Get your creative juices flowing with two 1-credit hour summer weekend workshops

Emporia State University assistant English professor, poet and jazz drummer, Kevin Rabas, will be offering two 1-credit hour summer weekend workshops.

“These courses are open to all students, but we are hoping to target community members who are interested in doing creative writing for the summer,” Rabas said.

Writing Short Short Stories will focus on exposing students to various types and approaches to the short short story. Participants will learn the basics of short story writing in a fun, shortened form. The “flash fiction” form is poetic and brief, and its immediacy often leads to shocking and playful results. Class readings will introduce students to several novel approaches to this enjoyable form.

“In Writing Short Short Stories we will study the work of Donald Barthelme, Kate McCorkle, Jamaica Kincaid, and many others,” Rabas said. “Class time will be spent discussing the writer’s craft, the assigned readings, and student writing.

Poets and story writers of all experience levels are invited to attend. This weekend workshop will run July 15 – 16, from 9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.

The second course, Narrative Poetry Writing, is also a weekend-intensive workshop where participants will learn to tell stories through verse.

“We will study the work of both poets and fiction writers,” Rabas said. ‘We will study the work of Robert Frost, Carolyn Forche, Michael Ondaatje, James Wright, Sharon Olds, Henry Taylor, Linda Pastan, and others. This workshop runs July 22 – 23, from 9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.

For more information contact Kevin Rabas at krabas@emporia.edu or 620-341- 5218.

Last Updated July 2, 2007>