Writing workshop offers exciting opportunity

The 22nd annual Tallgrass Writing Workshop will once again be held on the Emporia State campus June 23-24, 2007.  The workshop will include small group presentations by faculty, personal consultations and discussions.

The workshop is designed for those who want to write for personal satisfaction, as part of a service or professional responsibility, or for publication.  The only prerequisites needed are a reasonable writing ability and a serious interest.  The workshop faculty have published extensively, taught wide varieties of writing and are knowledgeable about the requirements for publication.  They will discuss specific characteristics of fiction, non-fiction and poetry, assist participants with literary style and technique and discuss strategies and opportunities for publication.

This year’s faculty include:

• Don Coldsmith, writer of more than 40 books, 150 magazine articles and 1800 newspaper columns.  Coldsmith authors the “Spanish Bit Saga,” a fiction series about the Indians of the Great Plains in which there are more than 6 million copies in print.  He was recently named “Best Living Western Historical Novelist,” by True West magazine.  Coldsmith is a member and past president of the WWA.

• Jim Hoy, director of the Center for Great Plains Studies and member of the ESU Department of English since 1970.  Hoy writes non-fiction and has published ten books and over 100 articles and is co-author of "Plains Folk," a weekly newspaper column on the history and folklife of the Great Plains. He is a past president of the Kansas State Historical Society and trustee of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.

• Mike Blakely, writer of fifteen books, most of which are historical novels set in the American West.  He is also a songwriter, with six CD’s to his credit.  Blakely is a winner of the 2001 WWA Spur Award for “Best Western Novel” for Summer of Pearls.  He is a past president of WWA and on the board of the Ozark Creative Writers.

• Connie Dover, a musician who’s CD’s of Celtic and American traditional songs have garnered rave reviews around the world.  She has been a guest of NPR’s Weekend Edition, Thistle and Shamrock and A Prairie Home Companion.  She is a winner of the Speakeasy Prize in Poetry.  She has just completed soundtrack production for the PBS documentary, Bad Blood-the Border War that Triggered the Civil War.  Dover also just released a book of poems entitled Winter Count.

• Phillip Finch, author of more than ten books, including Sugarland, a New York Times “Notable Thriller.”  His works have been published in more than thirty countries.  Previously, he has been a reporter and columnist for the San Francisco Examiner, the Washington (D.C.) Daily News, and the Peninsula Times-Tribune.  Finch was also a consultant and editor-in-chief for the President’s Commission on Organized Crime.

• Max McCoy, an award-winning novelist, screenwriter and investigative reporter.  He authored four original Indiana Jones adventures for Bantam/Lucasfilm, wrote the novelization for the Steven Spielberg epic, Into the West, and won the Spur Award for “Best First Novel” with The Sixth Rider.  McCoy is a member of the WWA and is currently a Journalist-in-Residence at ESU.

The workshop will be held on the ESU campus in Plumb Hall room 408. The fee for the workshop is $60.  Participants may register on a credit or non-credit basis.  Participants wanting to enroll for credit must contact Jim Hoy via e-mail jhoy@emporia.edu or by phone at 620-341-5549.  To register, please visit, http://www.emporia.edu/cgps/form.htm, send your name and address to the Center for Great Plains Studies, 1200 Commercial, Campus Box 4040, Emporia State University, Emporia, KS 66801 or e-mail your request for a brochure to jjohnso1@emporia.edu.

Last Updated July 2, 2007>