All conference events will take place in the Commons and Bartlett Hall, labeled 11 and 12 on the campus map. 

Find parking across 23rd Street in the Multimodal Transportation Center.

(Please note that if  you use the Multimodal Transportation Center on Friday, you will need to pay the hourly rate.
Pay stations can be found adjacent to stair wells on 23rd Street.)  

Friday April 19

2:30 - 3:30

Conference Registration Table Open
Commons Ballroom

 

3:30 - 5:00

Welcome Event Unveiling the New NAR
and the Open Space of Democracy Poster Exhibit
Commons Ballroom


7:30 - 9:00 

An Evening with Terry Tempest Williams
Reception and Book Signing to follow
Lang Hall Auditorium

 

Saturday April 20

7:30 - 5:00

Conference Sign-in, Poster Exhibit, Bookfair​​
Commons Ballroom

 

8:00 - 11:30

NAR Archive Pop-Up Exhibit
outside Commons Ballroom

 

8:00 - 11:00

Morning Refreshments​​
Georgian Lounge

8:45 - 9:45

The Open Space of Democracy: The Challenge to Writers and Artists
Taylor Brorby, Martín Espada, Sophfronia Scott, Terry Tempest Williams 
Plenary Panel
Commons Ballroom

10:00 - 11:00

Nina Murray, Director of Arts Envoy Program
"Cultural Diplomacy: What can the State Department do for you?"
Commons Ballroom

 

Kij Johnson, Workshop
(WORKSHOP FULL)
Bartlett 34

 

Adrianne Finlay
"The Hustle: Pursuing a Book Deal and Learning to Promote Yourself and Your Writing" 
Bartlett 2129

 

Lauren Schmidt, Multigenre Reading
Filthy Labors (Poetry) and The Players (Young Adult Fiction) 
Georgian Lounge Porch

11:15 - 12:15

 

Kij Johnson, Reading
Bartlett 1017

 

Sophfronia Scott
"What Do You See Now?: Reflection in Creative Nonfiction."
(WORKSHOP FULL)
Bartlett 34

 

Jim O'Loughlin
"Netprov: Collaborative, Improvised Storytelling"
Bartlett 17

 

 

12:00 - 3:00

Afternoon Refreshments
Georgian Lounge

 

12:30 - 1:30

Bullets into Bells: Poets and Citizens Respond to Gun Violence
Brian Clements, Dean Rader, Debra Marquart, Martín Espada, Khary Pennebaker, Katie Bewyer Albrecht, Joe Gorton 
Commons Ballroom

 

Workshop: Write A Novel in A Month As Part of National Novel Writing Months​​
Ian Wilson​​
Bartlett 34

 

1:45 - 2:45

 

 Martín Espada
"Jumping Off the Mystic Tobin Bridge: A Poetry Reading"
Georgian Lounge Porch

 

        Joyelle McSweeney, Workshop
“Writing (and Reading) the Necropastoral”
(WORKSHOP FULL)
Bartlett 34

 

Sophfronia Scott, Reading
Bartlett 1017

  

3:00 - 5:00

 Chris Johnson​​, Founder & Principal, The Milkweed Group 
"Nourishing the Courage to Create in Anguished Times"
(WORKSHOP FULL)
Bartlett 2089​

 

3:00 - 4:00

 

Lauren Schmidt, Workshop 
"'I Sing the Body Electric': Using Concrete Imagery to Write the Body"
(WORKSHOP FULL)
Bartlett 34​​

 

Adrianne Finlay, Workshop
"Worldbuilding and Speculative Fiction"
(WORKSHOP FULL)
Bartlett 2129

 

Vince Gotera, Workshop
The Coolest Month: A NaPoWriMo and Poem-a-Day Workshop
Bartlett 2089

 

Joseph Scapellato, Fiction Reading
from The Made-Up Man​
Bartlett 1017

 

 

4:15 - 5:15

 

Joyelle McSweeney, Reading
"Toxicon"
Georgian Lounge Porch

 

Adrianne Finlay, Reading
from Your One & Only​​
Bartlett 1017

 

Joseph Scapellato, Craft Talk​​
"Finding Shape and Stepping Up: Practical Alternatives to Plotting"
Bartlett 34​

 

7:30 - 8:30

Taylor Brorby
"The River of Imagination"
Keynote Lecture
Commons Ballroom

 

Sunday April 21

7:30 - 10:30

Morning Refreshments
Georgian Lounge

 

8:00 - 5:00

Registration, Bookfair, Poster Exhibit, and Book Signings
Commons Ballroom

 

8:45 - 9:55

 

  • A1 North, South, East, West: Regionalism in American Poetry, Bartlett 2000

        Kimberly Burwick (moderator), Kevin Goodan, Rachel Morgan

 

  • A2 Writing Collaboratively: Why You Don’t Have to Go It Alone,* Bartlett 1060

Lucas Pingel, B.J. Love (moderator)

          

  • A3 Critical Readings,* Bartlett 2089

Alexandra Bissell (moderator), “Writing Queer Immortality: The Poetry of Thom Gunn and the AIDS Archive”

Daniel Uncapher, “The Sentimental Ones: Hubert Creekmore and William Grant Still”

Frederic Will, "Labor and Writing"

N.T. McQueen, “Limitless Burden: Racial Definition and Parody in Percival Everett’s Erasure”

                

  • A4 Fiction Reading, Bartlett 1079

Robert McBrearty, "Sarge and Hollings"

John Henry Fleming (moderator), "Xenophilia"

Nick Seifert, "Another Night of Recycling Cans"

 

  • A5 Dialogue in Fiction,* Bartlett 34

Rod Martinez, "Dialogue: It Isn’t Just About Talk"

Jennifer Morales, "Hearing Voices"

Valerie  Fioravanti (moderator), "Authentic Artifice"      

 

  • A6 Poetry Reading, ​Bartlett 1017

Stephen Haven, Rosa Lane, Owen Mordaunt, Peter Cooley (moderator)

    

  • A7 Creative Nonfiction Reading,* Bartlett 3021

Martin McGoey, "American Bison"

Kevin Koch, "The Thin Places: A Celtic Landscape from Ireland to the Driftless"

Michael William Palmer (moderator), "Mormon Country, A-Z"

 

  • A8 Animalia Poetica, Bartlett 81 

Claire Millikin, "State Fair Animals"

Matthew Murrey (moderator), "Run Wild: Letting the Real and Imaginary Animals Loose in Poems"

Ann Struthers, "The Kindness of Crocodiles and Other Creatures"

 

  • A9 The Craft of Narrative Prose,* Bartlett 2055

Jenny O’Connell (moderator), "Sing it Loud: Looking to Music for Lessons on Embracing Vulnerability on the Page"

Kelly Daniels, "'I'm Nobody! Who Are You?': On Writing Because You Love It"

Gordon Mennenga, “Writing Under the Influence”

   

  • A10 The Cyclical Imagination: Writing Inter-Linked Stories,* Bartlett 1039

​Tim Bascom (moderator), Rebecca McKanna, K.L. Cook

 

  • A11 The Narrative Mode in Fiction,* Bartlett 2129

​Jody Hobbs Hesler (moderator), "Narrative Tension: The Promises Writers Make"

Emily Wortman-Wunder, "Resonant Frequencies: On the Uses of Information in Fiction"

Laura Herbst, "The Sun Was a Woman: On Not Knowing What Comes Next in Fiction"

 

10:00 - 11:10 

 

  • B1 Repressed Voices: A Reading and Discussion of Poetry from Syria, Haiti, and China* Bartlett 2055

Elizabeth Dodd (moderator), Scott Minar, Stephen Haven

 

  • B2 The Resurgent Sonnet: A Roundtable, Bartlett 1000

Michael White, Aliki Barnstone, Allison Joseph

 

  • B3 Creative Nonfiction Reading,* Bartlett 1060

Kathleen Blackburn, "Daughter Tongue"

Jean Feraca, "Caves: How Donald Hall’s poetry writing seminar changed my life"

Jason Harper (moderator), "A Murmuration of Starlings"

            

  • B4 Writing Through History, History Through Writing,* Bartlett 3021

James Roberts, “The Eye of Polyphemus: Imaginative Fiction and Poetry in the NAR since 1900”

 

  • B5 Publishing Worlds,* Bartlett 2129

Kathy Flann, "Something About a Frying Pan and a Fire: Why I Gave Up a Tenured Position and Launched a Publishing Imprint"

Ted Morrissey (moderator), "Writing Too Good to Publish"

Sayeeda Ahmad, "To Publish or Not to Publish"

 

  • B6 What We Write About When We Write About Environment, Bartlett 81

K. L. Cook (moderator), Debra Marquart, Charissa Menefee, David Zimmerman

 

  • B7 Forty Years On: The Evolution and Impact of Tributaries, a Student-Produced Journal of Creative Arts,* Bartlett 17

Tanya Perkins (moderator), Brian Brodeur, Melissa Blankenship

 

  • B8 Image and Poetry, Poetry as Image,* Bartlett 2089

Naoko Fujimoto, “Graphic Poetry = Trans. Sensory”

Vince Gotera (moderator)​, “Word Pictures: Concrete Poetry and Carmina Figurata”

Penny Wang, "Abstractness: From Poetry in Logographic Text to Fatacism Abstract Art"

    

  • B9 NAR Poets Read, Bartlett 1017

Rustin Larson (moderator)

Dave Meyer

Wyatt Townley, "Body as Poem"

Steve Wilson, "Lose to Find"

    

  • B10 Fiction Reading,* Bartlett 34

Mary Louise Tabakow, “Stop the Music”

Laura Gabel-Hartman, “Moles, 2004”

Marcus A. Hennessy (moderator), “Bobby's Hair” & “The Need to Write”

 

  • B11 Poetries of Unlikely Beauty,* Bartlett 1039

Seth Thill (moderator), “Masterpiece on the Mississippi: A Portrait of America’s Fourteenth Drunkest City”

Alberto Sveum, “Negotiating a Shared Space Between the Poetics of Joy and Black Metal”

Moriah Henkelman, "Wulff Mothers in Nineveh"

 

12:00 - 3:00

Afternoon Refreshments
Georgian Lounge

 

11:15 - 12:25 

 

  • C1 Slang in America: Twenty-First-Century Perspectives on Whitman’s 1885 Essay,* Bartlett 2055    

Hannah Carr-Murphy (moderator), Seth Thill, Kathryn Wohlpart

    

  • C2 A Space for Dissent: A Roundtable,* Bartlett 34

Susan Porterfield (moderator), John Bradley, Ric Amequita, Bonnie Amesquita

 

  • C3 Literary Magazines in Theory and Practice, Bartlett 1017

Travis Kurowski (moderator), "Theory of Literary Magazines"

Peter Cooley, "Editing Poetry for NAR, 1970-2000"

Alexander Luft, "Newspapers, Literary Magazines and the Disappearing Public"

 

  • C4 Creating Creative Communities, * Bartlett 2129

Rosalind Buckton-Tucker, “The Cultural Psychology of Creativity and the Writing Retreat: A Case Study”

Wade Geary (moderator), “Alternative Models: Reimagining the Structure of an Introductory Creative Writing Course” 

Robyn Groth, “Quality Writing Instruction in the Community”

Erin Robertson, “Coyote Collaboration: Communal Writing with Unsuspecting Strangers”

        

  • C5 Writing Character in Fiction,* Bartlett 1039

Rod Martinez (moderator), "Character Kickstart 2.0"

Brandon Hallmark, "The Forgotten Queens"

 

  • C6 Sighted: A Literary and Letterpress Collaboration, Bartlett 1129

James D’Agostino (moderator), Karen Carcia

 

  • C7 Poetry Reading,* Bartlett 1060

David Wolf, Phil Tabakow (moderator), Sujash Purna

       

  • C8 A Fiction Reading by NAR Writers, Bartlett 2000

Warren Jones, Roderick Townley, Julia Lynn Rubin (moderator)

    

  • C9 The Nature of Love in the Contemporary Lyric: Sensual and Spiritual Poems by Women,* Bartlett 2089

Patricia Clark (moderator), Alice Friman, Marilyn Kallet

 

  • C10 A Deep Cut Through the Heartland: From the Bluff Country to the Delta, Vital Voices of Rural America, Bartlett 17

Elijah Burrell (moderator), Greg Brownderville, Keith Lesmeister, Angela Mitchell

 

  • C11 On (Non)Fiction,* Bartlett 3021

Christiana Langenberg (moderator), "Transgenre Prose: the Permeable Boundary Between Fiction and Nonfiction"

Nina Barragan, “When Fiction Becomes Memory”

 

12:30 - 1:40 

 

  • Lunch Workshop: Scared Violent like Horses: Interrogating Landscape and Region to Write the Perfect Simile,* Bartlett 34

John McCarthy

  • Lunch Poetry Reading: The Coolest Month, Georgian Lounge Porch

Vince Gotera

  • Lunch Reading: Fiction Reading, Bartlett 1017

​​Jack Smith

Valerie Fioravanti (moderator)

Julianne Couch, "Turning Non-Fiction into Fiction Along the Sylvan Trail"

1:45 - 2:55 

 

  • D1 Ecological Visions of Modernist Poets,* Bartlett 2055

Jim O’Loughlin (moderator), Skye Rozario

 

  • D2 Forms, Traditions, Sources,* Bartlett 17

Lee Bahan, “To Wrestle with the Angel: Periodicity in Petrarch’s 'Chapbook' of 1337”

Henry Finch (moderator), “Urmuz: An Obscured Source of Surrealism”

        

  • D3 Rethinking the Workshop, Revising the Curriculum, Bartlett 1017

Scott McMullen (moderator), “Content in Student Writing”

Autumn Stephens, “Against Pre-Scription: The Genuinely Generative Prompt”

Matthew Salesses, “There Is No Such Thing as ‘Pure’ Craft”

    

  • D4 Fierce and Phenomenal Fiction: Multi-modal and Nonlinear Stories from ISU's “Write Like a Woman" course,* Bartlett 1039

Christiana Langenberg, Moderator

 

  • D5 Gender and the Craft of Fiction,* Bartlett 2089

Trudy Lewis (moderator), “Gender Craft: Writing Diversity”

Timothy DeLizza, “Writing Embodied Women” 

Alia Afzal, "Bridging Transnational Feminism and Ecofeminism" 

 

  • D6 Starting a Fire: Tinderbox Editions Reading, Bartlett 1000

Athena Kildegaard (moderator), Molly Sutton Kiefer, Katherine Rauk

    

  • D7 Writing to Save Your Life: Hospice, Prison, and Spirituality,* Bartlett 34

Alan Harris, "Hospice Bed Conversations"

Ellen Taylor, "Writing From the Outside In"

Susan Baller-Shepard (moderator), “Saving the Soul of Your Character: Sussing Out Spiritual Lives, Religious Rituals, and the Practice of Darshan in Character Development”

 

  • D8 Writing and Healing,* Bartlett 2129

Jessica Love (moderator), “Mental Health Hygiene for Writing Instructors”

Laura McCullough, “Wellness & Emotional Literacy in the Writing Workshop”

 

  • D9 Midwest Poetry Reading, Bartlett 1079

Tiffany Grayson (moderator), "Homes of our Foremothers: Poems Mourning the Great Lakes"

Jim Johnson, "Ecopoetry"

Dylan Loring, “Famous in Canada, and other poems"

 

  • D10 The Writing Life,* Bartlett 3021

Ralph Moisa, "Does Jesus Hate Indians / Indians Love to Laugh"

 

  • D11 Teacher & Writer: Finding Reciprocity,* Bartlett 1060

Dana Thomann (moderator), Ashley Wells 

 3:00 - 4:10 

  • E1 Re-Viewing the Past: A Student-Faculty Reading of Creative Work Inspired by Early American Texts, Bartlett 81

Anne Myles (moderator), Dylan Haase, Alizée Millot, Natalie Peterson

 

  • E2 Speculative Writing,* Bartlett 2089

Danielle Dunagan (moderator), "An Escalation of Senses: Speculative Memoir and the Manifestation of Memory"

Ariadne Wolf, "My Speculative Memoir"

Trudy Lewis, "Medusa’s Ball"

 

  • E3 Heresy and Empowerment: Inside and Outside Writing Classes,* Bartlett 34

Michael Fischer (moderator), “From Big House to Ivory Tower: One Writer's Insights on the Road from Prison to Grad School” 

Margaux Griffith and Jenna Bazzell, “Empowering Narrative in a Composition Classroom”

 

  • E4 The Craft of Writing Place,* Bartlett 1039

John Morgan, “Moving to Fairbanks: On Writing and Place”

    ​

  • E5 NAR Poets Read, Bartlett 1017

Elijah Burrell, "Troubler: A Rock Record of Form and Heartbreak"

Sandy Longhorn (moderator), "I (Re)Write the Songs"

 

  • E6 Writing Healing,* Bartlett 1060

​Kathryn Wohlpart (moderator), “The Bog is in Front of You”: Trauma Between Land and Body

Amy Nolan, “Searching for a Language that Heals: Writing from a Ruined Landscape”

 

  • E7 Poetry Reading,* Bartlett 3021

Susan Porterfield (moderator), John Bradley, Ric Amesquita, Bonnie Amesquita

 

  • E8 “'If I Knew Then What I Know Now': Becoming Editors,"* Bartlett 2129

Adrienne Lamberti, Vince Gotera, Jim O’Loughlin (moderator), Steve Semken​

 

  • E9 Faculty Writing Workshops: Creation, Engagement, and Kinship, Bartlett 17

Andrew Jones (moderator), Matt Muilenburg, Dale Easley

 

* denotes room outfitted with technology