Thursday Writer's Workshops
Join us for one, two, or all three of these workshops conducted by our Missouri Western State University English faculty. Each session will include: workshopping winning Scholastic Writing Awards competition entries from 2007, practicing the strategies for effective writing our facilitators share with us, and writing and receiving feedback on drafts for this year's contest. In addition to pizza, everyone who comes to the workshop will receive a notebook for journaling as well as a Thursday Writer’s Workshop Certificate of Completion.
Signup by the Monday before each Thursday session you will attend by sending an email to scholastic@missouriwestern.edu.
Include: Name(s) of student(s) and/or teacher(s) attending; grade; school; evening phone number; email address.
Led by Meg Thompson
Meg Thompson led a popular workshop titled "From Dre to Death Cab" focusing on the intersection of poetry and songwriting for last year's High School Writing Day at Missouri Western. An English instructor at Missouri Western, her poetry has most recently appeared in journals such as The Louisville Review, and she is also working on a collection of lyric essays. She graduated from West Virginia University with an MFA in creative writing, and her favorite poet is Johnny Cash.
Workshop Focus:
Emily Dickinson said, "If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry." How does one accomplish writing with this much power? Let’s find out.
Led by Dana Andrews
Dana Andrews is currently in his third year as an instructor of English at Missouri Western. However, Dana's second life as a college instructor comes after twenty-plus years of experience in Los Angeles. Most notably, Dana was Executive Story Editor for NewLine Cinema - where he helped develop installments of the "A Nightmare on Elm Street" franchise. As well, he wrote episodic television, situation comedies, and was story consultant for numerous episodes on all three major networks.
Workshop Focus:
Without story, scenes, character, conflict, and dialogue, there is nothing - no director, no actors, no set designer, no cameraperson... no film, or play, or television show. It all begins with the writer, and the writer of anything for the screen or stage must first understand conflict. This workshop will give you a couple of tools to think about when creating your scenes.
Led by Bill Church
Bill Church has a Ph.D. in creative writing from the University of Kansas. He is revising his dissertation, a novel titled The Just-Enough Club, for publication. His short stories, essays, and poems have appeared in Icarus; Soundings; The Western Horseman; Tamaqua; Number One; Big Muddy: a Journal of the Mississippi River Valley; Coal City Review; Spring Formal; and Steam Ticket. He directs the learning communities program and teaches composition and creative writing at Missouri Western State University, where he also serves as Faculty Editor of The Mochila Review and Faculty Advisor to Canvas.
Workshop Focus:
We writers sometimes become so focused on plot, character, and setting that we forget language itself is the essence of fine writing. Our workshop will concentrate on delivering those key elements in language that keeps readers racing into our prose just to see what linguistic acrobatics we next perform.
These are photos from the 2009 workshops.
