Maps, Journeys, and Geographies with Anita Skeen and Colleen Anderson – G24070407
“To ask for a map is to say, ‘Tell me a story,’” writes Peter Turchi. In this course we will consider various geographies that we inhabit/have inhabited and various journeys that we and other writers and artists have undertaken. We will examine and create maps, both visual and with words, that tell important stories about who we are as individuals and as a culture. We will look at the writer as cartographer and how through exploration (premeditated searching or undisciplined rambling) and presentation (creating an essay, poem, story, or play meant to communicate with and have an effect on others) we lead both writer and reader on a journey into worlds real and imagined. Every map has a story, and every story can result in a map. Beginners and experienced writers (and map makers) are all welcome. To augment their writing, participants will create their own, personal maps in several forms, using simple collage materials, including printed maps and decorative papers that Anita and Colleen will provide. And, whereas the discussion sessions will meet during regular hours each morning, the map making studio space will be open to students whenever they want to use it.
Instructors
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Colleen AndersonColleen Anderson is a writer, songwriter, and graphic designer in Charleston, WV. Her poetry, short fiction, and essays have appeared in Redbook, Arts & Letters, Antietam Review, The Sun, and many other publications.
Her book publications include a children’s chapter book, Missing: Mrs. Cornblossom, which won a Moonbeam Children’s Book Award, and a poetry chapbook, Bound Stone. Her essays for WV Public Radio have won national awards, and she has produced three albums of original songs.
Her writing has earned two Individual Artist Fellowships from the West Virginia Commission on the Arts as well as residency fellowships from the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of Taos, New Mexico and Monson Arts of Monson, Maine.
Colleen has led writing and songwriting workshops throughout the U.S. and is an enthusiastic Read Aloud volunteer at Piedmont Elementary School in Charleston, WV.
Visit her website at colleenanderson.com. -
Anita SkeenAnita Skeen is currently Professor Emerita in the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities at Michigan State University where she is the Founding Director of The Center for Poetry. and currently the Series Editor for Wheelbarrow Books. She taught students in kindergarten through high school while working with the Kansas Arts Commission’s Artist in the Schools Program; in traditional venues such as college classrooms as a Visiting Writer and Writer in Residence; and in senior citizens’ centers, libraries, and at Ghost Ranch. She has been the Coordinator of the Creative Arts Program at Ghost Ranch for 41 years, and the Fall Writing Festival for 23 years.
Anita is the author of six volumes of poetry: Each Hand A Map (1986); Portraits (1990); Outside the Fold, Outside the Frame (1999); The Resurrection of the Animals (2002); Never the Whole Story (2011); When We Say Shelter (2007), with Oklahoma poet Jane Taylor; and The Unauthorized Audubon (2014), a collection of poems about imaginary birds accompanied by the linocuts of anthropologist/visual artist Laura B. DeLind.. With Taylor, she co-edited the literary anthology Once Upon A Place: Writings from Ghost Ranch (2008). Her poetry, short fiction, and essays have appeared in numerous literary magazines and anthologies.