstarting the Muse — CANCELLED
Matthew Guenette
It's easy for writers to wait for inspiration to strike like lightning. Using two invention exercises—the Five-Minute Postcard and the Surreal Questionnaire—Matthew will present some methods for a community of writers to jumpstart the muse together.

B3: Becoming a Professional Writer: Marketing Your Work and Yourself
Petra Lina Orloff
Today, creative writers cannot simply rely on skill and a solid publication record to achieve career success. There are other tools and strategies writers should employ to make themselves more marketable. This session will help writers to professionalize themselves and their work.

Saturday, 9:00 to 10:15 Sessions
C1: The Thirty-Minute Poem — CANCELLED
Tom Schaefer and Angie Gentry
Think too much? Stuck for poems or titles? We're here to help! Make and bake a poem (or at best a start), all in thirty minutes.

C2: Writing with Music
Brandon Jennings and Dustin Hoffman
We will discuss the benefits of using music in writing: musicians, describing music, and the use of rhythm in prose and poetry to achieve feeling. We will also discuss and practice using music as a muse for writing.

C3: Wandering through the Jewish Universe: Understanding and Using Jewish Concepts in Your Reading and Writing
Andy Plotkin
The translation of the word for Hebrew is in fact Wanderers. It was their wanderings that gave the Hebrew people a unique perspective from the more sedentary people of their times. For them, each day was unique, every day an adventure. Writers, whatever their religious backgrounds, might benefit from this perspective in their work

C4: Person, Place: Writing About Location
Melanie Jankowski
Inspired by the Ursula K. LeGuin story "Either, OR," this workshop will first examine images of location and discuss how place influences person. Next, through a series of timed exercises, participants will create a town and its inhabitants.

C5: Persona Poetry: Who's Behind the Mask?
M.J. Iuppa
Persona poems are known as "the second self"—a self invented by the poet. We will look closely at some contemporary persona poems; then through several guided writing exercises, we will create one or two persona poems of our own. This workshop will launch a series or sequence of poems. Certain to jump start your writing for the long winter ahead.

C6: Poetry of Witness and Beyond — CANCELLED
Kristina von Held
Is poetry of witness still a relevant category, and how can it be traced in the documentary poetics of young contemporary poets like Claudia Rankine, Mark Nowak, or Juliana Spahr?

C7: Wind-Whipped Laundry — CANCELLED
Kate Divant
Participants will look at multiple time in Robert Pinsky's "Shirt" as clotheslines upon which wind whips the "laundry" of a poem, catching the reader's eye. Attendees will practice setting a poem, sharpening their sensation of how performance (of work, worship, art, sex, violence, etc.) reveals unique human awareness and response to limits.

C8: Zen and Haiku
Michael Dauro
An Introduction to Zen and its presence in Haiku. Haiku tends to be simplified into a "5-7-5" poem. We will discuss how this labeling can be misleading and explore the other major elements that make up this Japanese form. Afterwards, in the spirit of the social aspect of Haiku's roots, the participants will collaborate and create a linked verse.

C9: Poetics, Prose, and the Surreal: Post-Modernism and the Short Story
Daniel Lockhart
This workshop will focus on creating post-modern surreal worlds and narratives in short- and flash fiction.

10:30 to 11:45 Sessions
D1: The Event as Inspiration For Flash Fiction
Matt Bell and Anne Valente
This workshop will focus on how to develop a single event from a mere "happening" to a fully fleshed-out piece of flash fiction. We will discuss and read examples of the form before writing and sharing our own stories.

D2: Science Fiction Is Rhetoric: Writing SF to Persuade
Robert Graves
This session explores how SF functions rhetorically as well as discusses strategies for composing SF narratives in order to achieve certain persuasive goals. So how does one "alter perceptions" with SF? We will answer that question in detail and try a brief writing experiment based on my claims.

D3: Stepping Off a Hundred-Foot Pole: Creative Writing and the Zen Koan
Michael Cherry
A Zen koan: "Atop a hundred-foot pole, how do you step forward?" The student must respond not with cleverness but with her/his whole being. Creative writing demands a similar wholehearted, intuitive engagement. In this workshop, participants will investigate how Zen koan practice can free and enliven the writing mind.

D4: The Experiential: Writing Floods, Fire, Iraq, and Beyond
Jane Varley and Hugh Martin
What does it mean to write from experience? What if this experience is controlled by larger forces, such as a natural landscape disaster or required service in a war zone? Participants will be asked to consider their own experiences and the various challenges, of all proportions, that we live with near and far away.

D5: Go to Your Happy Place: The New Regionalism and the Spiritual Home
Heather Frese and Lori D'Angelo
Historically, place has provided inspiration for fiction. Contemporary authors continue to draw on not only the place of their actual home, but of where they feel at home. This session will focus on the many facets of place and how it can inspire and impact your characters, plot, and action.

D6: The "Grotesque Joys" of Post-Communist Czech Poetry
Virginia Konchan
A broad survey of Czech poetry that has been written since the fall of communism in the Czech Republic, this session explores the resemblance of Czech poetry to American L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry and to post-war verse from Europe, as well as the history of the "samizdat," or chapbook‹literally the only means of publishing for Czech poetry during the fifty years of totalitarian rule.

D7: The Music of Poetry
Mark DeFoe
This program explores the use of musical techniques in writing poetry. Topics include rhythm, beat, meter, and the sonic elements of poetry. The session will demonstrate how sound supports sense to create a unique music in poetry.

D8: Writing Your Way off the Map: Poetry that Crosses the Line
Frank DePoole and Eric M. Morris
We will contemplate the boundaries between the real and the imaginary while exploring contemporary works that surprise and provoke. Writing exercises will give participants the opportunity to walk the line between real and surreal, and to negotiate the territory in between.

1:00 to 2:15 Sessions
E1: Challenges in Undergraduate Publishing
Zach Tarvin
What challenges do undergraduate journals face? And are they different than the challenges faced by larger magazines? This session takes the form of a roundtable question-and-answer discussion.

E2: Stop, Collaborate, and Listen or Co-writing Alone
David Williams, Brad Modlin, Angie Gentry
Sparked by collaborative strategies of other poets, we three underwent a six week experiment in English-to-English "translation" of one another's work. A discussion of these processes is followed by a chance for audience writers to work on their own (together).

E3: Gay Regionalism
Nathan Jackson Tucker
This session will discuss how Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgendered writers can write about the influence of place in terms of their cultural position as a GLBT person. Emphasis will be placed on open discussion of what it means to be both a "regional writer" and a "gay writer."

E4: More Than Just Setting: Ways of Using Sense of Place in Poetry
Karen J. Weyant
This session will explore different ways poets use sense of place in their works. By providing published examples and prompts, participants will be encouraged to explore the different ways place is used in their own works.

E5: Writers Write: Making the Commitment
Shannon N. Forster
When it comes time to write, does cleaning the house suddenly seem more important? Participants will discuss the things that interfere with our writing as well as ways to manage those distractions.

E6: Kicking the Monkeys Off Our Backs: Revising Fiction
Ed Buchanan and Rick Strong
This session will focus on providing information and exercises geared toward writers honing their writing process in regards to revision, reorganization, and the reimagination of stories. The goal is to find a working method of revision that is a good starting point for novice and advanced writers alike.

E7: Incorporating Research Into Your Fictional Narrative
Eric Wasserman
What are the pros and cons of incorporating research into one's fictional narrative? Join Eric as he discusses how writers can best use research to illuminate their imagined worlds, especially when it comes to situating characters in historical settings.

E8: It's (Not) All About the Binder Clips: Practical Advice for Submitting Poetry Manuscripts
Mary Biddinger and Amy Bracken Sparks
Two experienced poetry book contest readers offer advice on choosing markets, arranging and presenting manuscripts, and understanding the editorial process. The presenters will also answer questions about poetry book contests and open reading periods.

E9: The Confessional "I" in Poetry and Creative Nonfiction: Balancing Truth and Sentiment
Telaina Eriksen
This session will give a brief history of the Confessional "I" in poetry and draw parallels to the Confessional "I" used in 20th and 21st century memoir. We will explore what truth means in poetry and creative nonfiction, the overlap between the two genres, and touch on well-publicized memoir hoaxes. We will also talk about the intersecting literary techniques both poets and CNF authors use to evoke either sentiment or sentimentality in their readers, and we will complete a short writing exercise.

2:30 to 3:45 Sessions
F1: Size Does Matter: How to Write Effective Short-Shorts

Megan Ayers
Learn the basics of the short-short story form‹what works and what may not in terms of arc, plot, character interaction, etc. This is the ideal session for someone who is just getting started with writing short-shorts.

F2: Words Like Snow: Using Creative Visualization to Overcome Writers Block and to Increase Writing Efficiency and Pleasure
Robert Graves
This session will discuss methods of meditation and creative visualization useful to the writing process as well as the scientific evidence that supports my claim that these practices are useful. The session will include a brief visualization practice followed by a writing session. We will conclude with a group discussion.

F3: Your "Voice": The Keys to Giving a Successful Poetry Reading
Jessica Leann Stump and Callista Buchen
This session will explore what makes for an effective reading and how the way we read influences the way our poems are received. Participants will listen to readings by new and established poets and are invited to practice reading with the group.

F4: The Myth of Self: Putting the "Creative" Back Into Creative Nonfiction
Ryan Futrell
In this workshop session we will look at samples of writing that strive to push against the traditional boundary lines between fiction, prose poetry, and creative nonfiction. Through prompts and exercises we'll try our hand at writing some of this as well. What we're going for here is a kind of "real-life apocrypha" ‹ writing that over-lays the stories of our normal lives with myth, entwines the real and unreal; writing that attempts to get at the way we color our own stories with elements of the supernatural and absurd.

F5: Location, Location, Location
Daniel A. Hoyt
A strong and fresh sense of place can invigorate a piece of fiction. This panel will discuss different ways of using and exploiting settings‹both familiar and fantastic‹and then present a number of creative exercises for participants to try.

F6: My Father the Minotaur: Elements of the Ridiculous and Surprising in Fiction
Natalie Sypolt and Melissa Minsker
A fine line separates magical realism in fiction from genre fiction, such as fantasy or science fiction. How can we as writers use elements of the "ridiculous" without devolving into the gimmicky or ridiculous? Exercises will allow participants to try their hand at using the ridiculous in their own work.

F7: From Edna St. Vincent Millay to Frank Bidart: The Poetry Chapbook as a Literary Form Cancelled
Kristina Marie Darling
This workshop will focus on the artistic opportunities inherent in writing a short, highly focused manuscript. Discussions will examine the role of theme, voice, and narrative in creating chapbooks, as well as effective uses of literary forms (poem sequences, sonnets, prose poems) in smaller collections.

F8: The Poetics of Abandon: You Gotta Get In to Get Out CANCELLED
Brent Royster
Charged and inventive, a poem is recalled to readers by the rarefied consciousness that gives it voice. This talk explores how writers might invigorate their work by abandoning convention and control, and by engaging the explosive interaction between self and subject where poems take place.