Louisiana Book Festival offers variety of 'Wordshops'

            Time is ticking to register for the five Wordshops hosted by the Louisiana Center for the Book, as part of this year's Louisiana Book Festival. These workshops will be given Friday, Oct. 31, in the State Library of Louisiana in Baton Rouge by Louisiana Book Festival author-instructors Jill McCorkle, Mark Dunn, Ava Leavell Haymon, Barbara Slate and Earl Swift. Topics covered include storytelling, teen-writing, graphic novels, poetry and organizing strategies.

Jill McCorkle

            Fellowship of Southern Writers member Jill McCorkle, author of four story collections and six novels, presents Finding the Story, a fiction workshop focusing on showing and telling the story one has always wanted to write. 

            Mark Dunn, the genre-busting novelist, leads young writers in Breaking the Rules: A Teen Writing Workshop for the Creatively Hyperactive, an exploration of the different non-traditional ways of expressing oneself with language.

Ava Leavell Haymon

            Comic artist Barbara Slate guides attendees on how to write and draw comic books and graphic novels as she presents You Can Do a Graphic Novel.

           Louisiana Poet Laureate Ava Leavell Haymon facilitates novices and experienced participants alike in Making Poems out of Your Own Experience through translating memories into poems. Haymon has published four poetry collections. She also edits the LSU Press Barataria Poetry Series.

            Journalist Earl Swift, author of five books of narrative nonfiction, presents The Lovely Bones: On Organizing Your Research and Writing, offering strategies for organizing field notes, interview transcripts and documentary research. 

            For additional information or to register for WordShops, call (225) 219-9503 or visit LouisianaBookFestival.org/wordshops.html.

Cheré Coen is the author of “Forest Hill, Louisiana: A Bloom Town History,” “Haunted Lafayette, Louisiana” and “Exploring Cajun Country: A Historic Guide to Acadiana” and co-author of “Magic’s in the Bag: Creating Spellbinding Gris Gris Bags and Sachets.” Write her at cherecoen@gmail.com.