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A blog of writing news, tips, and inspiration from Fat Plum

Writers’ Group Announces Thoburn Scholarship for Students

(From the mailbag)

Ligonier Valley Writers announces a scholarship for college and high school students for its summer writing conference.

The Tina Thoburn Memorial Scholarship will honor the woman without whom there would be no Ligonier Valley Writers. After a long and productive career as an educator and writer, Ms. Thoburn helped to found the Ligonier Valley Writers Conference 21 years ago. She hosted the conference picnic in her gardens every summer until the Southern
Alleghenies Museum of Art opened, thanks to her donation of the land and the building. The scholarship recognizes her enthusiastic support for young writers in particular and the arts in general.

The scholarship will be awarded to a deserving high school or college
student interested in creative writing. The recipient will be invited to attend the two-day conference in July free of charge. This will be an opportunity for young writers to hone their craft with the help of
published experts in a supportive atmosphere. Students can focus on one genre or mix and match to explore two interests.

The scholarship is open to all accredited college or high school students in Pennsylvania. Those interested in applying should send a sample of writing of no more than two pages and a letter explaining how they hope to benefit from the conference. The writing sample can be fiction, nonfiction, or poetry. Application forms and complete requirements will be posted soon on the LVW website, www.ligoniervalleywriters.org.

The scholarship is valued at $250. It includes the entire two-day
conference: the Friday afternoon session on creativity, the Friday picnic at SAMA (where all faculty members will read from their work), and seminars and workshops all day Saturday, followed by dinner, the Thoburn Lecture, and a roundtable discussion on the current state of publishing.

Kirk Weixel, professor of English at St. Francis University, is program director for the conference.

The 21st annual LVW Conference will take place July 27-28 at the Ramada Inn in Ligonier. Faculty members this year include Christine O’Toole, a creative nonfiction writer who specializes in travel; Patricia Easton, recipient of the 2006 Beverly Cleary Children's Choice Award; Richard Easton, author of the young adult novel A Real American; poet and "Prosody" radio host Jan Beatty; and novelist, short-story writer, and essayist Gary Eberle.

LVW is a nonprofit group serving writers and readers throughout western Pennsylvania. For more information about any LVW events, visit the website.

Posted by Cindy on April 20, 2007
This entry was posted in the following categories: Recommended
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Flash fiction workshops

A writing workshop of interest:

Point of View
Writing Workshops at Silver Eye Center for Photography
1015 East Carson Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15203
www.silvereye.org
412-431-1810

Reservations: Please contact Sylvia Ehler sehler@silvereye.org

Thursday evenings from 7-9pm

May 3, 10, 24 [no class on the 17th]
June 14, 21, 28
October 4, 11, 18
November 1, 8, 15

Each three-session workshop is $20.

These evenings of generative writing will use a variety of photography exhibitions at Silver Eye as jumping off points to create flash fiction. Silver Eye is a great, cozy gallery perfect for getting some good writing done. We will explore setting, point of view, characterization, and the art of the detail. Sherrie Flick will moderate the programs with mini-lectures from special guests thrown in here and there.

Sherrie Flick is author of the award-winning flash fiction chapbook I Call This Flirting (Flume Press, 2004). Anthologies include Sudden Fiction: The Mammoth Book of Minuscule Fiction (MAMMOTH Press, 2003), Flash Fiction Forward (Norton, 2006), and New Sudden Fiction (Norton, 2007). She has received artist residencies from the Ucross Foundation and Atlantic Center for the Arts, as well as a Tennessee Williams Fellowship from Sewanee Writers‚ Conference. In 2005, she was honored as one of Pittsburgh's "40 under 40." Recently, she was awarded a 2007 Individual Artist Fellowship from Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Her interdisciplinary work includes a collaborative exhibition, The Garden Inside, with photographer Sue Abramson and a libretto for Dali's Egg, an experimental opera by Los Angeles composer Nicholas Chase. She is co-founder and artistic director of the Gist Street Reading Series.

This event is supported by a Heinz Endowments Arts Experience Initiative.

Posted by Cindy on April 13, 2007
This entry was posted in the following categories: Coming attractions
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