Category Archives: Worcester State English Majors

Passport to Adventure: WSU Writers Workshop

1940s mystery, book signings and readings, Burning Cold, Film Noir, Jessica Minton, Letter from a Dead Man, Lisa Lieberman, mystery, Mystery Writing Workshop, Sisters in crime New England, suspense, Worcester, Worcester State English Majors, writing, Writing Workshop, , , , , , , , ,
On Friday, April 26th, I had the pleasure of joining Lisa Lieberman in presenting the writing workshop “Passport to Adventure” at Worcester State University.  Like me, Lisa writes historical mysteries.  Hers follow the adventures and intrigues of Cara Walden from 1950s Hollywood to England and Italy (special guest appearance by Cary Grant!) to Hungary during the Revolution and soon to Indochina.  Lisa is also Vice President of Sisters in Crime New England.  In that role she’s been working to bring new blood, so to speak, into our organization.  This fun work shop is one means she is rolling out to do so.  I was happy that she asked me to join her.
To give you an idea of how fun and inspirational this work shop is, here’s Lisa’s description: “The Surrealists used to pool their money and buy a one-way ticket to the furthest destination they could afford. They’d send one person off on an adventure and they’d have to make their way back somehow, and tell the others all about it when they returned.  Along they way, they’d collect talismans that helped them navigate the dark places they encountered. In this workshop, we’ll be sending each of you off on an adventure and when  you get back, you’ll have the outline of a short story.”
Of course, we didn’t literally send anyone off ‑ that would be a really long workshop.  More pragmatically, we had a display of all kinds of intriguing objects from which participants could choose for the “talismans” or souvenirs. For a destination for their journey into the mysterious, we had them select one sealed envelope from an array, each with a different noir image to inspire their journey into creativity.  They had time allotted to get started on who one character in the image was and what his/her concern was.  Then, to spice things even more, I got to do individual tarot reading of past, present, and future of their characters ‑ which would aid them in thinking through where their characters had been, what conflict they were in now, and how that conflict might be resolved.  It was fun for me to give vague interpretations of the cards and then watch our writers run with them, already inspired by their images and selected souvenirs.  Wonderfully, the writers all seemed pretty well pleased with what they had come up with and planned to continue their tales.  One fellow even told me he had finished his short story and had submitted it to the Al Blanchard Short Fiction Contest.  Since he’s one of my students, of course, I’m pulling for him to win!
Our faculty liaison, Cleve Wiese was so excited by our endeavors, that he not only now has a story he wants to finish, but asked us to come back next fall to do the session with the WSU writers’ club INK.  Another faculty member wants us to do the workshop with his course The Writers Life in the spring!  And here’s the good news for everyone else out there!  Lisa and I would be delighted to come to schools or writers’ groups to do the workshop as well!  So let me or Lisa know if you would like us to work with you.  Once again, Sisters in Crime is out there making a difference for writers, published and unpublished!  Joining was one of the best decisions I ever made!

            

2017 Undergraduate Shakespeare Conference

Undergraduate Shakespeare Conference, Worcester, Worcester State English Majors,
This year, the Undergraduate Shakespeare Conference was held at UMass-Boston, with Dr. Scott Maisano as site coordinator.  The theme was “Recreating Shakespeare:  New Contexts, New Interpretations, New Performances.”  The conference is highly competitive in its selection of presenters, with invitees this year coming from Harvard University, Smith College, Clark University, College of the Holy Cross, Wellesley College, Northeastern University, SUNY-New Paltz, Worcester State University, and UMass-Boston.
English major Wyatt Rogers represented Worcester State University this year.  In the session “Shakes-fear,” he presented his paper “Hamlet and Donnie Darko” as part of a panel that included students from Clark University and UMass Boston. I’m happy to say that Wyatt developed the paper in my Shakespeare course this semester.  I enjoyed moderating his session. I also joined Dr. Christine Coch from College of the Holy Cross as a judge for  all the A session panels.
We were also fortunate  to enjoy Dr. Linda McJannet as plenary speaker with her address : “Shakespeare in Motion: Physical Theatre in the New Millennium.” Dr. McJannet’s talk revealed to us the wonderful – and actually amazing – work done in experimental theatre where actors use their bodies in acrobatics and dance to create setting and mood, as well as to convey the words, even interpret the meaning of dialogue.