National (adj): Of or relating to a nation or country, esp. as a whole; affecting or shared by a whole nation.

The National Day on Writing celebration at Washington College is coming up next Wednesday. Sponsored by the Writing Center, the Student Government Association, and Student publications, we’ll offer a day of celebratory writing.

WHAT? NATIONAL DAY ON WRITING (NDOW) (visit the NCTE site for details on the national initiative)
WHEN? WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 20TH
WHERE? MILLER LIBRARY TERRACE
WHAT TIME? 10AM TO 4PM, WITH A READING FROM 1-2PM
WILL THERE BE FOOD? Yes! We’ll have coffee and cookies to warm you up!

 

HOW CAN WE GET INVOLVED?

CONTRIBUTE WRITING TO OUR LIVE GALLERY

We will be working to build a LIVING gallery on the library terrace. There will be clotheslines and poster presentation boards purely for the purpose of exhibiting student, staff, and faculty writing and written work you admire. We would love to have an exhibit that is truly representative of the kinds of writing we are all engaged with in our every day lives, from letters to lab reports, from poems to academic essays, from ethnographic case studies to email exchanges!

If you would like to reserve a space to exhibit your students’ work, please contact us in advance. Otherwise you and/or your students can stop by and contribute writing throughout the day. * Please keep contributions to 1 page each *

GIVE A READING OF WRITING THAT MATTERS TO YOU

You and/or your students are welcome to participate in a reading (from 1-2pm). Readers should be encouraged to bring 1-2 pages (roughly 2-3 minutes worth of material) to share. This can be anything from something you or your students have written to a piece of writing that is valuable to you.

Have your students written something they are particularly proud of? Is there a singular work that was been inspirational to you as you entered your scholarly field? Share it all!  Students, faculty, and staff are all welcomed to read.

Contact us in advance to get on the list or sign up on the day!

PARTICIPATE IN THE WRITING FAIR

Sponsored by the Writing Center and Student Publications (The Elm, Pegasus, Writer’s Union & The Colophon, and The Washington College Review), a variety of writing-related activities will be set up throughout the day.

Events include a yearbook photo caption contest, on-the-fly writing prompts, Washington College MAD LIBS, and writing POST-SECRET, and more! This is an opportunity for your students to have some fun with writing and also learn more about the student publications on campus.

There will also be contests and a raffle for gift certificate prizes!

DESIGN ANOTHER EVENT

You might also consider posting writing to the National Gallery of Writing.

Other participants are sending students to journal across campus, students are visiting local schools to give workshops, and I will even be tweeting/micro-blogging throughout the day (follow the writing center to see it unfold!)

If you decide on an activity of your own, let us know what you’re up to!

 

Festival (n): A time of festive celebration, a festal day. Also occasionally, a festive celebration, merry-making.

I love associating terms like “merry-making” to book festivals!

When I first moved to  Chestertown I was impressed by the vibrant literary community fostered both by the college and the local community — it’s incredible to me that a town with only around 5,000 residents has a book festival to call its own. The 2nd annual Chestertown Book Festival is this upcoming weekend, Oct 8th and 9th, in and around town in your expected book-ish spots.

There we will have much “merry-making” and book loving and listening… not to mention the Kent County Library book sale (exciting!). Check out the official blog for featured items and the schedule for a full list of events.

C-Town locals, see you there.

Pair (n): Two individual persons, animals, or things of the same kind, taken together (esp. when associated in function, purpose, or position), but not necessarily forming a fixed set; a couple, a brace.

Slate‘s Creative Pair series features some Chestertown locals from Idiots’ Books. The article puts two creative partners through a series of questions/studies to mark their relationship to each other and their relationship to their collaborative work. The pair, both married and professional couplings, express difficulty in separating oneself from other, the rate at which couplings proceed to “we” from “I” and how this factors into the creative process.

If there’s one thing that defines Robbi and Matthew’s work, it’s the collaborative method itself—the long, creative tumble that they take together, like kids going downhill in a tire. Matthew says that his work doesn’t even exist until he and Robbi talk about it and make it into something together. The collaboration extends well beyond their work, to encompass their very identities. “I know it sounds totally lame,” Robbi says, “but Matthew really is the other half. He’s half of what makes me.”

…

[Robbi] didn’t just appreciate Matthew’s writing. She also felt drawn to work with it herself. Illustrators usually represent in image what’s already articulated in words. But with the huge spaces in Matthew’s work, Robbi felt an opening to both follow and lead—to punctuate the text and to carry it along like a schoolmarm bending a little boy’s ear. The two found themselves hashing out the ideas in Matthew’s pieces—and how to compound, contradict, and enrich them. “It was the most thrilling artistic thing that had ever happened to me,” Matthew says. “It was like the first time I took a drink. It was this visceral gut-wrenching thrill of being in a new time and place. It was, ‘Oh my god, this is something I can do.’ “

Read more!