Events
Each session, MTSU Write hosts events that nurture the writing community and celebrate literary life. Check here for updates as events change from season to season.
Throughout the year, MTSU co-sponsors Poetry in the Boro, a monthly reading and open mic event. Follow the schedule and learn more about featured writers here: https://www.facebook.com/PoetryInTheBoro/?fref=ts
Fall Session
The second volume of SHIFT: A Publication of MTSU Write will be available in early September. Naturally, we'll have a launch party! Watch here for details...
This fall, MTSU Write is proud to be an exhibitor in the 2019 Southern Festival of Books. Come out to Nashville's War Memorial Plaza October 11-13 and find our booth, where we'll have volumes 1 and 2 of SHIFT available for purchase as well as program information, writing inspiration, and lots of fun merch.
Our 2019 Fall Creative Writing Conference will be held Saturday, October 19, at MTSU's Student Union Building. This year's keynote speaker is essayist Mary Laura Philpott (I Miss You When You Blink). Registration is now OPEN! Details and schedule (as it firms up) are at the Conference site (click on it in the lefthand column!)
MTSU Write continues to sposor Poetry in the Boro, a monthly community poetry reading and open mic event here in Murfreesboro.
Summer Session
MTSU Write continues to sponsor Poetry in the Boro throughout the summer.
Save the Date!
Camp Writerhaven: a writer's retreat
Rockvale Writers Colony 6994 Giles Hill Road, College Grove, TN
Session 1: June 20-23 (includes 3 nights, Meet the Mentors event, craft colloquium, 3 dinners, and t-shirt)
Session 2: July 14-20 (includes 6 nights, 2 craft colloquia, 6 dinners, and t-shirt)
Spring Session
2019 Spring Events Overview
Thursday, February 7: Launch party for SHIFT: A Publication of MTSU Write, volume 1 4-7 pm at L & L Contractors on the square
Sunday, February 10: Poetry in the Boro, Murfreesboro Little Theatre, 6:30 pm
Saturday March 2: Tell it! Storytelling Workshop with Mark Lamb, 1-5 pm MTSU College of Education Bldg. Room 253
Sunday, March 3: Storytelling Workshop Performance at Murfreesboro Little Theatre, 3 pm
Sunday, March 10: Poetry in the Boro, Murfreesboro Little Theatre, 6:30 pm
Saturday, March 16: Spring Saturdays memoir master class with Dorin Shumacher at MT Center, 9am-noon
Saturday, April 6: Spring Saturdays fiction master class with Jennie Fields, 9am-noon MTSU College of Education Bldg. Room 253
Saturday, April 20: Spring Saturdays poetry master class with Marcus Jackson at MT Center, 9 am-noon
Monday April 22: Application period for Summer Session Mentorships opens
Saturday, April 27: Staging the Page Spoken Word workshop with Kory Wells and Jamie Stevens, Murfreesboro Little Theatre
Spring Saturdays
April 20: Marcus Jackson
Marcus Jackson earned a BA from the University of Toledo and continued his poetry studies at NYU and as a Cave Canem fellow. His poems have appeared in such publications as The American Poetry Review, The New Yorker, and Tin House. His first collection of poetry, Neighborhood Register, was published in 2011, and his second book of poems, entitled Pardon My Heart (Northwestern University Press/TriQuarterly Books), was recently released. Of Pardon My Heart, The New York Times writes, “Jackson's collection confirms the arrival of a thrilling new voice in American poetry, one whose writing, on page after page, has the fullness and glow of a jubilee." Jackson lives with his wife and child in Columbus, Ohio, and he teaches in the MFA programs at Ohio State and Queens University of Charlotte.
April 4: Jennie Fields
"Writing Fiction From Your Subconscious: A class that taps into your hidden creativity"
“Please get out of the habit of saying that you’ve got an idea for a short story. Art does not come from ideas. Art does not come from the mind. Art comes from the place where you dream. Art comes from your unconscious; it comes from the white-hot center of you.” Robert Olen Butler, Winner of the Pulitzer Prize
Your most complex, creative thoughts are locked away in a part of your brain you may find hard to reach: your subconscious mind. How do you, as a writer reach into that white-hot center of ideas, vision, meaning?
This class will share tips and take you through exercises to help you gain access to this heart of creativity. We’ll be reading, talking, writing and listening to each other as we tap our deepest thoughts.
Jennie Fields was born in Chicago. She received her MFA from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and spent many years as an advertising Creative Director in New York City. In 2009, she moved to Nashville where she now writes fiction full-time. She’s published four novels: Lily Beach, Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, The Middle Ages, and The Age of Desire. The Age of Desire, based on the life of writer Edith Wharton, was named a New York Times Editor’s Choice. Her recently completed fifth novel, Atomic Love, is set in 1950. It tells the tale of a nuclear physicist asked to spy on her old lover to find out whether he's selling atomic secrets to the Russians. Putnam will publish it in 2020.
March 16: Dorin Schumacher
"REVEAL: The Craft of Writing Memoir"
For beginning and published memoirists, this memoir workshop will help participants move to their next, deeper levels. Keys to beautiful memoirs that move and reveal truths about our lives and experiences will be discussed. Some examples from Dorin Schumacher’s Gatsby’s Child: Coming of Age in East Egg will be given. Participants should read Gatsby’s Child beforehand. Books can be purchased at accounts@mastodonpublishing.com.
Dorin Schumacher is the author of Gatsby's Child: Coming of Age in East Egg (Bell Bridge Books, 2018). Recent publications include Brooklyn Rail, PANK Magazine, Terminus, Bridge Eight, At Large, Fjords Review and Quiet Lunch. Her writing on silent film star Helen Gardner appears in Women Screenwriters (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), the Encyclopedia of Early Cinema (Routledge, 2010), This Film is Dangerous and many other anthologies and publications. Her personal writing appears in The New York Times and Stonepile Writers Anthology (University of North Georgia Press, 2014), alongside numerous other publications.
