CLEVELAND ó Beat the August heat and join other writers for some cool sessions at the Weathers Creek Writersí Series. For this series, ěwordplay,î poetry and nonfiction essays are the topics with three instructors as guides.
Weathers Creek workshops offer a one-day getaway to a farm located between Cleveland and Mooresville. Class size is kept small for lots of individual interaction. At Weathers Creek, writers have a chance to recharge their creative batteries in a home-like setting.
Jim Minick, author of a memoir, ěThe Blueberry Years,î will be at Weathers Creek on Aug. 13. Minickís two-hour session in the morning, ěPlaying with Words,î will offer participants a look at what poetry can teach the prose writer about metaphors and word play.
Minick explains, ěWhatever genre, metaphors sweeten the writing, making an ordinary scoop of a sentence into a deluxe banana split. How do you play with language to find original metaphors? How do you see the world anew? These will be the central questions we tackle in hopes of finding metaphors wherever we look, metaphors like a forked tree to tune the wind.î
The afternoon session, ěPlaying with Time,î will show how, as Minick puts it, ěWhen we write, we become gods, creating a world with every page. So as gods, we have many gifts, one of them being the ability to play with time.î The diverse ways that writers manipulate time on the page, from the micro-level to the macro, will be explored in this workshop.
Minickís ěThe Blueberry Years,î published by Thomas Dunne, recently won the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance Best Nonfiction Book of the Year Award.
Minickís other work includes a collection of essays, ěFinding a Clear Path,î and two books of poetry, ěHer Secret Songî and ěBurning Heaven.î Minick has won grants, awards and honors from the Southern Independent Booksellers Association, Southern Environmental Law Center, Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, Virginia Commission for the Arts, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Appalachian Writers Association, Appalachian Heritage, Now and Then Magazine, and Radford University, where he teaches writing and literature.
His work has appeared in many publications, including Shenandoah, Orion, San Francisco Chronicle, Encyclopedia of Appalachia, Conversations with Wendell Berry, The Sun, Appalachian Journal, Bay Journal News and Wind. For 13 years he wrote a monthly column for The Roanoke Times, New River Current. He’s now working on a novel about fire, healing and Pennsylvania Dutch folklore. He lives in the mountains of Virginia with his wife and three dogs.
The Farm at Weathers Creek is a peaceful spot with scenic views from almost every window of the log home on the property. Owned by the Campbell family, the house was built from logs salvaged from their motherís home place in Mt. Ulla. The Weathers Creek Writersí Series was founded by writer/editor Ann Wicker, photographer and writer Susan Campbell, and marketing and sales specialist Cindy Campbell.
Sessions are $75 each. All sessions include a homemade lunch. Deadline for registration for the August session is Aug. 5.
Allen Michael Parker will present a workshop on Sept. 10 and Marjorie Hudson will work with writers on Oct. 8. More information about those events is forthcoming. Discounts are offered for writers who sign up for more than one session.
Gift certificates are available. All sessions will start promptly at 10 a.m. and end at 3 p.m. For a registration form, directions and other information, go to www.weatherscreek.net/.