Spring Writers’ Room March 7th: Register Now!

Have you spent many a long, dark winter hour thinking about the prose, poems, and songs you’d like to write? Do you need a spark of inspiration to jumpstart your creative pulse?

Come join the professional writers of the Missoula Writing Collaborative for a day of writing workshops around downtown Missoula. You could find yourself learning how to write a poem from a historic scrap of paper, taking a songwriting class with one of Missoula’s best musicians, learning introductory Salish, or crafting the details of fiction scene. Register for classes in the morning and/or afternoon, and join us for wine and conversation at the end of the day at Goodworks Ventures.

OPI Credit is available for teachers.

Find out more and register at: missoulawritingcollaborative.submittable.com/submit

Class offerings will include:

• Old Forms, New Eyes // Robert Lee // Jeannette Rankin Peace Center: Tired of the White Paper Blues? Inspire and inform your poetry by writing haiku, pantoum, or sestina! We will explore time-tested form poems and work from prompts to invent our own.
• Songwriting // Caroline Keys // The ZACC: Come with an open mind, leave with the seed of your next new song.
• The Business of Writing//Julie Stevenson//Fact & Fiction: Learn about the publishing world from a New York literary agent who represents bestselling, prize-winning authors. Information covered includes query letters, novel revisions, nonfiction book proposals, agents, book contracts, and more. Bring your pitch and query letter. This workshop provides information, so Julie will not consider participants for representation.
• Hybrid Genre Art Collision//Becca Carson//Goodworks Ventures: Hybrid poems and other genre-defying writing and artwork serve as an inspiration for our own hybrid-genre poetic arts response to a theme of universal importance. Participants will leave the workshop with their own mini-zine in hand. Instructor will provide supplies.

• Story in the Poem//Sheryl Noethe//Fact and Fiction Using poems with powerful narratives, including works from Dubie, Rilke, Eliot, Stevens, and Jarrell write a poem by telling the story taken from a journal, letter, rare scrap of paper, historic document, or a diary. There is no story the imagination doesn’t already know!
• Introduction to Salish//Aspen Decker//Goodworks Ventures//To celebrate the first peoples in Missoula, participants will learn some Nsèlišćn (Salish language) alongside Plains Indian Sign language and will explore Indigenous storytelling.
• Make a Scene//Caroline Patterson//Jeannette Ranking Peace Center Starting with a moment of impact, we’ll use senses, dialogue, and character to create the first scene of that story that has been lingering in your imagination. 
• About Place//Nicholas Littman// The ZACC “No place at last is better than the world. The world is no better than its places. Its places at last are no better than their people while their people continue in them”—Wendell Berry. Using both prose and poetry as models, we will explore several ways to write about the intricacies of the landscapes and towns we come from and those we now call home.