Author: gccazcrw

Saturday Workshop: What the Writer Sees, Workshop of Witness

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  • 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.

 

District & GCC Writing Competitions

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Friends. Fall is here, winter approaches, and with these seasons come the usual visitors: 90 to 100 degree weather, National Novel Writing Month, existential dread, and writing competitions within the Maricopa Community College District and here at GCC.

First up is Maricopa’s competition, which is open to all students within the Maricopa district. The contest accepts submissions in essay, fiction, one-act play/script, and poetry categories. The deadline for this contest is November 17th, 2017.  

UPDATE: The deadline has been extended to December 1st, 2017 by 10:59PM.

Read through the official entry guidelines and submit here: Creative Writing at MCCCD.

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Not to be outdone, GCC has our own writing contest through the Traveler, our arts and literary magazine. We accept the same genres as the district competition above–essay, fiction, one-act play/script, and poetry. Plus, we also accept submissions of flash fiction (500 words or fewer) as a separate category.

To read the full entry guidelines and submit your work, head here: Submissions

Don’t know which competition to submit to? Simple: submit to both.

Any work you enter into the district competition can also be entered in the Traveler competition, and the reverse is also true.

Problem solved. Now, get your work ready, polish it up, and submit!

Reminder: Open Mic & Kimberly Williams Tonight!

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kwilliams-bookcoverDon’t forget that tonight (Wednesday, 10/18) GCC is hosting our October Open Mic event. This event is free and open to the public. Come share your own creative work, be it poetry, prose, or some other genre. Or, simply come listen to the creative endeavors of your peers and neighbors.

In addition to the Open Mic, poet Kimberly Williams will read from her new collection of poetry Finally, the Moon. She is our featured reader for the night, and will take to the stage after the Open Mic portion ends.

All of this begins at 7:00PM on the GCC Main Campus, in SU104. Follow the signs! We’ll have some light refreshments. Have questions? Contact Jeff Baker at jeffrey.baker@gccaz.edu.

October Open Mic: Featuring Kimberly Williams

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kwilliams-bookcoverThere comes a time in every blog post’s life when it needs to put away childish things and enter society as a responsible adult. Time to get a job. Time to find a like-minded blog post and settle down. Have a family. Raise little baby blog posts. Secretly choose a favorite. Find a new web hosting service with more bandwidth and greater security. Time to shop for life insurance policies. Designate secret favorite the sole beneficiary of said life insurance policy. Time to move to Florida. Wait weeks between phone calls.  Be condescended to by no-longer-baby blog posts once those calls do come. Time to regret life choices and question the necessity for putting childish things away in the first place.

But now is not that time.

Now is the time to talk about our next open mic event where you creative wonders regale us with poetry and prose and song. Read us your finished work, your unfinished work, your work that prefers not to be labeled. Now is also the time to talk about GCC’s own Kimberly Williams and her book of poetry, Finally, the Moon, and how she is our featured reader for October’s open mic event. Come to read, come to listen, come to support a great community of writers and people.

  • When: Wednesday, October 18th from 7:00PM to 9:00PM.
  • Where: GCC Main Campus, SU104.
  • Why: Because life is too short not to.

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Kimberly K. Williams teaches Creative Writing and Composition classes at Glendale Community College. She earned an MFA from University of Texas El Paso in Creative Writing. Filled with art, angels, and poems that explore other places, Finally, the Moon is her first full-length publication.

Register now for CRW202: The Writer as Witness or CRW251: In a Flash! Writing Flash Fiction and Prose Poetry with Kimberly Williams in Spring 2018.

Saturday Workshop: Travel Writing With Renee Rivers

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  • What & Who: Travel Writing Workshop conducted by Renee Rivers
  • When: Saturday, October 14th from 9:30AM to 11:30AM
  • Where: GCC Main, Room LA-141
  • Why: I mean, read the post. This sounds amazing!

Travel Writing is an area of writing that is open to everyone. Given the upsurge in travel and online publication possibilities with multiple audiences, travel writing opportunities abound.  Once the parlance of colonial adventurers and conquerors, this art form has been rightfully infiltrated by genre- and boundary-busting creatives, inter-cultural sojourners, and reflective writers to produce a flurry of stories that not only transport readers into other places and cultures, but in which any reader can find themselves whether they travel or not.

Some of today’s most sumptuous and widely read travel writing seeks to situate the individual at the center of the narrative and defines travel in wide-open ways. When travel asks us to show up and interact with new places, peoples and cultures, we are often challenged to understand our inner world in terms of the outer.

And that’s where story magic happens.

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Photo: Renee Rivers, Selfie, Lhasa, Tibet, 2014.

You x place x culture x your interests x your memories x some kind of new insight is where the intersection of exciting new travel narratives emerge. Consider how a story may come to life after visiting a neighborhood ethnic market triggers a childhood memory, or how a grandparent’s journal takes you on a search for cousins across the country, or how sensuous food can transport you into the realm of imaginary travel, or how your college engineering notebooks inspire a trip to university archives or another country to research the science and history of aeronautics, or even how a family vacation may have gone hilariously wrong.

These ideas represent a tiny peephole into the rich and ready domain of travel writing available to writers of all backgrounds today.

In this workshop you will participate in:

  • exposure to many exciting expressions of travel writing
  • creative ways to access authors and practitioners of this craft
  • travel writing exercises meant to center you, your interests, and travel or every day experiences into a trip-tick for continued writing practices
  • reflective writing that explores where your internal and external travels may take you
  • finding travel writing and travel writing markets for your writing
  • mapping out story ideas and how to craft them for potential markets
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Photo: in Phoenix, by Frankie Wheeler, North Mountain.

Renee G. Rivers’ interests can find her behind an acetylene torch, shooing urban chickens from her kitchen or traveling to remote locales.

She holds an M.A. in English from SUNY Brockport, a B.S. in Special Education, and B.A. in German via the Goethe-Institut–Muenchen.

Renee’s stories have appeared in: PBS Filmmaker Jillian Robinson’s Change Your Life Through Travel, Canyon Voices, and The Feminist Wire and have won international awards from SouthWest Writers and Tin House.

Renee currently writes about teaching in remote Alaskan villages, taking her father in a wheelchair to Mount Everest, and teaches First-Year Composition and Travel Writing at Arizona State University at the West Campus.

Tonight! Open Mic, L.M. Reker, & Traveler Readers

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Don’t forget our first Wednesday night reading is tonight, September 20th. We’ll have an open mic for anyone who wishes to share what they’re writing or reading or contemplating. We’ll have a few Traveler winners from last year to regale us with their published work. We’ll have author L.M. Reker to read from his published novels.

Light refreshments will be provided, along with copies of  the Traveler, GCC’s Arts & Literary Magazine.

The fun begins at 7PM on GCC’s Main Campus, in SU104.

September Open Mic: Featuring L.M. Reker & Traveler Winners

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We know we’ve spent some time apart of late, Wednesday. First it was Tuesday that came between us, and then the summer months with their delirium-inducing heat. There arose in us the notion (far-fetched, we know that now) that Wednesday night readings were antiquated, a thing of the past, a glory day from a touch-too-long Springsteen concert, a near-real picture of you inside Robert Smith’s damp and neglected photo albums, Bryan Adams’ little-known second real six-string from 1972. As the great balladeers Skid Row once sang, “Remember yesterday, walking hand in hand. Love letters in the sand, I remember you.”

Well, Tuesday is gone, things done changed, and we remember you, Wednesday.

To celebrate the reborn commitment to our sacred union, we’re having a reading on–you guessed it–Wednesday. There’ll be an open mic, readings from our most recent Traveler winners, and excerpts from our featured reader L.M. Reker. Come to read, come to listen,  come to make semi-obscure references, come to dramatically perform lyrics to forgotten songs about love and nostalgia. There’s something for everyone!

  • When: Wednesday, September 20th from 7:00 to 9:00PM.
  • Where: GCC Main Campus, SU104.
  • Why: Because if society accepted Skid Row as artistic talents, it sure as hell will accept you!

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Saturday Workshop: How To Make Your Writing MOVE

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Creative Writing is one of those “good news/bad news” situations.  The good news is that every writing tool you know and use can help make a story or poem or novel “move” more.  The bad news is that every writing tool you know and use can ALSO make the movement and momentum of a story or poem or novel simply shudder limply and grind quite unmajestically to a stop.

All your writing tools, by definition, slow your writing down – because, by definition, they all use up the reader’s time and space and energy and attention. How you choose to manage that movement and momentum (ultimately your readers’ time and attention) are the keys to a better literary piece.

Explore how to establish and maintain movement and momentum in your writing to your advantage.  In this workshop you’ll be exposed to several writing techniques that improve motion and momentum, and do a few short writing exercises yourself to get the feel for how a few of these techniques  work and/or “fit” your writing (time permitting). Much of the focus for this workshop is on dialogue and description.

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This workshop is free and open to the public. Breakfast pastries will be provided, but bring your own caffeine!

  • What & Who: Creative writing workshop, “How To Make Your Writing MOVE” will be conducted by Gary Lawrence, short story author and creative writing instructor.
  • When: Saturday, September 9th from 9:30AM to 11:30AM.
  • Where: GCC Main, Room LA-141.
  • Why: Because you REALLY don’t have anything better to do.

Gary Lawrence teaches composition and creative writing for GCC and Cochise College.  He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. He published an anthology of short stories in 2013 called Baffled. Gary has given several workshops at GCC before, with topics ranging from “Time in Fiction” to “Short Story Sequences” to “Writing Style.” Most recently Gary has published fiction and CNF  short stories in Canyon Voices (ASU West’s Literary Ezine) and Cochise College’s Mirage.   Gary currently lives in Sierra Vista and teaches CRW170/270 online for GCC.