Time to Register for the Sorcerer’s Apprentice Camp!
We’re still in the process of updating a few pages, but I wanted to let you know that it is now possible for students to register for the Sorcerer’s Apprentice 2010 Creative Writing Camp! This is an opportunity for educators to nominate students who they think have potential as creative writers.
This year, we’re trying a few different things.
1. We have streamlined the camp to focus on two genres, fiction and poetry. Accordingly, there are two workshops on poetry and two on fiction in the morning. Students will get started writing poetry and short fiction in those hands-on workshops, led mainly by DWP teacher-consultants.
2. In the afternoon, everyone will attend a revision workshop, giving students a chance to revise or continue to develop the pieces they started in the morning. We’re also, for the first time, encouraging students who wish to do so to bring up to ten double-spaced pages of creative writing (fiction or poetry) that they wish to revise. So, while the focus at the revision workshop is on the pieces started during the morning workshops, the option of revising earlier work may be of interest to some budding writers.
3. After the revision workshop, the students will have the choice of attending either the performance workshop or the poetry slam(!) workshop. The performance workshop helps prepare writers to perform their pieces at the 4 p.m. public reading, whether it’s poetry or fiction (and this can include any writing they chose to bring to the camp). If the students instead choose the poetry slam(!) workshop, members of the Vermillion Literary Project (VLP) will help the students prepare to perform their poems in a poetry slam, that will also be part of the 4 p.m. reading. This is an exciting option that we are trying for the first time. The VLP has been running poetry slams for the past several years, and this is an opportunity for the high school students to learn how to “slam” in a supportive environment.
So, our writing camp continues to evolve, with help from several DWP teacher-consultants, including Rebecca Mehrens, Dan Schweitzer, Lindy Obach, Sue Zueger, Sue Morrell, Dennis Sjolie, and Connie Krueger, as well as others. You can see details about the camp at http://orgs.usd.edu/dwp/camp . Again, we’re still updating web pages, but we are accepting registrations. Please note that registrations need to be postmarked by September 15.
