Poetry Course
Poetry
Our poetry course will be lead by Allison Joseph. More details to come!
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Allison Joseph was born in London, England, to Caribbean parents and grew up in Toronto and the Bronx. She earned a BA from Kenyon College and an MFA from Indiana University. Joseph is the author of many collections of poetry, including Confessions of a Barefaced Woman (2018); My Father’s Kites (2010); Voice: Poems (2009); Worldly Pleasures (2004); Imitation of Life (2003); In Every Seam (1997); Soul Train (1997); and What Keeps Us Here (1992), which won a John C. Zacharis First Book Award. Of her work, which frequently joins autobiography to cultural narratives and histories of Afro-Caribbean communities, Joseph has said, “I write to be a recorder, observer, participant, and sometimes, even judge. I want to engage the world as I see it with my whole self—all those different aspects of it.”
Joseph’s honors and awards include fellowships from the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers’ Conferences and from the Illinois Arts Council. She is the recipient of a George Garrett Award for Outstanding Community Service in Literature from the Association of Writers & Writing Programs. The Judge Williams Holmes Cook Endowed Professor of English at Southern Illinois University, Joseph is editor of Crab Orchard Review, directs the MFA program, and runs the Young Writers Workshop, a summer program for high school students. She lives in Carbondale, Illinois.
Fiction Course
Fiction
Our fiction course will be lead by Kathleen Rooney. More details to come!
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Kathleen Rooney is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press, a publisher of literary work in hybrid genres, and a founding member of Poems While You Wait, a team of poets and their typewriters who compose commissioned poetry on demand. She teaches English and creative writing at DePaul University and is the author, most recently, of the novels Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk (St. Martin’s, 2017), and Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey (Penguin, 2020), as well as the poetry collection Where Are the Snows (Texas Review Press, 2022). She lives in Chicago with her spouse, the writer Martin Seay.
Friday Night Keynote
Ruben Quesada
Ruben will read from his newest book, Brutal Companion published by Barrow Street Press (2024), and speak about why he finds writing to be imperative.
Ruben Quesada is an award-winning poet and editor. He edited the
groundbreaking anthology Latinx Poetics: Essays on the Art of Poetry, winner of the
Gold Medal from the Independent Publisher Book Awards. His forthcoming
collection of poetry, Brutal Companion, was awarded the Barrow Street Press
Editors Prize. His poetry and criticism appear in The New York Times Magazine, Best
American Poetry, Ploughshares, Harvard Review, and American Poetry Review. He has
served as poetry editor for AGNI, Poet Lore, Pleiades, Tab Journal, and as a poetry
blogger for The Kenyon Review and Ploughshares. He has served as a literary advisor
for the Smithsonian Institution, NEA, and Publishing Triangle Awards. He is an
Editorial Advisor for JackLeg Press. Her teaching for the MFA programs in creative
writing at Antioch University and Cedar Crest College.
Sunday Morning Generative (both genres)
Before the participant open mic on Sunday, we'll have an hour of generative writing lead by local author Nik Markevicius.
“Word Jazz”
Word Jazz is a series of round-robin word games and imaginative- seeing exercises. Each participant will use their own responses, as well as others’ responses, to pursue and develop an idea that is generated organically from the subconscious. Participants will spend the last quarter-hour engaged in the actual writing of their generated idea, ensuring that everyone walks away with - at the very least - a sprout of story which they can then grow at their own pace.
Word Jazz is adapted from the Story Workshop method of writing instruction, originally developed at Columbia College Chicago.
Kristin LaTour, director
Kristin is the founder of the Aurora Writers Workshop and has lived in Aurora since 2004. Her poetry has been published in several chapbooks, anotholigies, and in journals such as the Massachusetts Review, Tinderbox, Museum of Americana, Escape into Life, and others. Her full-length collection of poems, What Will Keep Us Alive, came out with Sundress Publications in 2015. She teaches writing at Joliet Jr. College and gives writing workshops at libraries in the far-western Chicago suburbs. She is currently working on a novel set during the 1800s whaling industry in New Bedford, and a collection of poems centered around Gen X.
