Conference Schedule - Northwestern School of Professional Studies

2:00 – 3:00pm CT
The Body Intervenes: Personal Narrative and The Body 
Featuring Megan Stielstra

“Literature does its best to maintain that its concern is with the mind,” wrote Virginia Woolf in 1926. “On the contrary, the very opposite is true. All day, all night, the body intervenes.” This workshop examines how memory lives in the body, using our own stories and experiences as a contribution to a wider cultural and political dialogue that centers human beings. Pulling from both literary and oral storytelling traditions, we'll engage in a series of activities (adapted for online!) that will take our writing out of the head and into the body, generating new work and digging deeper into material you're already exploring. All levels and genres are welcome; we need you. We need your voice. We're trying to remake the world.

3:30 – 4:30pm CT
Multi-Genre Revision
Featuring Rebecca Morgan Frank

This cross-genre revision class will explore a range of strategies for "revision," the modes of movement from early drafts towards work we consider finished, or final. We will cover big picture approaches and organizational strategies, such as using mission statements. transitional drafts, and generative revision, and you will leave with a variety of more specific revision exercises you can continue to practice beyond the class. Join us to expand your revision toolbox!

Saturday, July 9

 9:30 – 10:30am CT
Writing About Friends, Family and Lovers: Telling Your Truth while Holding Space for Compassion
Featuring Paula Carter

We all have a right to tell our truth and share our experiences. But what happens when people we care about are a part of that truth? How do we approach writing the past without the fear of how others will receive our perspective shutting down the process? And away from the page, how do we then navigate the real relationships that make up our lives? In this workshop, we’ll look at examples of writers writing about friends, family and lovers, discuss why we feel compelled to tell these stories, examine some of the ethics of writing memoir and nonfiction, and engage in writing prompts to generate honest work from past events.

11:00am – noon CT
The Origins of the Original  
Featuring Rebecca Makkai

For writing to succeed, it must be both well-executed and original. But when we sit down to write, the first words, scenes, characters, conflicts, and settings we come up with are often the least original ones of which we're capable. Digging past the obvious, the stock (and even the products of the collective unconscious), we might finally arrive at stories that are strikingly new and memorable. In this class we'll cover some key elements of originality -- specificity, idiosyncrasy, complexity, repetition, and change -- and talk about accessing them in both drafting and revision. While originality might seem intuitive, or even a product of the writer's personality, it's in fact a skill that can be sharpened. That's what we'll be doing.

12:30 – 1:30pm CT
Panel Discussion: Promoting and Selling Your Book
Featuring Julia Borcherts and Sara Connell

For years, you put your heart and soul into writing and revising your book, a press agrees to publish it, but then what, after the ink dries? How do you get your book from the printing press into readers’ hands? How does your book get the attention it deserves from the media? Hear from publicists Julia Borcherts and Sara Connell on best strategies.

2:00 – 3:00pm CT
How to Describe Characters
Featuring Gioia Diliberto

All stories – in fiction and nonfiction – have characters. And characters need to be described. A specific description of a character grounds readers in the world of a story and helps them believe in it. If readers can “see” a character in their mind’s eye, they’re much more likely to engage with what’s happening on the page. But description for description’s sake, no matter how beautiful, witty, or colorful, is wasteful unless it illuminates qualities behind the mere physical. In this workshop, we’ll explore elements that make successful character descriptions and try writing one ourselves.

3:30 – 4:30pm CT
Writing Ourselves into Place
Featuring Maya Marshall

In this generative workshop we will delve into the choices writers make to craft a poetics of place. How we write about where we are, have been, and wish to be can birth a world, buoy a metaphor, or inspire an environmental intervention. Join us as we close read brief texts from cross-genre writers and get started on writing a poem, scene, or paragraph embodying a place with character.

Please note: schedule is subject to change.