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Keynote: Casey Parks, award-winning journalist and author of Diary of a Misfit: A Memoir and a Mystery, opens the conference at 10:00am.

Location: Most workshops will be held in-person in the Roger Rook building on the Clackamas Community College Oregon City campus. The keynote address and select workshops will be available to attend virtually via Zoom.

Address: 19600 Molalla Avenue, Oregon City, OR 97045, United States

Workshops: After the keynote address, participants can choose between five morning sessions and five afternoon sessions covering topics including poetry, mystery fiction, science fiction, graphic novels, playwriting, and composition.

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  • If you choose to attend a remote session, you will be emailed a Zoom link 24 hours before the event.
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Saturday, May 18
 

10:00am PDT

Keynote: Diary of a Misfit
Casey Parks opens Compose 2024 with a keynote on the writing process and development behind her story, Diary of a Misfit: A Memoir and a Mystery.
Speakers
avatar for Casey Parks

Casey Parks

CASEY PARKS is a Washington Post reporter who covers gender and family issues. She spent a decade at The Oregonian, where she wrote about race and LGBTQ+ issues and was a finalist for the Livingston Award. Her articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker... Read More →

Saturday May 18, 2024 10:00am - 10:50am PDT

10:00am PDT

VIRTUAL: Keynote: Diary of a Misfit
Speakers
avatar for Casey Parks

Casey Parks

CASEY PARKS is a Washington Post reporter who covers gender and family issues. She spent a decade at The Oregonian, where she wrote about race and LGBTQ+ issues and was a finalist for the Livingston Award. Her articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker... Read More →

Saturday May 18, 2024 10:00am - 10:50am PDT
  VIRTUAL

11:00am PDT

Diary of a Misfit Q&A
Informal Q&A with Casey Parks about Diary of a Misfit: A Memoir and a Mystery.
Speakers
avatar for Casey Parks

Casey Parks

CASEY PARKS is a Washington Post reporter who covers gender and family issues. She spent a decade at The Oregonian, where she wrote about race and LGBTQ+ issues and was a finalist for the Livingston Award. Her articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker... Read More →

Saturday May 18, 2024 11:00am - 11:50am PDT

11:00am PDT

Creating Compelling Characters for the Stage
At the heart of every interesting play is an interesting character– but what makes a character interesting? How do we create characters that connect with an audience? Playwright Sara Jean Accuardi will guide you through the process of forming a character and discovering their voice. Come with a blank page and leave with someone you could write a whole play about!
Speakers
avatar for Sara Jean Accuardi

Sara Jean Accuardi

Sara Jean Accuardi is an award-winning playwright whose work has been seen at Shaking the Tree Theatre, Vivid Stage, Theatre Vertigo, PlayMakers Repertory Company, the Seven Devils Playwrights Conference, Spooky Action Theater, The Blank Theatre, and Victory Gardens, among others... Read More →

Saturday May 18, 2024 11:00am - 12:15pm PDT
RR206

11:00am PDT

Helling It Slant
In this generative workshop, writers will read, discuss and write poetry based on mis-heard bits of gossip, English as Second Language, double entendres, and other methods of transforming and transgressing language.
Speakers
ET

Eric Tran

Eric Tran is a queer Vietnamese poet and the author of Mouth, Sugar, and Smoke, winner of the Oregon Book Award and finalist for the Thom Gunn Award, and The Gutter Spread Guide to Prayer. His Poetry has been featured on All Things Considered, Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and Best of... Read More →

Saturday May 18, 2024 11:00am - 12:15pm PDT

11:00am PDT

Making the Invisible Visible
Our buried backstories, the wounds no one sees, the hidden worlds in our midst—as writers in all genres, we can, we SHOULD explore this rich territory. Join this workshop, both generative and instructive, to jumpstart your work.
Speakers
avatar for Lauren Kessler

Lauren Kessler

Lauren Kessler is an award-winning narrative nonfiction writer who specializes in exploring invisible subcultures in our midst. The author of fifteen books, she has written about everything from the gritty world of a maximum security prison to the grueling world of ballet to the surprisingly... Read More →

Saturday May 18, 2024 11:00am - 12:15pm PDT

11:00am PDT

Pitching Your Graphic Novel, Selling Your Story
Blas will guide participants through the process of creating a pitch for a graphic novel idea and share how knowing what your story is really about will help your idea be understood and make your pitch more powerful.
Speakers
avatar for Terry Blas

Terry Blas

Terry Blas is the illustrator and writer behind the viral webcomics You Say Latino and You Say Latinx. He wrote the comic book tie-in for Ariana Grande's R.EM. fragrance campaign. He is also the writer of Steven Universe comics for Boom, and Rick and Morty comics for Oni Press. His... Read More →

Saturday May 18, 2024 11:00am - 12:15pm PDT

11:00am PDT

VIRTUAL: How Description Builds Story
What does descriptive writing do? There’s an idea that description is "only" for painting a picture in the reader’s mind. But what does that picture look like? What is its atmosphere and mood? In this workshop, We will look at examples of atmospheric, descriptive writing and identify the ways that description can be a propulsive force in a story, carrying many messages about the text. This talk will celebrate descriptive writing, and show how our choices can drive plot in a work of fiction far more than the simple mechanics of "He said this; they did that."
Speakers
avatar for Lydia Kiesling

Lydia Kiesling

Editor, The Millions
Lydia Kiesling is a novelist and culture writer. Her first novel, The Golden State, was a 2018 National Book Foundation “5 under 35” honoree and a finalist for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. Her second novel, Mobility, a national bestseller, was named a best book of 2023 by Vulture, Time, and NPR, among others, and was longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. It is a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. Her essays and nonfiction have been published in outlets including The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker online, and The Cut... Read More →

Saturday May 18, 2024 11:00am - 12:15pm PDT
  VIRTUAL

1:30pm PDT

Avoiding Infodump in Speculative Fiction
Infodump is a major occupational hazard in fiction—especially for writers of fantasy and SF. After all your worldbuilding, all your hard-SF research, how do you introduce backstory or technical details without bogging down your story? Join award-winning fantasy & SF author Joe Pitkin for tips dealing with this challenge—including examples from his most recent novel, Exit Black, published by Blackstone this year!
Speakers
avatar for Joe Pitkin

Joe Pitkin

Joe Pitkin’s short stories have appeared in the Boston Review, Analog, Black Static, Cosmos, and other magazines and podcasts, as well as on his blog, The Subway Test. His most recent novel, Exit Black, was published by Blackstone in 2024. He teaches at Clark College in Vancouver... Read More →

Saturday May 18, 2024 1:30pm - 2:45pm PDT

1:30pm PDT

Crafting a Cozy Mystery
In this workshop, cozy mystery author Paula Charles will guide participants through creating characters and setting, as well as choosing a weapon and victim. Expect idea sparks and some writing time.
Speakers
avatar for Paula Charles

Paula Charles

Writing cozy mysteries as both Paula Charles and Janna Rollins, Paula is a member of Sisters in Crime, the Guppies, and the Columbia River chapter of SINC. Paula lives on a one-acre hobby farm in Washington state with her patient husband and a handful of furry and feathered creatures... Read More →

Saturday May 18, 2024 1:30pm - 2:45pm PDT

1:30pm PDT

Writing the Magical, Writing the Real: On Making Magical Stories Believable
A caterpillar dissolves until it is entirely liquid and then puts itself back together as a butterfly. If we could talk to trees, tap into their roots and fungal networks, what would they say? A fairy has flitted around the room and landed atop my wrist before zooming out the window. Magic is all around us if we know how to look for it. For thousands of years, humans have been telling stories about magical creatures and occurrences existing among the mundane. In this workshop, we’ll discuss techniques for seeing the magic in the world, as well as the craft elements that make magical stories more believable.
Speakers
avatar for Emme Lund

Emme Lund

Emme Lund is an author living and writing in Portland, OR. She has an MFA from Mills College. Her work has appeared in Electric Literature, TIME Magazine, The Rumpus, Romper, the Portland Mercury, and Autostraddle, among many other venues. Her debut novel, The Boy with a Bird in His... Read More →

Saturday May 18, 2024 1:30pm - 2:45pm PDT

1:30pm PDT

Writing: Aggregating the Raw Material
To write skillfully, writers must have the essentials necessary to write. This workshop titled, ‘Writing: Aggregating the Raw Material’ will not cover what is obviously needed in order write (e.g. pen or pencil, paper, even electronics, etc.), but will examine elements that, to coin a phrase, and metaphorically speaking, ‘the raw material’ needed to write well. For the writer, raw material can come in the form of diction, dictum, metaphor, analogy, etc. Aggregating such raw material will contribute immensely when drafting written composition. This workshop is generative. Instructor commentary included. Participant participation in dialogue and writing is essential. Prompts will serve as inspiration for composition. This workshop is an opportunity for group learning.
Speakers
avatar for Emmett Wheatfall

Emmett Wheatfall

Emmett Wheatfall features, writes, records, and publishes, as well as performs poetry to music. Fernwood Press, an imprint of Barclay Press, has published three books of Emmett's poetry. His collection titled As Clean as a Bone was a 2019 Eric Hoffer Award Finalist as well as a da... Read More →

Saturday May 18, 2024 1:30pm - 2:45pm PDT

1:30pm PDT

VIRTUAL: the things themselves
“The most sensuous poets are the ones I trust the most,” says the poet Jorie Graham, citing the way that a word like “justice” can mean a thousand things to a thousand people while a word like “salt” has a much smaller range of possible associations. This workshop will focus our attention on the world of the senses and how our poems can sharpen and heighten our sensorium, offering a shared subjectivity beyond one’s perceptual confines, a way to, together, engage with a larger aliveness. The title of this course is a line from a Lucille Clifton elegy. We'll use this and other poems as a lens to consider the ways our current cultural moment is an invitation to widened wonder.
Speakers
avatar for Daniela Naomi Molnar

Daniela Naomi Molnar

Daniela Naomi Molnar is an artist, poet, pigment worker, wilderness guide, and educator collaborating with the mediums of language, color, water, pigment, and place. Her work is guided and inspired by the rapidly-changing, ever-resilient earth. Her book CHORUS won the 2024 Oregon... Read More →

Saturday May 18, 2024 1:30pm - 2:45pm PDT
  VIRTUAL
 
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