Lakeland College - Sheboygan, WI

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Lakeland's Great Lakes Writers Festival celebrates the written word

Academics - posted on 10/23/2006

The Great Lakes Writers Festival, Lakeland College's annual celebration of the written word, will be held on Lakeland's campus, Nov. 2 and 3.

This two-day event features several readings and workshops with guest authors Marilyn L. Taylor and Sebastian Matthews, along with members of the Lakeland faculty.

The Great Lakes Writers Festival is free and open to the public. Hosted by Karl Elder, Lakeland's Fessler Professor of Creative Writing, this event provides both seasoned and emerging writers the opportunity to talk with peers, to discuss their work and to learn from the pros in workshops.

Each year highly esteemed writers join the Lakeland community for conversations about their art and craft.

Taylor is the author of five collections of poetry. Her poems have appeared in many anthologies and journals, including The American Scholar, Smartish Pace, The Formalist, POETRY and POETRY' s 90th Anniversary Anthology. She is the recipient of the 2003 Dogwood Prize, three Pushcart nominations, and has also taken first place in contests sponsored by Passager, The Ledge and the GSU Review.

Her latest book, "Subject to Change," (David Robert Books) was nominated for the 2005 Poets' Prize. She is also the author of four poetry chapbooks, the newest of which, "The Seven Very Liberal Arts," was published earlier this year in a limited edition by Aralia Press.

A teacher for the Honors College at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Taylor is currently a contributing editor for THE WRITER magazine, where her columns on craft appear six times a year. She served as the Poet Laureate for the city of Milwaukee in 2004 and 2005.

Matthews is the author of the memoir, "In My Father's Footsteps" (Norton, 2004), and co-editor, with Stanley Plumly, of "Search Party: Collected Poems of William Matthews" (Houghton Mifflin, 2004), a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award.

A graduate of the University of Michigan's MFA program, Matthews teaches part-time at Warren Wilson College and edits "Rivendell," a place-based literary journal. His poetry and prose has appeared in Atlantic Monthly, New England Review, Poetry Daily, Poets & Writers, Seneca Review, Tin House and Virginia Quarterly Review, among others. Matthews was a recent Bernard De Voto Fellow in Nonfiction at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference and received a 2006 North Carolina Artist Grant.

He has a chapbook of poems out, "Coming to Flood" (Hollyridge Press, 2005) and his first full-length book of poems, "We Generous," due out soon from Red Hen Press.

The Festival includes a writing contest which features two categories - high school participants and all remaining participants. Anyone who attends the Festival is eligible. First place in both categories will receive cash awards in each of three genres - poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction.

For further information or to register, contact Karl Elder, Lakeland Fessler Professor of Creative Writing and Poet in Residence at 920-565-1276 or elderk@lakeland.edu. For a complete schedule of both days and additional information, visit the festival's website, www.greatlakeswritersfestival.org.