Writing the Difficult From a Reservoir of Love with Brian Turner

Literary Masters Lecture Series

Tue, Sep 15 & 22
6:30-8pm CT via Zoom
Nonmember: $90; Member: $75; Student/Educ/Mil: $63
*EARN CPEs;SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE

Join us for the first Literary Masters Lecture of the fall as we explore how to write about life’s most difficult experiences from a reservoir of love. Each session features an engaging craft talk, ready-to-use writing strategies, and a live Q&A with the author.

In this two-part intensive, award-winning poet and memoirist Brian Turner will share techniques for transforming painful experiences into meaningful, resonant writing. Through craft-focused lessons, you’ll learn how to approach challenging subjects with a broader, more grounded perspective that honors the humanity of the story. Participants will receive additional writing exercises to continue developing their work after the lecture series ends. This lecture is open to writers of all genres and skill levels 18+.

Participants will leave this lecture with:

• Craft-based strategies for writing about loss and other challenging topics
• A sense of what it means to sit with the art
• A series of writing prompts to work on at home following the lecture

Brian Turner is the author of five collections of poetry (from Here, Bullet to The Wild Delight of Wild Things) and a memoir (My Life as a Foreign Country). He’s the editor of The Kiss and co-editor of The Strangest of Theatres. His poems and essays have been published in The New York Times, The Guardian, National Geographic, and Harper’s, among other fine journals, and he was featured in the documentary Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience, nominated for an Academy Award. A Guggenheim Fellow, he’s received a USA Hillcrest Fellowship in Literature, the Amy Lowell Traveling Fellowship, the Poets’ Prize, and a Fellowship from the Lannan Foundation.