The C.D. Wright Women Writers Conference
will be November 4-5, 2022
Photo by Marley Cash-Powell
2022 Conference Schedule
Registration and Check-in 4:30–6 pm, 7:30–8:30 pm
events.blackthorn.io/en/1I2LTNb7/cd-wright-women-writers-conference-2022-5a4w8W1ZHID/overview
Location: Lobby, McCastlain Hall
Conference participants, and those wishing to register on-site, may check in before or after our evening keynote. Conference badge is not required to attend the Friday evening keynote. It is required for the Saturday lunch, and admittance to the breakout sessions.
Conference Hotel: Hilton Garden Inn Conway
www.hilton.com/en/book/reservation/rooms/?ctyhocn=LITCWGI&arrivalDate=2022-11-04&departureDate=2022-11-05&groupCode=WWC&room1NumAdults=1&cid=OM%2CWW%2CHILTONLINK%2CEN%2CDirectLink
events.blackthorn.io/en/1I2LTNb7/cd-wright-women-writers-conference-2022-5a4w8W1ZHID/overview
Location: Lobby, McCastlain Hall
Conference participants, and those wishing to register on-site, may check in before or after our evening keynote. Conference badge is not required to attend the Friday evening keynote. It is required for the Saturday lunch, and admittance to the breakout sessions.
Conference Hotel: Hilton Garden Inn Conway
www.hilton.com/en/book/reservation/rooms/?ctyhocn=LITCWGI&arrivalDate=2022-11-04&departureDate=2022-11-05&groupCode=WWC&room1NumAdults=1&cid=OM%2CWW%2CHILTONLINK%2CEN%2CDirectLink
Friday Evening Keynote and Reception 5:00–8:30 pm
Speaker: Tess Taylor
Location: Ballroom McCastlain Hall
In spring 2020, Tess Taylor published two books of poems: "Last West," part of Dorothea Lange: Words & Pictures, at the Museum of Modern Art, and "Rift Zone," from Red Hen Press, hailed as "brilliant" in the LA Times and named one of the best books of 2020 by The Boston Globe. Taylor, who is on-air poetry reviewers for NPR's All Things Considered, is currently on the faculty of Ashland University's Low-Res MFA Creative Writing Program
Speaker: Tess Taylor
Location: Ballroom McCastlain Hall
In spring 2020, Tess Taylor published two books of poems: "Last West," part of Dorothea Lange: Words & Pictures, at the Museum of Modern Art, and "Rift Zone," from Red Hen Press, hailed as "brilliant" in the LA Times and named one of the best books of 2020 by The Boston Globe. Taylor, who is on-air poetry reviewers for NPR's All Things Considered, is currently on the faculty of Ashland University's Low-Res MFA Creative Writing Program
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2022
All events for Saturday take place in McCastlain and McAlister Halls.
All events for Saturday take place in McCastlain and McAlister Halls.
Registration and Check-in 8:00am–5:00 pm
Location: Lobby, McCastlain Hall
Conference participants, and those wishing to register on-site, may check in at the conference table.
Location: Lobby, McCastlain Hall
Conference participants, and those wishing to register on-site, may check in at the conference table.
BREAKOUT SESSIONS
There are five breakout sessions with 2-3 concurrent presentations per session. Breakout sessions are located in McCastlain and McAlister Halls.
There are five breakout sessions with 2-3 concurrent presentations per session. Breakout sessions are located in McCastlain and McAlister Halls.
Breakout Session I, 9:15–10:30 am
1. Give and Take: The Entanglements of Caregiving, Writing, and Environment
Location: Fireplace Room, McCastlain Hall
Presenters: Danielle Harms, Angela Voras-Hills, Kate Partridge, Hila Ratzabi, and Freesia Mckee
The pandemic has brought greater scrutiny to the longstanding ways that caretaking and writing have always been entangled with gender, sexuality, and the environment. In the panel, we will explore what we can learn from scrutinizing these intersections in our own writing and through the work of others. Taking an expansive view of what it means to give care, from parenting children and supporting ill and elderly people, to other relationships oriented towards care, we will draw on our positions as cross-genre writers, and interdisciplinary scholars. Our conversation will address the emotional labor of care as creative and ecological practice.
Location: Fireplace Room, McCastlain Hall
Presenters: Danielle Harms, Angela Voras-Hills, Kate Partridge, Hila Ratzabi, and Freesia Mckee
The pandemic has brought greater scrutiny to the longstanding ways that caretaking and writing have always been entangled with gender, sexuality, and the environment. In the panel, we will explore what we can learn from scrutinizing these intersections in our own writing and through the work of others. Taking an expansive view of what it means to give care, from parenting children and supporting ill and elderly people, to other relationships oriented towards care, we will draw on our positions as cross-genre writers, and interdisciplinary scholars. Our conversation will address the emotional labor of care as creative and ecological practice.
2. Poetry as the Writing of Silence: An Interdisciplinary reading and conversation
Location: Mirror Room, McAlister Hall
Presenters: Jennifer Steinorth, Ananda Lima, and Caroline M. Mar
In "Pictures Never Taken but Received," Wright writes that "the greater responsibility lies with poetry to sort through the inaudible signals before speaking up." In this hybrid-reading-panel-, three poets will share their process of "sort[ing]" through the inaudible, as well as the interruption of the silence via material utterance. If poetry is a means of translating the inaudible, how does it expose the ways in which silence can be both violence and gift, defiance and oppression, potential and void?
Location: Mirror Room, McAlister Hall
Presenters: Jennifer Steinorth, Ananda Lima, and Caroline M. Mar
In "Pictures Never Taken but Received," Wright writes that "the greater responsibility lies with poetry to sort through the inaudible signals before speaking up." In this hybrid-reading-panel-, three poets will share their process of "sort[ing]" through the inaudible, as well as the interruption of the silence via material utterance. If poetry is a means of translating the inaudible, how does it expose the ways in which silence can be both violence and gift, defiance and oppression, potential and void?
Breakout Session II, 10:45 am–Noon
1. Creative Reading: Writers read from their own works in any field or genre
Location: Fireplace Room, McCastlain Hall
Presenters: Coffy Davis, Melissa Ginsburg, and Adele Holmes
MEdusa: Reflections on writing from the margins will address the need for diverse voices in literature and how these accounts help to nurture healthy self-images for girls longing to belong and searching for ourselves amidst the crooked mirrors of traditional literature. This reading focuses on the often unheard stories of disenfranchised women and trauma and coming of age in areas that often times don't hold space for your voice.
Adele Holmes was born into poverty and was nearly blind until age seven. Today she is a retired pediatrician and an award winning novelist. As she reads her essay, "Vision," and an excerpt from her Southern Gothic novel, "Winter's Reckoning," you will see why resiliency is the key to success. Use determination and a clear vision for your future to overcome the obstacles stacked against you.
Melissa Ginsburg's new poetry collection, Doll Apollo, employs mythology, the figure of the paper doll, and the hoax conspiracy surrounding the Apollo moon landing in pastoral lyrics embedded with violence and beauty. Ginsburg’s feminist ecopoetic weaves the domestic and celestial into considerations of female identity, desire, spiritual yearning, and doubt. The author of two poetry collections, three poetry chapbooks, and two novels, her work has appeared in the New Yorker, Image, Guernica, and elsewhere. She teaches creative writing at the University of Mississippi.
Location: Fireplace Room, McCastlain Hall
Presenters: Coffy Davis, Melissa Ginsburg, and Adele Holmes
MEdusa: Reflections on writing from the margins will address the need for diverse voices in literature and how these accounts help to nurture healthy self-images for girls longing to belong and searching for ourselves amidst the crooked mirrors of traditional literature. This reading focuses on the often unheard stories of disenfranchised women and trauma and coming of age in areas that often times don't hold space for your voice.
Adele Holmes was born into poverty and was nearly blind until age seven. Today she is a retired pediatrician and an award winning novelist. As she reads her essay, "Vision," and an excerpt from her Southern Gothic novel, "Winter's Reckoning," you will see why resiliency is the key to success. Use determination and a clear vision for your future to overcome the obstacles stacked against you.
Melissa Ginsburg's new poetry collection, Doll Apollo, employs mythology, the figure of the paper doll, and the hoax conspiracy surrounding the Apollo moon landing in pastoral lyrics embedded with violence and beauty. Ginsburg’s feminist ecopoetic weaves the domestic and celestial into considerations of female identity, desire, spiritual yearning, and doubt. The author of two poetry collections, three poetry chapbooks, and two novels, her work has appeared in the New Yorker, Image, Guernica, and elsewhere. She teaches creative writing at the University of Mississippi.
2. Grounding Resilience: A Forum of Teaching Undergraduate Creative Writing in a Pandemic Era
Location: Mirror Room, McAlister Hall
Presenters: Alyse Bensel, Kris Coffey, Caroline Crew, Sara Henning, and Simone Savannah
The COVID-19 pandemic's effects on higher education-- with shifts to online, hybrid, and socially distanced learning-- have posed challenges to both educators and students. In this roundtable, panelists will discuss their experiences revising their pedagogical agendas to emphasize process, self-expression, and empathy in order to re-image the creative writing workshop as a space not only of intellectual but also emotional growth.
Location: Mirror Room, McAlister Hall
Presenters: Alyse Bensel, Kris Coffey, Caroline Crew, Sara Henning, and Simone Savannah
The COVID-19 pandemic's effects on higher education-- with shifts to online, hybrid, and socially distanced learning-- have posed challenges to both educators and students. In this roundtable, panelists will discuss their experiences revising their pedagogical agendas to emphasize process, self-expression, and empathy in order to re-image the creative writing workshop as a space not only of intellectual but also emotional growth.
Lunch 12:15–1:15 pm
Breakout Session III 1:30–2:45 pm
1. From This, That: Feminist Practice of Repurposing
Location: Art Lecture Hall, McCastlain Hall
Presenters: Elizabeth Hughey, Lauren Slaughter, Iris Jamahl Dunkle, and Tess Taylor
Where does poet look when called to write beyond the limits of her personal history? How do poets report from life? What does our lyric reporting look like? And what does feminism have to do with in it? In this interactive workshop, panelists will share dynamic texts the invite articulation -- letters, photographs, journals, maps, and artifacts -- that invite us to write, investigation how archive or report or shard stirs a response in poetry. With time discussion and collaboration, the panel will also offer exercises to enter new texts, rewrite their landscapes. and recalibrate language for a feminist future!
Location: Art Lecture Hall, McCastlain Hall
Presenters: Elizabeth Hughey, Lauren Slaughter, Iris Jamahl Dunkle, and Tess Taylor
Where does poet look when called to write beyond the limits of her personal history? How do poets report from life? What does our lyric reporting look like? And what does feminism have to do with in it? In this interactive workshop, panelists will share dynamic texts the invite articulation -- letters, photographs, journals, maps, and artifacts -- that invite us to write, investigation how archive or report or shard stirs a response in poetry. With time discussion and collaboration, the panel will also offer exercises to enter new texts, rewrite their landscapes. and recalibrate language for a feminist future!
2. The Sick List: Creating Metaphors for Illness, Pain, and the Divergent Body & Mind
Location: Fireplace Room, McCastlain Hall
Presenters: Anna Leahy and Sonya Huber
In "What Pain Wants," Sonya Huber challenges conventional writing about pain and instead assumes her pain's agency: "Pain is four-dimensional person with fractal intelligence." Through discussion of essays and poems, we'll examine and question existing metaphors of illness (e.g., the battle, the enemy), pain (e.g., to be struck, felled, imprisoned), and the experiential mismatches (including assumptions about gender) between our variable bodies and minds and the world. We'll then turn to prompts to create meaningful, individualized metaphors that also suggest a more inclusive human experience and literary culture.
Location: Fireplace Room, McCastlain Hall
Presenters: Anna Leahy and Sonya Huber
In "What Pain Wants," Sonya Huber challenges conventional writing about pain and instead assumes her pain's agency: "Pain is four-dimensional person with fractal intelligence." Through discussion of essays and poems, we'll examine and question existing metaphors of illness (e.g., the battle, the enemy), pain (e.g., to be struck, felled, imprisoned), and the experiential mismatches (including assumptions about gender) between our variable bodies and minds and the world. We'll then turn to prompts to create meaningful, individualized metaphors that also suggest a more inclusive human experience and literary culture.
Breakout Session IV, 3:00–4:15 pm
1. Thriving by Writing, Among, Across, Between
Location: Art Lecture Hall, McCastlain Hall
Presenters: Lesley Wheeler, Ann Fisher-Wirth, Sharon Harrigan, Laura Minor, Hyejung Kook, and Breanna Womer
Sometimes the best approach to an obstacle is to refuse the ground rules. Drawing from their experiences in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and hybrid forms, participants discuss why writers might want to shift and blend genres as well as the results of their own experiments. Hybrid art and genre-crossing can make space can make space for multiple realities, enabling creators to negotiate pressure that might otherwise seem paralyzing, but these practices also have cost. Discussion will range from advice and creative prompts to reflections on how histories, circumstances, ambitions shape our literary lives.
Location: Art Lecture Hall, McCastlain Hall
Presenters: Lesley Wheeler, Ann Fisher-Wirth, Sharon Harrigan, Laura Minor, Hyejung Kook, and Breanna Womer
Sometimes the best approach to an obstacle is to refuse the ground rules. Drawing from their experiences in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and hybrid forms, participants discuss why writers might want to shift and blend genres as well as the results of their own experiments. Hybrid art and genre-crossing can make space can make space for multiple realities, enabling creators to negotiate pressure that might otherwise seem paralyzing, but these practices also have cost. Discussion will range from advice and creative prompts to reflections on how histories, circumstances, ambitions shape our literary lives.
2. Veronica Franco: The Poetry of an Honored Courtesan and Proto-feminist Writer
Location: Fireplace Room, McCastlain Hall
Presenters: Michelle Rochniak
Veronica Franco (1546-1591) lived in the city-state of Venice and wrote poetry that reflected her life as a woman during the 16th century. This presentation will analyze how she discussed her relationships with men in her poetry as well as her connections to Venus and Apollo as a woman writer.
Location: Fireplace Room, McCastlain Hall
Presenters: Michelle Rochniak
Veronica Franco (1546-1591) lived in the city-state of Venice and wrote poetry that reflected her life as a woman during the 16th century. This presentation will analyze how she discussed her relationships with men in her poetry as well as her connections to Venus and Apollo as a woman writer.
3. Use the Pronoun "We"
Location: Fireplace Room, McCastlain Hall
Presenters: Vida Cross
As I complete a text I am working on, I challenge myself and the audience to consider how we as writers and readers/listeners can evolve from "I" and "You" to we. How does community exist in our writing? How do we imagine and encourage community building prose and poetry?
Location: Fireplace Room, McCastlain Hall
Presenters: Vida Cross
As I complete a text I am working on, I challenge myself and the audience to consider how we as writers and readers/listeners can evolve from "I" and "You" to we. How does community exist in our writing? How do we imagine and encourage community building prose and poetry?
Breakout Session V, 4:30–5:45 pm
1. SUFFERING MORE EFFICIENTLY: Sustaining the Writing Life
Location: Mirror Room, McAlister Hall
Presenters: Nicole Callihan, Patricia Spears Jones, Sasha Steensen, Sara Wallace, and Molly Sutton Kiefer
As the pandemic laid bare, women often face barriers to creating art, earning a living, and raising families that men do not. This discussion will seek to articulate different views on sustaining a writing life. Panelist will explore their origins as writers; the obstacles they've face; the influence of fellow women poets, like C.D. Wright; and the importance of persistence in the face of adversity. Writers work in organic, not prescriptive modes--our lived experience underscore our work-- and as such, we hope to empower audience members by sharing our own strategies of persistence.
Location: Mirror Room, McAlister Hall
Presenters: Nicole Callihan, Patricia Spears Jones, Sasha Steensen, Sara Wallace, and Molly Sutton Kiefer
As the pandemic laid bare, women often face barriers to creating art, earning a living, and raising families that men do not. This discussion will seek to articulate different views on sustaining a writing life. Panelist will explore their origins as writers; the obstacles they've face; the influence of fellow women poets, like C.D. Wright; and the importance of persistence in the face of adversity. Writers work in organic, not prescriptive modes--our lived experience underscore our work-- and as such, we hope to empower audience members by sharing our own strategies of persistence.
2. Love Set You Going: Poems of Mothering & Being Mothered
Location: Fireplace Room, McCastlain Hall
Presenters: Amy Fleury, Gauri Awasthi, and Maegan Gonzales
An intergenerational, cross-cultural reading of poems that centers mothering from various perspective by a daughter in a home filled with mothers, a mother raising children alone and in a blended family, and a woman who mothers a child past death. These poems contemplate the emotional intricacies of mothering and being mothered.
Location: Fireplace Room, McCastlain Hall
Presenters: Amy Fleury, Gauri Awasthi, and Maegan Gonzales
An intergenerational, cross-cultural reading of poems that centers mothering from various perspective by a daughter in a home filled with mothers, a mother raising children alone and in a blended family, and a woman who mothers a child past death. These poems contemplate the emotional intricacies of mothering and being mothered.
3. The Body Politic: Motherhood, Trauma, and Sexuality
Location: Art Lecture Hall, McCastlain Hall
Presenters: Anna V. Q. Ross, Keetje Kuipers, Eugenia Leigh, Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach, and Hyejung Kook
In the year of intensifying armed conflict and continued pandemic, when hate crimes reported to the FBI are at a record high and the U.S. Supreme Court stands to overturn Roe vs. Wade, five poet mothers will share work that engages diaspora, sexuality, mental illness, and inherited and received trauma, while reflecting on the repercussions of parenting in troubled times, confronting what Adrienne Rich calls the "long, erotic, unended wrestling of poetry and politics" through the lens of personal. We will end with a discussion and invite the audience to respond with variety of creative prompts.
Location: Art Lecture Hall, McCastlain Hall
Presenters: Anna V. Q. Ross, Keetje Kuipers, Eugenia Leigh, Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach, and Hyejung Kook
In the year of intensifying armed conflict and continued pandemic, when hate crimes reported to the FBI are at a record high and the U.S. Supreme Court stands to overturn Roe vs. Wade, five poet mothers will share work that engages diaspora, sexuality, mental illness, and inherited and received trauma, while reflecting on the repercussions of parenting in troubled times, confronting what Adrienne Rich calls the "long, erotic, unended wrestling of poetry and politics" through the lens of personal. We will end with a discussion and invite the audience to respond with variety of creative prompts.
Closing Reception, 6–7:30 pm
Location: Ballroom, McCastlain
Location: Ballroom, McCastlain
