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Lakeland's Great Lakes Writers Festival marks 10th anniversary

Academics - posted on 10/19/2007

The Great Lakes Writers Festival, Lakeland College's 10th annual celebration of the written word, will be held on Lakeland's campus, Nov. 1-2.

This two-day event features several readings and workshops with guest authors Philip Dacey and Margaret Dawe, 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.

Philip Dacey Dacey is the author of nine full-length books of poems, the latest "The New York Postcard Sonnets: A Midwesterner Moves to Manhattan" (Rain Mountain Press, 2007). His eighth was "The Mystery of Max Schmitt: On the Life and Work of Thomas Eakins" (Turning Point, 2004).

The latest of more than a dozen chapbooks is "Three Shades of Green: Poems of Fatherhood" (Snark Publishing, 2006). His sixth and seventh books of poems appeared in 1999, "The Deathbed Playboy" (Eastern Washington U. Press) and "The Paramour of the Moving Air" (Quarterly Review of Literature Book Series).

Much anthologized, he has received three Pushcart Prizes, a Discovery Award from the New York YM-YWHA's Poetry Center, prizes from many magazines and various fellowships (a Fulbright to Yugoslavia, a Woodrow Wilson to Stanford, Bush Foundation, Loft-McKnight, and two in creative writing from the National Endowment for the Arts).

A former Peace Corps volunteer and college professor, the anthology he co-edited with David Jauss, "Strong Measures: Contemporary Poetry in Traditional Forms" (Harper & Row, 1986), remains in print and was influential in the development of the literary movement known as the New Formalism. A native of St. Louis and 35-year resident of Minnesota, he currently lives on Manhattan's Upper West Side.

Margaret Dawe Dawe is the author of the novel "Nissequott," one of the few American novels published by New Directions, a company known for its choice of distinguished progressive writers. The novel was a New York Times New & Noteworthy Paperback. She was a journalist at The East Hampton Star, where her stories won New York State and Long Island press awards.

Most recently her essay, "A killer's trail, in hindsight," on living in Wichita during the time the serial killer BTK was caught, was published in Newsday. She received her MFA from Brooklyn College, her MS at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and her BA from the University of Virginia. In New York City, she studied with Allen Ginsberg and Grace Paley and in Charlottesville with John Casey and Peter Taylor.

She chairs the English Department at Wichita State University, where she has taught in its MFA program since 1993. She has completed a novel entitled "Killers We Knew," which tells about a newspaper reporter who recalls seeing a murder scene as a small girl on a walk with her grandfather. During the course of investigating that old, unsolved murder, she comes to suspect her grandfather of the crime, and learns more about her own family and relationships.

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.