Literary Conference
“Perspective”
September 26-27, 2024
Location:
Goodstein Foundation Library, Room 215A and 215B
This year’s conference focuses on the theme of “Perspective.” Writers help us to form ways of seeing the world as well as ways of thinking about
being in the world. They help us see the power in nature and in technology, in thinking about family and about trauma.
This year’s conference will feature free public readings, craft talks, and workshops* from authors Elizabeth Gonzalez James, Matt Daly, James Fujinami Moore, and Chad Hanson.
* = Workshops are free, but require sign-up. Please email conference director for information
Elizabeth Gonzalez James
Elizabeth Gonzalez James is a screenwriter and author of the novels, Mona at Sea and The Bullet Swallower, as well as the chapbook, Five Conversations About Peter Sellers. She teaches fiction writing at Grub Street. Originally from South Texas, Elizabeth now lives with her family in Massachusetts.
You can find her on Instagram: @unefemmejames
Matt Daly
Matt Daly is the author of two poetry collections: The Invisible World (Unsolicited Press, 2024) and Between Here and Home (Unsolicited Press, 2019), and the chapbook, Red State (Seven Kitchens Press, 2019). He is the recipient of a Neltje Blanchan Award for writing inspired by the natural world and a Creative Writing Fellowship in Poetry from the Wyoming Arts Council. Matt is the Executive Director of Jackson Hole Writers and co-founder of Write to Thrive, an enterprise that brings reflective and creative writing practices to individuals and professional groups to cultivate creativity and wellbeing. He lives in Wyoming.
Chad Hanson
Chad Hanson serves as a member of the faculty in sociology and religion at Casper College. He is also the Director of the Wyoming Mustang Institute, and he is the author of a wide range of books, including the forthcoming title, The Wild Horse Effect. For more information, visit: www.chadhanson.org.
James Fujinami Moore
James Fujinami Moore’s debut poetry collection is Indecent Hours (Four Way Books, 2022), winner of the 2023 GLCA New Writers Award in Poetry and the 2024 AAAS Outstanding Achievement Book Award in Poetry, and finalist for the Golden Poppy’s Martin Cruz Smith Award & the Lambda Literary Award in Bisexual Poetry. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Barrow Street’s 4×2, Boston Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Guesthouse, Jet Fuel Review, The Margins, the Pacifica Literary Review, and Prelude.
Schedule
All events will be held in the Goodstein Foundation Library classroom space (LI 215)
Thursday, September 26th
- 9:30 am – 10 am A Reading from Chad Hanson
- 10 am – 10:50 am “Literary Horsepower: Deciding What You Care About” with Chad Hanson
In a general session, focused on “Seven Steps to Becoming a Passably Successful Writer,” Hanson will guide participants through a series of considerations on subject matter and commitment, all of which relate to the process of producing stories, articles, or poems for publication.
- 11 am – 11:50 am “Looking Back: Some Notes on Redaction” with James Fujinami Moore
Redaction poems (also called erasure, or blackout poetry) is a formal technique that can often bend and invert the perspectives of power – between writer and text, and between reader and poem. In this talk, we will explore specific technical advantages and disadvantages to certain forms of removing text, as well as discuss the broader ethics and implications of withholding information from a reader.
- 1:30 pm – 2 pm A Reading from James Fujinami Moore
- 2 pm – 4 pm
Nonfiction Workshop with Chad Hanson LI 215b
In this workshop, students will take time to think about their values and the perspectives that they bring to the pressing issues that we face as a society today. During the workshop, students will start a piece of writing with potential to spark or inspire change.
- 2 pm – 4 pm
Transparent Structure: How Source Material Invites Poetic Forms with Matt Daly LI 215a
This generative workshop will play with possibilities for finding invented poetic forms inspired by the structural elements of the source material for poems. Writers will try their hand at looking closely at structural elements of art, natural and found objects, non-poetic texts, and physical movements to invite new forms of organization to their poetic efforts.
Friday, September 27th
- 9:30 am – 10 am A Reading from Elizabeth Gonzalez James
- 10 am– 10:50 am “Call and Response: Poetic Practice as Conversation” with Matt Daly
In this session, Wyoming poet Matt Daly will share stories of how individual poems and larger poetry projects have emerged out of responses to a broad range of sources — from art forms to landforms and from linguistic phrases to movement phrases — with the intent to motivate fellow writers to find new perspective and challenges from the instigating experiences which spark our writing.
- 11 am – 11:50 am “Making yourself heard: Writing strong voice in fiction” with Elizabeth Gonzalez James
For anyone planning on publishing their work, voice is vital. Agents and editors frequently cite voice as the most important element that makes a manuscript stand out from the slush pile. In this session, we will discuss six elements of voice in fiction – Inflection, Dialect / Jargon, saying exactly what you mean, Sentence length and rhythm, Characterization, and Access.
- 1:30 pm – 2 pm A Reading from Matt Daly
- 2 pm – 4 pm
Poetry Workshop with James Fujinami Moore LI 215a
In this workshop, we will explore how inventing new forms can help shape a poem’s content. We will explore how to pull forms from an existing poem, as well as using numeric repetition and recurrence to build a poem’s engine and complicate its associations.
- 2 pm – 4 pm
Fiction Workshop with Elizabeth Gonzalez James LI 215b
Henry James wrote that someone should “Be a person upon whom nothing is lost.” In this workshop, we will talk about writing with your five senses plus your heart, and how that can liven up your writing.