Compose Creative Writing Conference

This workshop invites participants to explore hopeful visions of the future or alternative worlds. Through guided writing exercises and discussion, participants will practice articulating goals for their imagined society, using awareness of social and ecological relationships to design ways to achieve those goals, and identifying how narrative conflict and interest can still exist in a fundamentally utopian setting. 

Arwen Spicer holds a PhD in English from the University of Oregon. She is a college English instructor, science fiction writer and educator on the concept of workable utopias. Her doctoral studies on ecology in utopian science fiction informs her commitment to helping communities build hopeful visions for the future.

Books by Arwen Spicer

While we are all physically distant and living through this challenging time, I’ve found the puzzle-like qualities of poetic form to be a satisfying escape from my free-form cascade of worrying thoughts. Paradoxically, poetic form has also helped me trick myself into grounding into the deep truths that are hardest to give voice to. In this workshop, I’ll share several of these techniques as starting points for us to write together, provide some space for us to share writing in our virtual community, and offer some additional ideas for using form to spark more poems after our workshop ends.

Jennifer Perrine is the author of three books of poetry: "No Confession, No Mass" (winner of the Publishing Triangle Audre Lorde Award and the Prairie Schooner Book Prize); "In the Human Zoo;" and "The Body Is No Machine." A fourth book, "Again," is forthcoming from Airlie Press in 2020.

Books by Jennifer Perrine

This session will consider how we draw stories from our lives and those of our families and the many truths of each. Perspective — point of view — and creativity define the stories we tell. And the same story has many threads to be tugged on or woven or knotted or, perhaps, burned, but all of us who tell stories are weavers of the truths and falsities of our lives. It’s seductive to think that we have one true story, but just think for a moment about telling the following people about your first date: grandparents, mother, father, sister, brother, child, best friend, teacher, shrink, and so on. Same truth? Same story? Let’s talk about how our point-of-view is determined so much by audience. And vice versa. And this even goes for the stories we tell ourselves. 

We will also consider how this understanding can help us find the best vehicle for telling a story. Which publishers to consider and how to suss out the POVs of their acquiring editors.

Dennis Stovall is an Oregon writer, publisher and educator now retired from PSU where he founded Ooligan Press and the graduate program in book publishing. He has traveled and taught internationally as a Fulbright Specialist. With Linny Stovall, he founded Media Weavers and Blue Heron Publishing. He received a BA from the University of Oregon Honors College in 1968 where he majored in political science after minoring in math. For the next decade, he worked in a variety of jobs, from sandhog to steelworker and San Francisco to Pittsburgh. He then pursued freelance writing, followed by publishing and teaching. 

Books by Dennis Stovall

If you are feeling creatively stuck, scattered, or emotionally all over the place lately, you're not alone. Come learn some gentle methods that will help. Opening the Creative Mind combines simple meditation techniques with writing prompts that have proven effective for breaking through creative blocks and finding new perspective. We create a cheerful and supportive atmosphere for you to overcome blocks, clear mental clutter, and silence self-doubt.

Trista Cornelius is a writer and illustrator cultivating cheer through her warm and whimsical cards, coloring books, and snail mail. Previously, Trista taught college English and loves helping students of all ages and abilities find their writing voice. Her essays have been published online and in print, and you can see her creative work on her Etsy shop.

Robin Vada brings a grounded, warm, and practiced approach to meditation. She has practiced meditation for most of her life, and began teaching in 2010. As a filmmaker, musician, and poet, she has personally used these techniques to find her way through creative blocks more times than she can count! Her work has been featured in multiple film festivals, including Dances with Films (Oscar-qualifying fest). You can see her creative work at RobinVada.com.

Ekphrastic writers are worker bees who harvest visual art to pollenate creative work. We will look at ways to both begin as well as jumpstart current projects through visual prompts. Participants can choose from a wide range of visual delights charged with the energy needed to fuel more art. This is an open-genre generative writing class, focusing on fiction and poetry, but welcome to non-fiction writers as well. The workshop will include examples of ekphrastic texts, in-class writing prompts, dedicated writing time, and the option to share new work out loud. 

Amy Baskin's fiction and poetry are currently featured in Noctua Review, Bear Review, River Heron Review, and forthcoming in Pirene's Fountain. She is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, a 2019 Oregon Literary Arts Fellow, and a 2019 Oregon Poetry Association prize winner. 

Books by Amy Baskin

Do you love writers that make you laugh and are you wondering how to include some humor in your fiction, poetry, screenplay, or nonfiction writing? Or is your life full of funny stories you're not sure how to write them? Maybe people tell you, “You're so funny!” and you want to learn how to translate that in your writing? We'll look at how different writers tickle the funny bone and how you can do that in your own writing. When writing comedy, there are some universal rules for lighthearted humor and there are also ways to use darker stuff such as humiliation, brutal honesty, and vulnerability (just for starters!). Those who use humor in their writing do so in a myriad of ways and in class we’ll examine them and I’ll teach you some exercises to explore different techniques to inspire you. I’ll also share some strategies to magnify humor that I learned from doing professional Improv Comedy in NYC and L.A. Get ready to laugh, chortle, and sniggle and to make others giggle, cackle and guffaw!

Debby Dodds is the author of the novel "Amish Guys Don't Call" (2017), which was on the list Best YA OF 2017 by Powell’s Books, featured in Random House’s Better with Books, and made an Amazon Top 100 in a YA category. Debby has stories in twenty anthologies including NY Times best-selling collections. As an actress, she wrote and performed in comedy stage shows at both Disneyland and Disney World. She also screamed in many indie horror films.

Books by Debby Dodds

How do we build a writing life that is deep and meaningful, but also fulfilling and efficient? How can we sit down at our desks and tell stories from our heart when we all feel so broken? In this workshop, we'll discuss how you get your writing life back on track, so you can find a refuge in the darkness and create your own light. 

Kate Ristau is an author, folklorist, and the Executive Director of Willamette Writers. You can find her essays in the Washington Post and the New York Times, and her young adult and middle grade books at your favorite indie bookstore. Find out more about Kate at Kateristau.com.

Books by Kate Ristau

In poetry or prose, tension packs the punch. Learn ways to build and use tension—with rhythm, line breaks, sentence variation, language, and other tools. Especially if you’re writing about intense experiences, you want your lines or sentences to capture and enhance the meaning. You’ll write, share, respond, dig into examples, try new muscles. No experience necessary. All experiences welcome.

Kate Gray's passion stems from teaching, leading workshops and salons, and hosting Writing Together: a free meditation and daily writing practice during this Covid-crazy time. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, two full-length poetry collections, and one novel which stares at bullying without blinking. Kate and her partner live in a purple house in Portland, Oregon with their impetuous dog.

Books by Kate Gray

An exploration of poetry and the visual prompt, from Matthew Brady and Walt Whitman, to Robert Frank and Allen Ginsberg, into the present day.

B.A. Van Sise is an internationally-known photographer and the author of "Children of Grass," proclaimed "the year's most most startlingly original, remarkable book" by Joyce Carol Oates in the Times' Books of the Year 2019.

His visual work has previously appeared in the New York Times, Village Voice, Washington Post and BuzzFeed, as well as major museum exhibitions throughout the United States, including Ansel Adams' Center for Creative Photography, the Peabody Essex Museum, the Museum of Jewish Heritage, and the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery.  His written work has appeared this year in Poets & Writers, The Southampton Review, Eclectica, and The North American Review.

Books by B.A. Van Sise

"The writer’s job is to look at the world one street, one tenement at a time because it is through the particular that we come to know the general, through the concrete that we come to know the abstract, through the peculiar that we come to know the normal, through the home place that we come to know the world." — John Dufresne

Place is both physical and temporal. It can be here and now, or the past made here and now, or the future made here and now, or a fully imagined speculative universe. Either way, in your story or memoir, or novel a specific place should rise up and engulf the reader, envelope her in John Gardner’s “fictional dream.” Remember, place delivers the reader into a solid world. Thus, it is the writers’ first task to render and/or create a place, to make it visceral and believable. Through reading samples, specific exercises, and a thoughtful discussion we will discover ways that setting activates character and story. 

Natalie Serber is the author of three books, "Shout Her Lovely Name," a New York Times Notable Book of 2012, and a summer reading selection from O, the Oprah Magazine; "Community Chest," a memoir; and her novel-in-stories, "Must Be Nice," which is currently seeking representation. Her fiction has appeared in One Story Magazine, Zyzzyva Magazine, The Bellingham Review, and others.  Essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, O, The Oprah Magazine, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Rumpus, Salon, and others. Natalie is currently working on a memoir.

Books by Natalie Serber