The Nature Island Literary Festival offers an exciting opportunity for writers/aspiring writers/interested persons to develop their craft by attending pre-festival writing workshops free-of-charge during the month of July! The workshops will cover Poetry, Fiction, and Non-fiction including a session on blogging and social networking.
Experienced and published poet and poetry instructor Greg German will facilitate the poetry workshop. This will specifically focus on writing “free verse” poetry and is appropriate for both novice and experienced writers. Participants will learn the basic fundamentals of writing free verse poems including the use of titles, images, metaphors, line breaks, internal rhyming, sounds and other important characteristics. Participants will also gain an understanding of “voice” and “speaker” as related to poems. Class participation will include analysis and discussion of poems provided by the instructor and poetry writing exercises.
Polly Pattullo of Papillote Press will lead the first three non-fiction workshops. She is a journalist, editor, author and publisher. She worked on national newspapers in the UK for many years as both a writer and an editor. Polly is the author of various books about the Caribbean including Last Resorts: the cost of tourism in the Caribbean.
Each week Polly’s workshops will explore different forms of non-fiction writing:
1. What is non-fiction and an introduction to profile writing
2. Memoir writing
3. Review writing
Terri Henry will lead the fourth non-fiction session on writing for social media. She is a writer for several international print publications and the creator of the blog ‘Child of the Nature Isle’ (www.childofnatureblog.com). Terri will explore blogging, Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, Ezine and more!
The fiction writing workshops will be facilitated by Jonathan Bellot. His writing has appeared in Transnational Literature and BIM: Arts for the 21st Century. The goal of the fiction workshop is to allow writers to share their work in a space in where the work will be critiqued fairly and constructively. The elements of fiction (what makes up a story, crafting a story, places stories might be found, etc.) and different approaches to writing (exploring different writing styles, experimentation, getting out of writer’s block, etc.) will also be discussed.
To take advantage of this truly unique opportunity, interested persons are asked to register by Friday July 1st at the Public Library, The University of the West Indies Open Campus, or via email: [email protected] . More information about the workshops and facilitators may be found on the Nature Island Literary Festival website: www.dominicalitfest.com and on Facebook!
I’ll be there