YOUNG WRITERS’ WORKSHOP 2011
Writers’ Bios and Workshop Descriptions
CARTOONING
SAM HURT is a cartoonist whose work has been collected in books and comic books. His cartoons have also appeared in many newspapers around the country. He painted one of the giant guitars on display recently around Austin. Sam graduated from The University of Texas, in the Plan II Honors Liberal Arts program, where he cartooned for UT’s Daily Texan, and then attended UT Law School.
Workshop: Mr. Hurt will draw on the overhead projector while he explains principles of storytelling in the cartoon medium. Then he will give the students simple drawing assignments intended to apply those principles. Mr. Hurt’s emphasis will be the complete freedom the storyteller has in this medium to create characters, settings, and events without the need to adhere to reality or to anyone else’s cartooning style.
POETRY OUT LOUD / SONGWRITING
JENA GESSAMAN: Poet for Hire/Poetry Workshop Instructor,/ Jena has led hundreds of in-school and after-school workshops for elementary, middle, and high school students./ Poems on the Spot,/
Jena writes on her antique typewriter./ Guaranteed to make somebody cry./Jena is a performance poet./ Two National Slam Teams, readings worldwide, featured with the Trio of Poets.
Currently, Ms. Gessaman is a poetry instructor with Badgerdog Literary Publishing and has served as section editor and cover photographer for the nonprofit’s seasonal anthology, Youth Voices in Ink.
Workshop: This Land is Your Land: Featuring Woody Guthrie as artist of the day, we will talk about sharing pertinent information about our lives to develop voice and specific details in our writing.
JON DEE GRAHAM is a legend on the Austin music scene. He’s been inducted into the Austin Music Hall of Fame three times, in 2000 as a solo artist, in 2008 as a member of the Skunks, and in 2009 as a member of the True Believers. In 2006, the readers of the Austin Chronicle named him Austin Musician of the Year. In 2008, Graham was the subject of a portrait-of-the-artist documentary, Swept Away, which is available nationally on DVD. Released in January 2010, It’s Not As Bad As It Looks is Graham’s seventh record overall. He has two sons, and is an 11-year resident of Travis Heights.
Workshop: Jon Dee Graham will explore the relation of writing and creativity to one's everyday life...how writing—in this case, lyrics—can be a way of documenting, explaining and even processing the events and emotions that make up our days; how there is art and inspiration in even the most ordinary and mundane. Mr. Graham will encourage and help the students to find and put down in words what is interesting or beautiful or significant in the day-to-day business of their lives.
BRANDON “B. LIGGY” LIGON has been teaching 4th grade at Travis Heights for four years. He graduated from Angelo State University in San Angelo, TX. Not only has he taught in the classroom but he has also become an educational rapper, consultant and motivational speaker. The name is B. Liggy! He's visited several schools around Texas and put on shows focused on science, math, and writing! All his songs are based on areas students study in school. His mission is to provide a fun and catchy way to remember important information. He believes in making learning relevant. He has songs about the process of photosynthesis, facts and opinions, the importance of showing your work and many more. He uses these songs in his classroom as well, and the kids just love it! He's also held writing workshops and breakout sessions for teachers providing ways to incorporate "rapping" in their classrooms. He has recorded 3 CDs, "Droppin' Knowledge," "The Science Samurai," and "Diary of a Math Phobic."
Workshop: Rappin' With B. Liggy: If you love rapping, this session is for you! Get together and learn from the pro! Learn how to put words together that express a concept and put it to a beat! Come show your skills off in this "all the way live" writing session!
FICTION
LIZ GARTON SCANLON is author of the 2010 Caldecott Honored picture book All the World (illustrated by Marla Frazee, published by Simon & Schuster), as well as A Sock is a Pocket for Your Toes (illustrated by Robin Preiss Glasser, published by HarperCollins). Forthcoming titles include Noodle and Lou (illustrated by Arthur Howard, Simon & Schuster, 2011), Think Big ( Bloomsbury , 2012) and Happy Birthday, Baby (Simon & Schuster, 2012). Scanlon also is an assistant professor of creative writing at Austin Community College and the mother of two daughters.
Workshop: Ms. Scanlon is happy to be back at Travis Heights this year and will offer a workshop using the power of metaphors to bring their poems to life!
DEBBIE GONZALES has enjoyed a long, happy career as a classroom teacher, art program director, school administrator, curriculum designer, and educational consultant. Now a freelance writer, Debbie earned her MFA from the Vermont College in Writing for Children and Young Adults and has published a number of early readers with Gilt Edge Publishing. Deb works as a creative writing workshop instructor with Austin’s own Badgerdog Publishing. She currently serves as the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators Regional Advisor for the Austin chapter. Check out her popular blog, Simple Saturdays, where weekly she posts simple, inexpensive, and entertaining family.
Workshop: Dissecting Cinderella: Learn the elements of a traditional story arc by dismantling the plot line of a famous fairy tale. Then write a story without using a single word! Draw your very own fairy tale using the standard plot points of a story arc as a guide.
BETHANY HEGEDUS’s second novel Truth with a Capital T debuted at the 2010 Texas Book Festival. Forthcoming is the picture book Grandfather Gandhi, co-authored with Arun Gandhi, grandson of the Mahatma. Bethany’s first novel, Between Us Baxters, was named a Bank Street Books, Best Books of 2010 (starred) and a Top 40 Fiction Books for Young Adults, by the Pennsylvania School Librarians Association. Bethany serves as co-editor of the Young Adult & Children’s page for the VCFA literary journal Hunger Mountain. She writes from her home in Austin.
Workshop: Creating Character: Where do characters come from? Ourselves! Join author Bethany Hegedus as she helps you build and create characters drawing on our own big or small real life moments.
LINDSEY LANE thinks that writing is a pretty cool way to explain the world to herself and others, and it's about as close as she will get to being President of a whole universe and making all the characters do just what she wants...except for that one time when one of those characters jumped out of her computer and ran wild in the streets of Austin. . . .
Workshop: Ms. Lane will take her students on the wild adventure of plot twists and adventure turns as they trek into the wild world of "what would happen if..." Using vivid descriptions, wacky dialogue and lovable characters, students will create fantastic stories and characters that might just jump off the page.
JO WHITTEMORE started her writing career as a toddler, dragging a crayon across the living room wall. She has since switched to pen and paper and is now the author of three published fantasy novels in The Silverskin Legacy trilogy and a humorous contemporary novel, Front Page Face-Off. Her fifth novel, Odd Girl In, will be released March 2011.
Workshop: What's So Funny? Everyone loves a good laugh, but there's more to writing humor than throwing the word "booger" in a sentence. Author Jo Whittemore will share tips on finding the right approach and subject matter to get a giggle from any crowd.
NONFICTION
MICHAEL HALL is a journalist and musician who lives in Austin. He graduated from the University of Texas in 1979 and worked as an editor at Third Coast Magazine and the Austin Chronicle before becoming a writer at Texas Monthly in 1997. He writes mostly about criminal justice and music--which he plays in his band the Savage Trip.
Workshop: "How to Tell Stories?" One thing I know as a magazine journalist is that writing stories is just like telling stories--that's why we call them that. We will talk about how a story needs a beginning, middle, and end, and that somewhere in there is a topic sentence. Everyone will write a really short story in the class.
DR. BOB RONZIO, Dr. Bob Ronzio, a former university professor with a background in biomedical research, has a long-term interest in nutrition and science education. He wrote The Encyclopedia of Nutrition and Good Health to help readers improve their health, and the health of their families. Dr. Ronzio very much enjoys sharing science and writing activities with 6 grandsons, ages 4-18, and with elementary school students! Educational background: Reed College (BA), University of California at Berkeley (PhD, Biochemistry), followed by postdoctoral appointments at the Tufts University School of Medicine, the Cornell University Medical College, and the University of Washington, School of Medicine.
Workshop: People invent new products every year! Some inventions solve important problems that can change the world, while others are for fun. Reporters describe driverless monster trucks, human jetpacks, hurricane armor for houses, microscope-camera-phones to diagnose diseases at long distance, or an all-terrain wheelchair made from bicycle parts, and many others. Today, let’s explore how science writers report these inventions by answering the questions: Who? What? Where? When? Why? How? Let your imagination and genius soar! Come up with inventions you would like to see, then write a report to publicize your ideas.
SCRIPTWRITING FOR BROADCAST OR STAGE
KENT HAWES graduated Texas A&M University Broadcast Journalism and Advertising. He moved to Los Angeles where he worked for Warner Bros. TV on sitcoms “Growing Pains” and “Just the Ten of Us.” This led to an opportunity to produce a variety of projects in development for studio and network executives including hour-long specials, sitcoms pilots, direct response and live venue multi-media. He returned to Texas to raise his family in the latter 90's and was a commercial/ corporate producer for clients in Austin. Over the past decade he has specialized in serving education by developing unique media literacy and instructional technology programs for Texas school districts.
Workshop: SELL IT! The Art and Craft of a TV Commercial.
Its everywhere! People are selling to you all the time on TV, radio, Internet. Here's your chance to be on the other side to learn how companies and the media figure out (in part) how to get you to buy their product... and right now while supplies last! We will analyze a product and its intended market to craft a message suitable for television and that motivates someone to buy it. Then we will rapid fire shoot and view our spot. Fast paced and fun, satisfaction guaranteed or your money back!
DAVID MODIGLIANI makes film and theater at the intersection of the personal and political. Texas Monthly named him one of the “next great Texas directors.” His feature-length documentary, Crawford, about the tiny Texas town George Bush turned into the Western White House, premiered at SXSW. Variety calls it “poignant,” Premiere calls it “richly compelling” and the New York Sun calls it “revelatory.” He recently concluded his three-year fellowship at the Michener Center for Writers with the Austin production of his play, Wireless-less (nominated by the Austin Critics Table for “Best New Play.”) His newest film “Espwa (Hope)” debuted at Sundance in January. He has a BA from Harvard University and an MFA from UT Austin.
Workshop: How do you write a play? We'll create our own characters, write our own scenes and act some of them out at the end.
RUPERT REYES is the artistic director of Teatro Vivo. He is a graduate of the University of Texas Department of Theater, Drama Education. Rupert’s playwright credits include the Petra Plays (Petra’s Pecado, Petra’s Cuento and Petra’s Sueño) and Veciños, which was nominated for best new script by the B. Iden Payne Awards in 2008. His plays have been produced in a number of cities throughout the US, including San Antonio, and Houston, San Francisco, Albuquerque, and Minneapolis/St. Paul, .His most recent works include two one acts, Crossing the Rio and Two Souls and A Promise. His workshop performance of Route 307, a play inspired by 23 years as a letter carrier recently was selected as Best of the Week at Frontera Fest at Hyde Park Theater, 2011. And his latest acting work was a Whataburger commercial, where he plays a policeman enjoying a breakfast burrito. Yet all his theater work is shadowed by his daughter Anya's gift this past October; Amelia Lee Reyes, his first granddaughter.
Workshop: Have you ever wanted create your own play? Working with short skits, students will learn to identify and resolve a conflict using a skit format to create a short play. These short “plays” will allow students to identify character, exposition, conflict and resolution in their own original works. These skills will allow students to create they own works of great theater on their own. Students will perform these plays if time allows.
ALVARO RODRIGUEZ has been writing since childhood and, in fact, did his best work when he was 11. His Texas-border series of short stories, including a Pushcart Prize nominee, have appeared in The Mesquite Review, Bordersenses, flashquake and Popcorn Fiction, among others. With filmmaker Robert Rodriguez, he is the co-writer of the wishing-rock children’s movie SHORTS (2009), and MACHETE (2010) starring Danny Trejo and Robert De Niro. B.A., English, University of Texas and M.A., Literature, University of Houston
Workshop: Be the Hero: Writing a Screenplay from Myths. We will explore how older stories like myths and legends often form the patterns of movie storytelling today. We’ll take ideas and turn them into outlines for a screenplay, and come up with new ways of transforming words into images.
MARKETING
PATRICK ANCIPINK started his career as a technical writer 18 years ago and continued to leverage his written and verbal skills into his current postion as a marketing executive for a Fortune 500 software company. Patrick spends his working days finding fresh and compelling ways to communicate complex technical products and concepts as well as “ghost writing” for the Travis Heights Elementary PTA. Patrick has a BA in American Studies from Yale University.
Workshop: We will discuss how writing—from the technical to the creative--is essential in the technology industry and marketing profession. The workshop will use a wide variety of examples to
demonstrate how different writing styles and outputs can be used to market and sell products and ideas. We will work collaboratively to create materials to launch a new product to the market.
