SIERRA VISTA — The Cochise Community Creative Writing Celebration has announced its 2015 workshop presenters.
The annual celebration brings four published writers in different genres to present hands-on workshops to aspiring writers from the community. The 2015 celebration is March 27-28, with Friday’s events at the Ethel Berger Center and Saturday at the Cochise College Sierra Vista Campus.
Simon Ortiz
This year, author and poet Simon Ortiz will be the celebration’s keynote speaker. He is the author of Woven Stone, Out There Somewhere, from Sand Creek, Men on the Moon, Beyond the Reach of Time and Change, The Good Rainbow Road, After and Before the Lightning, and other books. Currently, he is the Program Manager for RED INK: International Journal of Indigenous Literature, Art, Humanities that will begin publishing annually in fall 2015 at Arizona State University.
Also presenting at this year’s celebration is Cochise College instructor and Cochise County native Jay Treiber, whose debut novel, Spirit Walk, was published in May 2014. In an early review of the book, Jennifer Lee Carrell calls it “a gripping story of remembrance and redemption, beautifully painting the place and giving voice to its people.” He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Montana. His workshop explores the process and mechanics of finding, shaping, and enhancing the natural narrative arc inherent in a good story.
Susan Lang is the author of a trilogy of novels published by University of Nevada Press about a woman homesteading in the southwestern wilderness during the years 1929 to 1941. The first novel in the trilogy, Small Rocks Rising, won the 2003 Willa Award. Susan was awarded a 2007 Project Grant from the Arizona Commission on the Arts for her novel-in-progress, The Sawtooth Complex. Her workshop is titled “Breathing Life into Character.”
Carmen Duarte is a veteran reporter for the Arizona Daily Star. In 1999, she was assigned a story about the cotton industry for the business section as a millennium project. Then, editors asked her to write a book about the Mexican and Mexican-American experience in the Southwest through stories about her family. The result was “Mama’s Santos: An Arizona Life,” which ran for 36 days in the Star in 2000 and is now an ebook and hardcover book. Her workshop will explain interviewing and researching skills used to capture facts and details for memoir writing. It also will cover the importance of using all senses and putting the people you interview at ease so that they trust you and open up to share their stories.
Also included each year in the celebration is a writing contest, with cash prizes. Contest categories are poetry, short story and memoir. First-place winners of the Creative Writing Celebration’s writing contest have their work published in Mirage, Cochise College’s literary and arts magazine. Writing contest entries must be received by March 2 and winners will be announced at the celebration. For more information about contest guidelines, visit www.cochise.edu/cwc.
The celebration is co-sponsored by Cochise College, University South Foundation, Inc., Cochise College Foundation’s Diane E. Freund Memorial Writing Celebration Fund, and the City of Sierra Vista Leisure and Library Services, with support from other community businesses and organizations.
For more information and to register to attend the Creative Writing Celebration, visit www.cochise.edu/cwc, or contact coordinator Beth Orozco at (520) 255-6060 or colburnb@cochise edu.