Roanoke Regional Writers Conference

Roanoke Regional Writers Conference

Hollins University
January 28 & 29

Below is a list of the great classes I attended during the Conference

1. Stephanie Klein-Davis, Roanoke Times photographer "Editing Your Own Photographs"

2. Doug Cumming, associate professor of journalism at W & L University, author 2 recent books, The Southern Press and Bylines  "Structuring Your (Nonfiction) Storytelling"

3. Anne Clelland, owner of Handshake 2.0 "How Much Shall We Share on Our Blogs?"


4. Dan Casey, Roanoke Times columnist "Telling Stories You Know"


5. Jeanne Larsen, Hollins University professor, novelist, essayist, poet; books include Silk Road, Bronze Mirror, Manchu Palaces, and her most recent book, Why We Make Gardens (& Other Poems) "Tell It Like It Isn't: the Fine Art of Fiction & Other Lies"


6. Cara Ellen Modisett, former editor of Blue Ridge Country magazine, teacher, musician, student. "Lead Writing"

I Learned

No Excuse to take photos!

Go out in the rain.

Stay Curious and Inquisitive

Exceed your own expectations.

Pick a photo or postcard and write about it.

Narrow down to one person or topic.

Not the forest, but a leaf, moss, or rock.

Hand write in a journal every day.

We love to know each others story.

Make Time to Write and Do Art!

Silent Nature at Olin Hall Roanoke College

Kurt Ernest Steger

Olin Hall Roanoke College

January 21 - February 20

Silent Nature visually explores the edge where man and nature meet.

Through simplicity of form and within quiet beauty may we realize that we are nature.

The Pearl Gate

This sculpture created by siblings Kurt Steger and Char Norman is a collaboration

creating a passage symbolic of personal and spiritual transformation.

The piece represents many gestures, some intentional some by happenstance.

The sculpture is symbolic of a bridge transitioning from one world to another,

representative of a book of five chapters written by the physical interaction of each

person who passes through, and at the same time an experience of the

death process traveling through the tunnel into the light.

On another level the work is a “Buddha Wash” of 108 sheets of handmade paper,

 a number most auspicious in many eastern religions,

including the Buddhist belief of the 108 obstacles to enlightenment.

Most relevant to the artists is the personal experience and whatever one chooses to make of it.

 Kurt Ernest Steger and Char Norman

The Burden Boat Project

The burden boat project is an invitation for individuals who choose

to release a burden from their life.

We often hold in our minds, bodies and spirit, resentments, worries, fear, anger and

shame. These feelings and emotions may not be relevant or true nor have purpose.

If you have such a burden and are ready to let it go, write it down on a piece of paper,

visualize your life without such a weight and leave that burden behind

by placing it in the boat.

You have energetically in this moment let it go.

On February 20th at 3:00 p.m. a ritual of liberation by fire will be held

in the Olin Hall Courtyard. This will be where all the burdens gathered

will ceremoniously be released together, letting the collective energy

that we all carry in these burdens to be left as nothing

more then smoke and ash.

Suspended Journey

Healer

Funerary

Offering