POETRY READING 2NITE THURSDAY, APRIL, 28th

Please join us 4/28 in celebrating National Poetry Month and the closing event for Salem State’s Writers’ Series with poets:

LISA OLSTEIN & DAVID DANIEL
WHEN: THURSDAY, APRIL 28th , 7:30 PM
WHERE: MLK ROOM, ELLISON CAMPUS CENTER

Lisa Olstein is the author of Radio Crackling, Radio Gone (Copper Canyon Press, 2006), winner of the Hayden Carruth Award, and Lost Alphabet, named one of the nine best poetry books of 2009 by Library Journal (Copper Canyon Press, 2009). Cold Satellite, an album of songs based on her writing, was released by singer-songwriter Jeffrey Foucault in fall 2010. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and Centrum. Her poems have appeared in many literary journals including The Iowa Review, American Letters & Commentary, Denver Quarterly, Fairy Tale Review, Indiana Review, notnostrums, and Glitterpony. She is a contributing editor of jubilat. With Dara Wier and Noy Holland she co-founded the Juniper Initiative for Literary Arts & Action at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she is Associate Director of MFA Program for Poets and Writers.

David Daniel was raised in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. He has been poetry editor of the literary journal Ploughshares and has taught literature and poetry writing at Emerson College in Boston. His first full-length collection, Seven-Star Bird (Graywolf, 2003) was the winner of the Levis Reading Prize. He is also the author of a chapbook, The Quick and the Dead (Haw River, 1992). His poems have appeared in such journals as AGNI, Witness, The Literary Review, LILT, Poetry East, the Antioch Review, and Post Road. His essays and reviews have been published in various venues, including The Harvard Review, Ploughshares, Boston Review, The Writer’s Chronicle, and The Journal of Country Music.

I hope you are able to attend!

Writing Prompt #14

Pick an incident or event that you’ve tried to write about or that you’ve hesitated to write about because it is so personal or difficult. First write it in the first person point of view. When you are done, write it in the third person omniscient, meaning that there is a narrator who knows all and sees all and who is commenting on what is happening according to the “truth” of the incident.

Writing Prompt #11

Choose an individual who has been enormously influential in your life.
Create  list of ten things that person has taught you.
Create a list of ten things that person did not teach you.
Create a list of ten items that fit into the category of things not known.
Call this list: "I Want to Know Why"
Take one item from this list and write a page of prose about it.

Writing Prompt #12

Take one of the following ideas and begin a short story filled with all five senses:
1. A young girl and her mother walk to the edge of a field, kneel down in the grass and plant a tree.
2. A small team of graduate students are conducting research at sea when they are overtaken by a wild storm.
3. A middle-aged man wakes up in a seemingly endless field of wildflowers in full bloom.
4. A family of five from a large, urban city decides to spend their one-week vacation camping.
5. An elderly couple traveling through the desert spend an evening stargazing.
6. A woman is working in her garden.
7. Some people are hiking in the woods when they are suddenly surrounded by hundreds of butterflies.
8. A person who lives in a metropolitan apartment connects with nature through the birds that come to the window.
9. A group of college students launch a project to grow their own food so they can eat healthier and be closer to nature.
10. A rural family moves to a big city or
11. A city family moves to the country
12. Two adolescents, a sister and brother, are visiting their relatives' farm and witness a sow giving birth.

Writing Prompt #13

1.     Begin with oral storytelling about something that happened to you in the past week or month

2.     Take 10 minutes to write a pure narration (telling) version of the recent event

3.     Next do a pure scene version

4.     Finally, write a version that is a combination of both scene and narration.

5.     Read each version aloud to your group and listen to feedback from your peers.

MANDATORY ATTENDANCE @ MEMOIR READING TONIGHT!! 3/30 WED.

Judith Nies will read tonight in the MLK room in Ellison at 7:30. Anyone who wants to meet the author and have dinner with her, come to Panera Bread in Vinnin Square at 6 p.m. There will be no class tomorrow. Conferences available all day in Meier Hall room 104 (Prof. Mulman's office).