- What & Who: Workshop of Witness, with Kimberly Williams
- When: Saturday, November 4th from 9:30AM to 11:30AM
- Where: GCC Main Campus, Room LA-141
- Why: Troubling times call for writers to witness, record, and bring perspective and levity.
If you are a thoughtful person (and most writers are), you might find yourself struggling with the contemporary moment we find ourselves in. As a world, we struggle with terrorism, poverty, unstable politics, and famine, just to name a few of our challenges. As a country, we also struggle with terrorism, poverty, deeply embedded racism, immigration issues, and an government which feels unstable to many. What do we do in the face of all of this? How do we face it with our pens, our keyboards, and our words?
This workshop will do the following:
- Help define what witness writing is – as a subgenre.
- Look at the history of Witness Writing
- Help define what types of writing witness writing includes.
We will also consider these questions in the workshop:
- How do writers respond to the troubling times which surround us?
- What is a writer’s responsibility toward the world around him in the midst of troubling times?
- How do we approach some of these gigantic and overwhelming events in the face of a media which makes them even larger?
If you find yourself trying to articulate responses to even one of these issues, or another global, national, or local issue that’s on your mind, bring that issue with you – even bring a newspaper clipping or article if you wish. Come with what’s on your mind, and we’ll think about how to approach and write about these topics together.
Interested in delving deeper? Looking ahead to Spring 2018, Kimberly Williams will be teaching an entire course on the writer as witness, using multiple genres as a way of witnessing the world around us. Get a taste of the class by attending the Saturday workshop on November 4th, and then Register for Spring: CRW202, Section 28149, Online.
GCC Creative Writing 