Prairie Writers' Workshop
Place-Based Identity: A creative-nonfiction workshop focused on connections between self and place.
June 2-5, 2011
with
Angela L. Glover, Artist-in-residency

Participants will enjoy 14 hours of creative nonfiction classes led by an experienced writer. The workshop will be held in Red Cloud, Nebraska; the childhood home of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Willa Cather. Three-hour workshops will be held daily throughout the residency. Writers are encouraged to visit the Willa Cather Memorial Prairie to glean inspiration from the land and its rare forbs and grasses.

Guided tours of Cather's childhood home and other sites relating to her life and writing will be available to registrants.

Itinerary

Thursday, June 2
4:30-5:00 PM: Participant check-in, Red Cloud Opera House, 413 Webster Street
6:00-9:00 PM: Where to begin when writing creative nonfiction


Friday, June 3
9:30 or 11:00 AM/1:30 or 3:00 PM: Town Tour of Cather historic sites
6:00-9:00 PM: View clips from Cather's films related to her connection to the Prairie, Writing Workshop: The Role of Displacement


Saturday, June 4
10:00 AM-12:00PM: Tour of the Cather Prairie/On-Site Nature Writing
1:00-5:00PM: Writing Workshop: Stylistics, Form, and the Stuff In-Between


Sunday, June 5
1:00-3:00PM: Place-Based Identity: sharing our work with each other
3:00-4:30PM: Public Reception and Reading


Overnight arrangements can be made at Green Acres Motel, one mile north of the Foundation, by calling 402-746-2201.

Following Sunday afternoon's program, participants will be invited to share their writings at a public reception. Angela Glover will read from her collection and beverages and appetizers will be provided.

Click here to register.

Click here to download the brochure.

More about Angela L. Glover

Angela Glover is a Visiting Asst. Professor of English at Simpson College, just south of Des Moines, Iowa, where she teaches writing and literature classes and coordinates the creative writing reading series. She completed graduate work at The University of Nebraska and The University of Kansas, obtaining her PhD in 2008. Her writing has appeared in The Mochilla Review, The Sequel, Heritage of the Great Plains, and Eureka Studies Teaching Short Fiction. Her memoir, All Skate, Now Reverse, is about growing up in the Midwest. As a collective work, it seeks to convey a greater truth about how family and place inform identity and is currently under consideration at Mid List Press. Presently, she's working on a couple of other projects. Glover's scholarly curiosity in place and identity includes a book project titled "[Re]-settling the United States: How Multicultural Gastronomy Influenced the Flavors of American Literature." This critical project looks at how the representation of food in the work of authors such as Willa Cather, Zora Neale Hurston, Jumpa Lahiri, Sandra Cisneros, and Amy Tan enables an understanding of cultural identity that is influenced by ethnic cuisine found in the United States. Whether making soup from potatoes or tortillas from maize, the process of turning raw ingredients into food is a cultural practice shaped by the narratives and connections communities share about both agriculture and eating. These connections reveal the value of Cather's statement in Shadows on the Rock, "a new society begins with the salad dressing." The second project she is working on is a collection of personal essays about growing up in a suburb during the 70s. In these essays Glover grapples with "going green," living in a split level track home, and being afraid of owls. Glover lives in Indianola with her husband and their two dogs, Lucy and Chopper.