Tomorrow’s guests are sure to transport us with stories about women as did last week’s. Here’s a summary of March 13 including photos from the day:

* Ena Baker (Lansing Storytellers) introduced herself as someone whose name is forgotten for what she accomplished: Annie Edson Taylor, the first person to survive a trip over the Niagra Falls. Speaking as Annie, Ms. Baker took us along this adventurer’s cross-country travels as a dance teacher to the plunge that brought her short-lived fame.

* Charles Thornton passed out golden haloes to ready listeners for stories about children’s “right to be bad”. Woven throughout his childhood adventures, like the tricycle getaway, was Mr. Thornton’s clear and shining admiration for his mother Fanny May.

* Mary Catherine Harper (Defiance College) sparked our imaginations with poetic prompts linking the spiritual and sensual, as workshoppers examined objects with hands rather than eyes and took surprising turns across the page.

* Dawn Comer (Defiance College) guided an exploration into character development with photographs of women unknown to us by face though familiar to our experiences, and the writing led us to China, Vietnam, England, and emotional depths.

In anticipation of  tomorrow’s program, here are insightful words shared by Dawn Comer from Virigina Woolf’s “Professions for Women”, which inspired Ms. Comer’s workshop title “On Becoming a Fish”:

I want you to imagine me writing a novel in a state of trance. I want you to figure to yourselves a girl sitting with a pen in her hand, which for minutes, and indeed for hours, she never dips into the inkpot. The image that comes to my mind when I think of this girl is the image of a fisherman lying sunk in dreams on the verge of a deep lake with a rod held out over the water. She was letting her imagination sweep unchecked round every rock and cranny of the world that lies submerged in the depths of our unconscious being. Now came the experience, the experience that I believe to be far commoner with women writers than with men. The line raced through the girl’s fingers. Her imagination had rushed away. It had sought the pools, the depths, the dark places where the largest fish slumber. And then there was a smash. There was an explosion. There was foam and confusion. The imagination had dashed itself against something hard. The girl was roused from her dream. She was indeed in a state of the most acute and difficult distress. To speak without figure she had thought of something, something about the body, about the passions which it was unfitting for her as a woman to say. Men, her reason told her, would be shocked. The consciousness of–what men will say of a woman who speaks the truth about her passions had roused her from her artist’s state of unconsciousness. She could write no more. The trance was over. Her imagination could work no longer. This I believe to be a very common experience with women writers–they are impeded by the extreme conventionality of the other sex. For though men sensibly allow themselves great freedom in these respects, I doubt that they realize or can control the extreme severity with which they condemn such freedom in women.

Virginia owns Enterprise Press and is the author of several creative nonfiction works with a historical focus including Bold Women in Michigan History and Gentle Hunter: A Biography of Alice C. Evans, Bacteriologist. Learn more about Virginia on her web site.

Here’s what the session offers:

Creative nonfiction (CNF) encompasses many forms including memoir, personal essay, feature articles, and opinion/ editorial pieces. The workshop offers a brief survey of CNF’s evolution and explores four steps to essay writing useful with all other forms of this genre.

Registration for writing workshops is recommended due to limited space. The form, available here, may be submitted by email herstories.project @ gmail.com or at Everybody Reads bookstore (M-SA 11am to 7pm, SU 9am to 4pm).

Professor Harper teaches at Defiance College in Ohio. Her poetry has been published in The New England Review, WomenWriters.net, The Bozeman Er, and Masque. She also has published articles on women’s science fiction in Science Fiction Studies, Extrapolation, and FemSpec. She has completed a cross-media epistolary novel Letters to Christian Duval, which is set in Ohio and Iraq. Her interests in language arts, cultural studies, poetics, and social justice issues have taken her to Cambodia to work on a language arts and ethnography project, so she is currently writing poetry about her experiences in Cambodia.

Here’s what to expect at the workshop:

Experiencing and contemplating the spiritual realm – whether understood as an internal state, poetic episode, or connection to a larger being – is often understood in terms of getting beyond the physical world. But sometimes spiritual experience comes to us through the physical realm and can be seen as deeply connected to our physical selves. This workshop uses sensory-rich objects from the natural world as a tool for entering poetic spiritual space.

Registration for writing workshops is recommended due to limited space. The form, available here, may be submitted by email herstories.project @ gmail.com or at Everybody Reads bookstore (M-SA 11am to 7pm, SU 9am to 4pm).

Thanks to HerStories volunteer Ashley Guerrant, the workshop registration form is now available!

PART 1: ABOUT WORKSHOPS

Thanks for your interest in the free writing workshops offered by The HerStories Project during March 2010. Workshops will be held at Everybody Reads bookstore, 2019 E. Michigan Ave., Lansing, MI 48912. Please complete this form by providing all the requested information. The form may be submitted by email herstories.project @ gmail.com or at Everybody Reads during business hours (M-Th 11am-7pm, F-Sa 11am-5pm, Sun 9am-4pm).

Since seating in workshops is limited, availability depends on how many people register. In general, registration will be taken on a first-come, first-serve basis. Half of the workshop seats are reserved for high-school aged youth, but if not taken these spots will open to adults.

If you are interested in more than one workshop, be sure to indicate your level of interest as directed on the form. This information is helpful if more people register than can be accommodated for the same session.

Remember: workshop participants are invited to submit an unpublished piece of writing to be considered for publication by the magazine Greater Lansing Woman. One entry from all submissions will be selected. Participants will receive details about the submission process when workshop registration is confirmed.

PART 2: REGISTRATION

Please provide the following contact information:

Name: _______________________________

Phone No.: ____________________________

Email Address: _________________________

Please provide your age group with a check or ‘x’ next to 1 selection.
__ Below 18 years
__ Above 18 years

If picking 1 workshop, please place a check or ‘x’ next to the selection.
-or-
If selecting more than 1 workshop, please indicate your level of interest with ‘1’ for the greatest interest, ‘2’ for the next greatest level, and so on.

__ March 6, 2:30pm, “Journaling through Change”, Holly Makimaa (Oasis Wellness).

__ March 13, 2:30pm, “There’s Sense in Our Poetry: Using the Senses to Enter Poetic Spiritual Space”, Mary Catherine Harper (Defiance College)

__ March 13, 3:45pm, “On Becoming a Fish: Birthing Characters and Finding Voice Through Fiction”, Dawn Comer (Defiance College)

__ March 20, 2:30pm, “Writing about Women”, Marilyn Mayer Culpepper (Never Will We Forget: Oral Histories of World War II)

__ March 20, 3:45pm, “Making Your Creative Nonfiction Sizzle”, Virginia Law Burns (Bold Women in Michigan History)

The National Women’s History Project turns 30 this year and has given 2010′s Women’s History Month the theme Writing Women Back into History. The theme perfectly matches the writing workshops offered by The HerStories Project.

Workshops are open to adults and high-school aged youth. All sessions support the development of stories about women – historical, contemporary, autobiographical, and fictional. Participants are invited to submit an entry for possible publication by the magazine Greater Lansing Woman, which will publish one submission from all entries.

Registration (see form here) for workshops may be completed by email herstories.project @ gmail.com or at the Everybody Reads bookstore, 2019 E. Michigan Ave. in Lansing, during business hours: 11am to 7pm Monday through Saturday, and 9am to 4pm on Sunday.

There are five workshops offered by HerStories in March. Updates are ongoing about sessions, so just follow the links as they’re available:

• “Journaling through Change” by Holly Makimaa (Oasis Wellness) on March 6 at 2:30pm.
• “There’s Sense in Our Poetry: Using the Senses to Enter Poetic Spiritual Space” by Mary Catherine Harper (Defiance College) on March 13 at 2:30pm.
• “On Becoming a Fish: Birthing Characters and Finding Voice Through Fiction” by Dawn Comer (Defiance College) on March 13 at 3:45pm
• “Writing about Women” by Marilyn Mayer Culpepper (Never Will We Forget: Oral Histories of World War II) on March 20 at 2:30pm.
• “Making Your Creative Nonfiction Sizzle” by Virginia Law Burns (Bold Women in Michigan History) on March 20 at 3:45pm.

Dawn Comer joins HerStories! Her workshop “On Becoming a Fish: Birthing Characters and Finding Voice Through Fiction” is scheduled March 13 at 2:30pm.

Dawn received her MFA in Creative Writing from The University of Notre Dame. She currently teaches part-time at Defiance College and is writing two books: Raised in a Corn Palace: Stories from the National Association of Tourist Attraction Survivors, and Fella With an Umbrella: Discovering Joy on the Autism Spectrum. The Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature has awarded her with The Paul Somers Prize for Creative Prose for the story “Raised in a Corn Palace” (2008) and the memoir “Fella with an Umbrella: Finding Joy on the Autism Spectrum” (2009). Learn more about her in an interview from last September.

Here’s what the session offers:

Birthing characters requires that a writer surrender conscious control and instead create a welcoming space for characters to grow and be born into. In so doing, characters may not only provide the voice of a story, they may also help writers discover their own.

This workshop will explore ways to welcome and get to know characters, to explore their yearnings, perhaps even to push through taboos. Participants are encouraged to come to the workshop with a character in mind that they would like to develop.

Registration for writing workshops is recommended due to limited space. The form, available here, may be submitted by email herstories.project @ gmail.com or at Everybody Reads bookstore (M-SA 11am to 7pm, SU 9am to 4pm).

Marilyn Mayer Culpepper joins HerStories! Her workshop “Writing about Women” is scheduled March 20 at 2:30pm. She is emeritus faculty from Michigan State University and the author of several books documenting women in U.S. history, including the most recently published Never Will We Forget: Oral Histories about World War II (2008).

The workshop description is coming soon!

Registration for writing workshops is recommended due to limited space. The form, available here, may be submitted by email herstories.project @ gmail.com or at Everybody Reads bookstore (M-SA 11am to 7pm, SU 9am to 4pm).

Holly Makimaa from Oasis Health & Wellness/ Yoga Center of East Lansing joins the HerStories program! Her workshop “Journaling through Change” is scheduled March 6 from 2:30-3:30pm. Holly has been teaching holistic journaling workshops for almost 10 years and has worked with clients nationally in telling their life stories. She is an avid yoga practitioner, meditator and contemplative at heart. She enjoys nature, spending time with children and writing in her spare time. Learn more from her web page.

Here’s what to expect at the workshop:

Learn to use writing as a way to navigate through change. Women have an innate understanding of change. Their bodies go through natural cycles that give them an enhanced ability to understand that we are always changing. We know that life could not exist without change. Throughout our lives we experience changes in our emotions, thoughts, dreams, relationships,jobs, families, health, etc. Journaling gives us a sacred space to enter into change and honor the feelings and thoughts we experience while clearing the way for us to touch an inner well of deep knowing that is changeless.

Registration for writing workshops is recommended due to limited space. The form, available here, may be submitted by email herstories.project @ gmail.com or at Everybody Reads bookstore (M-SA 11am to 7pm, SU 9am to 4pm).