My friends and family know I love to take writing classes in Iowa City. A few weeks ago, I took my nineteenth course. I specifically looked for an easy class, because I didn't want to churn out several pages a day or give written feedback each night to my fellow eleven students. So I signed …
Continue reading Iowa Summer Writing Festival – the Work and the Surprise
Imagine my shock when I found this rant! I remembered writing one for an assignment at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, but didn't remember when, so I searched. Then I discovered I'd written this twenty years ago. My, how time flies! A rant is a bunch of fun--just go wild with whatever is on your …
Big news! I finished a first draft of the book I'm writing about our cancer experience. In March, when I was in Arizona, I started compiling blog posts written during that time which will serve as the frame of the story. Then I added emails that I'd written to family and friends. Way last November …
I love to go to Iowa. Not just to glide past the flat lands of corn on I-80, or to roll along the miles of lightly forested hills on I-88, or, as a city dweller, to have the chance to drive my 2000 Beetle anywhere, or simply to savor a McD's cone alongside the Mississippi …
Continue reading Iowa Summer Writing Festival – A Typical Day / 2014
Thanks to Jan Weissmiller, poet and co-owner of Prairie Lights, Caring Lessons: A Nursing Professor's Journey of Faith and Self will soon be shelved in this much-loved independent bookstore in Iowa City. When I attend the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, as I did last week, I hang out at Prairie Lights between classes and evenings. You'd …
Continue reading Caring Lessons / Prairie Lights / Iowa City / 2014
Infusing ordinary lives with detail makes story, Marilyn Abildskov* told us at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival in July. She presented several examples where authors framed their stories around the everyday details of life. One example, the “action detail” of washing dishes, propelled me to “free associate.” In Tobias Wolff’s short story, “Say Yes,” washing …
Sentence in Poetry and Prose" was the catchy title faculty member Juliet Patterson chose for the week session I just completed at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival. The festival, held on the University of Iowa's campus in Iowa City, is enjoying its twenty-sixth year. Starting in 2001, I've attended the festival seven times and taken …
Continue reading “What’s Love Got to Do with It? A Field Guide to the…
A few summers ago, I took a class on personal essays at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival with David Bouchier of NPR fame. His dry humor and engaging personality led to a lovely week of pushing us to thinking deeply about seemingly mundane influences in our lives. For example, he had just scratched out an …
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