Some imagination comes to CSUBy Brandon Petitto
From poets to playwrights, “Imagination: A Writer’s Workshop and Conference” has it all.
Attended by credit-seeking and non-credit-seeking students and writers, the conference will focus on writing in the “slip stream.”
“It’s about putting down preconceived notions of writing, taking down walls,” said Rita Grabowski, manager of the poetry center at Cleveland State University.
CSU will hold its annual Imagination writing conference from July 17 through the 22 at the Trinity Commons located at 2230 Euclid Ave. Conference lectures, panels and readings will be open to those who applied and paid tuition.
But, conference workshops will be limited to a few select candidates based on their writing samples and/or submissions.
Dr. Neal Chandler, coordinator of creative writing at CSU, said the goal of the conference is to teach writers and students how to write across genres and innovatively.
“One way to make a writer better is to expose a writer to other writers,” Chandler said.
For six days, students and writers will work with 10 faculty writers from outside the English department’s staff.
“Students will get a variety of perspectives,” Chandler said. “They will work with poets, nonfiction writers, fiction writers, screenwriters and playwrights.”
Chandler said the conference’s faculty is what helps keep the conference fresh.
“The different makeup of the faculty is what makes it new each year,” Chandler said. “They bring new ideas and perspectives.”
In addition, Grabowski said the tone of the conference is a serious one because all of the conferences attendees are serious about writing.
Similarly, Holly Christensen, a writer and former Imagination participant, said the attending writers and the cost of tuition for the conference are what shape it.
“It’s the writers that make the conference something and the cost weeds out the serious from the nonserious writers,” Christensen said.
“The intensity and feedback from the writers is something you don’t often get,” Christensen said. “If you’re in a classroom, you don’t always get that.”
For more information, call (216) 687-2532.