The Writers Studio at ACC provides a full-day writing conference for students and community members that is the most affordable, quality-laden literary festival you’ll find, for writers of all levels and ages. Saturday, March 23 from 8:00am - 5:00pm, includes continental breakfast and a catered lunch.
There will be 4 sessions specific to: Fiction, Non-fiction, Poetry, and Disabilities literature or publishing session.
Agenda:
- 9:00 - 9:30am: Registration and continental breakfast
- 9:30 - 10:00am: Welcome and introduction of presenters
- 10:00 - 11:30am: Session 1 (Fiction and Poetry)
- 11:45am - 1:00pm: Lunch
- 1:00 - 2:30pm: Session 2 (Poetry and Disability / Non-Fiction)
- 2:45 - 3:45pm: Presenters Open Mic and closing comments
- 3:45 - 4:45pm: Book fair and meet and greet with presenters
Registration Fees (includes catered lunch):
- $25 for students
- $30 for CCCS employees
- $40 for seniors
- $55 for general admission
Poetry and Disability Workshop: Saying the Unsayable: The Poetry of Disability
Led by Shawna Ervin
Expressing disabilities or marginalized experiences can be challenging in writing. While it may seem counterintuitive, using the constraints of poetry forms can provide the freedom to say what can’t be said in other writing. This workshop will examine both traditional and experimental forms as a way to show what it is like to be disabled or marginalized. For example, a poem using the structure of the alphabet (an abecedarian) may help express the challenges of a person with autism who struggles to communicate. This will be a generative workshop with prompts.
Shawna Ervin has an MFA in nonfiction and poetry. She writes about disability and trauma and serves as a guest poet and mentor for Art from Ashes, which provides writing workshops for marginalized youth. She is a recent alum of Tin House, Bread Loaf, and Kenyon Review workshops. Recent publications include American Literary Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, Blue Mesa Review, Drunk Monkeys, Juked, Sonora Review, Sweet: A Literary Confection, and elsewhere. Shawna lives in Denver with her family.
Writing Historical Fiction Workshop: Truth and Invention in Historical Fiction
Led by Annie Dawid
Students with ideas about historical fiction can learn how to research, plan and write fiction based on real-life stories. Presenter will offer a schematic from her own novel, PARADISE UNDONE: A NOVEL OF JONESTOWN, offering tips and warnings about how to deal with using facts in a novel or short story. We will ask what are the advantages/disadvantages in writing fiction as opposed to non-fiction about the subject at hand, and consider what various ratios of truth and invention can provide for both authors and readers. Students should prepare by choosing an historical subject — 20th century and earlier — and pick one useful volume of relevant research and bring it to the workshop, if possible. If all research is online, please bring laptop.
Annie Dawid teaches creative writing at the University College, University of Denver. She was formerly professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, OR. Annie won the 2022 Screencraft Award in the Cinematic Novel and the 2022 Short Story award from Chipping Norton (UK). Other awards include the Dana Award in the Essay, the Orlando Flash Fiction Award, The New Rocky Mountain Voices Award (drama) and the Northern Colorado Award in Creative Non-Fiction.
Her novel PARADISE UNDONE: A NOVEL OF JONESTOWN was published 11/18/23, the 45th anniversary of the Jonestown massacre by Inkspot Publishing of the UK and distributed worldwide. The book has received a half-dozen positive reviews thus far, and she has been on 6 podcast-interviews, available online. Her fifth book, PUT OFF MY SACKCLOTH, was published in 2021 by The Humble Essayist Press. It was a finalist for the International Rubery Award in Non-Fiction. Her poetry chapbook, ANATOMIE OF THE WORLD, was published in 2017 by Finishing Line Press.
Her three prior volumes of fiction are:
York Ferry: A Novel, Cane Hill Press, 1993, second printing, winner of 2016 International Rubery Award in Fiction
Lily in the Desert: Stories, Carnegie-Mellon University Press, 2001
And Darkness Was Under His Feet: Stories of a Family, Litchfield Review Press, 2009
Hybrid Creative Nonfiction Workshop: Art Collage and Hybrid Creative Nonfiction
Led by Hillary Leftwich
The traditional essay is steeped in transitions and logic—leading the reader (gently) by the hand from one blocky paragraph to the next. The lyric essay is the radical teenager, playing with leaps that connect and are inspired from intuition and form. We’ll explore the use of the ART COLLAGE & SEGMENTED ESSAY and how to blend/blur/break genres using these forms as the backbone to widen our worlds in experimentation using art forms involving found objects and your own words based on an in-class writing exercise—the possibilities are endless when it comes to the hybrid form and there are no rules!
Hillary Leftwich (she/her) is the author of Ghosts Are Just Strangers Who Know How to Knock (Agape Editions, 2023, 2nd edition) and Aura (Future Tense Books and Blackstone Audio Publishing, 2022). She owns Alchemy Author Services and Writing Workshop and teaches writing at several universities along with Lighthouse Writers, a local nonprofit, for adults and youth. She focuses her writing on class struggle, single motherhood, trauma, mental illness, the supernatural, ritual, and the impact of neurological disease. On the outskirts of the writing world, she is also a professional Tarot and Bones reader and teaches Tarot and Tarot writing workshops focusing on strengthening divination abilities and writing.
She has several upcoming workshops through Writing Workshops, an educational partner with Electric Lit, and at Lighthouse Writers. You can find her upcoming workshops on her website.
She is a featured author and presenter at the upcoming Englewood Public Library Festival: City of Englewood
You can schedule a Tarot reading with her on her website.
Poetry Workshop: iPoetry: Performative and Hybrid Poetry
Led by Aerik Francis and Jason Masino
In this poetry workshop, we’ll explore ways in which we may both engage poetry through technology and engage technology through poetry. We’ll discuss the practical elements of these relationships (making our poetry more accessible, finding new ways to share our poetry) as well as craft elements (breathing new life into older work, exploring new media, new forms, and new content to compose our poetry). We’ll then have time to conduct our own experiments with technology and poetry and share our results with each other.
Aerik Francis (they/he) is a Queer Black & Latinx poet & teaching artist based in Denver, Colorado, USA. Francis is the author of the chapbooks MISEDUCATION (May 2023, New Delta Review), and BODYELECTRONIC (April 2022, Trouble Department). They have received poetry fellowship support from SAFTA, the Chrysalis Institute, CantoMundo, and The Watering Hole. They are also a poetry reader for Underblong poetry journal and MICRO podcast, as well as a coordinator with Slam Nuba. Francis is currently working in a new medium, music production, toward an LP of poem-songs. Francis has poetry published widely, links of which may be found at linktr.ee/aerik as well as their website phaentompoet.com . Find them on IG/TW/youtube/soundcloud @phaentompoet.
Jason Masino (he/him) received his BA in Dramatic Art from UC Davis and his MFA in Poetry from Regis University. His poetry has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize and has been published in Cultural Daily, Inverted Syntax, South Florida Poetry Journal, Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, and many others. His debut book of poetry—Sinner's Prayer—was released in 2022 (Passengers Press).
For more informations or accommodations, contact Juliet Beckman at juliet [dot] beckman [at] arapahoe [dot] edu (juliet[dot]beckman[at]arapahoe[dot]edu) | 303.797.5617 or Jomil Ebro at jomil [dot] ebro [at] arapahoe [dot] edu (jomil[dot]ebro[at]arapahoe[dot]edu).