May 16 & 17, 2020
9:00-12:00 p.m.and 1:00-4:00 Saturday and Sunday
Instructor: Perrin Kerns
For writers at all levels
Meets online via Zoom
The lyric essay is a form which allows many small fragments to be drawn together to create a whole. A lyric essay might hold memories, research, a bit of poetry; it celebrates mixing genres. In this workshop, we will write a series of fragments, and then stitch them together into short essays. Call it a collage, a mosaic or a quilt; you will leave the workshop with a sense of how small pieces of writing can grow into essays.
About the Instructor: Perrin Kerns served as the Director of Writing at Marylhurst University for 15 years. She currently teaches literature and creative nonfiction for Prescott College and Portland State. This summer she will also be teaching at PNCA’s new MFA in Creative Writing. Her own creative work has taken her from lyric essay to digital story to personal narrative documentaries based on her lyric essays. Most recently her film about a miscarriage, “What I Can Tell You,” won the best short animation at the Oregon Independent Film Festival in Portland.
