The Highland Park Literary Festival is honored that these accomplished authors, poets, dramatists, journalists, and songwriters will present workshops this year.
Workshops will be held on Friday, February 19, 2010.
Kay Barnes is the author of Mortal Means, a book of poetry published by Cherry Grove Collections in 2004 and short-listed for the PEN Southwest Book Award in poetry in 2005. Her poems have been published in America, International Poetry Review, Kansas Quarterly, The Midwest Review, Poetry, and other journals and anthologies. She lives in University Park. She received her MFA in poetry writing from Vermont College and an MA in French from Middlebury College. Ms. Barnes' workshop is titled "Poetry of the Moment." Through a series of exercises that encourage close observation, students will write short poems using various kinds of imagery. [students: register here]
Alan Birkelbach was the 2005 Poet Laureate of Texas, appointed by the State Legislature. He is a native son of Texas. His work has appeared in journals and anthologies such as The Blue Rock Review, Wichita Falls Literature and Art Review, and Borderlands. He has five collections of poetry: Bone Song, Weighed in the Balances, No Boundaries, New and Selected Works, and Translating the Prairie. His sixth book, a children's poetry book, Smurglets Are Everywhere, is due from TCU Press in the fall of 2010. We are honored that Mr. Birkelbach will again judge this year's student poetry competition.
Krys Boyd, the host and managing editor of KERA 90.1's midday talk show Think since 2006, began her career along the U.S.-Mexico border as a reporter, anchor, and news director. A TCU graduate, she returned to North Texas in 1999 as news director for Broadcast.com and later senior producer of broadcast news at Yahoo—a position that provided both the freedom to pursue long-form interviews with cultural and political figures and an audience to consume them. She joined KERA in 2001, where she has hosted a nightly radio talk show; written and produced television programs, including the critically-acclaimed JFK: Breaking the News (2003); and produced and co-hosted the Emmy Award-winning On The Record. Think was expanded to include a weekly television presence in February of 2007. Ms. Boyd is a director in the Texas Lyceum and lives in Dallas; she and her husband have four children. Ms. Boyd's workshop, "Writing for the Ear/Reading Aloud," will examine writing that is clear, concise, and pleasant to listen to when read aloud: skills useful in writing not only for broadcast or public speaking, but also in creative writing, which can be particularly powerful when read aloud. Cadence, rhythm, and word order all play into good writing. We'll explore how you can develop abilities for communicating effectively with your voice. [students: register here]
Natasha Carrizosa & Joaquín Zihuatanejo: Natasha Carrizosa is a mother, a dreamer, and a lover of music and life. A poet/spoken word artist who celebrates her dual heritage (African and MexicanAmerican) with works that weave an intoxicating blend of cultures, languages and impressions. She has shared the stage with Maya Angelou, Jill Scott, Erykah Badu, E. Lynn Harris and other poets, authors, and artists. Her writings have been featured in Rhapsody, Her Mark, and x magazine (United Kingdom.) She is author of mejiafricana, a spoken word cd, and nude, a collection of love and erotic poems. Currently she is recording her second spoken word cd, the dreamcatcher. Joaquín Zihuatanejo is a poet, spoken word artist, and award-winning teacher. Born and raised in the East Dallas barrio, Mr. Zihuatanejo's work captures the duality of the Chicano culture. He writes about existing between the streets of the barrio and dream wanderings that found refuge in stories and poems. In 2005, he was featured on HBO's "Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry." His performance before a packed audience in New York City received a standing ovation. He recently won the 2008-09 Individual World Poetry Slam Championship, and he represented the U.S. at the 2009 World Cup of Poetry Slam in Paris, which he won, besting 13 poets from 13 different countries, and making him the #1-ranked slam poet in the world. He has shared stages with Saul Williams, E. Lynn Harris, Alicia Keys, and Maya Angelou. Selections from of fire and rain, a book and CD collaboration between Mr. Zihuatanejo and Ms. Carrizosa, will be published on posters in DART buses and trains by "Poetry In Motion"—a series that places modern American and classic poetry on public transport. Ms. Carrizoza's and Mr. Zihuatanejo's workshop is "I Slam, Therefore I Am." Our eyes, our voice, our heart, this is all that we have, and all that we need to be a poet. Students will be given starting points for poems that can lead to poems from their innermost core. [students: register here]
Vicki Caroline Cheatwood is a playwright whose credits include the Off-Off-Broadway productions of The Risen Chris at Vital Theatre, Fits & Starts: The Sacred Heart at Access Theatre, and 10:10 and The Cowgirl Chronicles for Actors Stock Company/NYC. Her playwriting honors include a Dallas Theater Critics Forum award for Manicures & Monuments, and Best New Play awards from the Southwest Theater Association and the Robert Bone Memorial Playwriting Award for Fits & Starts: The Sacred Heart. Screenwriting honors include Best Screenplay finalist in the Austin Film Festival for the feature 10:10, and a Special Jury Gold Award for the short film Air in HoustonWorldFest Film Festival. Ms. Cheatwood is a member of the artistic company of Kitchen Dog Theater. Her workshop is titled, "Got Conflict?" Imagine sitting through five acts of this: JULIET: "Mom, I'm marrying Romeo, and there's nothing you can do about it." MOM: "Okay, honey. Let's go buy your dress!" Uh, no - we want conflict in our drama because conflict is what makes the story, and keeps us and the audience interested. The hero/heroine wants something and wants it bad, and somebody or something has to act against them. Who wins? As the playwright, you decide. In this fun writing workshop, you'll take a simple storyline and add your own brand of conflict, dialogue and imagery to create a very short play. [students: register here]
Will Clarke has been described as "the local adman-turned-genius-novelist" who "burst onto the literary scene like a kid cannonballing off the high-dive." Mr. Clarke's 2005 debut novel, Lord Vishu's Love Handles is in production at Paramount Pictures, and his most recent novel, The Worthy: A Ghost's Story is under development at Sony Pictures. Both novels were praised in a double review in 2006 by The New York Times. Mr. Clarke says, "I got my start as a professional novelist through Amazon.com and the internet. People found my work as an unknown writer just by clicking around on the Web, and from there my readership grew and grew until finally my first novel got picked up by a Hollywood studio and by a major publisher. I feel certain that without the Internet I would never have been published." Mr. Clarke lives in Dallas. His workshop is: "Do you have the right brain for a flat world?" Right brain/ Left brain techniques for creative writing and conquering the world. [students: register here]
Tim Cowlishaw has been the lead sports columnist for the Dallas Morning News for 12 years. Before gaining that position, he spent a number of years covering the Dallas Cowboys during two Super Bowl seasons and the Dallas Stars as they grew into a Stanley Cup Champion. Since 2002, he has made regular appearances on ESPN's talk show "Around the Horn." He also worked for ESPN for two years (2007-2008) on "Nascar Now" traveling the country to go to races and spending weekends in Bristol, CT, at ESPN’s headquarters. He worked at The Daily Oklahoman and the San Jose Mercury-News prior to writing for the Dallas Morning News. Mr. Cowlishaw grew up in Richardson where he attended Richardson High School and got a bachelor of journalism degree at the University of Texas in Austin. His workshop, "Writing, Blogging and Talking about Sports in an Information Fast World," will explore questions such as, "How do you make newspaper columns relevant?" "How do you get viewers to watch ESPN when a show is taped just a few hours ahead of time?" "What are the best ways to communicate your points, to give meaningful analysis?" He will also discuss radio, drawing on his work with 105.3 The Fan, which carries both Cowboys' and Rangers' games. [students: register here]
Suzanne Crowley is a well-known miniature artist whose work has been featured on the covers of American and international magazines. Her debut novel, The Very Ordered Existence of Merilee Marvelous received three-starred reviews, was an IRA Notable Children's Book, and was selected as the Book Sense #3 Top Children's Pick for Fall of 2007. It's also a current Georgia Book Award nominee. Her second book, The Stolen One, is an Indie Next List Pick for Fall of 2009, a Best Books for Young Adults nominee, and a Texas Tayshas Reading List selection. Ms. Crowley's workshop, "Writing Young Adult Fiction," will explore her path to publication, the examine current state of Young Adult Literature (which is hot, hot, hot!), and include a short writing exercise. Ms. Crowley's workshops are limited to Ms. Young's 7th & 8th period classes.
Linda Daugherty's plays have been produced throughout the U.S. and abroad, including at Dallas Children's Theater; The Kennedy Center; Stage One, The Louisville Children's Theatre; Portland's Northwest Children's Theatre; the Edinburgh Festival, Scotland; Savonlinna City Theatre, Finland; and NYU's Department of Educational Theater. Ms. Daugherty is Playwright in Residence at the Dallas Children's Theater. Her fourth play in a series on teen issues, "hard 2 spel dad," about two young people dealing with learning differences, will premier at the Dallas Children's Theater in the spring of 2010 and will be her thirtieth play to premiere at that venue. Ms. Daugherty's workshop, "Get Started on the Play You've Always Wanted to Write," will provide hands-on work on dialogue, stage directions and how to turn your ideas into a script. Ms. Daugherty's workshops are limited to Ms. Dulaney's 1st, 2nd, & 3rd period classes.
Leslie Garcia, an HPHS alumna, is a freelance writer who spent thirty years writing at The Dallas Morning News. For several years, she wrote a bi-weekly column called "Inspire Me"; most recently, she focused on fitness. Though she, like other reporters, knows how to write about practically anything, her true writing love is features. Readers often wrote to tell her how what she had written had affected their lives. But, she says, they're the ones who affected hers. She has been awarded a James Beard Foundation Award for Excellence and a Dallas Press Club Katie Award. Ms. Garcia's workshop will explore the two givens in feature writing: 1. Everyone has a story, and 2. Anything can be made interesting. Something makes each of us tick; we all have burdens and joys and reasons we are who we are. There's a trick to uncovering that layer, to asking the right questions and showing compassion. When you can do that, your subjects will trust you and open up. And you'll be the one privileged to tell their story -- whether or not even they think it's interesting. And, whether it's cupcakes, pedicures, apples, or grandfathers, if it's in someone's life, it's important. We'll talk about how life is made -- not of huge tapestries, but of the tiny stitches that comprise them. And how learning to recognize that can make you a more observant person and a better writer. [students: register here]
Spike Gillespie's fifth book, Quilting Art, was published in the fall of 2009. Her essays and reporting have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, National Geographic Traveler, Smithsonian, Real Simple, Texas Monthly, The Dallas Morning News, and many other publications. She has been published online since 1985. She lives in Austin with her son, her partner, and four crazy dogs. As print media goes away and magazines and newspapers shrink or shut down entirely, more and more people rely on the internet for news and entertainment. This shift is greatly affecting—for better and for worse—how and when writers are published and how and if they can make a living from their writing. In her workshop, "Brave New Publishing World," Ms. Gillespie will talk about the pros and cons of this change, with advice for young writers on maximizing internet opportunities. [students: register here]
Steven Gullion is a Houston-based short-story writer, software developer and former lawyer whose stories "Western Wear" and "Old Maids" have been included in the past three seasons of Texas Bound, the annual short-fiction program of the Dallas Museum of Art. In May 2010, Texas Bound will again include one of his stories, "The Six Hundred Dollar Dog," which is set in Highland Park and features an imperiled Pekingese left behind when its parents jet off to Hawaii. He is also a three-time winner of the Sherwood Anderson Short Story Contest (Virginia). His fiction has appeared in numerous publications including The Barcelona Review, The Adirondack Review, Night Train, Opium and Smokelong Quarterly. He is currently working on a novel about an armadillo. In Mr. Gullion's workshop, "The Art of the Opening," you will learn how to begin a story, including learning simple but effective techniques for luring the reader into your world and making them want to stay. [students: register here]
Matthew Limpede has been at the helm of Carve Magazine (www.carvezine.com) since 2007. He has attended New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, majoring in Dramatic Writing, and he earned his BA in Art & Performance (Creative Writing) from the University of Texas at Dallas. His short story collection is titled You Can Grieve Your Dreams Too. He lives in Dallas, or at least, very close to it. Mr. Limpede's workshop, "The Editor's Perspective: What Every Writer Should Know When Submitting a Manuscript," will explain -- from his perspective as editor of Carve Magazine -- what happens after you've put your story in the mail and it lands in the editor's inbox. Literary magazines, especially small-press ones, are usually the first step in establishing your career as a writer. But how do you get your story published? And what exactly are editors looking for? We will read excerpts from stories published in Carve, as well as take a look at some anonymous stories that landed in the reject pile and discuss why. You'll learn about the best resources on the web for finding literary magazines and also what to avoid when you're ready to submit your own manuscript. [students: register here]
Robert Nelsen is the President of the Univesity of Texas-Pan American. His areas of specialization include fiction writing (novels and short stories), 20th Century American Literature, and southern literature. His published short fiction has appeared in numerous literary magazines. For almost two decades, Mr. Nelsen taught at The University of Texas at Dallas, where he started the creative writing program and nurtured the development of an arts and humanities curriculum. He was awarded the Chancellor's Council Award for Outstanding Teaching. He also served as vice provost at UTD. Prior to his arrival at UTPA, was an associate vice president for academic affairs and professor of English at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. We are honored that Mr. Nelsen will again judge the Short Fiction submissions for the student writing contest.
John Owhonda is a well-known storyteller and writer of children's books, short stories, and screenplays. He is a long-time friend and favorite of the Literary Festival. Mr. Owhonda mesmerizes audiences as he performs original stories and time-honored African folk tales in a style handed down through centuries of oral tradition in his native Nigeria. As well as the screenplay, Akeem and the Golden Wrist Band, Mr. Owhonda has written the following books: Congo; Nigeria, A Nation of Many Peoples; Musa the Mouse; and Forest of Doom. A master storyteller, Mr. Owhonda will teach students in his workshops to draw from their own oral heritage to communicate through memoirs and fiction. [students: register here]
Cary Pierce is a producer, songwriter and performer. His songs and co-writes have appeared on more than 2 million records. He has shared stages with John Mayer, Dave Matthews Band, Matchbox Twenty, Counting Crows, Wallflowers, Vertical Horizon, and Sheryl Crow - to name a few. Mr. Pierce has written songs with Stan Lynch (Don Henley, The Eagles, Tom Petty, the Mavericks), Franne Golde (Faith Hill, Randy Travis), Jamie Houston (Jessica Simpson) and many others. He has recorded with John Alagia (John Mayer, Dave Matthews Band),T Bone Burnett (Wallflowers, Counting Crows), and others. Mr. Pierce is also half of the band Jackopierce (Jack ONeill & Cary Pierce). For twenty years, Jackopierce has toured the world in 44 states, 10 countries, on 3 continents. They've recorded seven records and play most major cities once a year. Their latest record, Promise of Summer, was released in 2008. Mr. Pierce lives in Dallas. [students: register here]
Misa Ramirez is the author of the Lola Cruz mystery series: Living the Vida Lola (January '09) and Hasta la Vista, Lola! (2010) from St. Martin's Minotaur Books. She is a former middle- and high-school teacher, and current CEO and CFO for La Familia Ramirez. A blonde-haired, green-eyed, proud to be Latina-by-Marriage, Ms. Ramirez loves following Lola on her many adventures. Whether contemplating belly button piercings or visiting nudist resorts, she's always up for the challenge. Ms. Ramirez is hard at work on a new women's fiction novel and is developing a middle-grade series for girls. Her other published work includes contributions to Woman's World Magazine and Romance Writers Report, as well as a children's book. Ms. Ramirez' workshop is "The Hero's Journey." Understanding the hero's (or heroine's) journey is key to character arc and to a satisfying story. This workshop takes participants through the key elements of the hero's journey (based on Christopher Vogler's book, The Writer's Journey). Through study of concrete examples, participants will gain a new understanding of how the hero's journey is used in fiction and movies. Also included is an overview of the hero archetypes and how they contribute to the hero's growth. [students: register here]
Native Texan novelist, essayist, scholar, and literary critic Clay Reynolds is the author more than nine hundred publications ranging from scholarly studies to short fiction and poems, essays, critical reviews, and a more than a dozen published volumes. A Professor of Arts and Humanities at the University of Texas at Dallas, he holds academic degrees from the University of Texas at Austin, Trinity University, and a PhD from the University of Tulsa. His published novels include The Vigil, Agatite, Franklin's Crossing, Players, Monuments, and The Tentmaker, Ars Poetica, Threading the Needle, a collection of essays, Of Snake and Sex and Playing in the Rain, and a collection of short fiction, Sandhill County Lines. His nonfiction books, authored and edited, include Stage Left: The Development of the American Social Drama, Taking Stock: A Larry McMurtry Casebook, A Hundred Years of Heroes: A Centennial History of the Southwestern Exposition and Livestock Show, Twenty Questions: Answers for the Inquiring Writer, and The Plays of Jack London. His novels, short fiction, and essays have won numerous awards; he is a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow and is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters. Mr. Reynolds lives in Lowry Crossing, a community near McKinney, Texas, with his wife Judy, a Medical Technologist. His workshop, "Creating Character," will explore just that aspect of fiction writing. [students: register here]
Marc Solomon is a Dallas musician. After graduating from the famous Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing Arts in Dallas, and gigging in clubs in which he could not drink, he did what any self respecting Dallas musician would do: he moved to Austin. During several recording and touring projects in Austin, Los Angeles, and New York, Mr. Solomon penned somewhere close to three hundred songs. Upon his return to Dallas in 1999 he formed Clumsy. In 2005, his current band, Solly, recorded "Get it wrong it's alright", which was chosen by Performing Songwriter magazine as one of the years top ten DIY releases. Solly has had songs featured in television programs such as Lost, The Ghost Whisperer, and Beverly Hills 90210. He is also the founder and director of "Zounds Sounds," a music education and training project that was the subject of a Dallas Observer feature article in 2005. His workshop will focus on songwriting. [students: register here]
Lori Ann Stephens, a nearly-native Texan, is a short story writer and novelist. A former Creative Writing teacher at UT-Dallas and HPHS, Dr. Stephens teaches composition courses at SMU and focuses her creative energy on her two sons and her novel manuscripts. Her stories and poetry have been widely published and won finalist places in national competitions, including the Glimmer Train Stories National Fiction Open. Her novel manuscript for young readers, Boarders, received an honorable mention from the 2006 PeaceWriting Awards. Her first novel for adults, Song of the Orange Moons, will be released by Blooming Tree Press in 2010. Ms. Stephen's workshop will explore "Creating Believable Characters." We also are honored that Ms. Stephens will serve as the judge of the imaginative essays in this year's student writing competition. [students: register here]
Beatriz Terrazas is a writer, photographer and blogger whose credits include More, Skirt!, Cure, The Washington Post, The Dallas Morning News, and the anthology, Literary El Paso. Her work has won first place in the American Society of Sunday and Feature Editors, the Society of American Travel Writers Lowell Thomas Awards, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and others. She was part of a Dallas Morning News team to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1994. Her blog, My mother's brain: love in the times of dementia, chronicles her family's care of her mother, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer's in 2007. She is a Harvard University Nieman Fellow, class of 1999, and a member of the Macondo Writing Workshops. Ms. Terrazas will present two workshops: one on memoir, and the other on photojournalism. Students, take note of which workshop you choose. 1. Memoir Workshop: "Pieces of life: crafting memoirs and personal essays from ordinary and extraordinary moments," reveals that you don’t have to be famous (or infamous) to write about your own experiences. This writing, when done well, has the power to change lives. We will examine pieces by contemporary writers and discuss what makes stories compelling and universal, as opposed to self-important navel-gazing. || 2. Photojournalism Workshop: Using images to tell stories about our common humanity. We will dissect photo stories and discuss how the photographer approached the story and made the images. A story told with images has the same power as one told with words. We will discuss difficulties a photographer faces in tackling stories about life and death, as well as ethical or moral dilemmas in capturing images that discomfort the story's subjects, the viewers, and even the photographer. Students are required to bring one story idea to the workshop. [students: register here]
Ross Vick is the dad of three HPHS grads and one HPISD current student. Five years ago, he left a successful business career pursue a career in songwriting, recording, and performing. With his band, TrueHeart, he has opened for the Beach Boys, performed at The Cavern Club in Liverpool, and recorded four CDs. Their CD, "The Road," reached the Billboard Top 30 Hot Adult Contemporary Charts in only a month and finished the year as the only Indie in the Mediabase Top 100—quite a feat for an independent artist and songwriter. Most recently, Mr. Vick served as musical liason for the Dallas/Dijon Cultural Affairs celebration in Dijon, France. He has written and performed the music for "Big Thought.org"; and his song "Tear or Two" is the featured song in the Michael Waxman short film: "Prank Call." Life as an independent artist includes not only making and maintaining websites but meeting with radio stations, venue owners and bookers, industry executives, producers, managers, and musicians. Technology's opportunities are offset by the clutter a musician must wade through to find a musical home and an audience. Mr. Vick's workshop will include insight into the music industry, as well as the song creating process from the first moment of inspiration to the finished product played on the radio. [students: register here]
Tobias Wolff is a short-story author, novelist, and memoirist. His works include This Boy's Life, In Pharaoh's Army: Memories of the Lost War, Old School, and Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories. He has received numerous awards, including the PEN/Faulkner Award, both the PEN/Malamud and the Rea Award for Excellence in the Short Story, the Story Prize, and the Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is the Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor of English at Stanford University. We are honored that Mr. Wolff will be the Fesival's 2010 Keynote Speaker and that he will lead two student workshops. A more complete biography of Mr. Wolff is here. [students: register here]
Bonnie ZoBell is from San Diego, California, where she lives in a Spanish casita with two cats, two dogs, and a husband. She has received an NEA Creative Writing Fellowship, a PEN Syndicated Fiction Award, and the Capricorn Novel Award. Recently included on Wigleaf's 2009 Top 50 list for very short fiction, she has work included or forthcoming in The Los Angeles Review, Night Train, Storyglossia, American Fiction, The Greensboro Review, dcomP, Rumble, and LITSNACK. She received an MFA from Columbia University, teaches at San Diego Mesa College, and can be reached at www.bonniezobell.com. Everyone is welcome to her workshop, "Flash Fiction" — whether you'e curious about writing flash or whether you simply like to read it. We will focus on stories under 1,000 words, but which imply much much more. In the class, you will start a flash of your own. [students: register here]