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writing

MWLF: “Weaving the Web: Myth, Metaphor, Meaning & the Muse” with Molly Murfee

April 7, 2022 by Brooke Harless MacMillan Leave a Comment

Weaving the Web: Myth, Metaphor, Meaning & the Muse

Writing is a lifestyle, a physical practice in mindfulness and awareness, ending in a story. As authors, it is up to us to find the seemingly disparate thematic threads floating in the air, and weave them into a cohesive web of metaphor and meaning. Work with your core beliefs, translating them into a defined theme in your story, and iterating them through writing devices such as characters, conversations, symbolism, and landscape. This interactive, immersive, experientially-based workshop first taps into the muse through a sensory conversation with physical nature, and what Greek philosopher Plato called the anima mundi, or World Soul. What inherent metaphors exist in the red-tailed hawk spiraling overhead, the wind in the trees? How do these players of an animate nature spur memories of mythology, folklore, fairy tales, or natural history from your past knowledge? We’ll bring in Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung’s theories of the collective unconscious and archetypes to tap into the universal themes and characters in relationship with your own. How might they be showing up through synchronistic conversations you hear on the street, or serendipitous encounters giving you just the piece of information you were missing? Bring in your own emotions around your theme, as well as identify what stands in opposition to it. In the end you’ll weave the web, pulling together all the threads into a cohesive story shimmering with layering, depth, and meaning.

Any genre—fiction to poetry to creative nonfiction and beyond—is welcome. Generate new material or apply the activities to a current project (consider bringing a copy). This is an outdoor workshop with a small amount of easy walking, and sitting on the ground. Wear comfortable walking shoes, and bring a small backpack with water, warm layers, and a portable camp chair if you have one. We will work visually with the material, bring colored pencils if you have them. Otherwise, they will be provided. A journal or blank paper and pen or pencil is strongly recommended for the generative freewrites and other activities (instead of a laptop, tablet, or cell phone).

Tagged With: Molly Murfee, nature writing, workshop, writing

“Capturing Voice and Rhythm in Your Writing” with Manuel Aragon

May 13, 2021 by Brooke Harless MacMillan Leave a Comment

In this seminar, we’ll examine the trick of pace, the landscape of silence, and percussive elements of voice using
examples from Jesmyn Wards, Bryan Washington, Tommy Orange, and the music of Bad Bunny. Writers of all levels welcome.
As part of the Mountain Words Literary Festival. Included in Festival Pass, or $30 single entry. At the Center. Masks required.

Tagged With: Capturing Voice and Rhythm in Your Writing, Manuel Aragon, Mountain Words Literary Festival, reading, workshop, writing

“[American Journal] Entries” workshop with Nate Marshall

May 4, 2021 by Brooke Harless MacMillan Leave a Comment

Using Robert Hayden’s classic Colorado-influenced poem as a guide, we will use this workshop to generate poems, rants, stories, and narrative experiments. In Hayden’s [American Journal] he embodies an extraterrestrial speaker to observe, praise, and critique his country. We will use various personas to consider the places and people that have had an impact in our lives.

Nate Marshall is a writer, rapper, and educator from the South Side of Chicago. He is the author of FINNA (One World, Penguin Random House, 2020), Wild Hundreds (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015), winner of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association’s award for Poetry Book of the Year and The Great Lakes College Association’s New Writer Award. Marshall is also an editor of The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop (Haymarket Books, 2015) and the co-author, with Eve Ewing, of No Blue Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks. His rap album, Grown came out in 2015 with his group Daily Lyrical Product. Marshall is a member of The Dark Noise Collective and co-director of Crescendo Literary. He has received fellowships from Cave Canem, The Poetry Foundation, and The University of Michigan. More on Nate.

Tagged With: Mountain Words Literary Festival, Nate Marshall, poetry workshop, Robert Hayden’, writing

“The Physical Stuff of Your Life” writing workshop with Pam Houston

December 15, 2020 by Brooke Harless MacMillan Leave a Comment

The Physical Stuff of Your Life (and how to use it to gain access to the emotional stuff); A Generative Workshop with Pam Houston.

In this generative workshop we will focus on all the ways the sensory details that surround us—the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures—can give us access to that much more elusive interior landscape we are always trying to access when we write. If we write those details all the way down to the bone. If we sit in the dark with them and let them distill up from the swamps of memory. We will focus on what I believe to be the real artistry of prose writing: the way we dip our ladles into the bottomless pot of metaphor soup of our lived and witnessed experience and pull out what we need; the way we pick up hunks of the physical world and bring them back to the page, translated into language.

We will be aiming for work in which the language is always working in at least two ways at once, where metaphors dance between meanings like beads of water on a too hot grill. We will work toward demystifying some of the essential components of prose writing (image, metaphor, structure, dialogue, character, scene, among others) and turning them into comprehensible tools that are at our disposal. We will all, no doubt, be humbled in the face of languages unlimited possibility as well as its limitation. At the same time we will honor (and hope for) the inexplicable flights of creativity (and madness?) that take a good story and make it great.

Pam Houston is the author of the memoir, Deep Creek: Finding Hope In The High Country, which won the 2019 Colorado Book Award, the High Plains Book Award and the Reading The West Advocacy Award and even more recently, Air Mail: Letters of Politics Pandemics and Place coauthored with Amy Irvine.  She is also the author of Cowboys Are My Weakness as well as five other books of fiction and nonfiction, all published by W.W. Norton. She lives at 9,000 feet above sea level on a 120-acre homestead near the headwaters of the Rio Grande and teaches at UC Davis and the Institute of American Indian Arts. She is cofounder and creative director of the literary nonprofit Writing by Writers and the fiction editor at the Environmental Arts Journal Terrain.org.

 

Tagged With: emotions, Mountain Words Literary Festival, Pam Houston, self connection, writing, writing workshop

Mountain Words Literary Festival

November 18, 2020 by Brooke Harless MacMillan Leave a Comment

Mountain Words Literary Festival passes + tickets are on sale now! Join us for a three-day literary celebration at nine-thousand feet. Featuring 25 authors and presenters for readings, workshops, kids events, parties, panel discussions, live theater, and more. In-person and safely distanced in Crested Butte and Gunnison.

Authors include Nate Marshall, Rachel Monroe, Scott Carney, Pam Houston, Bobby Lefebre, Laura Pritchett, Adam Valen Levinson, Steven Dunn, Chelsey Johnson, Nick Arvin and others.

VISIT GVLF.ORG FOR FULL LINEUP AND PASSES

Tagged With: Adam Valen Levinson, Bobby Lefebre, books, Chelsey Johnson, discussions, e Marshall, Laura Pritchett, literary festival, nick arvin, Pam Houston, panels, Rachel Monroe, Scott Carney, Steven Dunn, writing

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thank you

to our Annual Presenting Sponsors:

Black Dragon Development

Black Dragon Development

Bluebird

Bluebird

Benchmark Colorado

Benchmark Colorado

Viña Andrico

Viña Andrico

family dental crested butte

family dental crested butte

Gunnison Valley Health Foundation

Gunnison Valley Health Foundation

James Ray Spahn Photographer

James Ray Spahn Photographer

Resource Engineering Group

Resource Engineering Group

Alpengardener

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Alpine Express

Alpine Express

Owens Property Management

Owens Property Management

to our 2022 Summer Sponsors:

CB Oxygen Rentals

CB Oxygen Rentals

Chris Kopf Real Estate

Chris Kopf Real Estate

KBUT

KBUT

SRSI

SRSI

Irwin Brewing

Irwin Brewing

Crested Butte Yeti Property

Crested Butte Yeti Property

Liv Sotheby's

Liv Sotheby's

SHM Architects

SHM Architects

Old Town Inn

Old Town Inn

Coldwell Banker Mountain Properties

Coldwell Banker Mountain Properties

Peak

Peak

Studio West

Studio West

Sunlit Architecture

Sunlit Architecture

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Zuni Street

CCI Grant

CCI Grant

Montanya Distillers

Montanya Distillers

Crested Butte Realty

Crested Butte Realty

King of the Mountain

King of the Mountain

Handlebar

Handlebar

Townie Books

Townie Books

Ace

Ace

The Breadery

The Breadery

Elk Ave Prime

Elk Ave Prime

Mountain Spirits Liquors

Mountain Spirits Liquors

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Center for the Arts Crested Butte

606 Sixth St.
PO Box 1819
Crested Butte, CO 81224
970-349-7487
info@crestedbuttearts.org

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