Workshops and Registration

Register at Brown Paper Ticket by clicking the provided links below. There's no need to print tickets as we will have a list of those registered and will check names off as you arrive on the day of the workshop. If you have any questions about how to register, email getlit@ewu.edu.

All writing workshops will be held on Saturday, April 13 at the Red Lion Hotel at the Park in Spokane. The cost for any student with a current ID is $20 each. Student ID must be presented to the registration desk at the event. For all others, the cost is $30 each. Registration will open starting March 1st. Space is limited to 20 people per session, so pre-registration is recommended. (However, we will also allow day-of registration, as space allows.) Choose from the following options:

AM SESSION   9:30-11:30 am

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Hemingway rewrote the final page of A Farewell to Arms 39 times. Nabokov rewrote every word he ever published. In this workshop, we will attempt to “kill our darlings,” as Faulkner so memorably put it, while learning to love—or at least tolerate—what many consider to be the most painful but important stage of the writing process. Through a variety of exercises, we’ll learn to see our work from new perspectives, take risks, and practice techniques that are guaranteed to improve your writing. Participants are encouraged to bring a work-in-progress… and a big eraser.
Room: Corbin Room
Registration: To pre-register for this workshop, click here.   

Do you decide what to write before you write or do you begin with only an impulse and follow where the poem leads? Are there subjects you know you avoid? Are there subjects you return to again and again? In this workshop, we'll discuss your writing process, most particularly the early stages of writing a poem. I'll suggest ways in which you can become a better listener when it comes to hearing what your poems want to say, and I'll provide you with prompts that give you the opportunity to respond to our discussion. If time permits, you'll also have a chance to share your responses.
Room: Riverside Board Room 2
Registration: To pre-register for this workshop, click here.

The poet Richard Hugo claimed “all truth must conform to music,” for in music we find a fuller, stronger truth. As a prose writer, especially as a creative nonfiction prose writer, I’m not sure I buy that 100% of the time, but, nonetheless, I think Hugo’s on to something. In attending to language, we not only say what it is we’re after in more effective, vivid ways, but we very often find ways to say that which we didn’t even know we could say. We discover what it is we really mean to say. In this craft lesson we will discuss four techniques for attending to language and crafting evocative prose. Participants are asked to bring an essay-in-progress, as we will have some time to apply these techniques in revision and share revised work at the end of the lesson.
Room: Riverside Board Room 1
Registration:   To pre-register for this workshop, click here. 

Developing “voice” in fiction and nonfiction both is a tricky business. If it is your own voice, how to manage the tone and affect and what forms to bring to your story in order to get the truths to resonate takes practice. If it is a character’s voice, what forms and strategies are available for making that voice distinct, vivid, and powerful enough to carry part of the story? In this workshop we will tease out the wide varieties of voice strategies available to prose writers and practice the fine art of building voices that no one can forget. In the process we will develop a series of metaphors that match the voices you call forth in your writing. You will go home hearing voices in the best of ways.
Room: Willow 1
Registration:  To pre-register for this workshop, click here.

PM SESSION   3:30-5:30 pm

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Fiction Workshop with the IECRWA. 

Whether your book is set in a universe far, far away, contains creatures that stay alive through drinking blood, describes people who change into animal shapes, or takes place in a small town in the Midwest, your fictional world has to be as believable as your characters. In this workshop, you’ll learn the intricacies of world building and how to make your setting and characters complement each other. Join published writers from the Inland Empire Chapter of Romance Writers of America (IECRWA) as they guide you through hands-on exercises appropriate for all genres of fiction. Let them show you how to make world building straightforward, exciting, and fun. Our members are published through Tor, Kensington, Grand Central, Entangled, Sourcebooks, Ace Books, Harlequin, Pink Petal Books, and more. You can learn more about IECRWA and its members here.
Room: Corbin Room
Registration: To pre-register for this workshop, click here. 

“The land was ours before we were the land's.”  Robert Frost's poem recited at JFK's inauguration speaks to us in the West, and particularly the Northwest, where sea and mountains, evergreen forests and wheat-covered hills, Native American origins and the cultures of the Pacific Rim and East Asia all exert their power over our imaginations and in the poetic voices and traditions that flourish here.  We will read poems from a number of poets of the West and Northwest--from Stafford's quiet illuminations in his "Reports from a Far Place," to Hugo's Triggering Town, to Snyder's Zen reflections in the Sierras, to DeFrees's Light Station on Tillamook Rock, to poets of the Inland Northwest.  We will reflect on this work's organic connections with the region's natural history, lore, and culture, and write our own poems about scenes and landscapes that move and matter to us, using as many senses as we can to describe the scene; and if there's a story associated with it, tell the story.
Room: Willow 2 
Registration:  To pre-register for this workshop, click here.

David Shields is the author of fourteen books of fiction and nonfiction, including the New York Times bestseller The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead (2008). Shields's work often defies strict categorization and challenges other writers to break free from the constraints of tradition and of their genres. His highly controversial manifesto, Reality Hunger (2010), is a collage of hundreds of quotes from un-cited sources, from surrealist painters to hip hop artists. On the topic of appropriation, Shields says, "Art is a conversation between and among artists, not a patent office."

His forthcoming work, How Literature Saved My Life (2013), is a mix of criticism and autobiography that continues his appeal to writers and readers to demand more from their art. He writes, "Nothing can assuage human loneliness. Literature doesn't lie about this--which is what makes it essential." More information on this workshop coming soon.
Room: Riverside 1
Registration:  To pre-register for this workshop, click here.

This graphic novel workshop considers the place of the genre in the academic canon. For beginners and intermediates that either want to start reading or creating graphic novels, this workshop will investigate the history and development of the graphic novel, will introduce essential "must read" graphic novels, and will explore possible benefits of using graphic novels as teaching tools. Dr. Sean Agriss will be joined by John Waite, the owner of Merlyn's Science-Fiction Fantasy Store, and Manny Trembley, an acclaimed graphic novelist, illustrator, and co-producer of the Eisner-nominated PX! Book One. Additional topics covered in this workshop include graphic novels vs. comics, gender studies, and local graphic novel artists and writers. Opportunities for participants to create sequential art will also be included. Ages 17 and up.
Room: Riverside 2
Registration:  To pre-register for this workshop, click here.

FREE Youth Workshops  

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Keep checking back for updates on the Kids Workshop!
Time: 10:30-11:30 a.m.
Venue: Red Lion Hotel at the Park
Room: Willow 2