Call and Response Writing Conference
A day to explore writing as a spiritual calling
June 15, 2013
8:30 am – 5 pm
Holy Innocents Catholic Church, Duvall, Washington
Through writing we respond to a call from an unseen place.
It is this “thin place” that illuminates us, breaks us, and makes us whole again.
Keynote by New York Times Bestselling Author, Karl Marlantes
“Turning Ghosts Into Ancestors”
A graduate of Yale University and a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, Karl Marlantes served as a Marine in Vietnam, where he was awarded the Navy Cross, the Bronze Star, two Navy Commendation medals for valor, two Purple Hearts, and ten Air Medals. He is the author of the best-selling and prize-winning Matterhorn and What It Is Like to Go to War.
~ Presenters ~
Peggy King Anderson
has been writing and teaching for over 25 years. She has four published books, including The Fall of the Red Star, and hundreds of published short stories and articles, in such magazines as Highlights for Children, and Pockets. She teaches creative writing at Bellevue College. Peggy has been journaling regularly for over 20 years now, and has stacks and stacks of notebooks to prove it!
Workshop: Journaling—The Chicken Soup to Nourish Your Writing and Your Life
In this interactive workshop, you’ll get ten tips for recording your life’s journey, day by day, being sure to include the detours along the way. The benefits? Spiritual insight, plus a lovely soup broth for writers, to stir up all sorts of great stories, articles, and books.
Katherine Grace Bond, Conference Director,
is the author of Luke’s Journal: A Companion to The Summer of No Regrets (2013), The Summer of No Regrets (Sourcebooks, 2012), and of the bestselling The Legend of the Valentine (Zonderkidz) a story of the Civil Rights Movement. A lifelong educator, Katherine has focused on teen writers since the early 90’s, believing that creative communities save lives. She is the creator of TeenWrite an outdoor live action role-playing and writing community. For her work-in-progress, an urban fantasy verse-novel, Katherine received a 2012 4Culture Grant, an upcoming writer’s residency at Camac Centre d’Art in Marnay-sur-Seine, France, and a 2010 Jack Straw Writer’s residency.
Workshop: Writing the Hidden Story
Your characters live and breathe because of a hidden story—one you must go deep within to find. This workshop will focus on “mining your life”—both as an adult and as an adolescent–to find the connection point between you and your story. We’ll look at the work of several contemporary authors and learn how their own feelings and experiences informed specific aspects of their books. You’ll reflect on ideas and life events that hold “story power” for you, and discover techniques for bringing deeper authenticity to your characters, while still allowing them to be their own unique and separate selves. Discover the story you didn’t know you were writing and let it transform you—and your reader.
Jennie Caldwell, Conference Host,
has been a Pastoral Minister for the past 33 years. She has been responsible for the Faith Formation of preschool children, youth and young adults and even some middle and old adults, too. She feels that it is an honor to share life, often a silly joke and always stories of our faith with all of them. She has learned that most conversations, whether with 2 or 200 are often based on the same kind of rapport with people.
Workshop: Public Speaking—Speaking with a touch of ease and a dash mirth
Janet Lee Carey
was raised in the redwood forests of California. In the whispering forest she dreamed of becoming a writer. She is the award-winning author of eight Young Adult novels including Dragonswood, (Kirkus and School Library Journal starred reviews). Her Wilde Island fantasy books are ALA’s Best Books for Young Adults. School Library Journal calls her work, “fantasy at its best-original, beautiful, amazing, and deeply moving.” Carey links each new book with a charitable organization empowering readers to reach out and make a difference. A founding member of readergirlz, she tours the U.S. and abroad presenting at schools, book festivals and conferences for writers, teachers, and librarians.
Workshop: Character Compass (for fiction and nonfiction writers)
Purposeful characters create powerful fiction. Are you in touch with your character’s purpose? Do you know what drives them to make the choices they make? Your key character steps into the story with a unique personality, a formative past with friends, family, loves, and losses. Your character has a dream, a deep desire to find happiness, and they’ve entered your story to find it. Whether you’re writing fiction, narrative nonfiction, or memoir, the writing games in this workshop will provide excellent tools to help you explore the uncharted landscape of your newly created character, and find their true north.
Bev. Cooke
didn’t start out writing about saints and history. She wanted to write edgy, dark YA fiction. Instead, her books and columns–both fiction and nonfiction–seem to deal with both ancient saints like Macrina the Elder, Tabitha from the book of Acts, and St. Mary of Egypt as well as more recent historical figures: Feofil the Fool for Christ and Mother Alexandra, Princess Ileana of Romania among others. When she’s not time travelling by book and the internet (Dr. Who’s Tardis is on backorder), she lives in Victoria BC and attends an Orthodox Christian parish.
Workshop: Saints and sinners—Bringing historical characters to life
How do you turn someone who lived hundreds of years ago into a fully rounded person, yet stay true to who and what they were? What kinds of things do we need to know about the people who made history and still live in our hearts and imaginations? How do we look beyond the myths and write about who they really were? Can we even know? These are some of the issues Bev. Cooke will answer in her workshop for both fiction and nonfiction writers. Bring pen, paper, imagination, questions and your favourite historical figure.
Heidi B. Pettit, Program Coordinator,
is an accomplished Artist/Photographer. In 1990 she and author Janet Lee Carey together co-founded a creative process group of artists, writers, and performers. That group, Artemis, continues to meet on a regular basis all these years later… Heidi holds a master’s degree in Experiential Education. Her photographs have been published widely. She’s taught photojournalism for kids as Artist-in-Residence, and instructed groups for adults modeled after the success of Artemis.
Workshop: Creative Communities
Come to Heidi’s workshop and learn something of what has led to individual creative success for each Artemis member, and meanwhile provided a sense of belonging to a supportive community of artists. Heidi will explain the unique process and philosophy upon which Artemis bases its long-term success, sharing some of the stories of Artemis’ past. She will also lead workshop participants through an experiential lesson that can provide valuable ideas for one‘s personal benefit, and for creating a similar creative group if you choose.
Alex Riggle
is an Orthodox Christian who has been writing satire since high school, and Orthodox-themed satire since 2002. Founder of The Onion Dome (“Orthodox News with a Twist”), the original Orthodox satire website, and inventor of the lovable curmudgeon Father Vasiliy Vasileivich, his writings have been celebrated from Tacoma to Seattle and beyond. He is currently enrolled at the University of Washington in a one-year teaching certificate program, after which his wit will be unleashed on high school math students somewhere in the local vicinity. Please tip your server.
Workshop: Humor and Religion
A look into religious-themed humorous writing. We will discuss at least these topics: (a) what are the types of humor, and which are appropriate/inappropriate for religious themes; (b) which subject areas are okay to laugh about what which are off-limits; (c) how do you know when you’ve gone too far. We will look at some of the presenter’s writings as well as those of other popular web religious humor sites, Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant. Participants will be invited to try their hand at writing humorously about a religious subject, and these writings will be read and discussed by the group.
Carolyne Wright
has published nine books of poetry, four volumes of poetry in translation from Spanish and Bengali, and a collection of essays. These books include A Change of Maps (Lost Horse Press); and Seasons of Mangoes & Brainfire (Carnegie Mellon UP/EWU Books), which won the Blue Lynx Prize and the American Book Award. A poem of hers appeared in The Best American Poetry 2009 and the Pushcart Prize XXXIV (2010). Wright is a Contributing Editor for the Pushcart Prizes; and a Senior Editor for Lost Horse Press, for which she is co-editing an anthology of poems on women and work, Raising Lilly Ledbetter: Women Poets Occupy the Workspace. In 2005 she returned to her native Seattle, where she is on the faculty of the Whidbey Writers Workshop MFA Program.
Workshop: The Map-Maker’s Colors—Topography, History, and Inner Transformation in the Poetry of Travel
In her poem “Arrival at Santos,” Elizabeth Bishop chides herself for “immodest demands for a different world / and a better life, and complete comprehension / of both at last.” She was a poet whose travels and powers of observation and description allowed her to enter into landscapes, cultures, and the human heart, from the perspective of the perpetual traveler, even in her own country. In this workshop, we will dare to make those demands in our work, reading and discussing some of the great poetry of travel, and writing and sharing our own poems about cultures, landscapes, and human transformation.
~ Conference Schedule~
8:30 Coffee and Registration
9:00-10:00 Intro and Plenary with Karl Marlantes
10:15-11:30 Session 1
Character Compass (Janet Lee Carey)
Journaling (Peggy King Anderson)
Humor and Religion (Alex Riggle)
11:30 Panel Discussion
Spirituality and Creativity
Janet Lee Carey, Peggy King Anderson, Alex Riggle,
Carolyne Wright, Bev Cooke (Jennie Caldwell, Moderator)
12:15 Book signing (lunch gets started)
12:30 lunch continues
1:15-2:30 Second Session
The Map-Maker’s Colors–Poetry (Carolyne Wright)
Humor and Religion (Alex Riggle)
Writing the Hidden Story (Katherine Grace Bond)
2:45-4:00 Third Session
Creative Communities (Heidi Pettit)
Saints and Sinners: Bringing Historical Characters to Life (Bev Cooke)
Public Speaking (Jenny Caldwell)
4:15 closing
5:00 end
~ ~
Suggested donation: $80 (includes keynote, three workshop sessions, writers’ panel, and lunch)
Presenters are donating their services * Facilities use donated by Holy Innocents *
Lunch provided by St. Vincent de Paul Society * 100% of proceeds go to benefit St. Vincent de Paul charities
Info & Registration: www.holyinn.org