The description would be something like "Even if you think you can't draw, you probably can." But even if you really can't, practicing the methods of graphic literature--using the techniques of visual art, including drawing and painting, but also erasure, collage, photography and digital illustration--can enhance your poems, stories, memoirs, and essays. In this workshop, we'll discuss how studying and making comics and narrative collages can help make writers in any genre better at honing their descriptive and storytelling skills, as well as creating character, setting, and above all voice. Above and beyond that, making graphic literature is fun, and pushing yourself into a new approach can open up your writing projects and practices in ways you never thought possible.
Whether you attend in person or via zoom, start gathering materials you might want to use for this hands-on session. The minimum is several pieces of blank paper and a pencil, but you may choose to expand your options and gather up colored pencils, crayons, markers, maybe even collage resources such as magazines, collected images, scissors, and glue. We will be in the downstairs room with round tables, so if you want to team up you can share materials.
Kathleen Rooney is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press, as well as a founding member of Poems While You Wait. Her most recent books include the novels Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk (St. Martin’s Press, 2017) and Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey (Penguin, 2020). Her poetry collection Where Are the Snows won the 2021 X.J. Kennedy Prize and was published by Texas Review Press in fall of 2022. Her novel From Dust to Stardust, based on the life and work of silent movie star Colleen Moore, will be published by Lake Union in the fall of 2023. She lives in Chicago with her spouse, the writer Martin Seay, and teaches English and Creative Writing at DePaul University.
