…and thanks to a special grant from Knowledge Universe, our 5-day, 4-credit summer writing program, Teacher as Writer, could cost you 50% less if you register by Friday, May 31 (see registration form for details).

Teacher as Writer 2012
5-day writing and professional development workshop intensive (earn 4 credits)
June 25-29 or Aug 20-24
8am- 4:30pm daily
University of Portland
Open to all educators, ideal for grade levels 2-12.
Cost: $250 Program Fee** (price good only until Friday, May 31)
If taking course for credit, additional fee will apply

• Enjoy writing
• Enjoy teaching writing
• Open new, creative and inspirational connections in your classroom
• Earn graduate credits or PDU certificate from the University of Portland (see website for details)
• Create original work & receive coaching from professional writers
• Share expertise and teaching strategies, and become part of a community of like-minded colleagues

Registration is now available online! Just click HERE!

When Carmen T. Bernier-Grand signed a book for Sophie at the Wordstock Festival, it was just the beginning of the relationship. For one week in March, Bernier-Grand became a writer in residence for Sophie’s 3rd grade class at Harney Elementary School.

Bernier-Grand led Sophie and her fellow students through a series of activities writing the first draft of a book. The guidance she provided in her week of residency will result in a bound book that each student will take home at the end of the year.

Bernier-Grand also hosted a Family Write Night at Harney. Over 100 students and parents participated in the activities. She runs her workshops in English and in Spanish, and she encourages her students to write in whatever language feels most comfortable to them.

Teachers say that her bilingual workshops, and personable demeanor that draws in children and parents equally, have created an open atmosphere for families who do not speak English at home. These parents have become more involved in their children’s academic lives as a direct result of her presence in the school.

You can meet Bernier-Grand, and hear her read from her children’s books, April 15th at the upcoming Reading Fair at the University of Portland. She will read her books in the Wordstock Reading Corner in the big red chair. Catch her there, because she soon returns to the classroom for more Family Write Nights and a classroom residency with Harney first graders.

Click here to learn more about Wordstock’s Classroom Residency programs, Family Write Nights, and more programs for students and their families.

Happy Birthday Charles Dickens and Christine White!

That’s right.  February is full of reasons to celebrate.

You know who Charles Dickens is,  but do you know Wordstock’s newest board member?  Meet Christine White, who happens to share February 7 with Mr. Dickens.

Wordstock: Why do you give Wordstock your time and money?

Chris: Because I firmly believe in the power of words to make the world a better place: to comfort, to inspire, to teach, to stimulate new thinking, to entertain and to draw us together.   I have worked in publishing and communication for most of my career and I see the value of literacy everywhere.  Whether content is delivered via an e-reader, a blog, or a good old-fashioned book, the power of good writing speaks for itself – and will continue to do so in the future. Wordstock nurtures and supports these efforts.

Join us in celebrating words and writers in February. Need something for your valentine, perhaps? See our February promotions.

Where do the little red dots of literary love come from? Who thinks up and writes the lovely little nuggets of book wisdom and word nerdry? For the first time ever, those dots of brainy flair were created by none other than Art Spark participants. The one found to be the most supreme bit of wise & witty wonderfulness by representatives of January Art Spark’s esteemed featured groups and by the entire congregation of participants, will have the honor of being published on a limited-edition, 1” red button geared toward year-round promotion of Wordstock, our education and cultural programs and, of course, writing.

The theme for the contest in this year of elections was If Writing were running for president, what would Writing’s campaign slogan be? It was quite a difficult task choosing between all the great entries, and our thanks goes to our celebrity judges from The 100th Monkey Studio and Em Space, as well as our fellow groups and attendees at the Art Spark January Event Fair for their aid in making the decision.

Congratulations to the winner of the Wordstock Art Spark Button Contest:

a pen is a pen is a pen
Michael D’Alessandro

In addition to being published on a limited-edition, 1” plastic button read by 20,000 Wordstock attendees, Michael will also receive:
• Free admission to the 2012 Wordstock Book & Literary Festival
• His name listed on the website and at the Wordstock membership and merchandise table
• Facebook and Twitter announcement about winning

And we’d like to extend a big thank you to the dedicated folk at Art Spark that made the night possible and of course everyone for who came out to the event and entered submissions!

Thank you for giving us so much to celebrate! We finished an action-packed 2011 by breaking our 2010 Willamette Week Give!Guide record. You helped us raise $4,440.50 to provide writing instruction to teachers, students, parents, and writers throughout 2012. Thank you! The Meyer Memorial Trust joined you in your support with a grant “to provide core support for literary events and programs in schools and communities”. Thanks to you, Wordstock will be in residence at Sitton, Rosa Parks, Beach, King and Harney elementary classrooms this Spring and preparing for our annual celebration of books, writers and storytelling, the 2012 Wordstock Festival!
Save the dates, October 11-14, and may your new year be full of words.

Q: What do Beaumont Middle School, the month of September, and Wordstock have in common?
A: Author Mark Pomeroy!

In September, Mark Pomeroy became a finalist in the Wordstock Short Story competition, earning a coveted place in The Wordstock Ten Anthology, and Kirsten Parrott, a Beaumont teacher who participated in Wordstock’s Teacher as Writer program, contacted the Wordstock office looking for a professional writer who could share his passion for writing with students in a classroom artist residency. Not only was Mark Pomeroy the right fit for her writing goals for her students, but we also learned another way in which this residency was especially meaningful – Mark himself was a graduate of Beaumont in 1983, and it was his middle school creative writing teacher that encouraged him to pursue writing as a profession.

I had the pleasure of sitting in on one of Mark and Kirsten’s classes last week, where I saw seriously engaged 7th graders taking part in a variety of writing exercises to prepare them for writing a short story by the end of his residency week. The energy in the room was palpable, especially when he showed the students a picture of him as a Beaumont student in the early 80s. Mark finishes his residency work at Beaumont on Thursday, and we hope to share some of the student work with you after the holidays!

We’ve notified the lucky winner of our first giveaway — a signed copy of Wildwood by Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis — but if it wasn’t you, don’t despair. There’ll be other giveaways in the weeks to come, and anyone who donates by the deadline will be entered to win.

So what’s the next giveaway? Donate any amount to Wordstock through the WW Give!Guide before midnight on Black Friday (November 25, 2011 11:59PST) and be in to win a book, a baseball cap and a beer! One lucky winner will get an autographed copy of Daniel Woodrell’s latest book The Outlaw Album, a 650ML bottle of Chatoe Rogue Dirtoir Black Lager, and a Wordstock baseball cap.

Plus, anyone who gives us $35 or more before midnight on December 31 is entered to win a free night at The Ace Portland.

Thanks to generous folks like you, the Willamette Week Give!Guide’s Clear Creek Distillery giveaway on Thursday was a big success. Between 12:00:01 am and midnight on November 17, people used the website to donate over $65,000 to local nonprofits. How wonderful is that?

Get in on the giving. Click on the cute baby picture to give now!

Lucky teachers, you don’t have to wait a whole year to get your next dose of Wordstock workshops. Our latest Wordstock for Teachers workshop gets underway in just a few short weeks.

While most of you know Wordstock for its once a year book festival, teachers know that Wordstock carries on its important work year round, in schools, and through continuing education programs for teachers.

Wordstock for Teachers’ goal is to make better writers of our students by helping their teachers become better instructors of writing. Since 1997, Wordstock has been providing writing instruction for K-12 teachers, K-8 students, parents, and practicing writers. Our founding program has served more than 1,700 teachers throughout the region, and as a result, more than 40,000 students and their families.

Teachers, we applaud the time, energy, and creativity you pour into expanding young minds. Now it’s your turn to re-charge your creative battery, and earn graduate and professional continuing education credits while you’re at it.

In this workshop you will have the opportunity to immerse yourself in the writing process, create original pieces, receive feedback and coaching from professional writers, and learn practical ways to bring the best of the writing process back to the classroom.

This two-part class that starts November 9th and space is limited, so register now (download the PDF).

We’ve wiped the sweat off our brow and boxed up our festival supplies. We’ve had a moment to take a breath and reflect on this year’s festival, and all we can say is “Wow.”

We are amazed at how many people came out to the convention center over the course of the weekend, more than any other year.

We are overwhelmed with the energy and ideas that our authors and vendors brought to the weekend, and from the feedback we’ve gotten so far, the feeling is mutual.

We are awed by the dedication and hard work of the more than two hundred and fifty volunteers who showed up and made the festival possible.

The only thing left to say now is thank you. Thank you to each and every person who participated and made the festival wonderful. We can’t wait to see you all next year!

Guest post by: George Estreich

Author of The Shape of the Eye, George Estreich appears at the Wordstock Festival on Sunday, October 9 at 5pm on the Wieden+Kennedy Stage and will be leading the workshop Imagination and Diagnosis: A Workshop on Writing and Medicine on Sunday, October 9 at 1:30pm.

About ten years ago, I gave up writing poetry. I was thirty-six years old then, and since college, and then my M.F.A., I’d basically organized my life around writing poems. I had poems in little journals, a completed manuscript that had come painfully close in contests, and drafts in progress. But after my daughter Laura was born, then diagnosed with Down syndrome, I stopped altogether.

I write I stopped, using the active voice. In fact, it seemed less a decision than something already decided. Though Laura is a healthy, happy fifth grader now, and her extra chromosome is more asterisk than black hole, her early days were difficult for us. We could not imagine the fact of Down syndrome, or the subsidiary facts of heart surgery or intellectual disability, and with these things on my mind the world of line-breaks seemed distant at best. The old life, it seemed, was a hub, not a destination. I felt if I’d fallen asleep on the tarmac, and awoken to find the plane already in the air.

When we touched down again, when Laura’s medical problems had faded and the shock had worn off and we had begun the long, happy, difficult work of helping a disabled child succeed–her abilities increasing, our minds slowly changing, opening to the true problem, which is not Laura, per se, but the riven contradictions with which the world greets the disabled–I found I was writing prose, a memoir about raising Laura. At some point that memoir became The Shape of the Eye, and this spring it was finally published, by SMU Press.

Writing that book, I soon came to see that giving up poetry was neither as decisive nor complete a change as it had seemed. Apart from the lines being right-justified, the memoir is a lot more like my book of poems than unlike: the voice is the same, concerned with family and inheritance, reliant on metaphor, devoted to questions more than answers. Much is different, of course: narrative, research, larger structures. But writing, word by word, felt much the same.

In time, I came to see that the abrupt-seeming break between writing poems and prose actually disguised a continuity. Poetry, as I write in the memoir, furnished the tools for prose. It is as if I had been a cabinetmaker, and had moved on to building houses. I had to scale up. That realization about writing paralleled a realization about Laura: that despite her chromosome count, she was not radically different from our older daughter Ellie, and so what we had learned with parents with Ellie did in fact apply to Laura. We had thought we were starting over, and we weren’t. What wisdom we had was both available to us and relevant. Our experience, our story, still counted, and Laura was a part of that story.

Writing that story was at once a way for me to imagine Down syndrome, and to help others imagine it too. The happiness of people with Down syndrome depends on their being accurately imagined, and telling Laura’s story was a way both to illuminate her individuality and bear witness to her value. It also offered room to critique the mistaken stories, the tragedies and saccharine feel-good stories and lists of woe, by which people with Down syndrome are too often misunderstood.

Can these goals be accomplished in poetry? Of course. But for me, and because I came to see my book as a work of both advocacy and imagination, a memoir was the way forward. It may not be right, but prose is normative in our culture, and people who wouldn’t touch a book of poems will at least think about reading a memoir. My goal was and is to reach the diverse audiences vested in the issues my book brings up–doctors, parents, specialists, people interested in our genetic future–and prose offers me the best chance of doing so.

Now that the book actually exists in print, a tangible, two-hundred-and-eighty-four-page physical object, I find myself with a larger challenge than switching genres from poetry to prose: I’m trying to publicize a book when the future of physical books is up in the air. We are crossing the border now, between what books were and what they will be. But that, as they say, is another story.

More information about George Estreich and his writings can be found at www.georgeestreich.com